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 welcome to this naked mind podcast. I am here today with a special guest. Jamie, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for joining.

Thank you for having me.

Awesome. So I love your story because it is not necessarily the typical everything was roses story and I know we'll get to that. But I think it's so powerful and so important to share.

So first of all, thank you for having the courage to share it, especially when it's not your typical story.

So I really would love it if you could just sort of take me back kind of maybe even to the beginning.

I remember specifically my first drink, but I know that I definitely drink since college and I think a little bit in high school, but not very much.

And I always it's pretty typical, I think of people that are problematic whereas I had like a really high tolerance and I really can hang and I, you know, and really enjoyed it and really had a good time and party pretty hard.

And it wasn't great. It wasn't really a problem for a pretty good long time. And in addition to having a high tolerance, I was also like really functional like I'm very rarely got hung over.

And I was just all these factors that just kind of led to me having this like long drinking career would really I probably shouldn't have, but I will say that I felt like other people I drank with who drank heavily or, you know, occasionally or often or whatever.

Always seem to have like a much healthier relationship with it like they were just like, well, it's fun and I was just like, okay. And it my I had a lot of shame with it from the beginning, like I was all a really embarrassed and.

You know, not really trying to hide things necessarily, but just really just bad feelings, just negative feelings associated with the whole time and I mean I drank off and on throughout my entire adulthood and my my early 40s now.

I have had two kids and I stopped during pregnancy like no problem. There's no big deal.

And the thing that probably started to change is after my second kid, I started blacking out more and more and that was always problematic and I was blacked out a lot more than I admitted, but it was I was really good at like just playing it off like everything was cool and reality.

I didn't remember a lot and was really embarrassed and really felt really ashamed of all that.

I had a really bad blackout where I was on a church for work, which is super humiliating and was in a foreign country and woke up and I, you know, I was in a hotel room and I it was mine fortunately, but I didn't know how I had gotten there or I mean I honestly had no idea what had happened from about dinner time on.

And it was, you know, it just wasn't good. I wasn't necessarily in trouble or anything, but I felt terrible about it. I just it was just, you know, I don't know that it was rock bottom because I think people associate rock bottom with, you know, using your job or losing your family, but it was kind of just my personal rock bottom where I was just like this just can't continue.

And I started looking for ways to quit.

I had considered AA off and on throughout the years.

And I just, I just for whatever reason I just knew it wasn't the right fit for me. I don't even know that it was something I could specifically articulate.

It just, I just knew it was not something that would work for me and it wasn't until I found some people that are on Instagram and who are blogs who were sort of this new type of sober person that I didn't know existed where you're not deprived and it's not like you're being punished.

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