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 friends, welcome to Annie Grace Answers. I'm Annie Grace, author of this naked mind and I'm answering questions about anything related to living an alcohol-free life, the book, whatever.

And you can get the first four chapters of my book free at thisnakedmind.com. Check it out, see what it's all about.

We got secondest notes during yesterday, got home today, so we're home, thank goodness.

And yesterday I answered a question, how do you deal with stress without drinking? And it's a really good question because at the end of the day, obviously you want to crack one open, have a beer and what do you do instead?

I answered it yesterday in a way that was really about the fact that the stress in your life actually reduces without drinking and you don't have as much stress and alcohol creates stress, etc.

But I had a follow up question saying, okay, but that minute, you know, that end of the day when you're trying to transition, like I get it, that stress will reduce overall, etc.

And if you're more curious about that, watch part one. But the follow up question is, okay, but what do you actually do? Like what do you do at the end of the day to kind of relieve stress?

And so this is much more specific. And I was, you know, wanting to answer in the bigger, broader way first because I really do believe that there are, you know, if you're not going to use something for self medication, which is actually taking something that's going to psychoactively change your brain to instantly remove the stress, the things that you can do are few and far between that are as effective.

But for me, what I've started doing really regularly since I stopped drinking is it's going to be all the usual suspects. So exercise, my brother, is a black belt and take condo.

And his niece just got her black belt, my niece, his daughter. So my husband and I and our two kids joined a gym and now we are going through doing take condo and that's been a huge stress reliever.

Um, really enjoy coffee and tea and the great thing about tea specifically is you can kind of make it an entire, you know, experience with getting specific teas and ulongs and a teapot and buying the blossoms and everything else. So it can be really akin to, you know, kind of sign of the fluff and

pomp you got around wine drinking, which I think can be really useful if you like that preparation and excitement around it. So tea is really helpful.

I love sitting in, I don't do baths, but this I'm sitting on is our hot tub. So I'm very lucky to have a hot tub and that's really good.

And then that brings me to the most effective thing I do to relieve stress and it's funny because I grew up in a very hippie household in the middle of the mountains.

And there was lots of meditation and lots of incense and those sorts of things and so for some reason, and I think this is how it is when you grow up, you kind of rebel against whatever your parents did for a while.

And I just, meditation was a bunch of hoopla and how I understood meditation was that you had to clear your mind and you had to stop thinking. And I mean, someone told me once Annie, if you learn how to meditate, give me a call because that will be the day. And, you know, I.

It's true. I mean, my mind, the one of the main reasons I think I drank was to just slow my mind and to stop thinking as much as I was thinking. And, um, and so trying to meditate and stop thinking just had me feeling like a failure.

And I hated it like absolutely hated it. I thought it was the worst. And in fact, I don't even really like the word meditation because I think it's kind of loaded. But.

The one thing that I have figured that has really worked for me and I have to give a shout out to Dan Harris, author of 10% happier is because he reframed meditation completely. So it wasn't about.

Stopping your mind from thinking it was about observing your thoughts and I mean, this is going to sound like, oh, duh to anybody who's practiced mindfulness. But for me, that was a big, a big difference. It wasn't about that I had to stop thinking.

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