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.

Hey everybody, hello my name is Scott Pinier and I am the head coach in this naked mind and I am back again for another coaching questions podcast.

So I have three questions today. These questions are about community. I'm going to just dive right in and have them have Adam.

So question number one, hi Scott. So I have a question for you about community in the intensive. I spend a lot of time thinking about drinking and my personal life. I've spent a lot of time thinking about drinking and how to fix my life.

I've heard people talk about community and how important that is, especially early on in the process. I get that and it has been very helpful for me.

My question is this, what about long term? I've spent so much time thinking about and working on this problem. What do you think community should look like over the long? Should I only hang out with non drinkers? Do I need to be continuously thinking about drinking? What love to hear your thoughts?

What a fantastic question. So there's a couple of ways to look at this. First of all, yes, you know, particularly early on in those stages when you're just becoming aware when you're working to try to change your drinking habits.

Having community, having people around, having people you can talk to who understand what you're going through, who understand what you're dealing with is absolutely key.

It is so helpful to be able to connect with someone and hear their story, right, to hear what they went through and what they're thinking and what they felt and what happened, right.

It's so amazing to be able to talk about your own, right, and talk about the way you feel and what you see happening with your life. So all of those things are 100% true and important, particularly early on. Now longer term, you know, a lot of us think, all right, I want to, you know, quote unquote back into life, right.

I want to still be able to go out with friends. I want to still be able to engage. Obviously, we can't hide from alcohol. So what do we do.

And this is a really interesting question. I'm not necessarily recommending one way to do it over the other, but I do want to talk about some things that I have seen really help people be successful long term, including myself.

So number one is I have a few alcohol free friends, right. These are people that also don't drink. And some of them are in my social circles here in town, right, that I go out with regularly.

And some of them are people that I know online that I've met in forums, but I have a group of friends I have people that I talk to and connect with on a regular basis that are alcohol free.

And we don't always talk about booze, right. The entire relationship isn't based on that. But I have relationships there. So I know if I do end up having a hard time. And you know, over that first six, eight months, I did, you know, there was a lot of times when I, when I really wanted to talk to someone who's alcohol free.

So I have that group of friends. And you know, we do stay in contact fairly regularly, but that is not my only group of friends. This is a matter of fact, a lot of these people where people I met after I quit drinking and while those relationships are fantastic, I have a whole other group of friends who have known for a very long time. And I have not cut ties with them at all.

As a matter of fact, you know, I will go out and hang out in bars with these people like I will go to weddings and, you know, barbecues in places where people are drinking.

You know, to your question of do you have to not be around alcohol, obviously that's a personal choice. And if it is making you that uncomfortable, first I might ask you kind of what your beliefs are around it and see if we could work with a little bit. But ultimately, that's up to you.

And so for me, you know, I've kept my drinking friends and I hang out with them. And yes, I don't get wasted with them anymore. You know, I don't stay at the bar with them until two in the morning. I don't, you know, that sort of behavior is kind of stopped. These people are still my friends. Right. And so we still interact and we still engage.

So I kind of have both, right. What I've seen people be successful with is having that sort of balance. Right. It would be very difficult to remain alcohol free if it meant you had to give up all of your other relationships.

You know, for a lot of us, yeah, there might be one or two friends that are going too far. There might be friends that maybe don't necessarily understand what we're going through and don't really want to be around us also completely fine.

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