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'm super excited to be here with Christine. Welcome, Christine. How are you? Oh, I'm doing great, Annie. Thank you. So glad. So why don't you just like take me back, walk me back to sort of your background, the beginning of your drinking days, take me back to where it all started. Okay, before I start, I just wanted to say how much

you remind me of Rhonda burn who is the Australian author and media producer that put together the movie The Secret. Oh, because you know at the end of 2004 she was in really bad place and her daughter gave her a book called

The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Waddles written in 1910 and Rhonda says of that moment she says something inside me had me turned the pages one by one and I can still remember my tears hitting the pages as I was reading it. It gave me a glimpse of the secret and it was like a flame inside my heart.

And you know so much lifted from her and it benefited her so much she said I've got to share this with the world so people can understand the law of attraction, which is the secret and that's what you've done and you just opened up this for so many of us. Sorry, I want to thank you.

Thank you that's so I watched that movie on a plane three years ago and I was like, oh my gosh, why is nobody told me this before.

This is amazing. It's just like that's a cool thing to think about like your desires can actually yeah it's just amazing.

Yeah, our thoughts are energy and you know what we focus on we draw more of to ourselves. So.

How cool.

All right, very cool.

So I guess what I'm just going to say is that I had to take it or leave it attitude about alcohol all my life.

I had a false belief that you know if you have the alcoholic gene which I don't believe in anymore but if you have that gene it'll appear right away.

If you drink you know for any period of time or any like the time it's going to get you so I assume that although my grandfather had it he played pro baseball in the 20s and was kicked off the team because of drinking and consequences of that.

My brother younger brother just died in May of complications with drinking and pills and I actually told myself you know I don't take pills.

So I'm okay. You know we keep justifying what we're doing because we just you know I didn't want to face the fact that I might have a problem and what having a problem with me that I'd have to label myself an alcoholic that I'd be stuck in recovery the rest of my life and I've been a counselor.

So I know what that's like and the doom people feel you know to be trapped forever recovering never really having join your life and always abstaining and keeping away from people places things you know that are going to trigger you and I was so fearful of that I thought God no place.

So but I assumed that you know it wasn't I didn't have the gene but when I was 24 my boyfriend died in an accident and I took I turned to Christianity to try and make sense of my life and so I tried to quit a lot of things through willpower and as you know willpower runs out it's fine I and so I tried quitting smoking and various other things and you know when this is going to be a good thing.

You know when the stress became too much I started snacking on food so when I gained weight quickly I thought to myself well now I'm being a bad example of a question so I went on a three day water fast at the end of the three days because I thought it was a spiritual problem because I'd never had an eating problem before I went on water three days and at the end of it I just ate more than ever and so I thought well I haven't gone long enough so I went 21 days on water only.

I was working in a men's prison as a guard at the time I was like 20 early 20s and I got so much attention from people which I craved because I didn't get it growing up that I lost a lot of weight and I got all this attention and but at the end of it I still binge on all the foods that I do not feel any open I've done a five day water past and that was I I'm just amazed wow.

Well you know what happens after a while your hunger goes away sort of and it's not that hard it's coming off it and so I came off and I started eating again and I thought my gosh I'm just not normal this is the thing we tell ourselves I'm not normal I'm defective I have a problem so this was early 80s there wasn't a lot known about eating disorders and things so I just decided that I was going to have to control how I ate so this went on for years with me restricting my

what I ate how much I ate and and then finally giving in and couldn't take it after a while and then I binge for two three days and then fast again to rid myself of of the damage this went on for many years and at the same time was weight training in gyms

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