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, it's Annie Grace and I am the author of this naked mind and I'm here answering readers questions.

I got an email this morning from a woman named Charlotte and she asked me a question that I wanted to get on and answer right away

because it's important and really at this time of year when you're trying to make changes but everyone and everything around you during the holidays is just still holding up alcohol as the best thing.

And so her question is Annie I'd really appreciate it if you could do a video something around feeling low after giving up drinking, feeling the depression and other feelings that I've started to feel without my usual crutch.

Having to face up to everything I've been numbing and not been dealing with while I've been drinking. How to deal with the sadness, the regret, the things I've done, the harm I've caused to my body and to others.

Anything you can tell me about this would be helpful. So first of all I want to say something in general about the first weeks, months of not drinking.

There's a lot of feelings that you're feeling that are totally chemical and they're not necessarily going to be don't expect that this is going to be what you're signing up for.

Right, you're not signing up for this life of complete misery and I know that it can feel like that at first because you're having this major time of healing where your brain actually has to get back in balance.

So you've been feeding an alcohol your brain has been trying to maintain homeostatious trying to protect itself and it's been doing this in a whole host of ways and it's been producing other counter chemicals including di norphin that bring down the pleasure.

And interestingly, you know, pleasure is one of the few things on the planet that we become tolerant to and the reason we become tolerant to pleasure is because just like eating, you know, two dozen chocolate chip cookies, the last one is going to make you feel sick.

Our bodies trying to say, okay, no more of that. Let's steer us on the right path and you know, get us salad before we eat the next chocolate chip cookie.

But with something like alcohol that becomes addictive, we actually create a vacuum within our brains and our brain if we're drinking every day just can't continue to compensate.

So when you immediately take the alcohol away, it's like taking the rug out from under something and your brain has to be like, okay, wait, I have to get back to my normal levels and that takes time.

And I actually interviewed a doctor about this because it was something that I was really curious about and a radio was curious about it and I'll post the link to that video in the comments below because his response is just phenomenal in terms of what happens and how long it takes.

But you should just know that a lot of what you're feeling now, it's not going to last. It's really because right now you are in a major detoxification, a major healing phase and this is going to get better and better.

And so the other thing I want to say is that it's going to be worth it. So no matter what you're feeling now, you know, I can say, you know, years down the road, it's amazingly worth it.

It's incredible. You literally regain the ability to when you were a child, when you were a teenager, when you could just have fun without realizing, without thinking about alcohol, it literally takes a backseat in your life.

It becomes small and irrelevant, but that takes time and it's sort of an investment, you know, drinking people say, and it's commonly said that drinking is like stealing tomorrow's happiness for today.

And at the end, of course, we know it's not even that you're stealing happiness, you're stealing the ability to numb out tomorrow's negative feelings and you're using that today.

And then you have to steal a little bit more. It's almost like a loan shark with interest every day. You have to do a little bit more because your body is trying to, you know, build a tolerance and protect itself.

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