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 I am answering a religious questions.

And today I have two questions actually from Kim.

So the first question is she says, Annie, I'm 83 days alcohol for you.

Thanks to you. And for the last two days, I've been having cravings again and again that are really strong and almost constant.

I feel like I'm back on day one.

Any advice of what to do with the feelings when they come on, I don't want to go back to eating chocolate.

First of all, awesome, amazing job to get to 83 days and that's just absolutely great.

And I would really try to pinpoint what thought is happening right before those cravings because they're not really physical anymore.

So those cravings are certainly psychological in nature.

And I wonder if it's something different in your environment or some sort of stress that's happening in your life.

Something that is just sort of that you may have reached for alcohol before that you haven't navigated yet.

The first year, I think is really full of a lot of those ups and downs because you can be like smooth sailing, everything's going great, no problem whatsoever.

And then all of a sudden you get into a place where boom craving and you're in a really, really intense spot.

And that can often happen because you're navigating things that you have not previously navigated before.

So you can feel like, okay, what's this? What's happening now?

And the tendency is like, oh, I'm back at day one, beat myself up.

Oh my gosh, this is all going horrible.

My best advice is to never expect it to be like sunshine and roses.

Just expect that these things are going to come on and then you won't be so frustrated when they do.

So just have that kind of expectation that yeah, different things might trigger different cravings.

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