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.

This is Annie Grace and welcome to this naked mind podcast and I'm here with Melissa.

Hi Melissa. Hi Annie. Good thank you. Yeah, good to have you on. So why don't you kind of back up to the beginning and tell us where everything started for you.

Okay, back up at the beginning, I guess for me, alcohol really didn't play a part in my life at all until I was about 17 and then it kind of started getting on my radar, because I'm from Australia when we turn 18, everyone can drink and it's a massive thing.

But growing up alcohol was in my home, my parents didn't drink.

My dad before I was born, I was born when he was 48 and before I was born, he from all accounts, he drank a bit, or regularly, but just beer and he was a happy, happy drunk and nothing really bad.

But after speaking to him over the years, I've heard about his terrible hangovers and you know, drinking after work and drinking at lunchtime and all that sort of stuff, but never a problem, drink up.

But yeah, I missed all that. So when I grew up, he didn't drink at all.

And yeah, I think the first time I ever saw a drunk person was at a friend's house and her parents came home drunk, but I didn't know they were drunk. I was like, what's wrong with these people.

And yeah, I realized that they were drunk and that was the first time I'd ever seen an adult drunk and it was a bit scary because I just, you know, they were, they were just not acting themselves.

But anyway, see it when turn 17 started going to parties with friends and we would buy some, we get a friends mum to buy some alcohol, just a little like a hit flask, maybe like a 200 mil bottle and we tell the moment was for like the whole party.

But we'd end up having it and but not a lot and we just get tipsy and that was really about it and everything kind of progressed from there. So once I turned 18, it was kind of like, okay, now I can drink.

But I had really, I have really no idea how powerful alcohol was I really had no idea much about it was just something that was fun and now that we were 18 and adults that we could just drink. So that's what we did.

I think back probably to the first time, maybe I ever blacked out was when I went to a friends party and my boyfriend at the time, one of his older friends bought this Polish vodka.

And I think it was actually, I think I said 40% proof, I think it was like 80% proof, it was this stuff was like rocket fuel. But I had no idea that that's what it wasn't meant to be like. So we just drank that and I pretty sure that night, I don't know, I lost some of my memory.

And that was probably the first time I got seriously drunk and was ill and was hungover and everything like that. But that did not deter me. I continued on for a long time and in my 20s, that's how we put it.

And we were all tired, we would go out, we never went out to say we're going to get completely trashed, but that's always what happened.

And it kind of happened without meaning to just kind of went out and you drink and before you knew it was for a, you know, what had happened for half the night and it just, yeah, it was really messy.

But looking back, my 20s, I did feel like a lot of fun, but there was a lot of excessy drinking because everyone was doing it and it was the norm. No one really said anything. It was, you know, you call it the next day, you laugh at the stories.

You'd recover after when I was at young, I probably recover the next day and then you just kind of move on for the next weekend.

But what was happening, I don't think I realized that alcohol was kind of weaving itself into the whole fabric of my life and mainly the socializing things. So for me, I never drink at home on my own.

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