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 I got a great question yesterday, one that has me, you know, really thinking.

I thought I'd share my answer here. I was actually being interviewed for a magazine and I was sitting across the table from the woman who was interviewing me and she said,

so, are you sober? And it's interesting. I've never been asked that question before. I think because it's just the assumption that yes, I'm sober.

And I was thinking about it and I was like, you know what? I don't really identify with the word sober and I started just kind of pouring out my heart around why.

And I wanted to share it with you and I know this is going to feel sort of counterintuitive because I'm the first one to say, like, I don't drink.

And you know, if you've seen me on television and all in the ass this question and I say, yeah, I drink as much as I won't, whenever I want to.

I just haven't wanted to have a drink in like almost five years now, actually just over five years now.

And here's the interesting thing though, when I was asked, am I sober? What I say, hi, my name's Annie, I'm sober.

I've never really said that. I've never said, you know, and why? So why is it for me? And here's why.

There's a few reasons. First of all, I have such a just fundamental issue with the fact that when it comes to alcohol, 100% is success and 99.9% is abject, miserable, stigmatized failure.

Where else and with what else on the planet is that true? How does that even make sense? How is that even fair? And how is that ever setting ourselves up for success?

Right? And so the idea of sober being the goal or destination has never been my true North has never been my goal or destination because I think, well, I've chased and what's really led me down the journey that I've been on is a very different question.

Now, I will tell you that when I first started questioning my drinking, I did think about I need to get sober. I need to stop drinking and that was my goal. And actually that goal led me into a very long period of time, years of making promises to myself and in breaking this promises. So it would look like this.

Okay, I'm at least, you know, only drink on the weekends, only on the weekends, not during the week. I'm a mom. I'm at home. I need to not drink during the week only on the weekends. That wouldn't work. So I'd be like, okay, only Thursday, Friday, Saturday, that's only, that's it. Nothing else. That wouldn't work. Okay, just after a hump day, after Wednesday, it's totally fine. That didn't work. And you can see where this was going. And eventually I was like, okay, one day a week. I'm going to have one day a week where I don't drink. Right? And then that wouldn't work. And then I was like, okay, just two drinks a night. That's my max. That's my limit.

And if you read this and you could mind, you know, it starts me waking up having promised myself only two drinks tonight and not even being able to count how many glasses of wine I had drank. And so I lived in that space of trying for this thing. And it was when I started to ask myself a different question when I started to ask myself, well, I've been asking like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I fix this? Why can't I get over this? What's wrong with me? And when I started to look at this and be like, what changed?

Why is it that it didn't used to be an issue? Why is it that alcohol wasn't as important as it is now? Why is it that alcohol didn't used to take up so much of my brain space?

It didn't used to be something where I'd walk into the party in the first time I think about was, okay, where's the bar? What's your drink? I used to walk into the party and be like, oh, you know, there's Sally. Let me go talk to her or, huh, I'm hungry. And so how is it that all of a sudden, I've been spending so much time thinking about drinking, thinking about not drinking, thinking about how much I'm going to drink.

On this rollercoaster of it, what changed? So I started asking that question and then as a result of asking that question, I started asking in a better question, which was not what's wrong with me, but what's wrong with alcohol?

What is it about this fermented substance in a glass that has such a hold on me? What is it? What has it done in my brain? What has it done in my body?

And interestingly, the place where I found freedom wasn't in saying that I'm never going to drink again. And that's for a lot of reasons. First of all, that goal, I'm not going to know I'm successful to my dad.

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