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.

It's Annie Grace, how it's everybody doing. I wanted to dive right in and answer this question.

That is kind of controversial that I actually get asked a lot and it is, does Annie Grace think alcohol

ex-anonymous or AA is wrong? And I just want to clear the air here and just from the, you know,

right from the quote, horses mouth, tell you, although that makes me the horse in that scenario. But anyway,

straight from my mouth, tell you exactly what I think about AA. I want to say, first of all, I do not think AA is wrong at all by any stretch of the imagination.

This naked mind obviously is very different than AA and I want to go into some of those differences, but that does not ever mean that I think that AA is wrong or that it's bad or evil or any of those sorts of things.

In fact, looking back into the 1930s, when people were, you know, drinking out of control,

were getting addicted to alcohol, people did not even understand that alcohol was addictive.

They literally thought something was wrong with the person. And so people were going in and out of hospitals and hospitalization into doctors

and being turned away because the doctors didn't feel like they could help them until finally Bill Wilson came along with Dr. Selkworth and they found something in terms of community

and coming together and camaraderie and just being there for each other that actually helped and then put together and developed the 12 steps,

which is an actually really beautiful practice and process of going through a lot of self inventory and different things.

And so thank goodness for that, right? Can you imagine if we would have continued to just let people suffer? And when there was nothing like that, I think that's beautiful.

Another thing is that you just can't beat the community in AA right before this snake in mine was published. I actually went to an AA meeting because I was, you know,

I had done my research, I read through the big book, I was talking about different things in this snake in mine, the book.

And I really wanted to be clear and so I went to a meeting and I have to tell you that although I did find the meeting personally a little bit depressing and heavy,

and that's not generally like the mode I like to live in or stay in, it was so beautiful in the sense of how many women

I went to an all-women's meeting, they came up to me, they gave me their phone numbers, they said, any time, night or day, text me like the level of being there for other people that I witnessed was just second to none.

And you just amazing, amazing. And the reach of that community is absolutely incredible.

So I think that one reason that people think that I think AA is wrong is because I do take issue with the word alcoholic.

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