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 welcome to this naked mind podcast and I'm here with Jenny. Hi, Jenny. How are you? I'm great, Annie. Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, so good to have you. So why don't you kind of take me back to the beginning? Like where did it all start for you?

I have to say I was born in 1972 grew up in South Louisiana. I recently just listened to another podcast of years with someone else who grew up in New Orleans and it was very reminiscent of my upbringing.

Alcohol was just very much a part of the culture there and growing up my dad was in the oil field and was an entertainer who was a salesman and so we moved around a ton. We always had Louisiana's our home base, wherever we moved.

And so alcohol was just a part of our culture. It my grandparents house there were, you know, conversations on the carport always involved beer and the cousins would always fight to sit on top of the ice chest because if you were sitting on top of the ice chest, then you got to be the one to open it and there was just something you felt a part of something when you were the ones handing your uncles the beer and then they would start telling their stories and I come from a really long line of fabulous

of fabulous storytellers and they seem to just be fueled with just that little bit of bud light or a Miller light, whatever.

And so that early the early identification with alcohol for me was just always in that context. It wasn't it wasn't anything mysterious. It just was a part of life and I don't recall in the early days anybody really having an issue with it.

It just was something everyone did all the time and I always associated with grownups and since we did move around a lot, I think I know that that created a lot of insecurity in me.

We moved by the time I was in ninth grade, my I was I had been in nine different schools and so I was a petrol new girl.

And I never really thought twice about it until my adulthood, you know, until I started with planted roots with my own kids. I knew I didn't want to do that.

And while it did, I think grant me a lot of skills as an adult that I'd still use. It also created a lot of insecurity in me and a lot of

I always feeling like I was on the outside and always just observing very carefully how to fit in and different ways to fit in.

That didn't link up with alcohol until a little bit later, but I definitely think definitely think it had a big role in kind of this aha moment for me in early high school.

So growing up, it was just a big part of my family, a part of my culture. My parents had a we had a pretty chaotic life with the moving, but also my mom and dad did not have a happy marriage. They separated three different times and then finally divorced when I was 12.

And I kind of I guess like all divorced kids see things as a before and after in my household and the drinking really ramped up for my mom after the divorce.

And I don't know about my dad. I didn't see him as often. I saw him, you know, on the weekends every other Wednesday.

For me, it didn't start. I didn't really have my first taste of alcohol until that I remember until my freshman year in high school.

And I remember very clearly when it was it was a I had made the varsity soccer team, which was a big deal and I was super excited.

And there was a freshman initiation party that they to seniors held and took the freshman to. And I remember going to get picked up and I was I was a young freshman. I think I was 13 at the time.

And I remember being at somebody's house with the parents on around.

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