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, everybody is doing good. I have a readers question that I'm going to answer today,

and the question is, hi Annie, I find myself comparing myself to other people in the Facebook group.

Basically I see people who are easily changing and who have just read the book and are suddenly free,

and I don't understand why I am having such a hard time changing.

I read the book, I take 30 days off, and then on day 31 I drink again, and then I'll do the alcohol experiment a few months later and the same thing.

And I feel like I have to keep coming back to this and can't make any sustainable changes.

I know it's not physical because I can easily take the 30 days, but something in my brain tells me around day 31 or day 32 that it's a good idea

to start to moderate again, and then I'm back to where I started, and I really truly want it to be done with this for good.

I'm so sick of this and I'm really tired of looking around me and seeing all of this instantaneous success which I can't relate to.

Do you have any input or advice for why this might be happening?

So what a great question. And first of all, I think that we, especially on social media, we post the best of what's happening for us.

We post the absolute like the wins, and of course that's great. It's super important to post our wins, but sometimes we post only our wins.

And so what you don't see, like when I quit, it was on a dime and it was so easy and it was so effortless, but it was preceded by a year's worth of research.

And then that was preceded by multiple years of trying to drink less and not succeeding at that.

And so there was this whole history before the moment. And I've heard it, I was on a podcast and interviewing, I forget what her name is, but we were talking and she's like, you know what?

I tried it to quit and I tried to quit and I tried to quit and I tried to quit and I kept trying. And then one day it took. One day actually quit. One day it was actually done.

So I think a big part of this is actually just persistence and sometimes the only way you can fail at this is by stopping trying. I really believe that's true.

And sometimes every single iteration, every single twist in turn, we are learning more and more and more about ourselves.

You know, we think that change happens here. We're beginning and then it's just all up into the right. And especially when we're seeing other people on social media saying, oh yeah, I did it. It was so easy. I just read the book.

And now I like can be out at bars and drinking and myself, sir, and everybody else is drinking alcohol. It's super easy. Like we don't know first of all the backstory. And number two, we see that we think, okay, it's just easy. It's this linear thing.

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