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. I'm here with Jill. Welcome, Jill. Hi, Annie. How are you? I'm doing okay. How are you? I'm doing good. Really good. So why don't you kind of take us back to the beginning for you where where your drinking started and where everything kind of originated?

Okay, so I didn't drink a lot in high school like some people did. My college years were kind of interesting because I didn't drink during the school year that wasn't the time I drank, I really drank over the summers.

My parents had a summer house in a beach community where there are a lot of restaurants and bars. So I was a waitress for about eight years in the summers there. And after the ship, it was like expect the view to go out and get really, really, really drunk.

So that's where I'll begin, I think, but I never really wanted to do that. My friends kind of dragged me out. I'm not a kind of person that likes to be out and bars and really crowded areas.

Like they would literally come to the house, give me a beer, say, take a shower, get dressed, let's go and bring me out and then eventually I got used to it because you know, you go to the bar, you have three shots to start out with an beer, then everything gets a little easier.

And then I would say like normal drinking, whatever that is, like you know, turn into wine and that was more sophisticated. So we would go out to a restaurant and drink wine, but then we would then go out and like have shots and beers and things.

And fast forward a couple of years later, I met my husband. And he was a drinker, but he always was like, I could take it or leave it. And I was like, 27.

And, you know, I, no, I always drank. It was my thing. I was, you know, wine was my thing and it made me feel relaxed. I felt like everyone was doing it then. So I'd come home from work and have a drink and even if he wasn't drinking.

And the whole time, you know, in this early years, we were just stating, he would always say, I could just not drink. I could just not, I'm like, not me, like I'm a drinker. I like the drink. This is my thing.

And I was known for it, you know, like, and I wasn't, I wasn't a cute funny, it was like, you know, a sloppy drunk. It wasn't cute. It was, it was bad. And that's when the blackout started.

And my family started first one. Oh God. I mean, no, I mean, no, I mean, no, I mean, by definition, you don't remember blackouts, but your math would be like, wait, what did I do?

Yeah. No, and I, and like, listen to people sometimes, they're like, and I was terrified of that thing, you know, that I was, I blacked out and I, and then I didn't drink for three years. No, I wasn't terrified. You know, the next night, I went out and did it again.

I think that it was normalized.

We even had like, my girlfriends, there were like three bars all across the street from each other. We called it the Bremue de Triangle. And it was the joke where you would have, you would time travel for one bar to the other because you would blackout and not remember what happened in which place.

And we thought it was so cute. We were, this is adorable. We're all blacking out. Yeah, you know.

And so, yeah, the first time I blackout, no, I don't remember.

But it was, it was getting normal. And my family was noticing and they were saying things and saying, I'm okay.

I'm not eating enough or, you know, I know I need to cool it, but you know, I know all that, but I never did.

And then I don't know when my husband started saying things.

Again, it was sort of like, you know, Joe's just a sloppy drunk. And she just,

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