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 have a special treat today.

I'm here with two stories. We have Mandy and Kate. Hi guys, welcome. Hello. How are you guys?

I'm good. Yeah, it's seven in the evening. I'm in France, so I'm British, but I live in France.

So yeah, just just before dinner time for me over here. That's awesome. Yeah, and so I'm an

hour before, but you know, you can see that you're, you've got daylight going on, Annie. And we're

at the 11 a.m. It's still a little day. Yeah. So yeah, it's so good. Excited to talk to you.

Yeah, I'm excited too. So I would love to hear both of your stories and I don't know who,

who kind of wants to start, but just really walking, walking us back to the beginning of where it all

started for you. Well, I'm sure I go first. You usually, I usually sort of sit here and then wait

for you to start on time. So I'm going to dive in. Yeah, go on. I'm going to take the Olympic torch.

So I think I've been thinking about this. You know how you tell your story a few times,

and it kind of can really change depending on what mood you're in on the day. So I actually

was very organised and I've written some sort of notes of my key points. I'm seeing quite an

kind of organised frame for my interday, but I thought that was important because I think,

what's, as I've told my story a few times, what's come to the surface is this sense of everything

looking okay on the surface and there's a sense of me being a great pretender all the way through

and I can trace this really back to being a teenager and having a lot of anxiety just

feeling wrong in my own skin. And I know that's such a kind of common thing, theme for people,

for sober people and people in my country. So yeah, there was a lot of anxiety and there was a lot

of keeping up appearances and this sort of carried on. You know I was such a good girl. I kind of did

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