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 and welcome to this naked mind podcast. Today I have Claudia Christian and I'm so excited about

Claudia because not only of Claudia and I kind of struck up a friendship over the last year or so,

but Claudia has an amazing wealth of experience to bring through this topic.

Claudia founded a nonprofit called the C3 Foundation in 2013 and produced a documentary

called One Little Pill. Claudia is, you know, started in the documentary because she's been in actress for 35 years,

been in, you know, shows such as NCIS, Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, recently in 9-1-1,

and you know, just amazing career, not only that Claudia, but you're also an author.

You've done so much stuff, so impressive. And I just, I think your take on everything regarding alcohol

is just absolutely fascinating and such a breath of fresh air for people and a path of hope

where people have tried everything else, but haven't been able to kind of find that one magic bullet,

so to speak, you almost have the magic bullet in some regard. So anyway, would you mind, first of all, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me on. I loved your book, so I think we were on the same mission,

just in different, different directions. That's so cool. Can you just start with your story,

because I, I'd share people with love to hear kind of where you've been. Yeah, absolutely.

I, you know, I've raised and in my 30s, I became more of a social drinker, and right around my early 40s,

I noticed that I had a problem and other people noticed that I had a problem. And I did the, the reasonable thing,

even though we know you can't reason with addiction, but I did the reasonable thing, which traditional treatment says dictates

that I would have been cured because I quit drinking. I went sober, but what happened to me was the alcohol deprivation effect kicked in.

So instead of being a regular drinker, I became what's called a binge drinker. And the benches became progressively worse.

So I would go from three months sober, six months sober, and then I would relapse and relapse and relapse.

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