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.

Today's question is from Lulu. She says, I've read your book and follow your Facebook page every day.

I find your approach for your refreshing and exciting thank you.

And as you send your book, the willpower method eventually dries up.

What I'd like to ask you is why do we tend to forget all the bad things about drinking after a while of absence

and then start fondly remembering all the good times? I know intellectually how awful alcohol was to me.

But that disgust that I had for alcohol in my early days of sobriety isn't so strong anymore.

And I find myself reminiscing about drinking periods in my life.

At the time those periods weren't actually fun at all, but I seem to remember a much nicer, rosier version.

How do I remember in myself and regain the determination I had in the early days?

I know this is the right decision, but sometimes my emotions are not in line with my logic.

Thank you so much, Lulu. Yeah, I guess Maggie.

I think that it's really true. We tend to remember things in completely different terms than they actually were.

And I think it's a protection mechanism in some ways.

I mean, for example, I don't know if Lulu, if you have kids, but I was really nauseous during both my pregnancies and of course childbirth.

We go through that and you know, you swear, oh gosh, this is not worth it. This is horrible.

And then things happen and you don't even remember that.

I mean, it's similar to being hung over in the moment, you know, how would you ever do this to yourself?

And it feels so incredibly miserable. But after the physical feeling is gone, you can't remember a physical feeling.

So you can't remember how those things were. So we tend to do things to ourselves again and again,

because we can't actually remember the physicality of some of these things.

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