You're listening to this naked mind with Annie Grace.

Hi, this is Annie Grace and welcome to this naked mind podcast.

And I'm here with Tom.

Hi, Tom.

How are you?

I'm great, Annie.

How are you today?

Good.

Thanks so much for being here.

Yeah, it's great to be here.

Thank you.

So, what are you sort of take us back to the beginning?

Where did your journey without the hall start?

Well, you know, I was raised in the Midwest and I just had drinking around me my whole childhood, my all the adults in my in my life drink and it was very, very normalize.

Nothing particularly horrible ever happened as a direct result of that drinking that was around me, but just I was very used to adults who came home from work and and interact with you as soon as they walked in the front door and that was that was life as normal for me.

I had a pretty normal childhood except for when I was 11, 12 years old or so.

Sadly, I have some sexual trauma in my life that I never dealt with as a child, as a young adult, actually never even saw counseling directly for that incident until I was well into my 40s.

So it was sort of unresolved trauma my whole life.

I remember as a kid just having a feeling of I don't belong, I don't belong to my family, I don't belong to a friend group, I was not comfortable in my own skin, not comfortable with adults with kids my own age just never felt like I fit in.

I spent a lot of time alone as a child, my dad was a heavy drinker and traveling salesperson and was gone a lot of the time and I never felt I had a real close relationship with my mom when I was a kid and just spent a lot of time in my room playing guitar listening to music kind of being on my own.

I didn't start drinking until probably late in my senior year of high school and right from the get go I never drank like a quote unquote normal drinker I I drank to get drunk from the start and that's how I liked to drink was until I I couldn't drink anymore.

So I went to college and drank a lot graduated from college I got a job in the restaurant industry and drank and started using pot a lot as an adult and had a job where I could do both of those at work and drink and drink and drink and drink and I did get married eventually.

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