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

This is Annie Grace and welcome to this naked mind podcast and I'm here with Sally. Hi, Sally. Welcome. Hi, Annie. Thanks for having me.

I'm so glad that you're here. So why don't you take us back to the beginning in your journey. What was in your relationship with alcohol? Where did it all start for you?

So let's see. Let's go way back. Shall we? Um, typical high school. Nothing crazy. I shouldn't say typical high school. So for me, high school was all about hanging out with friends cheerleading, doing all of that alcohol was never a big part of anything that I did.

Not really a big part of anything that I did in college, I experienced experimented with it a little bit here and there.

Um, my drinking really started to escalate when my life kind of went sideways. I entered into a marriage. I was an a marriage for 13 years that ended up being an abusive marriage. My drinking kind of escalated at that point.

Um, two years into my marriage, my husband at the time was involved in a pretty serious, um, cycling accident, cycling like Greg LeMonde, not zooms in motorcycle.

So in the hospital for about three weeks out of work for three months, I brought him home from the hospital the day that I did. My father came to live with us. He was to have been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

So he lived with us the last three years of his life and just during that whole process, everything just really, really ramped up for me.

And I realized that I was absolutely self medicating for sure.

And it's just what I use to get me through the day, get me through the abuse, get me through the situation with my father.

I had always struggled as a little girl young adult with the whole not enoughness and the worthless feelings and alcohol definitely came into play.

I had crazy social anxiety and I thought, okay, well, there's power in the punch. And I would always, you know, take a couple of swigs or sips and start to loosen up and.

But yeah, for me, it really started to escalate probably in my mid to late 30s. I would have to say is when it got really, really bad and just continued because as my relationship with my first husband deteriorated, my father eventually passed, he passed in 95.

I realized that I was in a pretty unhealthy situation.

And so alcohol was my friend. It got me through everything that I needed it to get me through.

And I always felt as though I was built for more, it's like this can't just be that all life is about. I mean, there have to be other coping mechanisms, but I was just so dooped and stuck in that cycle that I couldn't get myself out of it.

I finally had enough courage. I left my husband and I swore a swore off men. I'm like, that's it. Peace out. I'm independent. I had my own business. I had my feet underneath me and I'm like, this is all I need.

I had a different story and just out of the blue, this amazing human being appeared into my life and turned my world upside down and I lived in North Carolina. He lives was living in Maryland at the time.

And I just remember thinking to myself, there's got to be something better out there. You know, you've got to get yourself together because what you're doing right now, it's taking you nowhere.

I'm going to fast forward. Donnie and I, this is my husband's name. Donnie and I get married. I moved to Annapolis. We live on the same street as his ex wife. I always say that God has a very interesting sense of humor. So live on the same street as the ex I couldn't have children.

And so I inherited two amazing boys through Donnie and through all of that. And I moved my mom up. She was living at the time. My father had passed at 95. So I had become her primary caregiver. So I had my mom appear. I had inherited two boys living on the same street. I'm like, cocktails, please.

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