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

Hi this naked mind with Annie Grace.

Hi this naked mind podcast I'm here with Tom. Hi Tom how are you?

Hey I'm doing great how are you Annie? So good so good to see you.

Great. Why don't you sort of do a blast to the past and take us back in your journey to where where did your drinking start?

Yeah, gosh, my drinking started a long time ago. I was probably 12 or 13 and really got into it in high school and you know, partied a lot and then in college it was a mix of

prescription pills and and drinking and just sort of took off from there. So was it like in your

home as a kid or how did it? Yeah yeah it was it like in your home as a kid or how did it? Yeah, yeah it was it was mostly at friends houses, you know, the classic you know doing a sleepover and

Steak in some some booze from, you know, your parents, or your friend's

parents liquor cabinet and replacing it with water and I'm sure they had a rude

awakening the next time they tried to make a cocktail, you know, but my story is not terribly dissimilar from yours.

You know, I was a corporate executive, I was head of communications for a couple of different companies, big companies, and traveling all over the world. And Guinness was my drink of choice and I sort of, you know, convinced myself that I wasn't drinking hard liquor, so it wasn't really a problem but but I was a daily drinker and especially on the road and it started to catch up with me.

And in January of 2020 I got diagnosed with a fatty liver and pre-surotic, you know, pre-surosis of the liver.

And that was kind of a wake-up call for me to begin to bring some curiosity in my drinking.

You know, my doctor said to me, he said, I never got the sense that you were a heavy drinker but whatever you're

drinking try and cut it in half and I'm thinking in the back of my mind man I'm drinking eight

Guinness as a night you know and and and I knew it was a problem but I kept drinking and went with my partner at the time to Nashville and gosh, the Tennessee Titans were in the playoffs and we wanted to go out and root on the home team, you know, and checked into the air B&B and took like a 45 minute nap and then went back out on a punk crawl.

And I remember singing karaoke, which is one of my favorite things that I'm sure we'll touch upon it plenty during this interview,

but singing karaoke and I

couldn't even read the words out as blacked out on stage and wound up in bed for

three days solid couldn't hold anything down,

liquids or food or anything like that.

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