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 friends, it's Annie Grace and I am author of this naked mind and I'm answering questions and today I have a question from Jack.

Before that I had a question about that fish right there, people were wondering what's the deal with the fish.

That is a fish that my dad caught when he was 15 on a deep sea fishing trip with lots of guys and he was the only one on the whole three day trip to catch a fish on this big, big, you know, trip.

He was very excited and I now have it framed in my office or stuff or whatever that is. But in any case, that's the deal with the fish.

But on today's question, the question is from Jack and he says, I am trying to moderate and I'm being pretty successful and only drinking a few times a month so far.

I feel really proud of myself but then why Annie do I feel so bad mentally, physically, etc. the day after is this the the dinorph and you talk about.

And so yeah, I think, you know, we talk a lot about not drinking at all but I think that a lot of people need to go through this journey of moderation and for some people it ends up working.

I mean, I don't personally drink for all sorts of reasons that you can listen to other videos on.

But, you know, the journey through moderation, we're trying to answer the big question. Can I still do this on occasion and more importantly, if I can, do I actually want to.

So I think, you know, in Jack's situation, Jack, you've kind of seen the cost of drinking overall and so your question is, is there a place for this?

Is there a time when the benefits of drinking are going to outweigh the costs? And for some of us, we might immediately just answer no.

I don't want to get stuck there again. It's not going to outweigh the cost. But for others of us, we need to answer that question by trying out moderation.

And I'm a firm believer that before you try moderation, you need a bit of a break from alcohol.

The guys over at one year no beer, they do these two challenges, a 30 day break or 90 day break.

And I think you can't, a lot of what happens when you drink because alcohol takes 10 days to leave your body is that you're actually like similar to when you're smoking a cigarette.

The craving for the next cigarette is the nicotine leaving your body. A lot of the craving for the next drink, or even that little niggling feeling I want to drink or drink sounds good.

Is actually the craving from the drink you had last night. So you know, 10 hours later, you wake up the next morning, you know, about 3 p.m. 4 p.m. 5 p.m.

You want to drink a lot of that is just a physical addiction from the alcohol and everything leaving your body.

So I think you need to put some distance between yourself and that before you try to moderate because that feeling of relieving that craving, it's like scratching an itch.

You know, scratching an itch is pleasurable, but you would never purposely get itchy just to scratch it. So you need to like eliminate the itch.

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