You're listening to this naked mind podcast and I'm here with Megan. Hi this is Annie Grace and welcome to

this Naked Mind podcast and I'm here with Megan. Hi Megan how are you?

Hi Annie I'm really well Thank you for having me.

I'm so glad that you're here.

So why don't you take us sort of back to the beginning in your relationship with alcohol?

Where did it all start for you?

Yes, right. Well, the actual beginning of my drinking, I was 18.

That was my first drink.

So kind of later than a lot of my friends and a lot of people in general. But I'll take you just a bit further back because anxiety's been a massive part of my journey. So when I was, probably around the age of six, we had a break in at my house and then my brother was hit by a car.

And he was fine, thank God, he was fine, but it was something that I really internalized and I hadn't thought about it until, you know, I started on this journey.

And I think those two things happening really started an anxiety disorder for me but really made me feel unsafe in the world.

And that continued through my childhood just in different ways and no one

knew this in my family so I never talked to my mom about what happened my dad was there but he was he was always at work so he had a really big job and but I was close to my mom but it just never came up and I don't know if that was the time or you know back in the 80s or 70s even at the time that we didn't talk about things that had happened so I took it with me and I was really anxious as a kid, but I hit it. So I was always worried if my mom left the house.

If when I got a bit older as a teenager and my parents went out, I worried it was always a what an underlying worry for me

I think looking back I felt I had to protect everyone and you know save the world so then at 17 I was always quite outgoing and at school I

really loved to get up in front of the class we have what was was called the daily notices. So this is when I was a teenager, 17. I love to get up and read them and then one day out of the blue I stood up with my paper and it shook. And that was the beginning of a social anxiety for me. And I know it to some people, it doesn't sound a lot, but that changed everything in my life because from that day

forward I had to avoid at all costs any situation where I might shake. So yeah it was it was a lot to take on and also I didn't know what had happened. It literally hit me out of nowhere and my mom was really great because obviously I'd go home and it did affect me because in our leaving year at school in Australia, year 12, it's called the HSC, we have exams and one of them was a oral exam and I had to

choose a poem recite it to the class and I practiced and I was really good. I was really good in the

mirror but I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it and the avoidance around that and the crying at home and my mom couldn't help but know something was wrong. So she did the right thing and she got me a psychologist but I just I never

got past that and so that social phobia it was called at time, really followed me.

So at 18, when I had my first drink,

it was, it was on a camping trip just after we'd finished school

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