Hey there!

Every month Annie has a call with our Path 365 members and answers their questions.

She tackles a wide range of topics from what to do with big emotions, what kinds of tips and

advice she has for addressing difficult situations, how to deal with cravings, and

so much more. Listen in as she does some real life coaching for our path

members. Hi, this is Annie Grace and I am answering readers questions and today I have a phenomenal

question and this question is from Mariana and Mariana says hey

Annie are there any such thing as normal drinkers I just want to be a normal drinker. I love this question. So in order to answer this question, I think we need to back up and we need to really look at okay, well, where does this whole idea of normal drinkers come from? And the idea as far as my research has shown is the idea of normal drinkers actually comes and stems from Alcoholics Anonymous and in a letter that Dr. Silkworth wrote to Bill Wilson,

the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous,

he said that they had identified something

inside, quote, alcoholics that made them different than normal drinkers.

And that thing was an allergy or a manifestation of an allergy.

Now, science has come a long way since 1929, and we have pretty much definitively proved that while yes some people are allergic to alcohol

those people who are actually allergic to alcohol cannot drink alcohol in any quantity whatsoever so they are certainly not the ones that we are worried about as we would traditionally

defined a quote alcoholic. And so, but this idea has persisted and a lot of times one of the shame-based questions that somebody asks themselves when they're exploring their own relationship with alcohol is why can't I drink normally? Why can't I be a normal drinker?

And I actually think that the alcohol industry itself has perpetuated this with,

although alcohol is arguably one of the most toxic and deadly substances on the planet,

and I know you might argue with me right now in your mind say hey that's not true

there's a lot of research that shows that is true there was actually a study done

called the margin of exposure approach where alcohol was ranked the most harmful drug on the planet by a huge margin.

And so there is a lot of evidence for that and I know it doesn't always seem that way in our society but the science is very clear but while that is the case people are like okay well why then is is alcohol not you know disclosed I mean you watch any TV show or and a commercial comes on for any sort of pharmaceutical and you know we've got like 20% of the commercial saying,

hey, this is going to make your life better in this way.

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