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'm answering readers questions.

And the question I have today is, hi Annie, I am struggling with getting through the first few weeks.

What happens to me is I end up feeling incredibly depressed right at first and I hope that it would be better after a few weeks, but I can't seem to get past those first few weeks to find out.

Can you tell me if it gets better and how can I combat depression in those first few weeks?

So this is such a great question. There's a few things happening in the first few weeks. First of all, your brain is rebalancing to a new normal. So while alcohol actually purges out of your system within about 72 hours, your brain has learned that you are doing a certain behavior and that behavior is credit like it's fault it follows certain triggers on a regular basis so for instance

your brain might see something like the wine glass you normally drink out of

or where you keep the wine and it will automatically say,

okay, this is what we're doing now

and it actually can almost counter balance your behavior before your behavior starts.

It's assuming what's going to happen.

And when that happens, what's happening in your brain is it saying, okay, let's overcompensate for the alcohol, right?

And so if alcohol is stimulating you, your brain is making you feel more depressed and

bringing down that stimulation and down that joy but also alcohol is a

depressant so your brain is creating stimulants and so all of these things are happening so when you remove the alcohol

your brain is still responding in the same way until it learns, oh, we're not doing this thing every time we see that wine glass. We're not doing this thing every day at 5 p.m. And so over time over those first few weeks is really when your brain is able to

rebalance and stop over compensating or stop compensating for the presence of alcohol because it learns,

oh, okay, that substance that we thought was coming based on these triggers

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