You're listening to this naked mind is Annie Grace, and welcome to this Naked Mind podcast and I am here with

Roberta.

Roberta, thank you for joining. How are you?

I'm doing very well, Annie. Thank you for having me.

Looking forward to chatting with you. Oh, so good. So, why don't you take us kind of back to the beginning in where where did it all start for you in your relationship with alcohol?

Oh, that's something that has become more and more frightening, I suppose, as I have a daughter who is 10 years old.

And when I reflect on my journey with alcohol, I started drinking when I was

started drinking when I was 12 years old and you know it crushes my heart to think

that I've got a child that could be there soon. Oh yeah, wow. All right, so you were about 12 years old and what happened? You know, I think growing up in a in a rural community where alcohol is part of everyday life.

It's celebrated and you're you kind of looked at as odd if it's something that you don't partake in the consumption of you know the church festivals with kegs galore and all of the things.

I you know I don't necessarily recall the the first sip I have ever had, but you know somewhere in my

memory is the summer after seventh grade. I had a girlfriend whose parents farmed and they had a they had a girlfriend who's parents farmed and they had a keg on tap in a walk-in cooler at their house that the adults and the folks working on the farm would enjoy a glass of beer after bailing hay or doing chores and you know we had very easy access to an ever flowing keg of beer.

Yeah.

And so how did did you like it or I don't imagine that I liked it and very early on I was made

I was made very aware that I'm not any good at drinking for as long as I can remember even into those first times I get violently ill from drinking and I would, you know, I don't have a turn off button, which is part of the biggest problem. So I drink until I either pass out or I'm throwing up. And oftentimes I would spend, you know, start wake, start throwing up at 7 a.m. and I would throw up basically every 15 minutes until early hours of the afternoon, just wasting entire days in bed. So I shouldn't have liked it, but you know for some

reason like I said that's we would go out to old cabins in the middle of

acreage and have bonfire parties in high school and it was just a lot of partying in high school is the crew that I hung out with so I thought I liked it.

Yeah, exactly like and so what happened next?

I continued partying, right?

And then when I was 18, I got a job at a beverage wholesaler.

And so at the beverage wholesaler,

we sold beer to liquor stores in the state I live. It's we're a three-tier state so you got a

...