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, this is Annie Grace and welcome to this naked mind podcast. So I'm really excited for a lot of reasons.

But so Scott has been a podcast guest in mind before. Hi Scott. Hello, how's it going?

It's going good. And the coolest thing about today's podcast is that now Scott is no longer just a podcast guest, but he is somebody who is now at full time work for this naked mind.

He is, which I'm so excited. So Scott is sort of officially started out as we really spend a lot of time together at Brian through all the method. He been through it all himself.

And he is my lead coach for kind of my most life changing program, the snake in mind intensive. And that's been going amazing. And we've had this idea that we get what we do is we do live Q&A calls every single week with a group of incredible people who we bring through this program.

And these some of these questions are tough and some take research and some way have to dig into. And so we had this idea that these questions are so good and people get so much out of these questions that why don't we start just answering the coaching questions on a podcast takes some of the hardest ones and throw them out there and toss them around, pull in the research that we did together to answer the questions for our naked mind participants.

But also just for all of you just to really, you know, answer some of these tough, tough questions the best we can. And so anyway, so Scott, first of all, so so excited to have you part of all this. It's been awesome.

Yes, it has been fun. And I'm excited to start doing this podcast too. I think, you know, we get there's a wide range of questions, but there are definitely some we tend to get repeatedly. And so I'd like people having access to that information. So this is good.

Yeah, it's so good. And it's so, yeah, the questions they come up and we'll do the tough ones, but we'll also I think that's a great point. We'll also do the ones that just come up all the time because you know some of the ones that everybody we are afraid to ask these questions and create this really safe space within the intensive people actually ask them and they realize everybody's else else is asking the same question.

I think that's one of the coolest parts of the program is that you get into it and kind of the the aloneness you feel the separation you feel because you're struggling with alcohol disappears within the length of the program, which is three months.

But today's question. So this is a tough one. We're going to start out with one of the toughest ones. And I'm going to put a big disclaimer on here that we do not definitively know the answer to this question, nor does anybody.

And so we are going to give based on our knowledge, our research, kind of the most information we can, but we have to warn you, we don't intend to like say this is the answer to this question because it's one that has been a subject of lots of debate for decades for maybe probably even longer.

So the question is, is alcohol addiction a disease or is it not a disease? And so it's like a wapper to start with, but Scott, do you want to jump in or should I jump in?

Sure. My answer is no. And thanks for listening.

My answer is a little bit.

So yeah, yeah, there's a lot of different ways to look at this. And one of the things, you know, one of the books that was key for me in my process was the biology of desire by Mark Lewis.

And Mark talks a lot about this idea and this idea and sort of the history of how we've treated alcohol addiction, right? And we used to look at it as this moral failing, right?

And it was just that you weren't strong enough. You weren't doing it right. If you were just a little more self-reliant or if you were a little bit more responsible or if you cared more, you know, you wouldn't have this issue.

And we obviously know that's not the case. And there's a lot of issues and you know alcohol addiction isn't the only one we look at that way or used to look at that way.

So it's time went on. There was this idea of well, no, it's not that it's a disease. So by calling it a disease, we remove this idea of, you know, we remove this moral dimension from it where you remove this idea of fault.

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