From Blackouts to Boundaries: A Year That Changed Everything | Where Are They Now? – Mary | EP 878

This Naked Mind Podcast

Annie Grace

Self-improvement, Education

4.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2026

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Trigger Warning: This episode discusses pregnancy and fertility loss, breast and brain cancer, caregiving stress, grief, blackout drinking, relapse, and substance use.What if relief isn’t in the glass but in the space you reclaim? Mary maps the messy middle—moderation rules, peer pressure, the “pitcher plant,” and the night she couldn’t care for her sister because she was too sick to stand. Revisiting her 2017 episode with Annie, she joins Coach Hayley to redefine success: presence over performance, rituals without alcohol, and permission to say “I don’t drink today.” Along this long road to quitting drinking, Mary learns that forgiveness ends the shame spiral—and that peace shows up when she stops chasing the first sip. In this episode, Coach Hayley and Mary catch up on: Revisiting Mary’s first TNM episode (2017) and what changed Miscarriages, breast cancer, and pandemic drift—why moderation unraveled The “pitcher plant,” blackout shame, and the caregiving wake-up call Surrogacy, motherhood, and choosing presence at bedtime Keeping the ritual without the alcohol: mocktails, adaptogens, THC microdosing Self-forgiveness > perfection; “not today” over “never again” Why relief feels like mental space, not a glass Walking the long road to quitting drinking without perfectionism …and more topics Episode links: nakedmindpath.com Related Episodes: EP 35: Naked Life Story: Mary - https://thisnakedmind.com/ep-35-naked-life-story-mary/ Making the Breast Cancer and Alcohol Connection - Tabbin’s Naked Life - E713 - https://thisnakedmind.com/ep-713-naked-life-story-tabbin-a/ Brian Accidentally Stopped Drinking - Brian’s Naked Life (Part 2) - E639 - https://thisnakedmind.com/ep-639-naked-life-story-annie-graces-husband-part-2/Does this mean I can never drink alcohol again? - Reader’s Question - E576 - https://thisnakedmind.com/ep-576-readers-question-does-this-mean-i-can-never-drink-alcohol-again/ Ready to take the next step on your journey? Visit https://learn.thisnakedmind.com/podcast-resources for free resources, programs, and more. Until next week, stay curious! Quince: Go to⁠ ⁠⁠Quince.com/naked⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns Hungryroot: Get 40% off your first box + a free item for life at ⁠⁠⁠Hungryroot.com/mind⁠⁠⁠ with code mind BetterHelp: BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off at ⁠BetterHelp.com/nakedmind⁠ Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at⁠ ⁠⁠Shopify.com/mind⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to This Naked Mind with Annie Grace.
0:14.8	Welcome, Mary to Where Are They Now? And thank you so much for joining me.
0:19.0	Your story has inspired so many and I just mentioned to you
0:22.9	I could see and hear myself in so many parts of it. And instead of me recapping and going back
0:29.8	to share parts of your story, I would love to catch up with you from the beginning, what happened
0:36.2	after and where you have been since you've been on the show
0:38.8	with Annie. How are you? Great. I'm great. It's been a very long time since that episode. So a lot
0:45.9	has happened. Actually, I mean, looking back, I feel like I was a different person. It was like a
0:49.7	completely different chapter of my life. I've lived many lives since that time. So I've come a long way and been at roller coaster as far as my relationship with alcohol since then. But yeah, my episode before was I was very much leaning into moderation. I had been alcohol free for like nine months, solid, which was the longest I've ever gone since
1:13.0	becoming legally allowed to drink, I think. I mean, I started giving up alcohol, like,
1:18.3	initially because I got married and we were going to try to have a child. So I was like,
1:24.7	let me prep my body. Went completely alcohol-free. Amazing. I never wanted to
1:29.4	touch alcohol again. I mean, I really thought that was going to be forever. Yeah. But like many people,
1:34.1	that's not how my journey went. So yeah, I did after about nine months. I ended up, I was pregnant for
1:41.2	the first time and we had a miscarriage. And that kind of was my, I just, I coped.
1:46.7	I had a glass of wine.
1:47.8	It felt like very just something to kind of like soften my grief at the time.
1:53.0	And I mean, since then, we moved across country.
1:56.3	So we were living in New York.
1:57.4	We moved to California.
1:58.4	I found a new community.
2:02.8	And I was still kind of like holding on to that alcohol free urge. Like I wanted to be a sober person. Like I really didn't want
	...

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