From Military Wife Wine Nights to Alcohol-Free Living | Dusty's Naked Life | E818

This Naked Mind Podcast

Annie Grace

Mental Health, Education, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What happens when the thing you think is helping you cope is actually making everything worse? Dusty thought she had found the perfect solution to the stress of military life—wine with girlfriends during deployments, vodka to manage the constant moves, and alcohol to numb the loss of control that came with being a military spouse. Her drinking escalated from social occasions to daily solo consumption, and she began to realize she needed to learn how to stop using alcohol to cope with military life before it destroyed everything she cared about. As a licensed professional counselor and former D1 soccer player, Dusty understood high performance, but alcohol was undermining every area where she wanted to excel. In this episode, she shares with Coach Pam how discovering the alcohol-free community opened her eyes to what she was really losing and how The Path helped her reclaim her life. In this episode, Pam and Dusty discuss: Growing up around alcohol and early social drinking in college Using alcohol to cope with social anxiety during D1 soccer career Marriage as a stabilizing force and reduced drinking periods Military life challenges: deployments, moves, and spouse community drinking COVID-19 impact on control issues and drinking patterns Learning how to stop using alcohol to cope with military life Discovering the alcohol-free movement and community online Working as a counselor while struggling with personal alcohol use Joining The Path program and doing the inner work What she gained by giving up alcohol: better relationships and health And other topics… Episode links: nakedmindpath.com Related Episodes: EP 758: Can Your Marriage Survive Change? Alcohol Freedom Coaching - https://thisnakedmind.com/can-your-marriage-survive-change-alcohol-freedom-coaching-e758/ EP 794: Life After Service, Life Without Alcohol | Peggy’s Naked Life - https://thisnakedmind.com/how-to-stop-drinking-as-a-female-veteran-peggys-naked-life-e794/ EP 636: Reader’s Question – The Art of Balancing Your Needs in a Relationship - https://thisnakedmind.com/ep-636-readers-question-the-art-of-balancing-your-needs-in-a-relationship/ 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!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to This Naked Mind with Annie Grace.
0:14.4	Hey everyone, this is Coach Pam, program and coaching manager with this naked mind.
0:20.2	And I am so excited to be here with Dusty. Dusty,
0:24.3	thank you so much for taking the time to just share your story with us. How are you today?
0:30.6	I'm doing well. Thank you. Oh, fantastic. Slow morning, so it's nice. I love it. I love it.
0:36.3	So I would love to just let's kick us right off.
0:40.0	I would love to hear about your story.
0:43.3	Yeah.
0:44.0	When I was writing in, I was trying to figure out how to make it the most condensed,
0:48.0	because I feel like it's really long.
0:53.8	Probably, when I think about my first drink, it was probably when I was a kid.
0:58.4	My mom would get up and leave her daquery or whatever, and I would like, oh, that looks
1:04.6	good and go try to taste it.
1:07.0	Growing up, I didn't really think too much about it because I had a very supportive family.
1:12.6	My dad, we're from Nashville.
1:14.3	My dad worked in the sound and lighting business, so he traveled a lot with concerts and things like that.
1:19.7	And so my mom took the role of taking my brother and I everywhere.
1:24.4	She was literally the mama taxi.
1:26.3	I grew up around the drinking and
1:28.8	I'm definitely not going to belittle my mother. She still struggles with it and heavily.
1:34.6	Progressively got worse after my brother and I got out of the house, which impacted me as to
1:39.7	why I probably needed to make a change because I've seen it for so long with her but it carried out sports
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Annie Grace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Annie Grace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.