How Alcohol-Free Living Improves Anxiety | Brooke's Naked Life | EP 898

This Naked Mind Podcast

Annie Grace

Education, Self-improvement

4.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2026

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does it take to finally walk away from drinking when you love the party, love your people, and have never once thought of yourself as someone with a problem? Brooke was a high-functioning extrovert running a business and raising a family when a quiet voice in her head kept telling her something was off. Once she found The Path and started doing the real work, she discovered how alcohol-free living improved her anxiety in ways she never anticipated, and two and a half years later she has not looked back once. Brooke discusses: The brain scan that first linked her alcohol use to her health and sparked a decade-long journey toward change Taking 10 months alcohol-free, returning to drinking after a family trip, and why she never judged herself for it How COVID neighborhood happy hours quietly accelerated her relationship with alcohol Joining The Path in August 2023 and the hungover weekend trip that became her last Discovering she was an extrovert living with social anxiety and how that reframed everything she thought she knew about her drinking How alcohol-free living improved her anxiety by removing the daily double whammy of hangxiety and giving her space to actually feel and respond The shift from "I can't have it" to "I don't want it" and what real alcohol freedom looks and feels like Morning Pages, journaling, therapy, books, and other low-barrier tools that helped her most in the early days Why self-awareness and willingness are the two things that make every other tool actually work And more on identity, belonging, and building a life that feels the same on the inside as it looks on the outside... Episode links: nakedmindpath.com Related Episodes: What is the correlation between alcohol and anxiety? - Reader Question - EP 480 - https://thisnakedmind.com/ep-480-reader-question-what-is-the-correlation-between-alcohol-and-anxiety/ Anxiety, Overwhelm, and Alcohol: Tools to Find Calm and Confidence - Alcohol Freedom Coaching - EP 877- https://thisnakedmind.com/daily-practices-to-stay-alcohol-free-afc-e877/ Have I done permanent damage to my brain? - Reader Question - EP 350 - https://thisnakedmind.com/ep-350-reader-question-have-i-done-permanent-damage-to-my-brain/ 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! This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp, Quince, and Shopify. BetterHelp: BetterHelp is offering our listeners 10% off at betterhelp.com/nakedmind Quince: get free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/naked Shopify: Sign up for $1 month trial at shopify.com/mind

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to This Naked Mind with Annie Grace.
0:14.4	Hey everybody.
0:15.5	Welcome to The This Naked Mind podcast.
0:17.5	I am Cole Harvey.
0:18.6	I'm filling in for the amazing Annie Grace.
0:20.4	And today you get to hear a
0:22.3	story around alcohol and Brooke's story around her journey with alcohol. Hey, Brooke, welcome to the
0:28.3	show. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Cole. Nice to see you. Nice to be here. Yeah. Great to see you.
0:35.1	Glad you're on. And glad you're willing to come on here and just talk about what's come up for you around alcohol and how it's affected you and all that great stuff that so many people, it's so helpful.
0:47.5	Yeah.
0:48.4	For others that are, you know, half a step behind even to hear and to kind of get an idea of somebody else's journey
0:56.1	and know that they're not alone. So really thank you for doing that. And speaking of which,
0:59.6	why don't you just start from the beginning? Tell us your journey, your story with alcohol.
1:04.2	Sure. Yeah. I think I will start about 10 years ago. That seems to be the time where I started thinking a little bit about my experience and life
1:17.1	with alcohol.
1:18.1	Ten years ago, I had two teenage kids in a full-blown remodel with our home, full-time
1:26.3	working, all the things, right? I just was noticing that I was
1:31.7	just feeling off, you know, like, God, I'm just feeling a little off and not as energetic and
1:38.2	as focused as I usually was before that. So at the time, I had been introduced to the work done by the Aman clinics and how
1:48.0	they do brain scans. And I thought, oh, this neuroscience thing is really cool. So I'm going to go
1:52.7	get my brain scanned to find out if I can get any answers as to why I'm feeling this way. And
1:58.3	when you have, when you do that, you fill out a big old intake form.
	...

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