The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast
Meg and Bella discuss the ups and downs of navigating an alcohol free life in Australia's alcohol centric culture. This highly rated podcast, featuring in Australia's top 100 self improvement podcasts, is a must for those that are trying to drink less alcohol but need some motivation, are curious about sober life or who are sober but are looking for some extra reinforcement. The Not Drinking Alcohol Today pod provides an invaluable resource to keep you motivated and on track today and beyond. Meg and Bella's guests include neuroscientists, quit-lit authors, journalists, health experts, alcohol coaches and everyday people who have struggled with alcohol but have triumphed over it. Our aim is to support and inspire you to reach your goals to drink less or none at all! Meg and Bella are This Naked Mind Certified Coaches (plus nutritionists and counsellors respectively) who live in Sydney and love their alcohol free life.
The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast
Annie Grace's This Naked Mind!
On our Christmas Eve One-Year Anniversary, we welcome Annie Grace, the trailblazing founder of This Naked Mind!
Annie talks about her transformation to an alcohol-free author of This Naked Mind, creator of The Alcohol Experiment and a coach of alcohol coaches spreading her This Naked Mind methodology across the globe.
We talk about how she wrote This Naked Mind, the four-step liminal process that's reshaping lives, why her book works, what sets This Naked Mind Coaches apart from others and her top tip for all of us hoping to get through this Christmas Day alcohol free.
Annie is a guiding light for those of us who are ready to rewrite our story with alcohol. So do tune in to this episode if drink less less is on your New Year's Resolution list (again) for 2024.
MEG
Megan Webb: https://glassfulfilled.com.au
Instagram: @glassfulfilled
Unwined Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub
Facebook UpsideAF: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1168716054214678
Small group coaching: https://www.elizaparkinson.com/groupcoaching
BELLA
Web: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Insta: @alcoholandstresswithisabella
Bi-Yearly 6-Week Small Group Challenges: Learn more: https://www.isabellaferguson.com.au/feb-2025-challenge
Free Do I Have A Drinking Problem 3 x Video Series: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/JTFFgjJL/checkout
Free HOW DO I STOP DRINKING SO MUCH Masterclass: https://resources.isabellaferguson.com.au/offers/7fvkb3FF/checkout
Online Alcohol Self-...
Today, Meg and I are really excited because we have Annie Grace on the podcast. Annie is, of course, the founder of this Naked Mind, the author of this Naked Mind and the live alcohol experiment. We are so excited to have you on, Annie, welcome.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:And we're excited as well because we're celebrating a touch over a year of being on the airwaves. So you know this is just so timely, annie, that you're on. I just have to say you know, you absolutely paid such a big hand in changing my life. Reading this Naked Mind and then training to become a coach with you has just really altered the direction of you know, my whole career and where I was heading, and your work has just changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the world. So so I wanted to have you on.
Speaker 3:Yes, me too, and Bella and I studied to become coaches with this Naked Mind from the beginning of 2022. And then we dived straight into this podcast once we were certified, and we're both coaching now. So you know me too. It's changed my life and I found my purpose and passion through you, Annie, so we're so excited to have you here. Can we start by hearing a bit about your story?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Well, I'm just, I'm thrilled for both of you and I love watching what you're doing with the podcast and everything else. It's just amazing. So yeah, my story and a little bit of a nutshell, was that I was not really that big of a drinker in even college or university. But then when I got into the corporate world, I actually moved to New York City and I was told by my boss that I needed to start coming to happy hour and I was like, well, I don't really drink. And he said that's actually not what it's about. It's kind of like where your ideas get showcased, it's where you network, it's it's important for your career and you know, I took that very seriously.
Speaker 2:So I sort of had a method and I would go out and I would have a glass of wine and then a glass of water to make sure I was never getting too tipsy Even so much so that I would literally go into the restroom to throw up the last glass of wine if I felt like I was getting too tipsy. And I was so like trying to be practical about it but also like really paranoid about being the you know drunk one at work, and so I had this whole kind of method going and really thought I'd kind of you know, fooled, fooled the system more or less, and it very ignorant, because alcohol is addictive to human beings, not just certain human beings and sure enough, fast forward about I don't know how I mean, it's a slippery slope, so I don't even know where the line was where things kind of turned to self medication. But I do remember certain instances, like I would get home after a long day and instead of putting on my running shoes or going out for a jog, I would go down to the corner store and buy a bottle of wine and, just, you know, sit in front of the TV and drink it. And it became. I had all sorts of different kind of coping mechanisms. I think you know I say a lot, you know where's the manual on how to be human, how to deal with our humanity, and so many of us fall into all sorts of other you know substances and self medication, without even realizing it or knowing that that's what's happening, because I did have, you know, some coping mechanisms, like I would read, I would exercise, and all of a sudden a lot of those things that I used to do just got replaced by a drink.
Speaker 2:And so, fast forward a decade, I was had done what I'd set out to do. I'd been promoted many times. I was in a global head of marketing role. I was actually coming to Australia quite frequently, new Zealand, all over the world. I was in charge of 28 countries and I was drinking two bottles of wine pretty much every single night, without fail.
Speaker 2:I was at a point I couldn't even remember when the last time I had gone for a day without a drink was, and, quite frankly, the idea scared me, and so I did what you know was typical and I said, okay, well, this is starting to be a little scary and I'm just going to drink less. Should be no big deal, no problem, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm not addicted, at least. So I thought. And so I tried to start to drink less. And it wasn't just so easy. It was actually quite problematic. It wasn't that I couldn't do it. I could do it. I could actually drink less or nothing. I could take breaks. But I was miserable. When I did, I felt like what is the point? Things felt boring, they didn't feel fun. It felt like I was missing out. It felt like I was outside of the whole crowd. I felt really like you know, if this is, if this is the reality of it, I'd rather just keep drinking honestly until things get really bad. That was or less my mindset.
Speaker 2:And I remember I was actually coming back from the UK from a trip and I had had a really boozy night the night before and I'd woken up early to get into the the cab. I'd gone into the restaurant to see if I could get a mimosa to kind of take the edge off, because you know, mimosas were one of those drinks that were okay for a second morning, in my mind at least and she said she wasn't going to open the champagne. So unless I was going to drink the whole bottle which I kind of laughed off but I probably would have that she wasn't. You know, she didn't want it to go flat before all the other customers came in the restaurant and so I thought, okay, well, I'll just suck it up and she goes. But I could give you a screwdriver, which I didn't really know what it was because I wasn't a big vodka drinker at the time, but it was vodka and orange juice, and so I had one of these little invisible lines in my head. It was like you don't cross which, for me, was hard alcohol. For a second in the morning I was okay to drink a mimosa, but if it was hard alcohol, for some reason that you know, it was just a different, a different. Oh, there's a problem if I'm drinking, you know, vodka for a second in the morning.
Speaker 2:But I felt really, really desperate, really miserable. I was flying home to the US. I was just feeling like I just have to get home, I just have to get back to my kids, and I had a few. And I remember getting to the airport and just sitting in the. I got off the train and I was just sitting in the airport. Everybody else had kind of left and I had a little bit of time and I was just sitting there just sobbing, feeling like what, what is wrong with me? I'm supposed to be bringing the best of myself home to my kids and I'm bringing the absolute worst of myself.
Speaker 2:And I just recognized that something had to change. And what I had been doing with trying to take these breaks and breaking rules on myself or being miserable while doing it, I had just gotten myself in such an intense cycle of of pain and misery and self doubt and lack of self trust. And in this moment, a different question came to me, which was why? Why did I used to be able to take it or leave it no big deal, and now it's such a big thing? Why did I used to be able to cope with my whole life without alcohol and now I feel like, if I even miss it a day like what's the point? And I made this, I think, really radical decision in this moment to answer that question why?
Speaker 2:And I actually stopped trying to stop drinking. I made the decision that I would spend the next. I gave myself a year and I was gonna find out why. And I was going to just keep drinking during that time. Because the misery I was experiencing from being on this cycle of starts and stops was I could tell that it was going nowhere fast and it was actually much more likely to drink because I was causing myself so much pain and so much misery.
Speaker 2:And so I took that next year. I actually made a list of every single reason I drank alcohol. I took that list and I asked all my friends and we live in this beautiful time where you can just go online, pay 50 or 100 bucks and download pretty much any scientific study that's ever been done and I just started going through and realizing all of these truths about alcohol that I hadn't known and it was mind blowing and amazing. And at the end of the year I walked out in my office and I told my husband I was like, if you wanna get drunk with me again, tonight's the night because after this I don't think I'm gonna drink anymore. And he was surprised and he didn't believe me. But that was actually I think we just crossed, I think, nine years.
Speaker 1:So Absolutely incredible and the year that you took off and researched the why and did all of the work culminated in this amazing book. And I think the why was a large part of the success for me and what drew me to the book, because no one could tell me the why beforehand. So why do you think this book resonated and people just really grabbed it and it's flown off the shelves? Why do you think it's been so successful in really changing people's relationship to alcohol?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it tells the truth about a lot of things that we have not been told the truth about. So we have these common knowledge beliefs that only a certain percentage of our population can get addicted, that you're actually broken if you drink too much, that you're responsible, that you're morally a failure, all of these sorts of things and, by the way, that it's only a problem if it's really a problem. Otherwise, there's just, frankly, nothing you can do about it, because until your drinking is really bad, you just basically need to carry on. And so I think that what my research had done, that I did for myself and then, like you say, ultimately I put it out online, just self-published. And so for a self-published book to have gone on to sell over a million copies is pretty unheard of. But I think the reason that it happened is because I was just treating people like adults, really simply telling them the truth of the information that I had found, which was alcohol actually doesn't relax you. When you have a drink of alcohol, your body's responses to release cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and when we see that information without any blame, without any shame, without any story that we're broken or that we're somehow apart or that we're a failure, and we just see the purity of that science, we can say, hey, wait a minute, I'm not going to feel the same way now when I'm pouring my next drink.
Speaker 2:And so what this naked mind the book does so well is it really takes readers through what I like to call the liminal process, which is what you both you know, obviously right coaches have gone deep into. And that's just this process by which you actually change behavior. And the theory is that our behavior actually changes much easier, more sustainably and more effective over the long term when we are able to change the emotions around the behavior as well as the behavior itself. And so the liminal process is really a four step process, and the first step is to end cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the internal argument that causes so much pain that in my story you can see that I was in when I was both trying to drink less but really believed that alcohol was the kind of end all be all substance that was keeping my whole life together. And so we actually do that by allowing people the space to get in touch with with themselves and what they really want for their lives, without rules, without you know the need to get sober right away. You know doing that sort of work.
Speaker 2:And then the second step is to rewire the subconscious belief systems, and that happens through a few different ways. Coaches can do this through like a story, emotion, repetition, and one of my ways is authority, which is the science behind, like the why. When your brain hears the science of, very naturally let's go of its old belief systems. And the beautiful thing is is when you, when you change your belief systems as obvious as this sounds and maybe as oversimplified as it sounds your feelings change. And when your feelings change, your desire to drink or not drink changes. Very people often report it feels magical.
Speaker 2:And and then the third step is to adopt an experiment mentality. So once you've had this kind of change of heart, change of thought, you go into your life saying, right, okay, let's see how life is. I'm trying not to drink at this happy hour, maybe I'll be miserable, maybe I'll not be miserable, but I'm going to put on kind of the proverbial white lab coat in my own life and figure out how, how I really feel. And so we go through that process and then the final step and I think this is where you know coaches really shine is to help then build a life you don't want to escape from, because for so, so many of us, the reasons that we were drinking the first place, you know they really need to be looked at and otherwise, yes, sure you can put down the drink, but you might just pick something else up.
Speaker 2:But the whole process is about you're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. There's very clear science as to why you're doing what you're doing, and it's. There's no fear, there's no pain. We're not pressuring you. In fact, I don't even call myself sober. I say I drink as much as I want, whenever I want, and I just honestly haven't wanted to drink in nine years now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, amazing and I think that's what appealed to me so much at the beginning was take away the shame and the blame, you know, was because I did. I tried a and as the community was fantastic, love that. But I couldn't get my head around the, the label, the disease part. You know all of that. So finding you was such a fresh, exciting way to look at it and I just want you know everyone to know about it.
Speaker 3:Like the other day this is, this was a bit of a. It was quite confronting. It was my ex husband and he said something to me. We still, you know, we get on quite well and he said well, you're an alcoholic. And I said, whoa, that you know he's not. You know we're not actually that close that I can tell him all about this. But I did say to him one thing that you know I've learned through the process and it was, you know, first of all, take away the label, no, and I said to him it's an alcohol use disorder. A lot of people are on this spectrum, you know, and I think that's what's also amazing. You don't have to feel like you've got this huge problem to do this me anyone, and as coaches we really work with people to help them find a freedom. So thank you for helping me with all of that, and Bella it's, and for all the people that you have, because it's such a fresh way to look at everything.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. Well, first of all, let me just comment on the alcohol use disorder bit, because I think it's it's so important what you're saying and you know there's there's actually, I believe I think it's 11, might be 12 questions on the alcohol use disorder sort of quiz according to the DSM five, which is the diagnostic and statistical manual, that, like diagnosis disorders and of course, alcoholic or alcoholism are not even recognized in there, as you said. But I think the thing that's even more interesting and possibly mind blowing is that the two of the 12 questions are do you need to drink more than you used to to get the same effect? Every single drinker I know would say yes to that. And another one of the questions is do you ever have times where you drink more than you intended? Again, at least one time where you've drank more than you intended? Again, every drinker I know would say yes to that.
Speaker 2:And the interesting bit is that you only need to answer two questions in the affirmative to have alcohol use disorder. So not to scare people, because there's nothing scary here, but just to say that it is literally in everyone conversation. This is, you know, unless you are, you know, the grandma who has one glass of wine when her granddaughter gets married once. You know, once in a blue moon, like most people, that I know who drink. I don't know anybody who drinks who hasn't said yes to those two questions, so I just think that's worth saying yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I just wanted to ask when you were in the airport, how did you know, with that year, where to start and delve into this amazing? You know it's all about thoughts and emotions, because it really is. It has a ripple effect where it can change everything in your life, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I felt it was so interesting and I actually have my like very illegible, unintelligible journal from when I was writing because I was drunk. But what I can like decipher from it was that I had just been asking what's wrong with me and it was like I was writing down like, oh, maybe I'm, I guess I'm an alcoholic, and I had written it down right, and it filled me with such dread and such fear and such just wrongness. Not maybe, you know, you could say I wasn't humble enough to admit or, I'm sure, whatever you could say, but for me it just like to say I am, which you know, I have these hippie parents who taught me about affirmations and about thinking and about positive psychology and about the vital nature of the words I am and what you put after that. And for me to feel in that moment because it was like one of the first moments that I was like going to like say that out loud, because the paradigm is that you need to make that declaration in order that's the first step, right, in order to get help, you have to be willing to admit this is wrong with you. And I had written it down in my journal. And this is why I was sobbing is because I was like, okay, I guess I have to just admit, like this is wrong with me. I had hit such an emotionally hard moment and when I wrote it down, everything in me screamed no. And so then, all of a sudden, this much more peaceful little question wormed into my head which I'd been saying what's wrong with me? What's my problem? Am I an alcoholic? And all of a sudden, this much more peaceful question, which was well, why? And it was just like a curiosity, like I was just like why, why did I used to be able to take it or leave it, and now I can't like what changed and I just. It was such a beautiful moment in a way, but I think it was really born from my just complete dislike of how the question am I an alcoholic? Like how it made me feel.
Speaker 2:And, interestingly enough, I've actually done this exercise now with probably 60 or 70,000 people, because we have a sort of little event that we do on occasion where we take people through this process and it's just called identifying your emotion-based goals. So what I asked people to do is I asked them to say what is your goal around drinking, and everybody will put it in the chat because we're on Zoom and they'll say my goal is to moderate or to drink less or to never drink again. And I say, okay, close your eyes, get in touch with your body. How do you feel in relation to that goal? And everybody feels awful. It's like I feel dread, I feel fear, I feel heaviness, I feel self-loathing, I feel, you know, shame at all of these terrible feelings.
Speaker 2:And the newest neuroscience is so clear that feelings are the key to behavior change. Like and, by the way, you can scare yourself into behavior change, but it usually doesn't last, because we all have moments where we have these really intense hangovers, promise ourselves we're never gonna do it again, and then the pain fades and we find ourselves thinking, oh, it couldn't have been that bad. And so the science is just so clear that actually, you know positive or what I would even call resourceful emotions are the things that lead us to behavior change. And so I say, okay, let's try something totally different. I want you to consider your goal in terms of how you feel. So I want you to think of a goal. How would you like to feel in your relationship with alcohol? Admitting that we all certainly do have a relationship with alcohol. How would you like to feel? And some people say I would like to feel empowered, I would like to feel free, I would like to feel like I could take it or leave it, I would like to feel like it's small and irrelevant, I would like to feel in control. And then I say, okay, how does that make you feel inside your body? And people feel hopeful and they feel excited to work on it. They don't feel like they want to run away from it.
Speaker 2:And then, if you just like the predictable outcome of when you feel hopeful about something, you move toward it, you start to put in the, you start to become curious. And so in that moment, for me, I had done that for myself. I had gone from these terrible questions of I need to stop drinking, what's wrong with me, to why. And this question awakened this feeling of curiosity and it was fascination. And then I combined it with just this radical self-compassion because I was so definitive in my own experience that I wasn't going to. I knew I couldn't do the research if I kept beating myself up. Judgment and curiosity really can't coexist. So if I kept judging myself for my drinking and my inability to stick to these rules I had been setting for myself, I wasn't going to allow the space or the place for me to actually answer the question why? So it was combined with this moment of me saying, okay, I'm going to figure out why.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do it by making a list of all the reasons I drink to ask if they're true or not true it was pretty simple actually, but just so grateful that you went down that path and did that work, because for me it provided a roadmap. It was a roadmap out of a pretty dark, scary place where nobody else really had that path in front of me. So I found myself in rehab for four weeks and it was great. It was the needed break that I needed to really separate myself from the place that I had got to. But I still left that place, not knowing the why. I remember sitting there with the counsellors going, but why am I doing this? Like, I love my life, I've got a really good life, an awesome family, great friends, nothing to worry about but yet no one's telling me why. And so then I went on that same journey where I thought, okay, I was a lawyer. Then I thought I'm going to retrain to become a counsellor and part of that was really just to do my own.
Speaker 1:Self-discovery Wasn't as good as you, annie, did research and ended up with a book. But I found your book and that just kind of plotted well the mixture of the science, the way a mind works, the addictive qualities of it, the compassion, and I was like, ah, thank you, somebody's you know able to show me tools and strategies and the way out. And so I would love this book and I know you're probably a hit of the game, annie, and of doing it already but it really needs to be in rehabs. It needs to be right at that sort of early start of the journey for people so they don't have to sort of stumble across it themselves because you know therapy's good but it needs a bit of logic and science built into it.
Speaker 3:I think when it comes to alcohol, Tomorrow is Christmas, so we wanted to know Annie, do you have any hot tips to help motivate those that want to drink less through the Christmas period, and this goes for all holidays? Yeah, do you have any hot tips for us and our listeners?
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I think is so powerful to do is to again create your own emotion-based goal, especially around the Christmas holidays. Like how do you want to feel around alcohol this Christmas? You know, do you want to kind of feel as if it is small and relevant for you or as if it doesn't really matter, and not knowing that you have all the tools to feel that way yet, but also just honoring that, if you're like create these really hard, rigid rules for yourself. Often the places I see people really going overboard is when we've created these hard, rigid rules for ourselves, like I'm not going to drink at all, and then we go into the holiday and we end up having one. Then we just kind of push the effort button and we allow the whole thing to go off the rails.
Speaker 2:So I think reframing the question a little bit allows that you might drink, you might not drink, but you're really going for an emotion. You want to feel present. You don't want to feel that you're losing your memories, whatever it is for you, and that just kind of allows a little more space with a little more grace for yourself and less judgment. And usually when people take that approach the one of curiosity and compassion over kind of judgment and condemnation, they do find themselves drinking less, and so it's one of these strange paradoxes that when you actually try to control it less, you drink less because you're treating yourself with compassion, whereas when you try to go in with rigidity and rules, as soon as you take a misstep from that, you often drink more, and I think that's where a lot of the regret can come from.
Speaker 1:That's a great hot tip because it is such a tricky time of the year, isn't it? You really are particularly an Australian culture. You basically offer drinks from breakfast to lunch to dinner. Annie, we are just so thrilled to be this Naked Mind Coach. When you're all looking around at all of your coaches out there that you've created, you've basically had a hand in really helping. You know, hundreds of thousands of people break free from alcohol. What is it that you think sets the this Naked Mind Certified Coaches apart from other coaches out?
Speaker 2:there. Well, I don't know of any other program that's following sort of that scientific, neuroscience-based process that we follow. So a lot of programs are focusing on behavior, especially like a traditional sobriety coach. You know you're focusing on behavior, there's probably some level of accountability, and of course we know that that's true. You know, as soon as you go on to a diet and somebody's holding you accountable, you certainly eat less, you know, and you stick to your goals a little bit more. So it can appear as though it's working. The problem is that it's not actually shifting anything internally, and so, without that rewire of the internal shift in your belief system, how long it will work for is, you know, questionable. And in some ways, especially with things like constant meetings, we make ourselves as dependent on the tool we're using for healing as we make ourselves on the substance we were self-medicating with. And so this Naked Mind, we have a saying and we say it all the time, and all the coaches say it to each other, and it's that true medicine makes itself irrelevant. And so our goal, as this Naked Mind Coaches, is to obviously be there for you as long as you need it, but not to be there forever, because we actually want to make ourselves irrelevant in your life and give you the tools to overcome this in the most positive way. And I think the other big thing that sets us apart is, you know, people are generally really happy when they stop drinking with this Naked Mind.
Speaker 2:Ironically, it kind of there was a whole huge fight that broke out on Instagram recently as a result of this, because there was a post that was made about Matthew Perry and his passing and how addiction can feel so much. The woman who made the post, she said it could feel like living on the edge of camping. Your life could feel like camping on the edge of the Grand Canyon once you've once you're, in her words, in recovery. And that's really tragic, you know. And so a lot of people in the comments started saying, well, you need to, you need to discover this Naked Mind, or find this Naked Mind, because my life doesn't feel like that at all. My life feels really happy and peaceful and I feel really free. I don't I don't feel tempted, I don't feel like I'm about to fall off a cliff at every moment.
Speaker 2:And so it incited this kind of whole huge discussion because so many people who were either coaches for this Naked Mind, or people who had found freedom with this Naked Mind, were arguing the point that, like you, can actually do this and be happy.
Speaker 2:You can actually do this and find peace.
Speaker 2:You can actually do this with this right process and change your belief systems to where you just you just don't want to drink anymore, really moving from this mindset of, oh, I don't get to drink anymore, I don't have to drink anymore.
Speaker 2:And it was just wild to watch how these two different experiences play out, where, if you're quitting through kind of more traditional methods that are focused on your behavior and that are focused on you know you're successful if you're drinking, you're not successful if you're not drinking and how much pressure can come from that. Versus we don't focus on behavior, we focus on how you want to feel and and actually you know if you can be successful, even if you're having what we call data points, which is, you're still drinking on occasion, but you're learning from it and you're not feeling ashamed by it. You're just really digging into the process. And so the lived experience of the two different methodologies just came out in this, in this post, and it was. It was both amazing because I was so happy for the people who had found freedom, and heartbreaking, because I certainly wouldn't want to live my life as if I was camping on the edge of the Grand Canyon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, we're very proud to be this Naked Mind coaches, aren't we, meg? And so much so that we've got your Australian contingent. Annie has formed a group, alcohol Coaches Australia, which I'm sure you know about.
Speaker 3:And I certainly wouldn't be alcohol free if I wasn't extremely happy and joyful. So we can vouch for that that this is. This is a life we want to be living, and that's thanks to, thanks to this Naked Mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you.
Speaker 1:Well, all the work that you're doing I know that you're training coaches and there's a lot of other strings to your bow when it comes to this Naked Mind what else is out there for you? You know what's happening on the horizon.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm writing another book which I've just gotten an offer for, and it's really about what happens in that first year, and it's almost really targeted to people who certainly it's going to be useful for people who have found freedom with this naked mind, but equally, I think, and even more so, it might be really useful for people who have been finding freedom from alcohol in other ways and just almost white-knuckling the process, and so it's going to allow really education about this paradigm that happens, where we have this need to drink, to self-medicate the pain that we're in, and yet we create so much pain for ourselves when we stop drinking, believing that alcohol is still such an important role and such an important piece in our lives.
Speaker 2:And so it's going to unpack that and provide other ways to really get out of that pain, and so I'm very hopeful about it. I'm really excited about it. I think it's going to be as much of a sort of research project already has been to some degree as this naked mind, but in a different vein. So that's next. As books go will take me quite some time to get that done, but yeah, that's really exciting.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for taking the time to pop on to not drinking today, Annie. We are incredibly grateful for all of the work that you have done and continue to do, and we cannot wait to see what else is out there and to read this new book when it's released.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for having me. It was really a joy. I hope you had a wonderful day.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Annie. Merry Christmas, oh, I should just say look people out there may want to do the alcohol experiment, or they might want to jump onto your site and really jump onto your podcasts and your blogs and all the amazing information out there, including your app, which is just wonderful. So where would just be the easiest, quickest place for people to jump on and know about, to learn about this naked mind in more detail?
Speaker 2:So this nakedmindcom is a great place to start, and then the alcoholexperimentcom is where you can just go for that free 30 day challenge Wonderful.
Speaker 1:Thanks, annie, thank you, thank you, thank you.
