My Alcohol Story

The Lies We Tell Ourselves, and How to Quit

I just offered each of my kids $1,000 to read or listen to this book on Audible.

And write down the most interesting thing they learned in each chapter, and call and read them to me.

I have decided to give up my Saturday night wine.

Luckily I didn’t have alcohol before age 43–my children were raised with no alcohol in my life nor in our home—but then they went off to college.

Because I didn’t have any till age 43 (except for a few experiments in high school that went badly)—

—I don’t like the taste nor have I ever believed it is in any way good for me.

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And I have nothing but compassion for the people whose culture pushed them toward it.

People whose parents always had a drink in their hand. People who gave it to their children, training them to drink, at an illegal age.

I have had so many friends who want to give it up and it’s ruined their health and their relationships. One friend, a health coach who does 200 good things for her health, said to me recently, “I don’t know who I am without alcohol.”

She wants to discover who that person is. I have known many people who say they don’t know who their parents really were, too.

I had to fire my best friend after 10 years working for me and 20 years as my best friend, for being permanently wasted or hung over. It. Was. Awful.

For her. And for me.

It didn’t happen overnight. I saw her ruin her life in 10 years.

There but for the grace of God go I. Or you.

It’s a progression, everybody thinks they can handle it and nobody can actually “handle” ingesting poison.

Even if some people seem to be able to have two glasses of wine just once a week, and others end up alone in life, and drunk in the gutter.

My parents are visiting soon and I am making a list of the things I want to thank them for, in great detail.

For instance, that they raised me to know that TV is poison for the mind and alcohol is poison for the body.

They would know. My dad’s dad drank his way through five marriages.

All my dad’s stories about his own father are related to what his dad did when he was drunk — despite being a decorated war veteran.

Grandpa’s first wife, my grandmother, killed herself when she was 33 and I have to wonder if there’s a connection. I wish I had gotten to meet her.

My grandpa won in the end, giving booze AND his pack-a-day habit up at the same time—at my age—and lived to his 90’s. So did his 5th wife, “Grandma Ginny,” the only grandma I ever knew.

My dad said my grandpa gave them up when I took the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and dumped them in the toilet and begged him to stop.

Grandpa’s 5th wife was an alcoholic chain smoker too, gave both addictions up at the same time Grandpa did.

RIP Grandma Ginny, whom they would not let me see in her care facility in July 2020, in Spokane, and she died a week later.

(PS and may you rot in hell, you psychopaths at the top, who wouldn’t let me see my grandma, even through a WINDOW, after I drove 13 hours to try. You Neo-Nazis who let thousands of our seniors die, without access to their families, and without any choice about it.)

Annie Grace will convince you, in This Naked Mind, the whole booze marketing scam is nothing but lies.

Study after study shows even the professional wine tasters can’t tell an $8 bottle of wine from a $600 bottle.

The smartest among us believe the hype and sexiness and status; we cave to social pressure. You’re criticized if you don’t drink; then you’re an embarrassing “untouchable,” if you can’t “handle” your drinking.

Our unconscious mind believes we “need” it to “relax” or to socialize or for “fun” to be possible. One at a time, Annie Grace deconstructs and debunks every reason you might offer up, for why you drink alcohol, or your insistence you don’t have a “problem.”

Ask anybody who gave alcohol up–if their happiness, fun, or anything else good, disappeared with the booze.

I’ve been guilty. I’m done telling myself lies about how it’s okay since I do it “only once a week” and it gives me a “break from stress.”

Alcohol is poison. The actual science on it is clear, even if the wine industry tells you otherwise — alcohol we drink is the exact same as ethanol at gas stations, made palatable by sugar and flavorings and more.

Annie Grace (I interviewed her on my podcast) says:

Don’t say, “I’m going to give up alcohol.”

Just read the book, and you’ll never want to drink again. Listen on Audible at 1.5x speed while you cook or work out, if any of this speaks to you and you’re wanting to stop.

My next blog post will be the Cliff’s Notes of This Naked Mind one of my children wrote. She listened to the book on Audible, and loved it. She’s my “go the extra mile” kid, and she’d already quit drinking three months ago.

Thank you for your support of my blog. Please consider a one-time donation or subscribe for $10/mo if my work is valuable to you. A great addition to coming off alcohol–just one drink a week is proven to increase anxiety–consider learning about how to detoxify. Detoxification is for anyone living in this toxic world–not just those who drink alcohol. And, please assume that some of the links I may share, compensate my small business.