This Naked Mind

[Fordian]

I've just started this book, so pretty early days, possibly just finished the 'drink or the drinker?' chapters.

I will stick with it, I think, but I'm already a bit 🤔 at the idea that the down and out in the gutter is just further along his alcohol addiction journey than your maiden aunt who has a sherry at Xmas. Or, more realistically, our mates who drank like fish alongside us at 20-30, but who now at 50 have a single glass, maybe two, tops, on a night out.

They're either lying to us 🤣 or such drinkers do exist, and to me there's nothing to suggest the moderation they segued into in their thirties and have very much apparently sustained into their fifties will morph into drinking nail polish remover in their sixties.

What is your take? IS it an 'American' style book with no shades of grey, no nuance?

I’ve read it twice, back to back. I wanted to stop drinking, not cut down and I haven’t had a drink for 4 years. I don’t miss it and I credit this book with a mindset shift.

Maybe you’re not ready, it doesn’t sound like you have an open mind right now. And that’s ok, when the time is right it will resonate with you.

Its been a while since I read it. I don't think it is saying everyone will gradually become an alcoholic, but it definitely is easy to gradually drink more and more, or have a stressful life event that turns a moderate drinker into a problem drinker. The problem is it can creep up on you, and by the time it has happened it is very difficult to stop.

I'm genuinely happy that it has been such a huge help to you! But I will have to read more of it, I guess, to move past the concept that everyone is an alcoholic, just not as far along the road to dependence!

That book and the website saved my life. Four and a half years sober, and I owe it all to Annie Grace.

I read this book six years ago and credit it with me not having had a drink since. It shifted my mindset entirely. Be open minded! I had had at least 300 day ones where I said I wouldn't drink and it never worked until I read that book.

I haven’t read This Naked Mind, but in my experience with people who are problem drinkers, yes, I would agree with that generally. I’d think of it the same way you think of cigarettes.

The people who only smoke when they were out for the night in their 20s either stopped in their 30s or they started to smoke more. I don’t think it’s different for alcohol. The effects on the brain are very similar, though there is more social acceptance around smoking (you can do it on your break from work at 10am on a Tuesday, if you went outside for a glass of wine, you would definitely get pegged as an alcoholic!).

Most people I know in their 50s/60s/70s - bar the few who only ever had a sherry at Christmas - either don’t drink anymore or drink very sporadically or they drink too much. I don’t mean in the gutter with a paper bag of cheap whiskey. But they do drink in quite unhealthy ways.

Alcohol dependence is progressive. I actually didn’t drink in my teens or early 20s. My 21st birthday was one one of the first times I ever really had anything to drink. I didn’t start drinking the way many students do until I was probably 25 (and not a student!). It slowly increased from there, with periods of abstinence when I was pregnant, but really until my late 30s/early 40s, I’m not sure anyone would have said I drank more than anyone else in my social circle (we all drank a lot), but I definitely didn’t seem like an ‘alcoholic’, by popular definition.

All that being said, you won’t really know what people around you are drinking. Especially in your 30s/40s and beyond, a huge amount of drinking takes place at home. I went out maybe 5 times a year. My dh hardly even saw me drink and we lived together. I was drinking 3 bottles of wine a night though when I stopped. In a box of wine, not bottles, so I didn’t have to add them clanking to the recycling bin. I just crushed the box and disposed of it somewhere.

Now I don’t think everyone who drinks eventually will have a problem, but yes, most people who drink regularly throughout their lives unless actively seek to change that, will probably be drinking an unhealthy amount by the time they are older.

I found it the same as you OP, it didn't ring true to my experiences or the people I know. It was the people around me naturally drinking less as they got older that made me feel my drinking was different. I don't believe we're all on the same path, I think some of us are more susceptible to drinking too much and that's OK to acknowledge even if it feels unfair.

I also didn't buy the idea we couldn't genuinely enjoy the taste of alcoholic drinks as they are acquired tastes we work to like. So are olives and blue cheese!

Genuinely happy for those that loved this book and it has changed people's lives I know, it just didn't resonate for me. I loved the Sober Diaries as it was an ordinary person who realised she was drinking too much.

Thank you for the different perspectives!

I'd also agree that I like the taste of a good quality dry white.

Addiction is a strange thing. I grew up in a family of heavy smokers. My DB started at 10! So smoking was both normalised and everywhere back then, pubs, staff rooms, hospitals, shops, at home. I smoked when I was out with my mates, being cool, underage drinking... Purple Silk Cut, I recall. But I'd maybe smoke 2 of an evening, out; almost never at home, so possibly 2-4 a week.

One day in my early 20s I thought 'Nah, I'm not addicted, I'm not that bothered' so I stopped. Just like that. No struggle, no cravings. But none of my family succeeded in stopping.

Yet, alcohol, I've had periods of barely drinking, some of more. But I recognise it's a real habit for me, I'm trying to work out if it's an addiction, as even The Book acknowledges it's hard to know if you're an alcoholic!

Anyway, I'm rambling!

I will plough on, and hope it opens a door of revelation to me!

It sounds impressive

The Naked Mind website and videos are excellent. I would say something has drawn you along this path, you already know your alcohol intake is feeling problematic. If you approach the program from the 30 day perspective it’s enlightening.

I think the point is, we never use ‘but I can’t stop, I like the taste’ to justify our intake of anything else.

If we go on a diet, it’s a given that we have to stop eating and drinking some of the things we like the taste of, because they’re bad for us. Nobody questions it, least of all us.

But when we’re facing the prospect of giving up alcohol, it’s the excuse a lot of us use to keep drinking it. I know I did. But it wasn’t the real reason I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t the only drink I liked the taste of; there are lots.

The real reason I couldn’t stop was that it was an addictive substance.