This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life - Kindle edition by Grace, Annie. Professional & Technical Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

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This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life by [Annie Grace]

This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life Kindle Edition

by Annie Grace (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

14,172 ratings

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This Naked Mind has ignited a movement across the country, helping thousands of people forever change their relationship with alcohol.

Many people question whether drinking has become too big a part of their lives, and worry that it may even be affecting their health. But, they resist change because they fear losing the pleasure and stress-relief associated with alcohol, and assume giving it up will involve deprivation and misery.

This Naked Mind offers a new, positive solution. Here, Annie Grace clearly presents the psychological and neurological components of alcohol use based on the latest science, and reveals the cultural, social, and industry factors that support alcohol dependence in all of us. Packed with surprising insight into the reasons we drink, this book will open your eyes to the startling role of alcohol in our culture, and how the stigma of alcoholism and recovery keeps people from getting the help they need. With Annie’s own extraordinary and candid personal story at its heart, this book is a must-read for anyone who drinks.

This Naked Mind will give you freedom from alcohol. It removes the psychological dependence so that you will not crave alcohol, allowing you to easily drink less (or stop drinking). With clarity, humor, and a unique blend of science and storytelling, This Naked Mind will open the door to the life you have been waiting for.

“You have given me my live back.” —Katy F., Albuquerque, New Mexico

“This is an inspiring and groundbreaking must-read. I am forever inspired and changed.” —Kate S., Los Angeles, California

“The most selfless and amazing book that I have ever read.” —Bernie M., Dublin, Ireland

Print length

263 pages
Language

English
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Avery
Publication date

October 12, 2015
File size

5696 KB
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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

14,172 global ratings

5 star		79%
4 star		12%
3 star		5%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Seven months 100% sober; quit 5+ year nightly heavy drinking

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 9, 2022

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This book was recommended to me by a Reddit user, but I didn't buy it- just planned to. A couple weeks later, I heard comedian Pete Holmes discussing it on a podcast and thought, eh, screw it, let's give it a go, I don't want to go to AA and this is my only other choice.
I'm a 30-year-old woman. I bought this last August (I was 29). For over five years, I drank 6-7 drinks a night. Every single night. I could force myself if I really, REALLY tried to go a night without, but I'd spend the entire night miserable and wishing I were drinking.
I'd also often wake up on my days off and begin drinking, only to nap in the middle of the day and drink more that evening. I could not enjoy myself sober for long. I'd just be sitting there thinking about when I'd get to drink next, even if I was in the company of people I loved. I'd often also be the only person having a drink in social situations, family or friends... Ugh. It was awful. I thought I was doomed to eventually have to succumb to AA, but here's the thing... I REALLY didn't want to go to AA.
I followed the instructions of this book to a T. I read a chapter a day, I was sober when I read them, only read each chapter when I was in a positive mindset, and didn't cut back drinking during the whole process.
Here's the thing, fam. A lot of people like to cite the bit about withdrawal in the book, where she basically says withdrawal isn't as big a deal as people make it out to be. While I understand the sentiment, here's what you're missing: One of the core rules of the book is to not cut back on your drinking while you read it. Near the end of the book, she acknowledges people who have far more advanced alcoholism and encourages them to get help. She doesn't just say "lol withdrawal isn't real, you'll be fine". The reality is, for most people I know who have a drinking problem, they don't wake up every day and drink until they pass out that night. They have an insidious situation that they hide under the guise of 'unwinding' and then it just turned into a nightly thing. This book acknowledges both sects of people.
As for any botched science, I legitimately don't care if there's a couple things in there that aren't 100% accurate, because logically, I'm aware that drinking is inherently TERRIBLE. If you've gotta draw from a flawed study or two in a sea of other perfectly sound examples, I'm here for it. I needed to quit drinking.
Some people complain that it's a ripoff of The Easy Way To Stop Drinking. If you'd read the book, you'd know that Annie Grace is friends with Allen Carr. You would also know that The Easy Way books are extremely dated. As a woman in my 20's at the time, I'd read several chapters of Allen Carr's book a couple years ago and had difficulty latching on to how very, very old school it all sounded. Annie's book isn't like that at all. It's current, so it's easier for younger people to read. Even putting the science aside (most of which is SOUND, by the way), you can't flat-out deny that we're indoctrinated into drinking culture and made to believe drinking is 'normal' and 'fun' when, sorry fam, it's not. It's just not. It's poison.
If you think this book is a waste of money or otherwise BS, I'm here to tell you that the book isn't the problem here. AA teaches you that the problem is you, not the alcohol. Annie Grace teaches you that the opposite is true.
Sorry this is all over the place. My whole point is this: I quit a horrible addiction to alcohol using this book, and I believe that most people could do the same. ONLY people who are capable of following the rules, however (same could be said for Allen Carr's Easy Way book). This book changed my life. SAVED my life. I quit drinking within the last two-three chapters and wept tears of joy. I will never stop singing its praises.

213 people found this helpful

Extremely Useful and Informative Book (that also could be a little better)

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 6, 2021

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This is a really, very good book, and I'm glad I took the time to read and digest it. I came to it already having decided to stop drinking, which makes me not exactly its target audience. But it did nonetheless change my resolve. I had imagined my abstinence including exceptions for very special occasions like a dinner at a fancy restaurant. I also imagined that in several years I'd maybe be able to go back to drinking in a "take it or leave it" kind of way. Reading this book made me decisively drop those ideas: they were the alcohol talking.

I especially appreciated the departure in Grace's book from the usual AA approach. The latter distinguishes "normal drinkers" from "alcoholics" and focuses on the shortcomings of the addict. Grace focuses on the insidious culture and harms of alcohol. In another reversal, she positions the former drinker as a person who has more capacity to enjoy life and make decisions than those who drink. Other approaches position the former drinker as a person who has a disease, weakness, or moral failing.

That's what I found to love, and it's a lot. All of that kept me reading attentively right through to the very end, and left me changed.

I also had some reservations about the book. I share them not to debunk Grace's approach but, I hope, to demonstrate opportunities to strengthen it. (Maybe she'll come out with a second edition!) They mostly have to do with the author's leading, at every moment, with rhetoric and persuasion. These features are a little too close to the surface of the text, and when they drive the account, it can lead to logical inconsistencies or outright contradictions. Sometimes she says that alcoholism is not a disease. Sometimes she says that it is. Which is it? In her (mostly excellent) chapter on health effects, she criticizes those who have touted the health benefit of alcohol for conflating correlation and causation (see p. 62). Five pages later, she accepts the correlation of alcohol consumption with incidents of cancer as causation. Her larger point stands, but moments like these represent unforced errors that open her account to needless criticism. Moreover, some of the scientific evidence she relied upon was so old as to be questionable. I am skeptical of most science done in 1909 (eugenics, anyone?), so when I noticed that the study finding that alcohol deadens the tastebuds was published in that year, I had to wonder whether and why that was the most recent study she could find.

Grace is right about the intensity and breadth of unconscious conditioning we suffer around alcohol. But I wondered, reading this book, how much of her attempt to "reverse" the conditioning by picking apart myths about alcohol would be persuasive to a reader who is in a less-committed place than I am. She devastates the myths in their most blunt form, but more attention could be paid to the deeper and more subtle emotional cues that I think give them their staying power. She also lumps all the negative emotions that people use alcohol to mask under the label of "stress," and then points out that alcohol itself contributes to stress. True, but more attention might be paid to the fact that stress won't go away after one quits drinking: one needs to develop ways to cope healthily and effectively with it. By the same token, a lot of other feelings---emotional feelings---are numbed by alcohol, and I think it would be worth more acknowledgment and exploration of that. Loss, disappointment, low self-esteem, trauma....the list goes on. Grace downplays this because of her rhetoric of persuasion---she wants people to know that they will be happier, healthier, and more fulfilled without alcohol in their lives. But the work to get there involves more than understanding alcohol's insidious harms; it also demands significant emotional labor on the part of the former drinker.

I was glad to see at the end of the book that Grace has created an internet community for readers of This Naked Mind to support each other in their transitions to and experience of the non-drinking life. Throughout the text, she makes a big deal of how susceptible people are to peer pressure. Yet speaks of her approach as though the former drinker has to become a go-it-alone maverick. For all its flaws, part of the genius of AA is putting people into a new peer group who will pressure the alcoholic to not drink. I haven't checked out the internet community around This Naked Mind, but it strikes me that the importance of community might be better emphasized in this book.

In sum, I'm thankful for this book. I'm sure I'll return to it time and again, and I will definitely recommend it to others.

46 people found this helpful

This book just might save your life

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 2, 2023

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Having been through the meat grinder of addiction and struggled with AA and all its baggage, this fresh look at how addiction seduces you and controls your body and soul may be most helpful. I had read Rational Recovery by Jack Trimpey and realized that you, not some evangelical superpower, is the means to recovery.
If you are reading these books I would surmise that you have lost control over certain substances and quite honestly, when it's gone it's gone so let it go. Draw a line in the sand, don't waffle and don't let that other voice have a say. You are much more powerful than you give yourself credit for. I don't take any drugs other than a cup of coffee and occasionally advil . I love my life even on the rough days, hell when I was drinking I didn't have a life. If I can do it anyone can. Thanks Annie.

15 people found this helpful

Helpful for Understanding Alcohol Affects

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 19, 2023

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Got this from our local library (a very long wait line, btw...almost 2 months and they have multiple copies). Read it through once, returned to library and purchased a copy to re-read. Went to companion web site to learn more, signed up for online 30-day "alcohol free" challenge, managed by the books author, Annie Grace (great daily videos to help you get through the 30 days). Book has very easy to follow explanation of how alcohol impacts the body and the "mechanics" of how long term drinking can slowly lead to the point of alcohol being a problem, and how and why it can be very, very difficult to cut back or quit. And strategies for helping you cut back and or quit. Thanks Annie!

5 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Sadé 66

Life Changing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 28, 2018

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I bought this book originally in September 2017 direct from the Author’s site as an mp3 download, but have now purchased this book as a kindle and audio also. Yes people it’s that good. When I first read it I found it thought provoking, I was starting to really question my weekend binge drinking and also the lows that seemed to follow on. I often thought that I would love to be able to stop drinking, but alcohol has played an enormous role in my social life for so many years that I could see how to untangle myself.
I gave up the idea within a week and went back to my usual weekend wine time.
Then in April 2018on a very boozy holiday, I started to read the kindle version of the book. Something clicked and I knew that I didn’t want to carry on treating myself so badly, regretting drinking, feeling fed up etc. Through reading this books and dispelling the myths that I had grown to believe about “what alcohol gives me” I was able to see that there were actually zero positives to drinking. I knew that my life was going to change completely, and it has. I’m now 7 months free of alcohol. I credit this book as being the catalyst for that change. Ending the cognitive dissonance I felt around drinking was the key. Annie Grace goes into great detail about this in the book and takes the reader through ‘liminal points’ each of which dispels one of the the drinking culture myths that we are all brainwashed to believe.
If you want to stop, or are questioning the role that alcohol plays in your life, please buy this book. It’s awesome in the truest sense of the word.

213 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Life Changing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 8, 2018

Verified Purchase

I purchased this book for my Dad. He had been really struggling with drink. He had been to support groups and tried numerous times to quit drinking but never with success. He was at his lowest point, so, after doing some research, I decided to get him this book. After reading the book he is now 9 months sober - the longest ever in his adult life. He has no desire at all to drink. I am so proud of him, and so thankful that this book was able to help.
It has really been life changing.

181 people found this helpful

G. Mattu

Of Liminal Use

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 15, 2018

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Felt this was poor, despite the other great reviews. In fact, I returned it and then couldn't be bothered to take it to the Post box and so still have it. It is very US-focussed and full of some odd science. Sections where she unequivocally states with great confidence that '6,000 Americans in a blind taste taste proved you can't tell at all between good and bad wine' just really undermine her seemingly genuine appeal to people to drink less, or not at all. There are many similar moments throughout - the young man drinking a warm lager at a ball game when he'd (obviously, according to Annie) rather be having a soda, the friend that was inculcated into booze by her parents giving her a taste - it doesn't feel like this has been past a good copyeditor. There are many Obviously, According to Annie moments. The humblebragging about the youngest VP in a multinational and then C-suite blah blah and never missed a meeting, never once was late - well, so what? Are we to take that as evidence that 'wow, it could be anybody' or 'you never can tell' ? Or are we to reflect back on the author some kind of - well, that's amazing that you held it together, and now you're sober too! I suppose if this book gets even one problem drinker off the booze, it is worth it and it works - which is fantastic - but the sermonizing and the sheer insularity of the US perspective are grating and clearly a self-published book/blog in fancy clothes.

Maybe I will continue to read it despite not enjoying its strange 'liminal moments'.

172 people found this helpful

AliceB

The book that changed my life!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 14, 2017

Verified Purchase

It works! I have not had a drink in 8 months and don't want to drink again. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I was the 'get home from work and open a bottle of wine immediately' kind of drinker. Alcohol was controlling my life.

248 people found this helpful

BookWorm

Read Carr and Vale instead - that’s where the ideas come from

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 6, 2019

Verified Purchase

Disappointing book. I’m surprised by all the favorable reviews for it. It’s basically a rehash of both Allen Carr’s and Jason Vale’s work. The frequency with which she refers to these books, and her constant use of Carr’s pitcher plant analogy, is pretty much indicative of the lack of any new ideas here.

69 people found this helpful

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