the alcohol experiment

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The Alcohol Experiment: How to Take Control of Your Drinking and Enjoy Being Sober for Good Paperback – 31 Dec. 2018

From the bestselling author of This Naked Mind

It’s YOUR body… It’s YOUR mind… It’s YOUR choice…

There are a million reasons why you might drink. It tastes great. You feel more sociable. Sex is better. It helps you relax.

But are you really in control?

Whether you’re reading this because you know you drink too much and want to quit, or whether you just want to cut back for a while, this book is for you.

The Alcohol Experiment is a 30-day programme with a difference. Each day, it will show you a new way of thinking about booze, and ask you to look a little closer at why we drink, what we get out of it, and whether it’s really the alcohol that’s giving us what we want.

In the bestselling This Naked Mind, Annie Grace offered a completely revolutionary solution to dependency, and a path to sobriety. Now, let Annie give you the tools you need to understand alcohol – whether or not it’s a problem. Packed with humour, patience and the latest research, try The Alcohol Experiment today, and take control of your drinking for good.

• Print length 256 pages
• Language English
• Publisher HQ
• Publication date 31 Dec. 2018
• Dimensions 15.3 x 2.1 x 23.4 cm
• ISBN-10 0008293473
• ISBN-13 978-0008293475
• See all details

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‘Practical, down-to-earth and easy-to-engage-with’ Press Association

‘A wise, rational, uplifting exploration of drink, with sound and simple advice on taking control.’ Saga

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Book Description

30 days to take control, cut down or give up for good

About the Author

Annie Grace has had a unique life from the very beginning. She grew up in a one-room cabin without running water or electricity in the mountains of Colorado and then, at age 26, became the youngest vice president in a multinational corporation. Success, however, led to excessive drinking and the possibility that she might lose everything. Annie recognized her problem but chose to approach it in an entirely new way. Annie's program has been featured in Forbes, the New York Daily News, and the Chicago Tribune. Annie is successful, happy, and alcohol-free and lives with her husband and three children in the Colorado mountains.

Find out more at thisnakedmind.com/blog/

If you’re looking support in your journey visit thisnakedmind.com for additional resources and next steps or sign up for Annie’s weekly newsletter at thisnakedmind.com/reader

Why not commit to thirty days alcohol free? Join Annie for a thirty-day “Alcohol Experiment” at alcoholexperiment.com

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ HQ (31 Dec. 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0008293473
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0008293475
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.3 x 2.1 x 23.4 cm
• 226 in Alcoholism Health Issues
• 420 in Drinks & Beverages (Books)
• 1,181 in Popular Psychology

About the author

Annie grace.

Annie Grace grew up in a one-room log cabin without running water or electricity outside of Aspen, Colorado. She discovered a passion for marketing and after graduating with a Masters of Science (Marketing) she dove into corporate life. At the age of 26, Annie was the youngest vice president in a multinational company, and her drinking career began in earnest. At 35, in a global C-level marketing role, she was responsible for marketing in 28 countries and drinking almost two bottles of wine a night. Knowing she needed a change but unwilling to submit to a life of deprivation and stigma, Annie set out to find a painless way to regain control. Annie no longer drinks and has never been happier. She left her executive role to write this book and share This Naked Mind with the world. In her free time, Annie loves to ski, travel (26 countries and counting), and enjoy her beautiful family. Annie lives with her husband and three children in the Colorado mountains.

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Customers find the book very informative, easy to read, and excellent for the sober curious. They say it's full of practical, research-backed advice and uses CBT-derived methods. Readers also mention the book is comprehensive and answers many questions.

"...I think the 30 day Alcohol Experiment is a perfect introduction and a great many people will want to carry on doing themselves a real favour." Read more

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Customers find the book wonderful, interesting, and excellent. They say it's worth a try and makes their dry month enjoyable.

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The Book Newly Sober People Love to Give to Each Other

When she was 35 and working as a marketing executive, Annie Grace was also drinking two bottles of wine a night. She’d taken breaks from drinking to have children, and she was able to abstain during the work week if she wanted to, but she still felt like alcohol played an outsize and destructive role in her life. And so she did some research, changed how she thought about drinking, and stopped entirely. Grace then wrote a book for others interested in doing the same thing: This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness, and Change Your Life . The book works “by ending the conflict between your conscious desire to drink less,” she writes, “and your unconscious belief that alcohol is beneficial.” It came out in 2015 and has become something of a word-of-mouth phenomenon since (a recommendation from a friend is how I found out about it, too). The book’s Amazon and Goodreads review sections are populated with comments like: “This is probably the most important book I’ve ever read,” “This book has SAVED MY LIFE ,” and “I bought this book by accident. It has changed my life more than any other book, therapy, counselor, class, doctor, or addiction specialist ever did, combined.”

Concrete numbers are hard to come by, but Grace has estimated that she’s helped somewhere in the realm of 4,000 people stop drinking. More than 50,000 people are currently enrolled in her online programs, and Grace eventually left her marketing job to run the website This Naked Mind and its weekly podcast (with roughly 1.6 million total downloads). Late last year, Grace, now 40, followed This Naked Mind with her second book, The Alcohol Experiment , a “30-day alcohol-free challenge to interrupt your habits and help you take control.”

I stopped drinking myself a few years ago, although I liked her books so much I almost wished I hadn’t, to see if they could help me change my mind all over again.

Why do people like alcohol? I think it’s a huge cultural thing. From a very young age, when our parents present it as something that we can’t have ‘til we’re adults, it turns up the allure like 100 thousand percent, and suddenly we absolutely want it. And then we see everybody doing it, because it’s been so ingrained in our society. And then I think it’s really confirmed by our own experience, because alcohol, when you first drink it — alcohol is an interesting substance, in that it’s both a stimulant and a depressant. And so for the first 20 to 30 minutes after we drink it, it acts as a stimulant. It gives us that tipsy, euphoric, kind of high feeling: It artificially stimulates our pleasure systems, and it feels good. That’s pretty quickly countered when our blood alcohol content goes down, at which point it becomes a depressant. Those mood swings don’t feel good, but we don’t necessarily associate them with alcohol, and so we think, “Oh, it was a stressful day” or whatever, and we reach for the next glass.

I think this whole cultural thing is very much confirmed by the neurochemical addictive quality of the substance. Any addictive substance is going to stimulate a pleasure part of your brain and artificially release high levels of dopamine. Dopamine’s a learning molecule, and it says, “Do that thing again.” And it becomes very quickly a habit that’s ingrained.

In your opinion, what would be the ideal cultural role that alcohol might play in 20 years or 50 years? Or, what would be a long-term goal of your work? I think for people to just have a more mindful approach. And maybe we take baby steps. Obviously it would be amazing if we looked at alcohol the way we look at cigarettes, where we’re aware of the negative health implications before we’re told it’s fun — sort of like how the first thought we have now about cigarettes, now, is that they’re not healthy. That would be amazing, but I think that’s a little too long term, realistically.

I think just in the shorter term, and I’m very hopeful we can get there, very quickly, is to make it so that you’re not set apart if you don’t drink, or if you question your drinking. Questioning your drinking is as simple and easy as questioning your sugar intake, or questioning how much you’re going to go to the gym. “Would I be a bit happier not drinking?”

This ties in to the conversation around the word “alcoholic,” which is sort of a delicate topic but which I know can put people off. It put me off for a long time. Yeah. Because in our culture, if we question our drinking, the main question is: Am I an alcoholic? Or: Do I have a problem? And those are, for me, very fear-based questions that can inhibit growth.

And so often we’ll just keep drinking until something really bad happens. But I think a goal would be for us, culturally, to be able to ask a simple question: Would I be happier drinking a bit less alcohol? And to be able to ask it at any point, without any judgment, without inner judgement, without the inner fear, and certainly without any cultural or societal judgment.

I really like that idea of questioning alcohol intake in the same way we’d question our sugar intake. I do think an alcohol problem manifests a lot like type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is the kind you’re born with: From birth, or from whenever, you know you’re going to have to take insulin no matter what. But type 2 is the kind that develops as you expose yourself to a certain amount of toxins — sugar — over a period of time. And so you develop symptoms, and then you have to take insulin no matter what. I think an alcohol problem manifests like the one where you expose yourself to the toxin.

Because nobody is going to become alcoholic if they never have a drink of alcohol.

I think, on one hand, the term “alcoholic” can be very empowering. I have a very good friend, she’s sober with AA, and she came to the realization that she was an alcoholic. That realization for her was incredibly empowering, because then she knew she could not drink again in safety, and it gave her the entire foundation for her to build her sober life upon. And it’s a thing that she’s very tied to — that term, because she considers the fact that she can say, “I am an alcoholic,” one of the cornerstones that saved her life. And so it’s very important and powerful for her.

I think the harm comes when we use the term “alcoholic” in society in general. That same friend came up to me and was like, “Annie, I have learned this about myself, and you’re just not an alcoholic.” And she categorized my drinking as slightly different than hers, because I wasn’t necessarily doing some of the same things she was doing. And because I could take a break from drinking, like when I had a baby. But she was like, “Annie, you’re not an alcoholic.” And I really took that to heart. And that made it harder for me to quit drinking, ultimately.

Is there a clinical definition of alcoholism? According to the CDC, for excessive drinkers — so for women that’s eight drinks a week — only 10 percent of them actually fit the specification of being clinically addicted to alcohol. So if we’re going to use the term alcoholic, only 10 percent of heavy drinkers fit that alcoholic designation . Whereas for the other 90 percent, the alcohol dependence certainly involves some physical aspects, but it’s much more of an emotional and psychological addiction.

In other words, a much bigger percentage of our population, beyond those who fit that classical designation of “alcoholic,” are struggling with alcohol. And for that large percentage, they’re still on the path to addiction, they’re still even on the path to physical addiction, but they’re kind of on the sideline. It’s kind of like — well, to make a really bad analogy, if you’re becoming obese, obesity itself is a symptom, although you have to have a heart attack in order to get treatment. Or you have to be diagnosed with diabetes before you become treated.

I know you’ve written more about how the word “alcoholic” can act as a barrier for some people. They’re like, “Well, I know I’m not an alcoholic, because I don’t look like what we typically see on TV, etc., as alcoholics, so maybe rehab and AA aren’t necessarily for me, but at the same time, I’m still concerned about what’s going on.” And it’s that middle path that isn’t necessarily clear. Yes. The definition of alcoholism also focuses the effort of sobriety on a minority of excess drinkers while ignoring millions who also really struggle with drinking.

Another aspect of this is that it gives people a huge false sense of security. An “alcoholic” is very firmly the person — the person is the problem. That’s not often said overtly, but “an alcoholic” is a specific human being with a condition, whereas alcohol by nature is addictive to all human beings. Studies have shown that with enough exposure in the right circumstance, anyone is going to become addicted to alcohol. You weren’t addicted before you drank, and you can’t become addicted to it if you don’t ingest it, so like the idea that it’s “us” and “them” really puts this false sense of security on the people who don’t consider themselves alcoholic. And it then necessitates hitting something like rock bottom, because if you think, “Okay, well I’m not an alcoholic, and I don’t need to go get treatment, then I don’t need to reconsider my drinking.”

If I’d waited until I had a really negative experience, until I felt like I was a real “alcoholic,” my drinking would have spiraled way, way further out of control. I saw the train that I was on, and I wanted to get off that train WAY before it got to the destination. It was such a terrifying place.

Yeah. The whole idea is like, giving people permission to opt out while they’re in the gray zone, instead of like, thinking they have to stay on the ride until they get into the red zone. That’s totally it.

I know you’re familiar with Allen Carr and his Quit Smoking / Quit Drinking books, and I was wondering what other things you’ve read that changed the way you think about alcohol. Allen Carr, yes. Also The Addictive Brain by Thad A. Polk. There’s also a book called Alcohol Explained , by William Porter, and I think that’s really good. And then ironically this book called Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection , by John E. Sarno, which informed how I think about a lot of this, and which I mention in This Naked Mind . And then I’ve gotten a lot from other things, like psychology writer Kelly McGonigal, she’s got two books — The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress — that are really interesting. Not for alcohol specifically, but more for overall, about habit change.

For people who are drinkers and who may come across your books or this article, is there like a single sentence or thought that you want people to know about alcohol? This is going to sound pretty cliché, but that it’s not your fault, and you’re not alone.

When I was questioning my drinking, I felt like I didn’t fit in, in part because of that one friend who’d become sober herself but deemed me not an alcoholic. And I wasn’t really ready to admit my own problem either. I felt very alone in it, although as soon as I wrote the book [ This Naked Mind ], people started coming out of the woodwork. Thousands upon thousands of people who were saying, “This is what I struggled with, too.”

People who didn’t call themselves alcoholics but who nevertheless struggled with drinking. My mother-in-law was like, “I’ve never even seen you be drunk?” People I know were like, “What are you talking about, that doesn’t make sense?” My tolerance, I was pretty proud of it, ironically. But at that time, I felt very much like I was the only one questioning this, and that everyone else was on this happy-go-lucky path. And then even my boss, who originally had been like, “Why aren’t you going out with the rest of us from work?” — even he was like, “Wow, I thought you were keeping it together, now that you’ve given permission, we can all put it down,” and it was just this kind of revolutionary thing. But basically, if you’re questioning this, probably everybody in your social circle is questioning it, it’s certainly not just you.

And I think the other really important thing is that we stop this cycle of thinking like, “Okay, well, I’ve made one bad decision, so fuck it, I’m going to keep on making bad decisions, because what’s the point?”

The truth is that alcohol is addictive to any human beings that are made up of blood, flesh, bone, and cells. That’s the bottom line. It’s controversial to say it’s an addictive substance, but it’s the truth. It is an inherently addictive substance, and with the right level of exposure and in the right circumstances, any person will get addicted to it. Understanding this fact gives people a lot of freedom.

And then a third thing is that there is hope. For a long time, I felt very stuck between not wanting to be drinking as much as I was, but not having any idea how to undo it. And I could take a break — I could stop drinking Monday through Thursday, and then just drink on Friday and Saturday, but I’d feel miserable the whole time during the week. I’d feel deprived, I’d feel like I was missing out. I’d feel like I wasn’t having a good time. But once you get your thinking straight about that, the whole world changes. Everything else opens up.

If you go into sobriety without changing any of your thinking about alcohol, thinking, “Okay, but drinking is still awesome, everybody still loves it, and I’m the only one who doesn’t get to do it, poor me,” then sometimes you have to have, like, a decade of sober fun experiences to convince yourself otherwise. A decade of, “Oh, this concert is actually fun,” “Oh, this vacation is actually fun,” “Oh, this is actually good.”

But you can go into sobriety with a totally different mind-set. You can go into sobriety thinking, “I dodged that bullet, I feel bad for all the rest of you.” Maybe not that intense, but certainly I’ve had pity on people who are still trapped. I’d see them trapped and I’d remember where I was, and I’d be like, “Oh, I know that feeling, I’m so sorry.” But you can have a totally different experience if you have a mind-set shift around alcohol, 180 degrees.

Conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

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An ‘alcohol health champions’ intervention to reduce alcohol harm in local communities: a mixed-methods evaluation of a natural experiment

Public Health Research, No. 12.09

Elizabeth J Burns , Frank de Vocht , Noemia Siqueira , Cathy Ure , Suzanne Audrey , Margaret Coffey , Susan Hare , Suzy C Hargreaves , Mira Hidajat , Steve Parrott , Lauren Scott , and Penny A Cook .

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Background:

Globally alcohol consumption is a leading risk factor for premature death and disability and is associated with crime, social and economic consequences. Local communities may be able to play a role in addressing alcohol-related issues in their area.

Objectives:

To evaluate the effectiveness and cost–benefit of an asset-based community development approach to reducing alcohol-related harm and understand the context and factors that enable or hinder its implementation.

A mixed-methods evaluation. Area-level quasi-experimental trial analysed using four different evaluation methods (a stepped-wedge design where each area was a control until it entered the intervention, comparison to matched local/national controls and comparison to synthetic controls), alongside process and economic evaluations.

Ten local authorities in Greater Manchester, England.

Participants:

The outcomes evaluation was analysed at an area level. Ninety-three lay persons representing nineareas completed questionnaires, with 12 follow-up interviews in five areas; 20 stakeholders representing ten areas were interviewed at baseline, with 17 follow-up interviews in eight areas and 26 members of the public from two areas attended focus groups.

Interventions:

Professionals in a co-ordinator role recruited and supported lay volunteers who were trained to become alcohol health champions. The champion’s role was to provide informal, brief alcohol advice to the local population and take action to strengthen restrictions on alcohol availability.

Main outcome measures:

Numbers of alcohol-related hospital admissions, accident and emergency attendances, ambulance call-outs, street-level crime and antisocial behaviour in the intervention areas (area size: 1600–5500 residents). Set-up and running costs were collected alongside process evaluation data exploring barriers and facilitators.

Data sources:

Routinely collected quantitative data on outcome measures aggregated at the intervention area and matched control and synthetic control areas. Data from policy documents, licensing registers, meeting notes, invoices, time/cost diaries, training registers, questionnaires, interviews, reflective diaries and focus groups.

The intervention rolled out in nine out of ten areas, seven of which ran for a full 12 months. Areas with better-established infrastructure at baseline were able to train more champions. In total, 123 alcohol health champions were trained (95 lay volunteers and 28 professionals): lay volunteers self-reported positive impact. Champions engaged in brief advice conversations more readily than taking action on alcohol availability. There were no consistent differences in the health and crime area-level indicators between intervention areas and controls, as confirmed by using three different analysis methods for evaluating natural experiments. The intervention was not found to be cost-beneficial.

Limitations:

Although the sequential roll-out order of the intervention was randomised, the selection of the intervention areas was not. Self-reported impact may have been subject to social desirability bias due to the project’s high profile.

Conclusions:

There was no measurable impact on health and crime outcomes. Possible explanations include too few volunteers trained, volunteers being unwilling to get involved in licensing decisions, or that the intervention has no direct impact on the selected outcomes.

Future work:

Future similar interventions should use a coproduced community outcomes framework. Other natural experiment evaluations should use methodological triangulation to strengthen inferences about effectiveness.

Trial registration:

This trial is registered as ISRCTN81942890.

This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Research programme ( NIHR award ref: 15/129/03) and is published in full in Public Health Research ; Vol. 12, No. 9. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information.

Plain language summary

What was the question:.

Alcohol consumption puts an individual’s health and social relationships at risk of harm. The more a person drinks, the more harmful it is. The harmful effects can place a burden on emergency services and hospitals. We wanted to find out whether community members can make a difference by taking action to address alcohol harm in their local area.

What did we do?:

Local councils in Greater Manchester developed a project called Communities in Charge of Alcohol, where volunteers in targeted local areas were trained to become ‘alcohol health champions’. Alcohol health champions gave alcohol-related brief advice to people to help them drink less. They had a say about when, where and how alcohol is sold by reporting issues to their local council. We compared numbers of alcohol-related hospital admissions, accident and emergency attendances, ambulance call-outs and reports of crime and antisocial behaviour between areas that had alcohol health champions with other similar areas in England that did not. We calculated how much it costs to run and whether Communities in Charge of Alcohol could save society money.

What did we find?:

Not as many volunteers came forward to become an alcohol health champion as hoped for. Those who did give alcohol-related brief advice to people. They preferred not to report issues about alcohol sales to their local council, either because it was too complicated or because they did not want to be called a ‘grass’. We did not find levels of alcohol harm changed in the Communities in Charge of Alcohol areas. Because of this, we could not demonstrate that Communities in Charge of Alcohol could save society money.

What does this mean?:

Getting involved in alcohol licensing decisions needs to be made easier for communities, with more anonymity, through the support of professionals. More work needs to be done to understand whether giving brief advice can reduce alcohol harm in whole communities.

• Collapse All
• Scientific summary
• Alcohol harm: a global concern
• Interventions to reduce intake and harm from alcohol
• Asset-based community development
• Context to the Communities in Charge of Alcohol evaluation
• Research objectives
• Study design
• Ethical approval, registrations and study monitoring
• Intervention description
• Outcome evaluation methods
• Process evaluation methods
• Economic evaluation methods
• Data and evaluation of models
• Outcome evaluations
• Sensitivity analyses
• Interpretation
• Pre-implementation phase
• Initial implementation phase
• Intervention phase
• Follow-up phase
• Theme 1: extent of alignment with statutory requirements and political context
• Theme 2: operational concerns and approaches
• Theme 3: raising licensing issues
• Theme 1: connecting inside and out
• Theme 2: being in charge of alcohol
• Set-up and running costs of Communities in Charge of Alcohol intervention
• Effectiveness results
• Discussion of the outcome analysis
• Discussion of the process analysis
• Discussion of the economic analysis
• Strengths of the study
• Limitations of the study
• Equality, diversity and inclusion
• Public involvement in Communities in Charge of Alcohol
• Recommendations
• Additional information
• Appendix 1. Logic model
• Appendix 2. Alcohol health champion role description
• Appendix 3. Zero-inflation negative binomial mixed-effects models
• Appendix 4. Text comments from reflective diaries
• Appendix 5. Dark logic model
• List of abbreviations

About the Series

Disclaimer: This report contains transcripts of interviews conducted in the course of the research, or similar, and contains language which may offend some readers.

Article history

The research reported in this issue of the journal was funded by the PHR programme as award number 15/129/03. The contractual start date was in March 2017. The draft manuscript began editorial review in October 2022 and was accepted for publication in August 2023. The authors have been wholly responsible for all data collection, analysis and interpretation, and for writing up their work. The PHR editors and production house have tried to ensure the accuracy of the authors’ manuscript and would like to thank the reviewers for their constructive comments on the draft document. However, they do not accept liability for damages or losses arising from material published in this article.

Last reviewed: October 2022; Accepted: August 2023.

This work was produced by Burns et al. under the terms of a commissioning contract issued by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. This is an Open Access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0 licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . For attribution the title, original author(s), the publication source – NIHR Journals Library, and the DOI of the publication must be cited.

• Cite this Page Burns EJ, de Vocht F, Siqueira N, et al. An ‘alcohol health champions’ intervention to reduce alcohol harm in local communities: a mixed-methods evaluation of a natural experiment. Southampton (UK): National Institute for Health and Care Research; 2024 Sep. (Public Health Research, No. 12.09.) doi: 10.3310/HTMN2101
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