The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast

Celebrating 10 Years of the Revolutionary Book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol With Author Ann Dowsett Johnston

• Isabella Ferguson and Meg Webb • Season 2 • Episode 46

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Drink: The Intimate Relationship between Women and Alcohol celebrates 10 years today! Tune in as we talk to the author, Ann Dowsett Johnston, award-winning journalist, TEDx Speaker and Founder of the Writing Your Recovery Workshops about women’s relationship with alcohol 10 years on. Is alcohol still the modern women’s steroid that helps us do the heavy lifting? 

It was a brave act to speak out in the way Ann did 10 years ago. At the time, Ann became the modern face of alcoholism. “What I wanted to do with my book was to blow the doors wide open and say if I can have an alcohol issue, as Vice Principal of a University, anyone can” says Ann. It’s true. Drink gave permission for women to say “this is happening to me and my family as well”. For that, so many of us will forever be grateful to Ann.

Drink was and is a revolutionary book ahead of its time, interweaving Ann’s personal alcohol story with crucial research and interviews about the startling rise of risky drinking among women. Drink was named one of the 10 best books of 2013 by the Washington Post.

 Ann is now a psychotherapist helping other women to recover, a speaker and founder of the Writing Your Recovery Workshops, open to women internationally. 

Tune in to this conversation to hear about what life is like 15 year’s sober and Ann’s views on women’s relationship with alcohol today. 

Ann's Website: https://www.anndowsettjohnston.com

Writing Your Recovery Workshops: https://www.anndowsettjohnston.com/workshops

Ann's TEDx Talk on Drinking and How it Changed My Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqtZjpI1oVQ

MEG

Web: https://www.meganwebb.com.au/
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Unwined Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub
ConnectAF group coaching: https://www.elizaparkinson.com/groupcoaching


BELLA

Web: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Insta: @alcoholcounsellorisabella
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Isabella:

Today, on this episode of Not Drinking Today, we have Anne Dowsett-Johnston as our guest. Anne is an award-winning journalist and author of Drink the intimate relationship between women and alcohol, named one of the 10 best books of 2013 by the Washington Post. The book covered Anne's own personal battle with alcoholism and that of her mother's and then her father's, and it also brilliantly weaves in crucial research and interviews about the startling rise of the risky drinking in women. On the day of publication of this Not Drinking Today episode, this groundbreaking book will be celebrating its 10-year anniversary. Welcome, anne. A million years did I think I'd have the absolute honour of interviewing you.

Ann :

Thank you so much for having me. It's exciting.

Isabella:

Thank you so much. Look, this book was groundbreaking for its time. Can you believe that it's 10 years old?

Ann :

No, it's a little bit shocking because all the things that I predicted in Drink the intimate relationship between women and alcohol sadly have come true. We've narrowed the gap to the point that women are now dying at the same rate as men from alcohol issues. In North America, we outpace men in terms of presenting in emergency rooms for alcohol-related issues.

Isabella:

So it's frightening, it's very frightening it is frightening and, look, touching on that topic. So in your book you cleverly chronicled the fact that, as you've said, with the closing of the wage gap in our professional and educational lives, that we achieved equality with men in that troubling area of alcohol consumption as well, and in your TEDx talk, which, by the way, has 1.5 million views, you touched on three main reasons why you believed this was occurring, and just to really quickly summarise them One, that alcohol has become the modern women's steroid, enabling her to do the heavy lifting. Two, that women drink to self-medicate depression, anxiety or stress. And three, because women can. We've got the money to be able to drink, it feels good at the time, but we are being ruthlessly marketed to. Has anything shifted in relation to those three aspects over the 10 years, or have they really just been underscored as the reasons, while they're still drinking the same way?

Ann :

Yeah, I think that things got far worse in the pandemic. We saw an epidemic in the pandemic and it didn't get because of COVID. It didn't get the attention that it would have otherwise. I did a lot of research around in the past year or so and women, of course, were at home, homeschooling, carrying jobs. All the stressors that led women to drink what I call the modern women's steroid, as you said, enabling her to do the heavy lifting in a complex, complex world, became more complex.

Ann :

So we have not seen any downshifting in the pinking of the market, the marketing to women no, that hasn't changed. Have we seen an uptick in the pressures on women? Yes, absolutely A lot of pressures, and people used to argue that women did two shifts, but I argue that they do three or four shifts. You come home from the office or close down, zoom you cooking dinner, you're overseeing homework, then you're going back to laundry and perhaps more emails from work, et cetera, et cetera. So I would argue it's four shifts and life has not become less complex. Life has become expensive and challenging on that way and the numbers are very scary.

Isabella:

Yeah, what are you saying and in the numbers, and what are the trends at the moment?

Ann :

Well, the trends are women's, you know, women dying, and I think that that we, classically, when I started doing the research on women in alcohol in 2010, that just seemed like impossible, absolutely impossible, that it would never happen. And indeed it is happening. And I think that we live in a culture where you have to explain why you're not drinking, not the reverse. Oh yeah, right, and it is, it is a drug, but we see alcohol or wine as sort of a food group. You know, pair it with food and it's, it's delicious, it's delightful. We do not see it as a drug. So we live in an Alkagenic culture and Alka Centric culture. And you know, I mean you're nodding, and it's so true that you can't imagine any event where we walk in and, before they were taken to your coat, they're, say, red or white, so it's just normalized and indeed, having stopped drinking 15 years ago, I have to explain why I'm not drinking. That's peculiar, isn't it?

Isabella:

And today, with the, I guess the rise of podcast coaches, quitlit Books out there, where a lot of people are getting on the microphone and talking about their own drinking stories. This rise in risky drinking amongst women within that 40 to 50-odd age gap is still exponentially increasing, isn't it?

Ann :

Yeah, and what was scary about the numbers from last week that came out from the Center of Disease Control in the United States was that women 65 and over. So you know, we get into issues of trauma, we get into issues of depression, anxiety, but we also get into issues of loneliness, isolation, aging, retirement, all sorts of complex stuff. Emptying dust is a big one. Emptying dusting Absolutely.

Isabella:

Your book was so insightful because you really interviewed women in what felt like really the first time about their own drinking stories of all age groups. You really shone a lot light on their own stories around why they drank. What did you hope to achieve just by really sharing these stories as part of your book?

Ann :

I grew up the daughter of a beautiful woman who was cross addicted to Valium as many people were in the 1960s think Betty Ford and Valium and alcohol and she was a very beautiful stay at home mom and she was a secret. It was an open secret that she drank. Of course other people knew, but we didn't talk about it. What I wanted to do with my book was blow the doors wide open and say if I can have an alcohol issue as vice principal of McGill University, which is what I was doing when I got into trouble. What I didn't write in my book which I wish I had written was the congruence of menopause, menopause depression, menopausal emotional emotionality. And that's when my drinking really ramped up and I know so many women who in their late 40s, early 50s, have a problem.

Ann :

My mother got into trouble. We didn't speak of it. My mother didn't go to, went to rehab twice but didn't like the follow up groups and the reason she didn't. As she said, don't like telling secrets on my family, so she wasn't going to get sober. And then in retirement, my father joined her. So he died first of alcoholism, and I think that I lived in a family where the secrets kept us sick and I'm so determined that I would recover out loud. And there were many people, including my own sister, who said you'll never get a job again. What are you doing? I'm certainly not independently wealthy, but I felt called as a journalist to do this. I felt called as an individual to say I was born in 1953, the height of the baby boom. If I'm going through it, others are going through it, because that's just in my history and indeed they were, and the more I realized it was true.

Isabella:

Yeah, this secret, hidden drinking, which is often the habitual drinking style of women when they reach that point of it being a problem and it's really hard to then get out of. It is something that I think often is the counterpart of trying to keep up with that sort of crippling perfectionism that we try and portray as women in our everyday lives. But the anecdote to that is to tell the story and to shine a light on it. And when you wrote your book and you did your TEDx talk, you in effect became the poster girl or the modern face of alcoholism. You were well known. You were also ticked that box of well educated, successful you know you really look good on paper, but you had this story to tell underneath. How did that change your life? When you outed yourself in public?

Ann :

You know, I think there were probably jobs that I wasn't shortlisted for. When you've written a book called Drank, it's obvious that there are certain things that are not appropriate, but my life was great. My life was great. I ended up getting a job that was appropriate for me and then I went on to go back to school in my sixties to become a psychotherapist to help other women with issues such as this, and start my writing courses called Writing your Recovery, and it all has fallen together. So far, so good.

Isabella:

One of the most touching moments in the book for me was just the tenderness of which your son showed you, and there was that beautiful story of him when you're out celebrating together. You're in a restaurant and wine was flowing and he just offered to take you out for a walk and link your arm and just to get away from that heightened moment of all the drinking. And then he did that list with you, that list where the pros and the cons of what sobriety has given you. Your son just played such a major role in that book for me because I have sons and I'd also gone through my own recovery experience. Does he just look back on all that you achieved with such gratitude?

Ann :

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure he is. He's very quiet about it. We don't look backwards at that time. He is a psychotherapist, himself married to a therapist, and we communicate through my 21-month-old granddaughter. We both adore her, obviously, being the father, I'm the grandmother, and we found a real bond of our family, flourishing, and we don't talk about it and I often wonder if we don't, but we don't. It is an era that is, I think, tender, and I think that sons are different than daughters.

Isabella:

Yeah.

Ann :

And he is a man of few words when it comes to this issue, but he's always the first person with a non-alcoholic beverage for me. He's very tender. As you just saw, he's very tender guy.

Isabella:

I mean now that there's another generation of the family that is female. What you have been able to achieve is to break that generational link with alcohol and I guess, are you more hopeful for the generation that she's born into that we're talking about it now in increasing ways, even if the numbers and the stats are showing that, with the rise of AlcoPops and all the rest of it, that she still will be vulnerable growing up.

Ann :

I think you're so right. I think we are speaking of it as you and I are right now on this podcast, and there are rebels such as myself who are staring it down or speaking about it. Have it out in the open, recovering out loud. It's important and you wouldn't wish it on anybody, certainly not your granddaughter. So I feel hopeful. I feel the face of modern recovery has really changed, and the offerings of non-alcohol beverages for druppled and more so. I have a good feeling. I have a good feeling. I think we are making some progress.

Isabella:

Yeah, particularly people that have gone through it themselves. There is almost a hypervigilance when it comes to the younger generation. I'm very much the same with my own sons and I talk very openly about alcohol around them, and I love the stats in Australia in particular that I think now it's only one or one in three identify themselves as a non-drinker in their early teen lives, whereas in the 90s it was only one in 10. So it's becoming increasingly viable as a younger teen to say no, they're not a drinker. But then the component that are risky drinking are drinking at even more riskier levels. So there's still a lot of work to do. One of the most fabulous lines in your book and also in your TEDx talk was when you said that sobriety gave you your voice back. You got your writing back and you got your voice back. Why do you think writing is foundational to healing for many women, and you in particular?

Ann :

Well, I think that is not my phrase that the opposite of addiction is connection, and we connect through stories. As Joan Diddy and said, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. We are storytelling race, aren't we? Or beings?

Ann :

And I think, owning your story, owning what happened to you, what was the, what was the provoking incident or affliction in my case depression and I think is key, in other words, I think, making sense of it.

Ann :

And I think, when we sit down to write, we're not just dictating onto the page. We're actually going through a crucible of choosing what's important and what isn't important in terms of my story, what's important in terms of what happened to me, and really putting our hands around and owning that story ourselves. And so I started writing your recovery almost three years ago, which is an international, although it has a midday time and an evening time. So I have people from Australia, people from New Zealand, people from Europe, all across North America, all women in an eight week course with me live on Zoom, not, not can. Very important that we have that connection and all recovering from something, and it might not be alcohol, it might be diet, culture, it might be grief, it might be any number of things, but we are in groups of eight to 14 and very cozy and I just love the course and after 30 years of editing, it's a natural for me, right.

Isabella:

So mainly women, or women in this course, or women and I don't. I guess you're not necessarily having to write the the nitty gritty of your recovery and what happened. You can, you can tackle this from any angle, is that right? You can really, yeah. So talk about, I guess, various aspects or just feelings that come up, and I can understand the therapeutic almost benefit of that as well.

Ann :

Yes. So you know, people get daunted when they think I'd like to write a book, but they're not If I say, try and write me a little quilt square, a little patch, one scene, one scene, and they can do that. So the feelings that come up are very profound and my agent, my literary agent, said Ann, why did you go back to school to be a psychotherapist? Now, look at what you're doing. I said because it is a form of group therapy. It is a form of therapy to write, it is a form of therapy to look back at that and not be swamped by guilt and shame.

Ann :

I think those are two emotions that are not, will not serve us well. And so I say very clearly this is a guilt-free zone. We are going to wrap our hands around our story and own it, and what's fascinating is that everyone's story is different. Everyone's story is different, and so I just adore this class. And then, for those who are really making progress, we go on to writing your discovery, which is where we workshop, and One Woman's already finished two books. It's really fun. It's a lot of fun. Oh, I love that.

Isabella:

In essence, was Drink your Recovery Story. Did you write that as to make sense of all that had happened in your life with that common thread of alcohol?

Ann :

Yes, I did River, I say in the book. A river runs through it and it was a toxic river and it runs through intergenerationally through my family, with great uncles who've taken their lives because of the alcohol, and I was trying to understand, and I was also trying to understand which I still and may never understand why is it some of us you and me, for instance been able to find sobriety and others, like my two parents, who could not? And that is a puzzle. It was a puzzle that I worried at, and I believe we only write when we are deeply curious about something. It has to sustain you through the writing process, which for me was 11 months, and I really dug in and had that wonderful opportunity to interview people all over the world about what was all this. What was it about? What was it? And so often for women it's self-medicating and numbing.

Isabella:

I was reflecting the other day that I used to be one of those party goers that you know, one of the last ones standing always searching for those deep and meaningful conversations, the elusive conversations that never came and you would never remember them in the next day, you know. But really, what I was looking for was greater meaning and connection within myself, and I really had to find that, and I think, then, part of being able to get so bone-stay sober for me is being able to talk about it on the podcast and exchange a few stories with my clients as well. But yeah, you're right, you're needing to find that almost something larger than you, there's something larger in your life that sustains you and can keep you moving, and I don't know, but I think a large part of it is just talking about whatever it is you were seeking from alcohol and trying to find that within yourself, and I don't know whether the generation before us really had the access or the ability to be able to do that Right. I know that, yeah, yeah, and I know that your book really opened, almost gave permission for people to be able to put their hand up and just say well, me too. This is what alcohol has done to me and my family and I think for that will be forever grateful for you, ann, because it has been incredible.

Isabella:

If you were to write another part two or a follow-up from Drink, what would you be talking about now? And women and what's affecting them, and you touched on menopause and alcohol. What would be on the forefront of your mind if that were to occur?

Ann :

Yes, I would talk about menopause and hormones and alcohol a lot more than I did. I would talk about complex mental disorders more than I did, so not just depression, but bipolar too, which affects a lot of women without alcohol issues. I would talk a lot more about loneliness and aging. I would talk a lot more about what happens after year five, when I think you can chunk it out that year zero to five is one stage of sobriety, but I think things evolve between five and 10, and 10 and 15. I can't speak for more than that, but they do as we own ourselves and reach.

Ann :

You know, there are those that think we reclaim ourselves, but I actually think we reinvent ourselves. I think we become something. I think the courage that it takes to take the journey to evolve brings us a kind of strength that we may not have had before. We may have had a form of it before, but I think it does really revolutionize who you are. I talk a lot more about who have been the front leaders, front runners, in what I believe is a revolution staring down the industry. I talk a lot more about that. But I'd also talk about what I call and it's not a pretty word the Walmartification of recovery, which is everybody, and the brother is a coach charging a lot of money.

Isabella:

And is that a?

Ann :

good idea, or is that not a good idea? I would discuss that. So it's gone from just the only option being stepping down those rickety stairs in a church basement drinking bad coffee of 12 step to many, many options and perhaps not at all are good. Maybe all are good. I'd ask that question. I beg that question.

Isabella:

That would be a terrific discussion to have. I'd love to have that on almost as a separate episode on a podcast about the prolification of the whole sober industry.

Ann :

It is a fascinating one. So there's so much to explore. And then, on a personal level, there's a main romance character in my book, Drink and Jake. The major figure died tragically three years ago. So I would move forward on my personal life and there's lots to say there. So yes, there's lots to. I am at work on in the other book right now and it'll be the jury's out as to what I will put in it. We'll see.

Isabella:

Thank you for covering up all of that. I really loved in your book how you said when you emerge from addiction, you get to choose the parts of yourself to keep and those you'll have to lose if you're going to stay sane and sober. What did you lose and what did you keep?

Ann :

You know what a great question. It wasn't intentional, it wasn't intentional at all, but I lost my anger. I was a very fun drinker, a party drinker, but underneath I was dancing as fast as I could. I was a perfectionist. I've written about that. I was a perfectionist and I lived in the era of Martha Stewart and I was angry, I was exhausted and I lost that anger. It disappeared and I gained, regained a sense of boundaries and needing more private time, more time to create. I still wrestle with that. That will always be my Achilles heel, but I'm better at it than I was and you know, those are, foundationally, I think, the main things. Yeah, as a psychotherapist, what do you think is the absolute benefits that you think can be?

Isabella:

brought to clients, particularly with psychotherapists, that have that lived experience and understanding. I think that's the best way to think about it.

Ann :

I think that in working with women who are trying to quit or quitting. There is a profound understanding of how much we have to battle shame and guilt and how much we. For me, this was a very, very important part of my life. For me, this was true. Once we name it, it will dig in, addiction will dig in.

Ann :

So you draw a line in the sand, you say I'm quitting tomorrow, and actually it becomes harder and that's quizzical, isn't it? And so many, all the bargaining that you know and I know so well, which is, you know, only only white wine, only on weekends, only this, only that. And we flirt with moderation, and so I deal with a lot of women flirting with moderation and then once sober, really once the pink cloud if there is a pink cloud has passed, really wrestling around nine months, yeah, nine, ten months, you know, often when they're coming up to their first year and then often when they're coming up to year four. It's a wrestle, and so unmedicated life is, there's an astringent quality to it, and we need community, especially women I can't speak for being a man, but especially women, we need community and I feel my life with other women and it's really important.

Isabella:

Has it become almost second nature to you. Now you know, after is it 15 years, 15 years of not drinking alcohol. What's it like to be out there in this world still, world that's saturated with alcohol? What's it like for you?

Ann :

I find it 99% joyful and interesting and a relief. And then I can be wistful on occasion, usually a fancy occasion. I just turned 70 last week and there were people around me raising champagne glasses or at a fancy wedding. I'm very much about the celebration. Sometimes they can still get me. And don't ask me at a dinner party to pass a craft of red wine because the smell will get to me and I wasn't a red wine drinker so I'm super boundaryed around it. I will not pass the wine. I will not pour my own dinner parties. I will ask somebody else to take that on. I give away loot bags at the end of the evening, meaning the wine goes home with them. Even though I have lots of wine in my house, I wouldn't dream of opening it. But I'm pretty boundaryed about it because I believe my enemy is formidable. I want to take my parents down and it is a formidable enemy.

Isabella:

What's worked for you, to sustain you, to keep, to keep sober all of these years? What have been your? What are your top ways of keeping on track?

Ann :

My number one thing is my gratitude, the step-by-mourning, which is five days a day, that every morning, which is yeah things I send it to my former sponsor and AA. Been doing it for 15 years. I think we've missed three days. That's it. And my fifth thing is always, always, gratitude for my sobriety. But the other four cannot be repeated from the day before. They have to be original. They have to be a mixture of being grateful for the negative and the positive. So I take that from Melody Beatty and I consider it a muscular practice that keeps me grateful for where I am instead of becoming taking it for granted. I guess is the best way to put it. That's number one. Number two is being boundary, like I just said, and surrounding myself with smart, interesting people. Yeah, so my community is good.

Isabella:

You cannot just escape the benefits of a really good group of women, right? Did you lose lots of friends along the way? Do you think that?

Ann :

No, I didn't. No, I didn't lose friends. I have to say that in my close friend group I'm the only one that doesn't drink. Yeah right, and I find it pretty easy, pretty easy. Yeah, I do all the tricks. I go home before others do, when it gets a little bit, which is so lovely. And, as you know my dirty secret, I get up at three every morning and write and do other things, so I go to bed early.

Isabella:

And with all of the impacts that the modern women is facing. You know, we're still trying to do it all, Particularly of my generation. We're still, I think, trying to work hard, play hard, be the perfect mum. I still have that image of Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City, out there with those cosmopolitan in New York. I still hold that image in my mind. What do you think we need to do as a society just to bring alcohol under control? I know that in your book you said there was a great line or somewhere I've read, where you said we've got fuzzy values around alcohol. How do we change that? How do we shift that?

Ann :

I think we speak a lot more directly about the costs, the harms to others, what happens in the family. We focus so much on the opioid crisis and yet in North America alcohol kills more people than the opioids do and people would never guess that. So I think we have to be a lot more candid about the hard thing is that the alcohol industry is powerful and it affects, it lobbies hard, it gives across party lines and so it's really complicated. But I think the dialogue has started. The public conversation has started. It is a public health crisis. I think some of the smartest alcohol research has come out of Australia and Canada and if we listen to the alcohol research we'd really smarten up and pay attention. But we're so acculturated, so acculturated to drink. It's a conundrum. It's a real conundrum when you take campus culture, what happens in universities, which isn't the introduction to alcohol but the escalation of drinking, and then there isn't a slowing down in the 20s and the 30s as there used to be. So it's confounding.

Isabella:

I would love to see Australia match Canada. When it comes to the changes in the guidelines, canada's now two. There's no safe drinking at any level, isn't it Well done? What is it? Two servings of alcohol per week and the week is considered safe.

Ann :

Ish, I would say ish, and then no more than five to six is dangerous. It's considered dangerous. And so things are quite different. And you know, measure a five ounce glass of wine. This is five ounces, not an eight ounce glass of wine. So first thing I tell the women to work with me is go to the kitchen, get a cup measurement and familiarize yourself with how little. Five ounces is Number one and number two. You count your calories, count your drinks, and people are rebelling. People are rebelling and saying you're kidding. Three drinks a week is. It's had a lot of criticism from the public.

Isabella:

I've fed it has. I don't want to know about it. No, I don't want to. I don't want the tap to be cut off. No, I mean I'd love to see a warning on those drinks. I mean, I think Ireland's going that way with their, with their labels and their warnings. But you know, we need to really you know, if we're going to wrap our bottles with pink labels and really sell it to women, when then there has to be some link there with the very real stats around breast cancer. And I'm going to certainly put the link to your amazing workshops in the show notes. Thank you, and it's it's a workshop that I would love to do when time permits down the track. Yes, I'd love to have. How? Oh, thank you. How does a average workshop look like? So what if you could just expand a little bit about the workshops and how long they they take and what? What do you hope to achieve at the end of it?

Ann :

Right, I invented the eight session workshops, two hours each, when I stood back and I thought, what? What's the course I would love to take? And what I found was, when I wanted to write a book, I didn't know. I felt silly asking questions like when you get an agent, how do you find a publisher, how do you begin a book, how do you structure a book? I wanted to know all those things. How do you write a book proposal? So I created a course that answered all the questions, and so we have big name writers like Holly Whitaker and Laura McCowan Wow.

Ann :

And we have publishers. We have publishers and agents come and talk to you. But most of all, we I hold your hand to help you find your voice. And two things you need to write. Well, you need a voice and a story. And if you can find your voice and you can find your story, then you're off to the races. So we the course is designed to get you there and we have a lot of fun. Usually, the most talented person is the quietest and shyest and most reluctant to share. We, we coax, we coax them out, but it's powerful. It's powerful stuff when you find your voice, when you get to the microphone and you know you're owning your own story and connecting the dots for other people. There's nothing like it.

Isabella:

Yeah, oh. It just really connects with with me and, I'm sure, a lot of women, because I know that our call at some point became the the conduit to allow them to express themselves when they're growing up. Then it becomes a problem, and to find your voice on your own feet, on your own terms, is exceptionally powerful. So what a fabulous workshop, thank you. Yeah, it sounds really exciting. Can we read any of the stories of the people that are participants?

Ann :

Yes, yes, we. I have a newsletter that comes out once a month and I feature profiles of the various participants in my course and their stories also on my website. There's some of their stories there, so it's a great community. There are about 100 women and a little more who've been through the course and they're very tight. It's a very tight international community. It's a lot of fun.

Isabella:

Fantastic and, on that note, where can our listeners find you and, in particular, links to this amazing workshop? Where's the best way to find?

Ann :

Yes, my name is Ann Douset. Johnston Dotcom is my website and you look under workshops and enrollment. For October the 4th, the workshops is open now.

Isabella:

Fantastic, thank you. All of that information will be in the show notes, as well as links to your very famous TEDx talk as well. It's still relevant, highly relevant, 10 years on. Thank you so much for being a guest. On Not Drinking Today, ann.

Ann :

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate your great questions.

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Isabella Ferguson

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Meg Webb

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