Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Surrendering to Win: Justin’s Journey from Alcohol Struggle to Sobriety

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

  In this episode Justin shares his compelling story of growing up amidst domestic violence, struggling with various addictions, and his journey toward sobriety. He discusses his battle with alcohol, heroin, and other substances, the impact of his actions on his personal life, and his eventual path to recovery. Justin reflects on the transformative moments that led him to seek help, the importance of support from loved ones, and the gratitude he now feels for a sober life. This inspiring story highlights the resilience of the human spirit and the possibility of change, no matter how deep the struggle and this is Justin’s story on the sober motivation podcast. Download the Loosid App: https://loosidapp.com/ Sober Motivation Community:https://sobermotivation.mn.co   00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 00:28 Childhood Memories and Family Struggles 02:31 High School Challenges and Seeking Acceptance 04:53 Early Adulthood and Substance Abuse 11:18 Heroin Addiction and Recovery 16:05 Struggles with Alcohol and Identity 26:47 Turning Point and Seeking Help 29:58 Navigating the Party Lifestyle 31:00 The Descent into Daily Drinking 32:19 Struggles with Alcohol and Relationships 34:11 Health Issues and Realizations 35:19 First Attempt at Rehab 36:38 Relapse and the Ego Trap 41:31 Final Rock Bottom and Seeking Help 43:00 The Road to Recovery 44:27 Life in Sobriety 45:23 Reflections and Gratitude  

Welcome back to Season 3 of the Suburmotivation podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety is possible, one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, Justin shares his compelling story of growing up amid domestic violence, struggling with various addictions, and his journey towards sobriety. He discusses his battle with alcohol, heroin, and other substances, the impact of his actions on his personal life,

and his eventual path to recovery. Justin reflects on the transformative moments that led him to seek help, the importance of support from loved ones, and the gratitude he now feels for a sober life. This inspiring story highlights the resilience of the human spirit and the possibility of change, no matter how deep the struggle. And this is Justin's story on the sober motivation podcast. How's it going, everyone?

Welcome back to another episode. I want to give a huge shout out to MJ from Lucid for being a new sponsor here on the podcast. If you haven't checked out the Lucid app yet, you need to. They have over 250,000 members. It's an incredible place to stay connected with others on the journey of sobriety and recovery. And they just launched this really cool marketplace, which gives you exclusive discounts to different services and offerings

that would help out enhance your sobriety journey. Also, one of my favorite things is obviously the sober tracker to see how many days you're sober, keep track of it, be inspired by it if that's your thing. So check out Lucid today. It's a free app you can download from the App Store or the Google Play Store. I'll drop the link down to the show notes below. But be sure to get connected. They have a really cool gratitude space.

And you can also get support from others if you're struggling. And if you're not, you can help out those who are. Check out Lucid today. Now let's get to this episode. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast today. We've got Justin with us. Justin, how are you? Good night.

I'm great. Thank you for having me. Of course, thanks for being willing to share your story here on the podcast. My pleasure. So what was it like for you growing up? Yeah, look, interesting. I've just come out of a mating and we actually touched on that. So it's pretty fresh in my mind.

But I was like, I guess I was a normal kid. Into sport, was big into running and that sort of stuff when I was really young. But I guess my defining sort of thing as a child was my father was physically violent towards my mother. and yeah, that obviously shaped who I was to become. And, like, it was obviously a terrible thing to go through. But for me, I guess in particular, I've got an older brother and sister who felt differently about the whole thing. But I actually really, I had a pretty good relationship with my father.

She stood by him or put up with it for way too many years. But so I obviously had my mum's side of it. But there was also a part of me that he was. was my father and I had a pretty good relationship with him, you know, but personally. But, but yeah, I've always been a very sort of emotional sort of person and whether that stems from that sort of side of it, I don't know. But it had me questioning, questioning life and society at a very young age. I remember sitting down with my mum and I would have been about 10 or something and I was bawling and just ask, what's the meaning to life?

bother sort of thing. And so I guess in retrospect, there probably questions a 10-year-old boy probably shouldn't want to ask. But yeah, so I guess that sort of set me off. And I was contemplating on it tonight. You know, I was a pretty well-adjusted kid before all the other stuff came into my life, reasonably confident, made friends and all that normal sort of stuff. But I guess that was during primary school. I don't know what your sort of schooling system's like, but primary school here is grade one to six and then you're heading to high school and I guess just the weight of all the home life stuff and I was starting to feel a little bit alone and by myself and so when I hit high school again another sort of very vivid memory for me was hitting about year eight and feeling

like I was alone I was doing pretty well at school but I just wanted friends and I wanted to hang out with the cool kids and like I remember walking into the first class of year eight I think it was and I'd usually always sit up the front and I sat up the front and I swore at the teacher, she instantly kicked me up the back with all the cool kids and off I went. I'd arrived. Justin was in town and there's a lot of waypoints along the road. That was probably the beginning of the end of my teenage years and a lot of my adult years. Yeah, thanks for sharing that with us. If anybody can't pick up from the accent, where did you grow up at? I grew up in a little place called Broagalong, if you want to Google it, but I'm in Victoria.

Australia at the moment. Yeah. So you go into eighth grade and I can relate to that on so many different levels of trying to, you'll find your place, right? Find your identity. You'll find out where we're going to fit in. It's such a tough transition high school and all that type of stuff and you've got these things going on at home too.

How does that change things for you at eighth grade when you go to the back of the class and now you're maybe hanging out with other people that are going through similar things? Yeah, it changed a lot. everything that was happening me at home was at home like no one knew about it and then all of a sudden it was popular and on all the cool kids all wanted to hang out with me and I was part of the group and so I guess I guess I've always used humour throughout my life and I guess that was probably where I discovered I could also make people laugh and it just felt nice to I felt like I belonged somewhere and um and I guess that's yeah I don't know if I'm jumping ahead

here, but I always felt like I belonged to some extent, except for that little period at the start of high school. And then all of a sudden I belonged again, and I felt part of something, and I felt like I belonged here in life. And it's ironic that later on in the story, that's exactly what I was trying to replicate through alcohol and other stuff. But at that point in time, it just felt good. I had friends and I started getting girlfriends and I felt like I belonged. That was the big thing. But another thing that will probably or does come up in my story a lot is even from that sort of start, I always take or took things too far.

And that was to do with everything, my drinking, my drug taking, which was a big part of my life as well. And even back then, as far as, because I was hanging out with the bad guys, the bad kids, getting in trouble in class was cool. And I was always the one that had taken way too far and get kicked out and ended up getting expelled at the start of year 10, so two years later or whatever. But because I never knew, I've never known where that line was in a lot of things in my life. Yeah. So you get expelled in grade 10.

So do you go back after that or that was just for that year? No, that was, I guess I had options to go to other schools. But so by this stage, my mother and father had separated. We'd finally managed to sort of pull mum out of that situation. And the two oldest ones had gone off anyway. So it was just me and mum. I mean, it was over my behaviour. But yeah, so the start of year 10, new principal,

we man and other bloke used to always get caught smoking. And he said at the start of year, get caught three times you're out. About two months I was out. And so I went and got a job. And so my first job was a kitchen hand in a taco place in a Mexican restaurant. And I was a pretty big pot smoker by this stage. I picked up marijuana along the way and was pretty much a daily when I could afford it. So I get this job, Kitchen Hand, and living with my mum.

And she's a beautiful woman, but her sort of parenting was just let you go and just show love and everything will work out. But so I get this job as a 14, 15 year old, whatever I was. And because I was so slow, they'd all pack up the kitchen and go home, and I'd have to sit there and wash the dishes. and dawned on me that the margarita machine was still there going. And so I'd end up tipping out like two liters of orange juice using that bottle, filling it up with margarita. And, you know, that's what I did most nights while I was kitchen handing.

But I think, again, there was a lot of, for me, with part of the time, and being drawn to that margarita machine for no apparent reason was just that escape. So, yeah, I was just a kid out in the world trying to make it without any idea of where I was going. Yeah, so this is when around 14. it a little bit earlier for you. It's always interesting. Listen to some stories, I think we can pick up on that things were like, we were looking

for that acceptance and to fit in and feeling maybe uncomfortable in our own skin. Prior to drinking, that's what the story was like for me. I had a lot of things in my life. I mean, same sort of story. Suspension. Wanted to be the clown. The funny guy. Always pushed the limits.

I was suspended 50 plus times there in school. And I just never figured it out. But then once I found alcohol was like. Like, okay, now I found something that makes sense, right? Yeah. It could weigh those insecurities and everything like that. You get into this helping yourself to the margarita machine and everything. How does that change things for you?

Obviously changed it a lot, but I was in a holding pattern. Living with mum, she didn't really care what I did. I was smoking a lot of pot and now I just added alcohol into it. I guess the biggest change for me as a person after that or as this was all happening is, and going back to the question I asked. mom as a 10-year-old was really disillusioned with life and society and I'd come to the decision that I didn't really care what happened to me in a sense and so if I don't care what happens to me I might as well bloody have fun and to me I had quite a few alcoholic addict uncles and and so drinking and that sort of

thing was definitely around and so that was how you had fun and as a 15-year-old who was now out of school and work and I wanted to be an adult and I wanted to grow up and I don't want to to take life on and have fun. And I just took that as a, let's just go. Whatever you can do or have or get into trouble, you might as well do it. Me, what sort of coincided at that same time is I obviously couldn't afford, even at that early stage. I was having so much of alcohol and pot.

I couldn't afford it. So being the intuitive little kid I was, I started stealing as well. And so that's where the youth sort of cry. I was broken into shops to try and get money to fund my habit, essentially. And so I'd already raised the bar a little bit as far as the drugs and the alcohol, but then that raised it again. And that introduced me to a whole different sort of bad crowd in retrospect. But as I said before, it was really just a steady next step progression.

I went from smoking pot to drinking heavily to stealing to pay for it, which then led into other stuff. look in the hindsight it was a chaotic period for me but at the time I was so out of it 24-7 I probably didn't even realize what I was doing to be honest yeah now that that's so relatable too about yeah same for me when I look back at yeah how things went I'm just like how did it get to that point and then when you reflect back on it it just feels normal you just think it's normal like I had years of life living like that and I don't don't even think I took a second or two to really think about what the heck is going on around me. You get wrapped up in it. So as you move forward with things, say 18 in forward there,

is this sort of just the cycle that you get wrapped into? Yeah, that's pretty much what I've continued doing, move from job to job. I've always been a pretty good hard worker. So I've generally speaking, always managed to hold a job down, which has saved me a lot. So I flyed long just smoking pot and drinking, drinking too much for a few years. But I guess around late teens, early 20s, was around that sort of early time, got introduced amphetamines and a few other things. But like my go-tos were always just marijuana and alcohol and, um, an alcohol. On that early stage, like, I got into a lot of trouble and a bit later on ended up in, in prison a couple of times. And it's on all the bad things that have happened in my life,

of all completely being alcohol-related. But, yeah, I guess progressively, the drugs started showing up a lot more, just probably due to the people I was hanging around with. Tried to be or amphetamines a few times. But I guess the next big sort of power step in my addiction, alcoholism, was getting introduced to heroin, but around probably 20, I think. And excuse me if I was a bit sketchy on dates or years or whatever

because it's all a bit of a blur, to be honest. but around 20, you've introduced to heroin, and I dabbled with that for a little bit. It was a take-it-or-le-or-leave-it sort of heroin user, but that obviously backfired eventually, and I ended up with about a two-year heroin addiction in my early 20s, which was another thing. Along, even during that heroin addiction period,

I worked two jobs to try and pay for it. I was still smoking pot daily, and I'd bing drink on the weekend. Yeah, I was having to go at whatever I could, you know and that's when the story in my 20s if someone turned up with anything i'd just say yes and how much you got yeah so there's the obvious acid and mushes and all that sort of stuff along the way but yeah the heroin was the sort of wake-up called to you're an adult now and you make an adult decisions yeah but you said that was a two-year two-year thing that you went through so you were able to quit that

yeah so my mother had remarried and moved to queensland a couple of states away and and i'd just split up with a girlfriend I had. She was going to be the one. We were together for a few years and that sort of turned south. And so I ended up living with my brother. We're still getting along back then. And yeah, so that was my heroin addiction days. And I was alone by this stage. I didn't have a lot of friends. I had a drug associate. And so I was just doing it myself. And I'd got myself in massive loads of debt. And I was obviously a daily user. And he must have worded up my mom that I'm spiraling out of control and my birthday's boxing day and so I think he'd organized for them to come down for Christmas to try and sort me out and I was already at the point

of having to declare bankruptcy and lose my car and in massive loads of debt so I was already starting to realize myself that this heroin thing's not going to work out for the best in the end and so with mum and my stepfather coming down I went I've got to stop and what's one of my I know giving up heroin is obviously a positive in life, but so they came down, brought in a whole heap of family that I hadn't really seen for a while to lift my spirits and get me through this tough time, but they weren't aware of the fact that I was about to spend seven,

eight days locked in my room with the withdrawal. So that's what I did. And it was tough. Like, I'm certainly not going to sit here and so it was easy, but I did it. And yeah, I sat in my room for seven days, just drinking water and with the muscle, spasms and stuff and I popped out on my birthday, said hello to everyone. Filled up my water

jug and went back to bed and just sweat it out. And I got out of the end of that and said, geez, I'm never doing that again, which I didn't for a while, but it's the story in my life. So I put the heroin down. So I picked up pot and alcohol heavier. And then I threw in ecstasy for good measure and then picked up a fairly good amphetamines habit as well. So for me, that's been a really common thing with my addiction. Like I rap, for me personally, I wrap alcoholism and addiction up in the same bundle. They're all detrimental to my mental health and my well-being. I don't differentiate between them.

But so I gave up the heroin and was never going to get that bad again. But I just picked up another drug, essentially. Yeah, it's so interesting too, because you hear that in quite a few stories, right? if we're doing other stuff, then we just lead on the drinking. And there's so many ways we can justify drinking, right? It's on every banner. It's what everybody does. I think it's really easy for us when we're wrapped up into it to think,

hey, this can't be that bad. Let's just lean on alcohol for it. But then you hear so many times how progressive it is that maybe it doesn't start out terribly bad, but over time it picks a... Man, if I had a dollar for every time I just have a couple of drinks instead of the couple of bottles you drink. And I like, I get the people that drink and normally drink. I get that they don't get what I.

I get, but that's just not an option for me. If it was an option, I wouldn't be here, and I've tried a lot of different ways to just have a couple, but it's, and I think it's worldwide. I don't think it's, it's just Australia or just the Irish or whatever the people like to say, but it's just so accepted. It's just so accepted, and I hear it a lot here. They've gone to a six-year-old's birthday party, better stop by the bottle shop, and it's just insane. Like, that's not a normal way to treat a drug. He wouldn't go to a six-year-old's birthday, and I'd better just stop off and grab some heroin

before I go. It's just crazy. Again, there's a lot of people that can drink normally, and I'm just not one of them. I guess that's the difference. Alcohol and pot's kind of been a consistent thing. You've got your heroin journey there as well. But there's always something.

What changes for you when you have that first drink that you can, if you could put a finger on it, that it's hard or impossible to stop? It's just that, it's that warm, you know, and I talk about it a lot in meeting. And I lost it by the end, but that for years it was that initial warmth. It was like getting welcomed home by a lover and just welcomed you in the door and wrapped you when it's warmth. And it made me feel confident.

I had good ideas. I could articulate things better. I was smarter. It was all these wonderful, beautiful things. And the beauty of hindsight, I can see what other people would have seen when I was in that state. and it was completely the opposite to what I was feeling, but internally, it was my best friend. It took me a long time to realize that and admit that,

but it was my everything. It made everything better. And, yeah, the inhibitions and like what I said, just the great ideas, there was no hesitation of second guessing or judging or trying to judge what I was about to do. It was just, yep, let's do it. And I loved that freedom and that just confidence to just back yourself.

I was to try and talk it up, which I don't like to very much these days. But that's what it was, and it was freedom. It was freedom from society's constraints, if you want, just allowed me to do whatever. Yeah, it's interesting, too, all that stuff. I had someone earlier on the show, too, and when I was wrapped up in it, I thought it did a lot of that stuff for me, provide confidence and do the little. And then when I look back, though, I'm like, maybe there was a slight bit of that, but it was also just...

Sorry? The flip of the kind for me is like I was saying earlier, before all this came along, I was reasonably confident, but by this stage, the reason I had to use alcohol to boost my confidence was because of all the, excuse the French, the shitty things I'd done in the life I'd lived, I'd lost so much belief and confidence in myself.

I needed that to feel good again, I suppose. And that's the sad tale in the story, is that it took it away, but then pretended to give it back. So that was the hook. Yeah, we hear something similar to that. Alcohol gave me wings and then took them away. A lot of people share it in one way or another about maybe at first they checked some boxes. It provided some solutions for our life to go out, whatever it is, some internal stuff for us. And then you just hinted there, hinting at there, that all went away. So as you go through like your 20s, your 30s and stuff like that, when's the first time you thought maybe I have a problem? Is that way further down the road? Or did you have any thoughts throughout? this that maybe something is up here? Look, if I'm completely honest, I didn't.

I knew bad stuff was happening when I drank. And I don't know, this has confused me a little bit, having had to think about it. Whether I chose not to put the dots together or just didn't realize it or didn't care, I don't really know, but like I'd already had one prison three months. It was only a quick prison before all this. completely for drinking. And I've got so many stories of obvious red flags that, hey, drinking and you don't get along. I'll tell a quick story. And this will highlight what I missed. And I'm sorry if anyone finds this a bit disgusting, but I was in a lockup. I'd been pepper

sprayed. And because I was being an idiot when they locked me up, they've just thrown me in the cells and shut the door. And I'm like screaming for water to get this pepper spray out of my face. And I was completely drunk. It was completely alcohol. And I was completely alcohol. And I was just I'm washing the pepper spray off my face with the, like, flushing the toilet to get fresh water. For a normal person, that is a massive red flag. A hundred percent alcohol put me in that room. And at that time, all I could do was blame someone else, everyone else, everything except for myself and my drinking, because that was all I had by this stage.

It was the only true friend I had. I certainly should have connected the dots, but for whatever reason, I didn't. I think deep down I was scared. I didn't want to let it go. I didn't want to lose it. And that was pretty much. That was the story in my 20s. That just rolled on in one form or another. And I stumbled the way through life, really. Had some good times in there, obviously, as you do, I'm not going to lie. And so it was all bad. Predominantly, I was just ruining my life one day at a time. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a great point you make there about it's the blame for everybody else. It's the blame. for this person's fault, it's that fault. It's a situation. It's bad timing, wrong place, wrong time. We can come up with anything. Oh, there's hundreds of that. I came up with whatever, everything under the sun to be able to keep things going. You mentioned something there, too, that really stood out to me that I think a lot of people go through. And I just my guess here is

that the alcohol gets tied up in our identity as who we are. And it becomes, especially in your story here, I think it becomes a lot of who you are. It's become at the, this point a big part of your life and a tool on your belt about how to numb out or deal with life or move through life and everything. And you mentioned there that you were really scared to give it up. Yeah. What was it when you reflect back? What was it that you were afraid of? So I obviously didn't realize this at the time. But when I first jumped into AI to try and seriously have a look at my alcohol, because of, I guess, my history with heroin, amphetamines, all of the drugs and everything. Like alcohol was like the last, the last horizon. And it dawned on me

that if I give that up, and this is the addict alcohol in my brain that still and will forever live there is I'll have nothing left. I'll have no fun. How am I going to, if I give this one last thing up, you know, I've done so well given everything else up, this is my one last thing. It scared me. Who was I going to be? I didn't know who I was alcohol-free. The last sober and and clear thinking, Justin, that I had was a 14-year-old scared boy. And so I give alcohol away, and that's what's going to come out. He's going to be in an adult's body, but I'm just going to be a kid. And this was my last thing. This was my last thing, and it terrified me. And I don't even know whether I knew why it terrified me. It just did, because I think, as like you said, that was my identity.

That was who I was. Come hell or high water, that was me. And how am I ever going to have fun and be a normal person without this crutch helping me along and it was terrifying. Yeah, do you feel like in one way or sense over time, I don't know if brainwashed is the right word, but do you feel like you got convinced in a sense that alcohol was just a necessary part of life for you? Yeah, I definitely would agree with that statement. And another thing that I've been realizing lately is, and most of us would probably realize this, but to make smart, sensible judgments and changes about your life while you're out of it, it's really difficult because you're not using a sober, healthy thinking mind. You're using an adult mind that's really probably struggling to deal with

day-to-day tasks, let alone making life-positive decisions. Yeah, I think there was a lot of things conspiring against, which makes it hard for a lot of us. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's felt like that, and it's quite a common thing. But yeah, I was brainwashed into thinking that without this, I was nothing. And that's from advertising. It's from the alcohol companies, but it's also from the people I was surrounded with at the time. That's what they did. How was I ever going to fit in again? Yeah. Even when you mentioned that word fit in, it goes back to earlier in the story, where all of this got started in a sense, right? Looking for a place to fit in acceptance, right?

Part of something, feeling like you were. Interesting story for me, I sacrificed my own beliefs and values growing up because my folks never really drank or anything like that. I never even really had a concept of alcohol until probably later in life than most. But I put all that stuff aside for that burning desire internally to fit in and be part of a crowd. I was willing to sacrifice what I knew was right and going against that end. anyway, and over time that really wore me down as well.

Yeah, you quite often hear the stories of, and I feel very, like my father was violent towards my mother, as I said, but he never drank, never touched a drop. And mum would have a drink here and there, but she, at that time, wasn't an alcoholic. But for me, I honestly believe that people like us, or some people like us, not everyone, obviously, will find it regardless. And I honestly believe that was me. I was just going to find it regardless, whether I had a great upbringing with lots of love. I just would have found it.

I think that was just my journey, which is unfortunate. Yeah. It's interesting too there, right? Because I think I was going to find something to relieve the pain and discomfort. And when I had my first drink, it all made sense. Like, the stars aligned. But I had no idea. I was extremely naive to everything, and I had no idea where it was going to lead me.

But I do remember vividly that first time I got drunk, and it was just like, wow, you know, what in the heck is going on? Everybody loved me. I loved me. And then it didn't always, it didn't last, that didn't last forever. But it was that thing where I was like, wow, where has this been my whole life? It's interesting, right? Because a lot of people, like 14 or 15, whatever, they're going to have a drink. And a lot of people are not going to end up to where things are a problem.

So there's something I think that we have to look at maybe those follow-up years or what's going on internally. Like, why did that first one hit that way? Or maybe it wasn't the first one. Some people, it takes a little bit of getting warmed up to it before it starts to really check those boxes for us, I think, internally. And everybody shares a different experience. So this is not going to be something across the board. Yeah, definitely. You go through your 30s and your experience and this stuff, you know, three months in jail and the consequences and stuff.

But not really, I think denial can be at play here too, right? Like it's, you know for a little bit there. It's like everybody else. It's this, it's that. As you move to your 30s, what did things look like for you? Are you working? I mean, stuff like. Well, like, remain, I've accepted my lot in life.

This was just what it was going to be, make the best of it. And I had a workplace accident in my early 30s and long. story, ended up getting a payout a few years later over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, which was given addict and alcoholic $200,000 and let's see what happened. And so I just had the party of all parties and I just met my current partner at the time. And so we just went crazy. And like I was getting planes around Australia and it was just chaotic for about a year. And then the money ran out and I got used to having money in the bank. I decided how am I going to keep this going? And so I think as I mentioned before, there's an industry in Australia.

mining so we mine coal and iron ore and stuff like that and that's where the big dollars are and so I'd had a history as a tire fitter on and off most of my life and I was really lucky I decided that's what I was going to do got off at a job and part of the industry is random drug and alcohol checks so radio I've pretty much given the drugs away I've just got to give pot up and then I'm good to go so I did that got in the mines and and I've been broke and in and out of jail a couple of times and essentially an alcoholic and all of a sudden, you know, I've got a really good job I'm out and really good money. So in my head, like I'm giving myself a pound the back, you've done it, you've made it through, you're alive, you've got a good job, you've finally got

somewhere with yourself. And so there was a bit of screw you to the nays. Like I've made it, I've done it. I knew I could do it. I had confidence all the time. And what that did was because I'd given pot was really the last thing by this stage and I'd given that away. So what that did was it gave alcohol the steering wheel and shoved it into sixth gear and off we went. So doing shift work, which is what we do, like varying rosters, but for instance, like work seven days, home seven days. So I'd go to work. I wouldn't drink at work. It's a big drinking culture or it used to be anyway and I'd never drink at work and I'd come home and just have a massive blinder for seven days and then I'd go back to work and so I guess that obviously because

alcohol was taken the front seat now that sort of exacerbated a lot of the problems that had been hidden and so I was around this stage that my partner new partner who is still my partner she suggested that I'd go and have a look at A.A. because I've got a problem and because of everything I'd been through, I thought, geez, that's been a bit dramatic. Yeah, things don't go my way all the time, but I'm not in my bedroom using heroin. But I did it. I went to AA, and I did take it as serious as I could at the time, but I certainly wasn't planning on quitting. I thought I'd teach me a normal way to drink, and I'd run off into the sunset, happily ever after,

which obviously didn't happen, but. Yes. A fairytale ending. A fairy tale ending. I figured they all had magic wands, and, you know. everything in a disown. Yeah, you hear that a lot. I think most of us go through a time or a cycle where we try to make it all work. We try all the different strategies. We switch up the drinks, the times, eating before, eating after, change the people we hang out with, budget this much,

only by that much, just to take all life-consuming stuff. So you get a payout here too, back to that. Yeah. And then after a year or two, you fly through that with the party. And then you get this other opportunity, which I mean, for somebody in your situation, this is a home run. It is. It's a home run, too, with where you're at, get this opportunity. And also a home run in the sense of seven days on, seven days off. So did they check for drugs, but they didn't, they would just randomly check you for alcohol, or you could drink on your days off.

That was cool, just not while you were there? Yeah, you could drink on your days off. It was just like every site's different, but the majority will just breathalize you in the morning when you come into work, pass that, and away you go. So I knew what I was. like if I drank and I knew if I had a beer with the boys down the bar after work, there was 50-50 chance I'd still be there at five in the morning. So I just didn't allow that to be a risk because I'd made it.

This is everything I never knew I wanted. So I just didn't allow that to come into my life. But what I did do was obviously just make up for it on my break. Like it very quickly for me turned into, I remember someone saying, we're talking about bad hangovers. And they said, if you have a drink the next morning, the hangover goes away. And that was your beauty light bulb moment for me. So I was instantly an everyday drinker when I was home.

But that then very quickly progressed into an all-day drinker. Something I'm quite common of saying in my shares at AI is I drank. When my eyes were open, I was drinking. And I drank till I ran out or passed out. And that was pretty much how I lived in the next 15 years, 15, 16 years. What were you drinking? Predominantly bourbon, I started on bourbon, so this is the insanity of the alcoholic's brain. I drank bourbon was my only drink really for years and years.

When my body started not being able to deal with my drinking habits, I put it down to the fact that I was mixing it with Coke and looking at all those empty Coke bottles, that's got to be the raisin. And so I switched to gin so I could drink it with tonic water because that's probably going to be healthy for me. But that's the alcoholic in me, not trying to look at the actual facts, trying to just dance around the problems so we can just keep playing forward. So I was a bourbon drinker for years and then I finished off as a gin drinker. By this stage, like my partner, when things started getting really bad,

she refused to live with me anymore because of my out of control lifestyle, which I fully don't blame her for. And we don't have kids. I had no one to hold up pretenses to. I could just do what I wanted. So I could drink whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted, and did not have to answer to anyone. All I had to worry about was getting in a fight with some random person I defended or the police, lock them out.

That was, as long as I could keep those two things out of my life, I could just do what I wanted. And so I did pretty much unchecked. Like obviously my partner over the years, she's tried, like you just mentioned, she's tried hundreds of variants of trying to make me stop, trying to encourage me to stop, leaving me alone and hoping I'd do it on my own. and she's been brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I probably wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for her, to be honest. But as we all know, trying to get an alcoholic to realise they need stops

can be pointless until they realise that themselves. And I was definitely that person. I had no idea. And I was still living off this. I'm earning good money. I've finally made it. So I deserve to be able to live how I want. Regardless of the destruction, I know I've left behind me because of my drinking,

I still choose to do this. and no one can stop me, so off I went. Yeah. Off I went, and I discovered a lot of it. Yeah. When you look back at your story here, did you ever think to yourself throughout that time, and it sounds like things were you're drinking from the start of the day to the end,

so I don't know if there's much time to really think about too much in there, kind of deal about introspection, but did you ever think how did I end up here from how things start? started? Yeah, look, definitely. And it was around the time my body, so I've had pancreas issues in the last 10 years, I guess, directly related to my drinking. I guess it was about that. And I probably had thought of it before because I was lonely. I pushed everyone away and I had good money, but I was doing nothing with it. So you do sit down and go, where did it all go wrong? This is what you're hoping for. Why can't you just pull it together? But I've also had already

bolted with my addiction and alcoholism by a long shot. But by the The time the body was catching up and I was having quite regular hospital visits due to my pancreas and I was living alone. That's when I went, look, I've either got to commit to this as what my life is like and that's how to end or I've got to decide to make a change. And I'd been to numerous drug and alcohol counsellors and psychologists and all that before and none of it even came close to working for me. I certainly wouldn't put anyone off trying all that.

try whatever you can, whatever works, go grab it. But it didn't work for me. And I realized at one point that what I needed was like what we were talking about with the alcoholic thinking and brain. What I needed was sober time. That's what I needed was to just have a break from everything and drinking and just get my head back so I can make some actual rational decision. So that was the first rehab I took myself off to. It was a three. Three-month rehab, it cost me a heap of money. It was rehab. The one thing I'll always be grateful for that first rehab was part of their program was 90 in 90 meetings in 90 days. So we did a meeting every day. And on that really, even though it still took me a lot of years to get sober after, that really snapped my head to a different direction and went, there's hope over there. You've just got to go get it. And so that was the beginning. I don't know when that was, probably eight years ago, maybe nine years ago. Yeah, how old would you have been? That would have been my early 40s, so late low enough.

Yeah, so you go to the rehab, you do the 90 meetings and 90 days, and that sort of plants a seed in one way or another for you. There is hope out there that there are other people out there who are struggling with this. Maybe not the exact same way, but in one way or another, you can relate to their stories and their stuff. So that sort of plants the seed. and then you leave the rehab and you go back to drinking after that? I left the rehab, was doing a heap of meetings, and now I had the good wage, and I wasn't blowing it on alcohol, and what goes along with that lifestyle.

So my partner came back to live with me. We went to New York for a month, holiday. I'll throw this in there, and I hate to sound AA to people or whatever, but in hindsight, what I didn't do was set my ego to the side. So on the face of it, I was doing all the right things. My ego just super inflated because now I'm sober. I'm truly the king of the world. I've given everything up and I've got this great job.

And on the face of it, I was doing really well for six, seven, eight months. And then my partner had gone back to uni, became a teacher. We had to move out into country Queensland. And there was no meetings close by. It was like a two-hour drive to my nearest meeting. And I did that a few times. So this was my head. And I remember sitting there making this decision.

it's a really long drive. I'm really tired. It's late. There's a heat, like, I don't know if you're aware, hitting kangaroos when you're driving around at night. Here's a bit of a thing. I'm probably going to hit a kangaroo. But think about it, Justin, when you get to this meeting, you know the people that are there, you know what so-and-so is going to share, you know what so-and-so is going to share, you know what you're going to share, how you're going to feel when you walk away. So do you really need to go to the mating? I can probably afford to miss this one. And then as soon as I missed that one, then I missed the next one. And then I had a period of a couple of months after that where things were still going okay. So I don't really need meetings anymore. It's all up here.

I've got it all here. It's all locked in. So you'll be fine, Justin. And honestly, man, you hear the stories. And I'm here to say for me, about two months later, I held on and driving to work with the boys one time. And because I was the sober alcoholic, I'd be the designated driver. That turned into me just having a couple of beers with them on the way to start our shift, which very quickly turned into me buying a bottle to go to work with, which even quicker turned into me buying a bottle when I got home. And lo and behold, I was right back where I'd left off and it all just crashing down that quick. My partner left again. And my world was chaotic again, so I just went right back into it. And there was a couple of years after that of, I just had no

idea what was going on, where I was at. But again, I had my good old friend alcohol, so I just leaned on it and just went for it. Absolutely went for it. Yeah. It's true that you share that story. You hear that a lot about the ego getting in the way and I've got it all figured out and things will go well for a bit, but you mentioned there too and I've heard it so many times about when you start drinking again or whatever it is, it gets back to the same spot and often worse. Yeah, for me it was worse. I very quickly, a week after I'd picked up a drink, I was driving back to work and I was physically

incapable of driving a vehicle, let alone put aside the fact that I was probably still over the limit from the night before. I just physically wasn't able. So I had to stop into a hotel halfway and check myself into a motel for three days just so I could physically be okay to drive and it was just hectic and sick and terrible. And yeah, you hear the old story.

It's in the background doing push-up. And that was definitely the case for me. It came back and it came back hard. And my head was spinning. I didn't know how this had happened. I didn't know what I was going to do now. And so I just kept drinking. Yeah.

Why not get back to a meeting? Yeah, that's what I know now. And that's what I was told repeatedly. And that's what I would, there was a newcomer there tonight. And that's one of the things I stressed because he seemed on the fence a bit, is no matter what happens, just keep coming back. And yeah, I unfortunately hadn't learnt that lesson then. I keep saying, unfortunately, about my story.

I'm actually really grateful about my story, to be honest, but because that is why I am who I am right now is because of my story, if I could save someone the 25 years of destruction that I'd put on myself, then that'd be great. But I didn't know at that stage to just go back and ask for help. Yeah. I think that's a great point for anybody too who gets there because a lot of people do that, having a relapse, drinking again.

How am I going to show back up? Especially if you're struggling with the ego part and I got it all figured out. It's really hard to squash that. Go back like a dog after it eats the couch. It puts its tail between its leg and then it greets you at the door. It's a really tough thing to do, but it's so important. So when do you turn this around? When do you get sober and what do things look like for you early on and moving forward?

from there. Yeah, it obviously got worse before it got better, and I won't bore you with those stories. We all know what they're like in some degree. So what I will say is my last six months of drinking. I was alone again. I'd pretty much lost my job. I was selling stuff. Like I sold a $30,000 car to have money to keep drinking. And so I was visibly, even I couldn't deny that I'd hit one of my lowest rock bottoms. And I woke up one morning, and it's quite a disgusting story, so I won't share all the details with you, but I woke up and just had to ask myself, because of my physical state, I wasn't far off packing it in and do I want to die like this? Is this what my life is going to look like? Or am I going to have one more go and actually

take this as seriously as it needs to be taken? And so I got on the phone. And I heard one of your fellow guests today mention about this, and we're so lucky in Australia. that we've got free rehab. So I just got on the phone, rang everyone I could within like about a 500 kilometer radius and just said help and told them the story. I need help. I've got to get in somewhere. I don't care where it is.

I've just got to get somewhere. And I was really lucky that within about a week, I got a call back right, we can get you in. I obviously had to do a medically supervised detox, which again, there's a public hospital where I was at the time that had a five-bed wing. it specialised in medical detoxes and they got me in. They detoxed me properly and safely. And I find this free public rehab that was just down the road as it turns out. And again, it was different in my first rehab that I was defeated by this point, man. I was absolutely defeated. And that's been the saviour for me this time is I had to walk in there with the white flag held

as high as I couldn't say. I need help and I don't know what to do. Can you help me? and so that's what I did. Got back into the local A.A. group up there. Had some really good members take me under their wing. And one in particular, Brian, if he listens to this, he knows who he is. It saved my life and really just helped me get it. And so, yeah, that was two and a half years ago. And he told me one of the best bits of advice I've been given,

and it was from this fellow known Brian. He said, the first two years will be hell. And I think how he put it was, you've spent 30 years, walking into an addiction forest, you can't expect to just turn around and be out the other side tomorrow. So the first two years are going to be hell, but just keep coming back, no matter what you're feeling, just keep coming back. And that's what I've done. I've light-knuckled it for a bit, I'll be honest. I probably haven't done all the suggested things in my fellowship that I'm a part of, but I've done enough and I've done what I felt I could. And I've been willing to do whatever's

asked of me. That's been a big key for me. And look, life's great. Life's hard. I still have moments of wondering what the hell am I doing and why is this all worth it? I have those moments. We're all just human after all and life will be life. But holy Jesus, if I could go back and slap that young Justin around the head at 20 years old and just make him realize how bloody good life can be. Like I love my life at the moment. I love it.

We've just got back from a month in Italy. I know that has similarities to my first sober time, but it was different. It's different this time because I'm hopeless. I'm a hopeless alcoholic, and I know that and admit that. And it's different. I'm only safe today. I know that it will always be there for me, waiting, doing push-ups in the background, man. But life's good.

Life is great. Yeah, thanks for sharing that too in two and a half years. Incredible. So you plug back in, you mentioned their willingness as well. Be willing to do things, you know, maybe a little bit differently than it was the first time around. Stay connected. Plug in. and feeling that joy.

It's also interesting too, right? Because you go back in your story and give that younger just than a shake, right? It wouldn't have listened. It wouldn't have listened. And it's so strange, but I think one of the most beautiful things about sobriety in a sense

and why we feel so much gratitude on a deeper level than we ever have before is because we know what it's like on the other side and we went through those painful, confusing, moments in our life. So when we find a way out, it's, oh my gosh, I don't have to live like that anymore. This is incredible. I sometimes wonder, and not to get philosophical or anything, if I had to manage my drinking, I'm bluff my way through life. Like, I wouldn't have the appreciation for life that I have now. We've just got two little puppies, two little mini-groodles,

and quite often I'll just sit there and look at a bird with them and just wonder at how beautiful and peaceful life can be when you let it. And I'll contrast that with moments, remembering moments of when I was drinking, where all of that stuff just passed me by. Not only did I not notice, I had no idea all that stuff was there because I was too, I was always drunk. And the ability, what sobriety has given me is the ability to really appreciate life. And I feel super lucky and super grateful that I found it. And I'd wish that on everyone 100%. Yeah. Interesting. interesting there too with where, what if we were able to just keep it going and maybe keep it between the lines a little bit or the best we could?

Yeah, it's scary. Yeah, it's still that we, I think we still would have missed out on the beauty of this whole thing, right? Like, you can't see it. When you're drinking, that's the problem is we think that drinking alcohol connects us. And you go to the concert, you go to the sporting event, and we think that it enhances situations. But what we realize on this side is that it really just strips any ability to feel joy in any situation without alcohol. And then over time, maybe the first time we drank, we felt the joy and excitement and everything for three hours. And then five years later, we feel it for two.

And then another year later, we feel it for one. And then a lot of people share they enjoyed it maybe for the first 20 minutes. You asked me earlier on, what was it at the start that I liked about alcohol so much and the answer I gave, but I can honestly hand on heart. So the last 10 years of my drinking, I didn't enjoy a single part of it. I just couldn't stop. I just didn't know anything else, but I certainly was not enjoying any of it. There was no, and that was the thing. The first drink wasn't that warm, comforting home feeling. It was, oh God, I hope this stops the sick. I hope this stops the sickness and the sweats and the shakes and did. And so that that cycle just kept going and going.

Yeah. So are you still with your partner then? Yeah, yeah, I am. Thankfully. Yeah, she's an amazing woman. She's an amazing woman. She should have left me 100 years ago. And that's something, you know, sometimes us alcoholics need to realize.

Like, I've questioned myself and her as to why she stuck around. And her beautiful quote that I remember her saying this very clearly was, you were like Kekyll and Jod and Hyde, you were the drunk Justin and then the sober Justin, it was just lucky for you. I could see what that sober Justin was like. And I stuck around for him, but I hate drunk Justin. And I'm still coming to terms with accepting that in myself, because I still see myself as the drunk addict that would steal lying cheek. But I think a lot of us alcoholics, maybe I shouldn't speak for other people, but I think that's a very common thing is we don't see the beauty in ourselves that alcohol strips away from us, but other people do. And thank my

God that she saw it in me because, yeah, we're doing pretty well now. It's great. I love her with all my heart and I'm super glad that she stuck her in. Yeah, it's true. So many people, other people can see in us what we can't see in ourselves. And that's a lot of the thing you hear too, especially in AA, or at least I did when I went, is that we'll love you. until you learn to love yourself. Yeah, yeah. We can support you. What do you learn in two and a half years

heading towards rashing up here about yourself? Because I think it goes so deep. It goes so deep in the sense that there's more to this than alcohol. Yeah, there is. And what I've learned as a constant relapser, you know, I took 15 years from when I first stepped in the doors of a 12-step recovery program to now. But the effort and strength and determination it takes to continue drinking the way a lot of us drink or the way I drink anyway.

It takes a lot, man. It's hard work. It's really hard work. You've got to plan things, coordinate things, hide things. Like, it's a massive orchestra of, you know, drinking. So if you can somehow find a way to switch that into your sobriety, we're all capable of doing it because we've been doing it during our drink. It's like the old Superman thing, I guess, turn your powers to good, not evil. Like, we're all capable of doing it.

For me, I just had to get through that period where the alcoholic brain was trying to trick me into drinking again. And the only way I found to do that was to just give up, throw my hands in the air and go to a meeting. And that got me through the self-doubt, the two voices in my head. And now I'm long enough away from it that I can see me for what I am and I can see my drinking for what it was. And so now, like we talked about earlier when you said, why didn't go back to a meeting, I know now when I'm in trouble, and I've been in trouble, trust me, since

getting sober the last time. But now I have a clear mind. I can make the right decision. I used to hate all the little AA sayings, the next right thing, like the next right thing, just for today. If just for today's too hard, just for the next hour, if that's too hard, just for the next minute. But all those things that I used to see and read and hear but not really listen to, now that I've got a sober mind, I can actually put them into practice. And so I will. I think I mentioned to you once, I still obviously work away. And the second I land back home and then jump in my car to drive home, the first thing

I do is put on this podcast and listen to your later story because that gets my head in the game, no matter whether I'm feeling really up or really down or whatever I'm feeling, the most important thing in my life is when I'm back home is to get my head in the game. And look, hats off to you, man. And really, I can't express how much gratitude I have to what you're doing. But that's the tool I use now. That's my first tool I pull out of the bag. I get in the car to drive home from a long shift at work.

And I listen to someone else's story of hope. And that gets me right where I need to be to hopefully get through a really strong break at home. So with the sober mind, I have the ability to use the tools that I've been taught. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much for being a fan of the show. And thank you so much for jumping on here and doing a full circle with us and sharing your story. Incredible job, two and a half years in everything you're going through. It's got to be a really difficult situation that you were in.

And to get out of there is, yeah, it's a miracle in a sense to be able to turn things around and be a part of living this life. And then you see it for what it is. think one of the most powerful things I picked up from your story. There was a lot. But seeing it for what it really is, I feel like when we're stuck in it, we have no idea. We really have no idea. And then if you get some distance between us and our last drink, the more distance we put there, the more we see this for what it really is. And over time, realize that it's not going to solve our problems in life. It just makes everything worse. 100%. 100%. All right. Justin. Anything

that you want to mention before we sign off? Yes, I do have to just give one shout out to the most amazing, beautiful sober alcoholic I know, Natalie Up in McCoy. She's amazing. And she's been great for me. And she said she'd do nasty things to me if I didn't do a shout out for her. So you've got people that are going to be listening to the episode here. That's what I'm guessing. I've told one or two people that if it ends up on there have a listen, but they already know my stories. Yeah, but anyway, look, everyone, it works if you work and you're worth it. That's all I can say. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you, Justin, and I enjoy the rest of your evening. You too, brother.

Well, there it is everyone. Another incredible episode. Thank you, Justin. For jumping on here and be willing to share your story with all of us. I'll drop Justin's contact information down on the show notes below if you want to reach out to them and just say thank you for sharing your story. story on the Subur Motivation podcast. Also, if you haven't left a review or rating on Apple or Spotify, after you're done here, jump over there, drop of five stars, obviously, and I'll see you on the next one.