Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Surviving Trauma and Embracing Sobriety: Johnny's Journey

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

In this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, Johnny Lawrence shares his path from an unstable and traumatic childhood to a fulfilling life of sobriety. Born into a mixed-race family subjected to domestic violence, Johnny found comfort in alcohol. However, he felt compelled to give up drinking when he became a father. Johnny discusses the details of sobriety, emphasizing resilience, honesty, and the importance of never giving up. He also shares his concept of 'The Four A's - Awareness, Accountability,  Acceptance, and Action' to handle life changes. Johnny underlines that while the journey to sobriety can be challenging, the emotional resolution and personal insights gained make it worthwhile. This is Johnny’s story on the Sober Motivation podcast. ------------ Follow Johnny on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theselfdevelopmentcoach/ Check out SoberLink here: https://www.soberlink.com/recover Support the Podcast here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivation 00:00 Introduction and Guest Arrival 01:47 Guest's Early Life and Struggles 05:38 Turning Point and Leaving Home 12:52 Finding Solace in Wrestling 16:30 Becoming a Father and Facing Old Demons 22:30 The Journey to Sobriety 24:40 Understanding Emotional Regulation and Alcohol Cravings 25:26 The Journey of Sobriety: Relapses and Vulnerability 27:22 The Struggle with Suppressed Emotions 28:06 The Honesty Stage: Recognizing the Impact of Alcohol 28:56 The Transition to Sobriety: Challenges and Self-Soothing 31:16 The Four A's of Behavioral Change 34:50 The Emotional Journey of Quitting Alcohol 39:15 The Power of Persistence and Building Emotional Resilience 43:47 Final Thoughts: Never Give Up

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 as possible one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, Johnny shares his path from an unstable and traumatic childhood to a fulfilling life of sobriety. Born into a mixed-race family subjected to domestic violence, Johnny found comfort and alcohol. However, he felt compelled to give up drinking, when he became a father. Johnny discusses the details of sobriety,

emphasizing resilience, honesty, and the importance of never giving up. He also shares his concept of the four A's, awareness, accountability, acceptance, and action to handle life challenges. Johnny underlines that while the journey to sobriety can be challenging, the emotional resolution and personal insights gained make it worthwhile. This is Johnny's story on the Sober Motivation podcast. How's it going, everyone? We're three months into a new year, and I'd like to take a pulse on how everyone's doing and feeling.

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eliminating testing anxiety. Devices have built-in facial recognition so it knows it's you testing. Pamper sensors flag any attempts at trying to beat the system. Friends and family receive instant test results helping to rebuild trust and prevent relapse. If you're serious about getting sober, this is a tool to use,

and the only monitoring system I recommend. Make these next months count. Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive $50 off your device. Welcome back to another episode, everybody. My goodness, it's March already. Wow, where did the time go? This new year is flying by.

Can't wait for summer. I don't know about you guys. Incredible, incredible guest for this week's show. Johnny Lawrence joins us, shares his story. It's incredible. Let's jump right in. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got Johnny with us.

Johnny, how are you? I'm real good. Thank you. How are you? I'm well, man. Thank you for jumping on here, being willing to share your story. I know that sober Dave has said that you got to have Johnny on the show, man. So here we are.

Oh, I love Dave. Yeah. Got a lot of time for Dave. He's a very good friend of mine. We've shared many sober adventures since I've been sober. So, yeah, I can say a lot of good things about him too. Yeah. I've seen that Dave in all the trips.

It seems like you're in all the pictures of all the trips. So that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, last year was a big year. We did Mount Tipco in Morocco and we did Nepal as well. It was probably a bit too much, to be honest, but we enjoyed it and we survived it and we learned. That's what it's all about, right?

And it's interesting, too, since we're talking about Dave, when I first had the idea of starting this podcast, I reached out to Dave because he's someone I look up to as well. And I mentioned to him, what's the deal with this whole podcasting thing? And it was kind of that kick in the butt that I needed to get out of my own way and just get started on something. And here we are. We just passed over a million downloads for the show, so it's been an incredible ride. I saw that. Congratulations. Congratulations. That's fantastic and well deserved. Yes, thank you so much. So let's get started. What was it like for you growing up, Johnny?

What a question. Not great, if I'm honest, and it took me many years to realize that. But unfortunately, I was a witness to domestic violence. And I was a victim or survivor, as I like to say, of, physical abuse and torture as a child. And I grew up in the 80s. I was born in 1980. And at school was tough. I didn't realize until I was 30 years old, but I'm dyslexic. But at school, I just thought I was stupid. And the teachers did nothing to change that. And matter of fact, they may have even encouraged that view that I was stupid. We didn't have any money, come from a very poor family. And let's just say I was malnutritioned and I wasn't going to get picked for sports. So at school, I was I was skinny, weak, stupid as it felt at the time. So that was my school experience.

And then out in the big wide world, I mixed race. My dad's African, my mum's white British. And around that time, there wasn't a lot of acceptance of that. People might say that's still the same way. I think it's better than it was. I had to watch my mum get spat on in a queue in the post office because she was in a mixed race relationship. I was only young.

Watching your mum have saliva run down her face from someone else is not a good thing. you know out in a big wide world I'm struggling to feel accepted at school I'm struggling to feel accepted so home's the place right unfortunately not for me and back at home I was watching my father be very violent with my mum be very violent with my siblings and obviously to myself and I had to witness a lot of that violence and I had to have it subjected to me there was a lot of torture both emotionally and physically the emotional torture would be something like I'm not going to hurt you I'm going to hurt your brother or I'm not going to hurt your brother or I I'm not going to hurt you now.

I'm going to come for you in the night. And obviously that led to a lot of bedwetting and things like that. And then the physical stuff was how far do you want me to go with it? It was pretty bad. He held my head underwater, made me feel at a very early age that I was going to die. Locked me inside of things. Obviously beat me a lot with implements around the house and things like that. I collected quite a lot of trauma as a child.

And that doesn't really help. None of that really helps you form a very optimistic, positive, helpful view of the world. You go into the world not feeling like you can trust people, not really understanding how people really operate. For example, going round to friends' houses as a kid, it just baffled me. It confused me. I didn't notice at a time, but the lack of violence made me feel unsafe, which is a complete contradiction, right? So I was witnessing all these different things. And lo and behold, you get into your teenage years and you start meeting people, you start meeting girls, whatever.

And you're making a real, it's not going well, let's say that. So it wasn't until a bit later in life that I got into therapy that was due to the lady that is now my wife. She encouraged me to get into therapy. And then at first it felt like my reality was just falling apart around me. I couldn't find any stable ground. and I was unraveling quite quickly as I started to realize that everything that I thought was true about my life wasn't. And it was no surprise that alcohol was what I used as a way to outsource that emotional regulation as a way to cope.

And a lot of people don't like me saying it, but alcohol does that. It works. Is it the best option? Absolutely not. I'm happily sober now. And I would like to think I'd never go back to it, but you never know. know what's around the corner. You have to be realistic. But alcohol helped me survive. It helped me keep going. And I moved out when I was 16, 17 years old. I can never remember which it is.

And that was because of an incident that happened in my house. I walked in from work one day. And there was lots of screaming. We had like a little hallway and then another door. And I could hear the screaming. I prepared myself and I walked through the door. And my dad was violently raining down with a slipper on my mum and my brother's been shielded by her. And at this time, I was in the gym. I was getting a bit bigger. I started to figure things out. And I'm not going to pretend it was a big heroic moment or anything. It wasn't fought out. I just lunged over and I grabbed him and with everything I had in me, I threw him across the room. And then I stood there thinking, what now? I was terrified. I was scared. And he didn't do anything. He didn't retort. He didn't do anything like

that. He just looked me in the eyes, walked right up to me, looked me straight in the eyes and he just laughed at me. And then he went upstairs. And my mum and I sat and we had a conversation about it and we realized that incidences like that were probably going to become more frequent and that it was very possible that one of us, me or him, were going to make a very bad decision. So we made the decision together. And that's important because a lot of people say, well, why did he need to move? But he wasn't going to move out. That was never going to happen, you know? So I moved out on my own, 16, 17 years old. And I was lonely.

I was lonely because I missed the chaos. And that's when alcohol first came into my life as company, as a friend, as a companion, as someone that was never going to let me down. That loneliness went away when I had alcohol with me no matter what it was. So that's where it started and where it ended up was something a bit different. But I felt like I've done lots of talking. So I'll shush now. Thank you so much, Johnny.

And I mean, I can tell just from you sharing that, that you've obviously done a lot of work in this area to be able to talk about your story and share about your story. It's interesting that you bring that up too with the alcohol about people might not like that, about that it does provide relief from the pain. And at the time, when I look back at my journey when it all started, I didn't have a lot of those things that you had go on. But the alcohol quieted the voices, right?

The insecurities, the voices. And I can relate with you with the whole school thing. I don't know if I ever passed the test literally in my whole life until I went to college. And I felt like that too. At the time, that's what I felt, and this might not be true, but that's how I felt is my value in what I brought to the world was based on the academics. Because I did play sports, but I was never like a superstar sports player. I was your average Joe type sports player.

But I felt like the academics and I just couldn't do well there. I couldn't feel. I had ADHD and I used to take medication and then I stopped taking medication. And it was a whirlwind of problems. But I do really enjoy that point about it works because that's my story too. It really worked and maybe kept me alive when things could have went the other way about some relief of the pain, the emotional pain that I was going through. And at the time, I had no idea of how to connect the dots or what was really going on.

I just knew when I drank alcohol, I felt relief from myself. And that was just enough to keep it going. But as I went further in my story, it was one of those things that worked until it didn't work. And then it kind of flipped on me. So it was like at the beginning, it worked really well to, I felt accepted. I could be. It was like that social lubricant to go to parties and feel comfortable and not feel nervous and anxious and overwhelmed.

And I felt like I could be part of something. And then it flipped on me. And then it became the source of more problems and more anxiety and more sadness. So it's a really interesting point that you make to. I really, I really think that's a lot of people's story. Yeah, I think I'm always very careful because everybody's on a. own journey and everyone has their own world views and their own grasp on reality and that narrative they sell themselves, whether it's true, false, whatever, is something that offers them comfort

and allows them to move forward. So for some people, when they hear me say, it works, that they might take the view that I'm condoning it in some way. When I'm not condoning it, I'm just saying what was true about my experience. And there's a lot of people out there that they hate alcohol, they hate it. They're now sober and they hate it. And that's fine. But for me, I don't have room for hate in my life. Hate doesn't give me anything. It takes away. So for me, I don't want to hate alcohol. It's something that I did for a little while. It's like an X. It was good way it lasted part ways. It's toxic. It's not working. But for me, I had to find compassion for myself and for some of the things that I did, some of the things that I said.

And I got that compassion when it was a little while after I moved out of my family home. and I remember going back to the family home and helping my brother redecorate the room that we used to share used to be three of us in the room and obviously they were very happy that I had moved out and there was two of them in the room and there was more room and I said to him I'd go back and help him decorate so we were trying to take the wallpaper off

and I started in the corner where my bed was and I started taking the wallpaper off and on the wall there's some writing so I start clearing it away a bit more and then I read the writing and it says my name's Johnny I am eight and I want to die and it was like a message from the past, like a message in a bottle. And it was like that eight-year-old version of me was talking to me.

And I never did a lot about that. I put it to the back of my mind. And it wasn't until I started that therapy journey. And I mentioned it very flippantly to the therapist. And her eyes started welling up. And she said, that's really important. We need to talk about that. And what I realized was in that moment,

and the reason why it helped me with compassion was that eight-year-old boy was already suicidal, already didn't want to be here, just thick of the way the world was for him. And if I hadn't have found alcohol, I don't know what would have happened. So for me, that therapist said to me, congratulations for finding a way to stay alive.

And was it ideal? No, it wasn't. It wasn't ideal at all. I drunk too much and I caused a lot of destruction in my life. but I stayed alive and I was able to become somebody in the world whom I'm day by day, year by year, I'm becoming more and more proud of for the work that I'm doing. Would I be here if it wasn't for all of this stuff? And that's another story entirely, isn't it? When I look back and I think, yeah, a lot of the stuff I went through was super painful, but the post-traumatic growth that I've got from those things, it's a tough question.

I would never choose it, no. But would I take it back? I don't think I would because I have now got an ability to be able to sit with people and really hear them when they're talking sometimes better than they can hear themselves, which enables me to help people in a way which is very unique. And like I said, would I have picked it? No, but am I glad I've got those talents and those skills and those intuitions? Yes, I am. And I think there would probably be a lot of people that I've worked with that would feel the same way, hopefully. Yeah. That's so true. That's so powerful, that life experience and what you go through gives you that ability to show up

with that superpower, right? So where do you go? So you move out from home. What are you doing? Like, what does your life look like? What are you doing after that around 16, 17, 18, 20? I smiled because it will probably surprise you, but I became a professional wrestler. You're like, oh, right? Okay. Yeah, I became a professional wrestler. You know, unfortunately with me, everything has a sad story attached to it, but one of the ways I used to escape the violets at home and I used about a bit of escapism was watching the WWF wrestling. And I used to sit there and I fell in love with the characters. I fell in love with the music.

I fell in love with the storylines. And it was something that I used to be able to escape to that larger than life. And when I moved out, I got chatting with a friend that I worked with in a bar. And he said he wanted to go to this wrestling club. And I was like, interesting. Now, bearing in mind, I'd always been quite small. It was nine and a half stone at the time where I started wrestling. And I went down with him.

He hated it. and I loved it. And I carried on and fast forward five years and I'm wrestling for the heavyweight championship in Australia. I absolutely loved it. I put weight on. I trained hard. It gave me a focus.

And for many years, that was what I focused on. And actually, it was helpful because it kept me out of the pubs. I didn't go out drinking all the time because I was training and I had something to focus on. And then I got injured. And I ended up wrestling, a wrestler that's now Finn Baller in the WWU. I don't know if you watch that. at all, but he and I were wrestling in Ireland and he kicked me in the stomach and didn't feel

anything of it. And then a couple of days later, I had a ruptured appendix. And that was quite, there was other problems associated to that and it meant I was out for a little while. And in that time, I met the woman that is now my wife. And for a very long time, I told myself that I was injured and it was a career-only injury and that I couldn't go back to wrestling, but I've come to confess to myself that I wasn't true. I fell in love. And I didn't. didn't want to go back to wrestling. Did I want to go training for six hours and travel all the time and do all that? Or did I want to go for a roast dinner on a Sunday and a glass of wine with my girlfriend at the time? I wanted to do the other. So I let that fall away. And then, you know, our love blossomed.

And over time, I asked her to marry me. She said yes, thankfully. And then our life together started. And a little while after that, we were living in London. We got sick of the rat race. And we decided to move to Cornwall. We went there to start a family, but we didn't, we may have started a bit soon because within six months she was pregnant. So maybe we should have got a better sky package, a TV package or something, I don't know. We did it and she fell pregnant. And that's when things took a bit more of a sinister term with the alcohol. Up until then, it could be argued that I had learned to use it recreationally. I think probably everybody drinks a bit too much.

And I think that when we're all together, we all make each other feel good about that. and we all make excuses for each other. But what they didn't realize is that when they all went home and I went to bed, I went home and I opened white, or I drunk whiskey or I had beers, and that was the difference. And a lot of people were so surprised when they found out I had challenges around alcohol. And they said, well, don't think I've ever seen you really drunk.

And it was like, well, it wasn't really about that for me. It was about going home, sitting on my own until three, four in the morning, however long I could stay awake and just keep drinking. because I'm always wrestling in my life because of the trauma that I've experienced, it was often the good things. When something good happened to me, I didn't know how to rationalise that with myself. I struggled, so alcohol was a good leveler for me because when I drunk, I just didn't care. And that was that.

I was okay. I was good to carry on. So it wasn't until we had our first child when things really went a bit wrong for me. We'd obviously gone through the pregnancy together and stuff. Obviously, she did all the work. I was just there. If she listens, I don't want to take any credit because I'll get in trouble. But yeah, she went into labour and I watched both my sons be born.

It was one of the most incredible things I've ever had to witness. It was such an incredible thing. I was overwhelmingly proud. And when my son came out, I had all the feelings that a father that a parent should have. I was holding my son for the first time. I cut the umbilical cord and I was feeling hugely emotional. And I was making all his promises to myself, this is my son, I'm going to do things right, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.

But then I also got hit with this competing feeling. And I'd never had, I'd never been a dad before. I never ever had that perspective. And all of a sudden, these floodgates opened and this perspective of being a father came in. I'd always looked at it as like, why did my dad do these things to me? Why did he do it? Why?

Why, why? Why? Was it my fault? that it's wrong, wherever they're all these different things that come up. Actually, then the sort of narrative flipped and it became, how could you do this? Because I was feeling this love, right? And I was this overwhelming protectiveness for this little being in my hand. That was my son. That was our son.

And I was thinking, how could you ever hurt? And all I can say was like a psychological shutdown. It's like a malfunction. And I wasn't coping very well at all. And alcohol helped with that. Again, back to my old friend. every time things get really unmanageable, alcohol was there. And this is the thing.

It's dependable. It was dependable for me. I could go down the shop and I could buy the alcohol and I knew it would work every time. You know? And that's why I didn't want to hate it because I have to, in some way, as unpopular as it might sound, in some way I have to find gratitude for that. I don't want to hate it. I don't want to regret it.

Life's too short for all about for me. So I look back and I think I am grateful for it allow me. to still function. Was I dad of the year? Probably not. My wife is kind and says I was a great dad. My kids say the same, but I didn't show up the way I wanted to. I do now. I don't miss a single game. I don't miss a single game. I don't miss my son's rugby game. The answer is no. So that's the way it is. And that runs through me. That's always been me. But I just never allowed myself to be that person. So kids and becoming a father changed that perspective and it caused me a lot of problems. Yeah, thank you for sharing all that.

You mentioned you had two sons. Are they twins? Not at the same time. They're only a couple of years apart. But yeah, we had another son after that as well. Okay. Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, it's so beautiful.

I'm with you on that too. I have three kids. And it's magical, man. And you mentioned, too, there everything kind of ends. A lot of the stories are sadness at the end. I mean, you walked away from the wrestling, but you found this other incredible journey with your wife to go on. A silver lining, maybe in a sense.

It's interesting, too, because I feel that you're hinting at a few things here, which is a really interesting thing for me about not necessarily wanting to go back and change things. There was tons of trauma and a lot of stuff that happened in your life. But the way I look at it, too, in my own life is there was a lot of stuff too, and I took a lot of wrong turns and made a lot of choices that people would probably say, you those weren't the best. And I would even say they weren't the best choices. But the way I look at it is, if we're happy and content in making progress with where we're at, one change, one different choice, for me, maybe I don't end up here. And it's not like if I had a chance to go back and change

everything, I'm not sold on the fact that I wouldn't maybe want some things to go a little bit differently for the main reason of how it impacted other people that was one of the harder things is the fallout of struggling with addiction for me personally was it a big impact on people who loved me but i think we've come a long way from then but it's that interesting thing to where grateful to have gone through that struggle to come out the other side and like you shared in your story being available to help other people and through your experiences it built up that resiliency in you to be able to show up so incredibly for people. And I think I can relate on that in a little bit. And it scares me. If one little thing changes, I mean, life's a game of inches, right? And one little

thing changes. And you might not end up where we ended up. And even on this podcasting journey and everything that I've been doing for the past six years. I mean, there were wise in the road. And I was so close to going a different way. And I have no idea how that other way would have turned out. But I know if I would have went that other way, I wouldn't be where I am today. So it's a strange thing to be grateful, right? Somebody from the outside of a whole addiction thing would say, you know, Brad, that sounds a little bit wild. Look at what all you've been through. But it's that gratitude and then being a sober father and stuff.

Like, I don't know if there's anything more rewarding than that for me personally to be able to show up and be an example and be present for that. But that just kind of just went on a big tangent there. But it just made me think about that it is. And you hear a lot of people kind of talk about that. grateful to have struggled in one way or another. I embrace it in a sense. Yeah. And, you know, that gratitude is a difficult word. It's a difficult word because it comes at people sometimes then they don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear that word to be grateful. And maybe it's timing. Maybe it's timing. I don't know. But through my journey of helping people,

I've found gratitude for, like check this out, for example, I've been sober since 2020, right? And you could say, well, Johnny, you've been sober for three years. But actually, I've been on a sobriety journey for five years because there were two years before that where I was flirting with sober October and I was making promises to myself and not keeping them. Oh, this time I'm going to do this time, I'm going to do that. And at the time, I felt like the biggest loser ever. why can't I do this? Why can't I be like my friends?

Why is it I go out with my friends, I don't know, out to play golf or something like that? And everyone goes for a pint afterwards and then they go home and cut the grass and I go to the off license. Why am I like that? And I'd be really hard on myself for a really long time. But now I look back and I think to myself, thank God. Thank God I had those two years. Because the thing is, every time you try, you're on that journey. You're on that journey.

And you never know that moment when you decide that you're going to become sober. that could be the starting date, that could be it all, it might be next time, but every single time you relapse, you learn something about yourself. If you listen, if you look at the situation and you think, what happened? If you look honestly, I've come to realize that, yes, I'm a coach and I'm a helper of people. I like to help people, but what I am more than anything is a truth seeker. I made a pact with myself a long time ago that I wouldn't tell myself any lies and I wouldn't tell any lies to other people.

I would tell the truth. and what I say mean by lies, I don't mean anything sinister. I mean like sometimes we can get a bit creative with the truth, right? Sometimes we can create these narratives that we like and make us feel a bit cozy and comfortable, but they're not true. They're not true. And this is why I had to sit that, I had to have that deal with myself. And back when I was promising myself and then breaking them promises,

it's only when I stopped and I looked honestly and go, okay, what happened? Well, you were in the kitchen, you had a disagreement with your partner and you felt resentment and you don't know how to experience resentment. Resentment makes you feel angry. You're scared of your anger because the only think time you saw anger was rage, which was your father. So straight away, I need to emotionally regulate. So what do I do? I go for the alcohol because it works quickly. So it's that compassion. So what I've got now is not an alcohol problem. I've got a problem with my emotions. That's what it taught me. So once I started learning to regulate my emotions, guess what? Alcohol gave me up. I didn't have to give it up because it had no function anymore because I was learning.

how to emotionally regulate myself. So when I learn to emotionally regulate through disappointment, through resentment, through shame, through whatever it is that's coming up that's hard for me, then I know how to deal with that now, without alcohol. And then all of a sudden, I don't have that craving anymore to go for the alcohol because cravings aren't real. They're their reactions. Cravens are reactions. I'm having a difficult emotion, for me anyway. I'm having a difficult emotion. I don't know how to have that emotion. I don't want to have that emotion, so I'm going to drink alcohol because that's going to work and that's going to solve all the problems. But what I don't realize is that it solves problems for a little while. I don't have an off button. And before you

know it, I'm an asshole at 2 o'clock at the morning, which is not what I wanted to be. We've got to look back with gratitude. Those like a baby learning to walk, it stands up, it falls down. It stands up, it falls down. It doesn't stand up and go, oh, I fell down. Maybe walking's not for me. It doesn't do that. It says, okay, it learns. And it learns from what happened. And it strengthens their muscles and that's what we're doing in their moments. We are on the sobriety journey. So we relapse and I get it. Relapse is disappointing. It is very disappointing and I'm not condoning it or saying it's okay. What I'm saying is that if it happens, it's not the end of the world. Because when we come out of that difficult space, funny thing is when you've had a relapse, that next day you are the most

vulnerable you will ever be. And guess what? When you're vulnerable, you don't have the energy to tell yourself them lies anymore. You don't have the energy to make up stories and creative narratives and all them things. You only am dealing with what's true because you're in pain and pain is real. So once you start dealing with, that's when you start to find what you need, you know, and if it's not alcohol, then it has to be something else. Sorry, now I've ranted. No, incredible, though.

And that's what keeps me fresh and keeps me sharp and keeps me going and keeps me away. And I just know for a while there we touched about how the alcohol worked and then in my story, It flipped on me. And then I got to the point to where what you bring up is the honesty part about being honest about my relationship with alcohol. But when I really looked at it about the impact it was having on my life and the role it was playing, it just wasn't getting me anywhere productive. It was just basically putting off things for tomorrow when I saw this reel the other day on Instagram from this. I can't even remember his name, but it was like, how much happiness do I want to borrow from tomorrow? I think he was on Jay Shetty's podcast.

And it just really hit me. And I've seen it kind of floated around, but just the video just really hit is it's how much happiness do you want to borrow from tomorrow. And I'm like, man, that's what I was really doing and really struggling with. But when I was early on going through the pain and didn't know how to work through those emotions, I had just suppressed everything for years. I struggled my whole life. And the couple times I did share with people how I felt, I ended up in a psychiatric hospital on the seventh floor. Anytime I did share with somebody and I was like, well, I don't really enjoy that experience.

So I'll just keep it to myself. I'll go through these suicidal thoughts and I'll go through the sadness. And I don't know if it was necessarily depression. Doctors would say it was. I don't necessarily know if that's what it was at the time for me. But I would just go through that. And eventually it all comes out, right? Eventually it kind of implodes.

And yeah, that's what happened. What was that two years like, right? because Johnny, this is a thing. I mean, this is what I hear a lot. And I can relate to this in my own story is that we get to a spot where we kind of get honest. There's windows of honesty, I think, in people's lives. And we see the writing on the wall kind of deal that alcohol, substances, whatever it is.

It's preventing us from our best life. It's preventing us from being who we want to be, being where we want to be. We realize that. And then we kind of enter in this like maybe curious stage, sober curious or. We try, like you mentioned, moderate. Maybe we don't even, maybe know we're moderating, but we're trying to moderate, right? After this time, this certain money, hang out with these people, change the girlfriend, change the job.

It's kind of everything else. What was that like for you in those two years as you go through that process? You know, when you start a new job and the first two weeks, you start regretting it, you think, I want to go back to my old job because it's familiar and I'm comfortable with that. because it offers me comfort through familiarity. I don't know where anything is. I don't know if I'm doing it right. I don't know anybody.

Everything is anxiety-inducing and confusing, and I just want it all to end. That's what it felt like. And I hear a lot of clients that say to me, oh, every time I get close, I self-sabotage. Now, I don't know if you know me well enough fine out to know that I don't believe in self-sabotage. I'm not against labels.

I just question how helpful they are. because if you tell yourself that you're a self-sabotor, guess what you're always waiting for, that moment when you're going to sabotage? And actually, what I think is not self-sabotaging, it's self-soving. So you know how to be the person you was before.

You're really good at it because you've practiced for many years and you've become really good at it due to that practice. You don't know how to be this new person. And everyone's reacting to you differently. You feel differently. Everything feels different. And that is creating anxiety. And how do you deal with anxiety?

Well, you drink. So it's not actually self-sabotage, it's a way of soothing. It's your only known way of soothing. And I remember when I went to stop drinking, the person that I was working with to help me, said to me, if you want to know why you drink, stop drinking. And it wasn't until that point that I felt those overwhelming emotions that I hadn't felt for a really long time. And I realized that it was that.

For me, it was that. It was them overwhelming emotions. So for those first two years when I was trying to go sober and I was failing, or I felt like I was failing, what I now look back and realize is that every time I relapsed, I learned something. And I never needed to learn it again. There was a fair few lessons in that two years, but every single time I failed, I learned from that failure. Did it hurt? Yes. Was it painful? Yes. Was it hard? Yes. All of those things were true. It was.

And at the time did I want to give up, did I give up? Yeah, the many times. But every single time in the back of my mind, there was a little nagging thing going, you can do this, Johnny, you can do this, Johnny. There was people around me that said, you can do this, Johnny, you can do this, Johnny. And over time, I did do it. I am doing it right now. And that's what makes it so important. And this is where my 4A's come in that I write about in my book at the moment.

And that is the first stage of behavioural change. The first stage is awareness. You cannot address anything if you're not aware of it. The next stage is accountability. Where in here can I take accountability for stuff that I can control, that I can influence, that I'm not outsourcing to someone else or waiting for someone else to do it? Where can I take back my power? And then there's acceptance.

What can't I do anything about here? What am I helpless in? What do I just need to draw a line under and move on and accept? Not like, not condone, not forgive, accept. And then the last thing is, once I am aware of the problem, once I've taken accountability for what I can, once I've accept what I can't, what do I need to do? take action. I need to do something because that's how change gets created. It gets created through change, movement, doing. And so in those two years, there was a lot of lessons. Could they have been

easier? Yeah. Yes, they could. Now I can look back and say, well, thank goodness they wasn't, because let's face it, right? The only way you're going to learn that the flame is hot is by touching it. Now you know what hot means. Are you going to touch it again? No, great. Good. We've learned something, move on. Yeah. It's so true. So true. In the four A's, that's incredible. I also love that one part you brought up there, too, about if you want to find out why you're drinking, then quit drinking. And it'll rise to the surface naturally in a sense. It gives you the things that you need to work on. And going through that process, too, it just makes me think when I had that experience, too, I developed so much resiliency to get back up and keep trying, even though things

over and over again went working. I went through these stages of my addiction to where it was a good time. Then it really had an impact and a ton of consequences on my life. And then I tried to quit but couldn't quit. And then I just came to this place of acceptance of that this is the way my life is. This is how it's always going to be. I've tried so many times to quit. But there was like you mentioned that little voice. There was that nagging thing that always told me you can do better. Like, This is going to take you out. You have people who love you. I had those little things that would come in and out.

And then they got louder. And I started to pay more attention. It was able to at some point, just take a leap of faith in some way, shape, or form that, let me give this a shot. Let me give this all I got because I can always, this is what I used to tell myself in the beginning. I can always go back to the way I was living. They were always going to be selling alcohol. They were always going to be selling other drugs.

and I could always go back, but it was going to take me out. So I was like, let's just give this sobriety everything we got and see if we can make a little bit of change. And if you want to go back to the way you were living, you can do that. And that was kind of the push I needed. I needed that. And then shortly after, you start to experience the benefits. And like, I stopped going to jail and I stopped getting arrested. And people are telling me they're proud of me.

And I was kind of like you in a sense, too, success. was scary to me because I never did well in school. I never really was recognized for doing really well. I mean, my parents came up with creative ways to recognize me for like how I was doing. They did a great job with that, but I struggled to really accept that, to feel it, to believe it. And I just gave myself that chance. So in 2020, you call it quits. What does that look like for you? The day before, that first day, How do you get to work on this? Well, with the four A's there, it was that first time I walked into my therapy session and I'd been going for a while and I said, I think I've got a problem with alcohol.

And the guy I was working with Maliki, he just smiles and he says, I'm very glad you brought this up. Yeah. And I was just like, cool. And there I was. I talk a lot about spiraling. Some people think spiraling is a bad thing, but I feel like you can spiral inwards towards a solution and outwards and make the problem bigger. So if you're spiraling it inwards, you start to

look for solutions and start to rationalise things and understand things and make peace with things. If you make it bigger, then you'll start to use anxiety and make up problems. Oh, this is going to happen. That's going to happen. So it's important which way you spiral. And I started spiraling outwards and saying, oh, I can't give up drinking. I've not got a problem. So-and-soen drinks more than me, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the things that I'm sure you've had a hundred times. And he said, well, what if you tried? And I said, well, yeah, okay. And at the time, it was November.

So I was like, yeah, I'll stop. I'll stop after Christmas. And he says, there'll always be a Christmas. There'll always be a birthday. They'll always be a holiday. There'll always be a bank holiday. There'll always be a reason to keep drinking. And how cool would it be if this time next year when we sat here,

you've got one Christmas under your belt? And you know when you get so angry at somebody because you know they're right. That's how I felt in that moment. But I left there and I said to him, he goes, why don't you stop right now? And I think it was like a Thursday. And this is where I had to be brave. This was the guy who I really respect. So I was going to kind of go against his advice. He put the idea out there that I should stop then and there. And I decided that I needed to say goodbye, that I needed to have that last hurrah, right? So I planned what I was going to do for that weekend.

And it was like a planned breakup. And I told my wife how important it was to me. And we sat and we planned it and there was a nice bottle of red wine and we decanted it and we used the special glasses and all that sort of stuff and I really milked it. I was drinking on that Thursday night, then I was drinking on that Friday night, then I was drinking on that Saturday night and then I knew that the Saturday night was the last night. And my wife, she said to me, I'm going to go to bed now and I'm going to leave you on your own. And she treated it a lot like it was a breakup. up. And she knew that I needed some time alone with alcohol to say goodbye properly. And when she went to bed, I'd finished the wine and there was some whiskey in the kitchen and there was some

coke. And I knew that once that whiskey got to the end, that was it. I was never going to drink again. And something about that moment felt really real. Like I meant it this time. I'd never felt quite that way before. And I went in and I, he took me by surprise. I was watching my favorite show and watching the kitchen to top up the whiskey. And it was the last bit. And I walked in the living room with a whiskey in my hand and I put it on the table and I just cried. I just cried. I couldn't stop crying. And I think it's because I knew that it was over that I was never going to drink alcohol again. And it was extremely emotional and painful for me. And I milked the whiskey, drunk it really slowly. And then I decided to go to bed. And then the next day

I just had this grief, this loss. People think grieving is about people part of. in a way, but it's loss in your life, something that means something to you that's been there for you. If I could create a highlight real on my head of all the times that alcohol had helped me and all them different things or felt felt like a solution. But it wasn't. I'd almost outgrow in it, if that makes sense. So now I just had to get through that very difficult early stages of wanting to drink and missing it and realizing that alcohol is everywhere. I remember going to the supermarket like a week afterwards and I was in the car park and I grabbed the trolley and on the trolley was a advert. On the trolley, I didn't even got in the supermarket yet. When I walked through the door,

there were stacks of beer and I was like, wow, we don't stand a chance. But then obviously, three years later, here I am, sober and happy. And this is the bit that we can't often get through to people is that when they come to us in them early stages of sobriety, you look at them and you say, it will be okay. It doesn't feel like it now. I know how bad it feels right now. I know what's going on your head, the turmoil, all of it, I understand. I totally understand, but it will be okay. And what you have to do right now is build that emotional resilience, build that emotional regulation, focus on that, which means sitting in hard moments. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing. Sometimes you want to do something. I'm in this painful spot. I'm in this emotional

spot. I want to reach for the alcohol, the drugs, the sex, the gambling, whatever it is, but I'm not going to. And that just feels like an eternity. But it becomes easier and easy. And then one day you realize, huh, I haven't thought about alcohol today. Or I haven't thought about alcohol. I mean, I didn't drink in a week. I've been drunk at the weekends. But the problem is that I thought about alcohol all of the time. Once I got to Monday and my hangover was starting to dissipate.

I was already thinking about, oh, maybe we should go out for dinner on Wednesday so I can drink. Maybe we should go to that thing on Friday so I can drink. And everything led there. And that had gone away, all of those habits and practices and things that I used to do, they had no place in my life anymore. And that's where the loss, isn't it? You don't feel like yourself anymore. It's terrifying.

So it's much easier just to go back to drinking because everyone else is comfortable with that too. But that's not the person I want to be. It's one of the things I spot in you. I have an inclination that you were probably scared of your greatness. Now you probably go greatness, Johnny. No, because every person that listened, a million downloads, that's a million times that people have listened

and got help from you, from your podcast. There's somebody sat there now that you'll never meet, probably. who has got the most amount of help from listening to your podcast. And that is greatness. And it doesn't surprise me that you drunk for a little while because it was in you. And you were scared of it. Like you said, you'd never known how to be great. That's terrifying.

All of a sudden it feels like a huge responsibility. But now you're sober and you haven't got that constant nagging voice in your head. Guess what? You've got more space for it. I think there's probably something there with that. But anyway, what am I talking about? I'm not diagnosing you. Send me the invoice.

Johnny, send me the invoice. It's interesting you bring that up because, yeah, that is. And I think for a lot of us, we have something within, right? And if we just keep that stuff down, we don't move in that direction of what we're good at or what we're great at or a passion in life, then we'll get lost with what we're not happy with. I read this quote recently. And I'm not going to hit it exactly on. But it's about a lot of us aim too low when we hit the target. And then we just settle there.

And I think that's what I personally struggled with. I mean, just to keep it short is that I just settled with where things were. I got into that acceptance place about this is my life. I live on my brother's floor in his apartment and I go from job to job and I just try to do the best I can. And if I can get together $15 or $20 every day to get a box of beer or in other stuff, like I'm doing all right and then just drowned out the pain and the desire to be better. But that's ultimately what weighed on me is that I knew, like I had this. area of my life that I could bring out sometimes and really had this ability to connect with

people. And through the struggles that I had, I could hold that space for people where other people get really uncomfortable and they just want to talk, talk, to get out of it. And I was able to just sit there and listen to people. And even when I got into working in the space of helping people 13 years ago, I was able to really do that and let people talk and let people share and really them share what was really going on, beyond just the surface stuff. Yeah. And it was helpful. But yeah, I mean, I think that was a big part of it is like you have this maybe something that you can harness at the time. I had no idea, you know, what that was, but you could feel it, right? Yeah. I could feel that that there was something there to keep going. I love that. And it's beautiful in your story,

too, hearing about the ups and downs, but keep going because I haven't met. a person yet, I don't think, that just decided one day out of the blue that they've got this relationship with alcohol they're not happy with or a problem with drinking. And then they just all of a sudden switch it. A lot of people share about like a two year period or a three year period before where they're kind of chipping away at the block. And I think that is something that if people are out there struggling, that you kind of have to understand. And I love all of the insights because that's reality, right? Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. And we have to learn. learn from both. Incredible stuff, man. Thank you so much for joining in. 49 minutes, wow, time flies.

Is there anything, Johnny, you'd like to leave us with before we sign off? Tell us about your work of where we can find you, all that cool stuff. I'll share a story and then I'll tell you where you can find me if you want to. But when I was 17, I had about four jobs. My wife argued to me and says, I don't think it was that many, but I think it was. I was working in two pubs. I was working the W.H. Smith bringing the papers in and I was working in Wilkinson's stacking the shelves at night. And I didn't have any money. I was walking back to my flat one night and I was crying. And I wasn't suicidal, but I was having this want to give up type of feeling because life set up really hard. I was 17. I had four jobs and no money and didn't have any gas to put on the gas meter at the time.

I had to take a card into the post office, get gas money put on it and then take it home, put it a card and machine. and I'd have gas for cooking and heating. I didn't have any money for that, not even £5. And I'm walking back thinking, this is too hard, I can't do this anymore, I'm crying my eyes out, I'm tired, I'm hungry, and no one going back to a cold house, I want to give up, and I walk around the corner and on the floor is £20. Just a £20 note on the floor.

And I looked around and I looked at thinking, what the hell, I couldn't believe it, I could not believe it. And what that moment taught me was, there will be moments in your life where you really want to give up. But that moment just before you give up, could be that moment just before you find your version of that 20 pounds. So never ever give up. Never give up because you don't know what's around the corner.

Most people give up just before they're about to succeed. They just didn't know it. So that's what I would like to leave people with. Never give up. Keep going. The only time that you lose is when you quit. So don't quit. Keep going.

And it may take five years. It may take two years. It may take 10 days. who knows, but you will get there because you are determined and determination is to keep going. And if you want to find me, you can find me at the self-development coach on Instagram, the self-developmentcoach.com.uk, um, and basically on everything. That's what I do now. I help people with their self-development. I try to get them from where they are now to where they'd like to be in the future. I like to help people regulate and understand their emotions. I like to get people

to see what the truth is about themselves so that they can work with that. Um, and, And yeah, that's it. But, mate, I've been so great. It's been absolutely lovely talking to you. And I've really enjoyed this conversation. I hope others do too. Yes. Thank you so much, Johnny.

Well, there it is. Another incredible episode. So much great stuff I took away from this chat with Johnny. And I know you guys are as well. Be sure if you enjoyed this episode to send him a message over on Instagram. I'll drop the link and everything to his profile on the show notes below, the self-development coach. Thank you so much, Johnny, for a message. sharing your story with all of us.

And if you guys have yet to review the podcast on Apple or Spotify, hop over there when you're done listening to this and drop a review, let me know what you think of the show. It helps other people who might be considering checking out the show, know what you think, and maybe they'll give it a shot. So I'll see you guys on the next one. Until then, be good.