Latest / Sober Talk SA / Sober Talk SA - Dave

Transcript

Sober Talk SA - Dave · Sober Talk SA

• 0:00
  If you or anyone you know is struggling with alcohol, please
• 0:04
  call Alcoholics Anonymous on 1300 double 22222 or check out
• 0:09
  their website on aa.org dot AU. I'll just run through the
• 0:15
  preamble of Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 0:18
  Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who
• 0:22
  share their experience strengthen up with each other.
• 0:24
  They must so they come problems and help with us to recoup from
• 0:28
  alcoholism. The only requirement for
• 0:31
  membership is a desire to stop drinking.
• 0:33
  There are no Jews at fees for a membership.
• 0:36
  We are self support through our own contributions.
• 0:38
  A is not allied with any second nomination.
• 0:41
  Politics, organization or institution does not wish to
• 0:45
  engage in any controversy, neither endorses or oppose any
• 0:49
  causes. Our primary purposes stays open,
• 0:52
  help other Alcoholics achieve sobriety.
• 0:56
  My name is Dave, I'm an alcoholic and it's slowly to be
• 1:00
  here. Down at the National Convention
• 1:03
  in Adelaide, I was binge drinker and I can go for quite a while
• 1:09
  without without needing a drink. But as soon as the pressure or
• 1:16
  anxiety came in, then I'd drink. And I was.
• 1:20
  It was a long time before I realized that there was an
• 1:23
  alcoholic and on my last day of drinking or my last one day of
• 1:28
  drinking I was due to due to talk to some car dealers.
• 1:33
  I used to work for Motor Company and to start the morning off I
• 1:38
  went down to the local supermarket which is started out
• 1:40
  in early and I bought 2 cans of wine and the only although I had
• 1:46
  a lovely wine cellar at home. The only necessity that was that
• 1:52
  on the on each can it said 13% alcohol and I drank the two cans
• 1:59
  went and talked to the car dealers and I didn't have a lot
• 2:02
  to do for the rest of the day. But I got a call from one of the
• 2:06
  directors and it was when we launched a Scorpio and I had he
• 2:10
  had a problem with his car and I had the drive over and get it
• 2:13
  pick his car up on my way. I always maintained I had to go
• 2:18
  past my house to get there. But if you put it in Google Maps
• 2:23
  you would go probably via Aberdeen before you go past my
• 2:26
  house. And I stopped there and I picked
• 2:30
  up a Butler Scotch which I had hidden under the floorboards in
• 2:34
  the bathroom and I lifted the carpet and under the floorboards
• 2:39
  got the Butler Scotch back with the floorboards and down with
• 2:44
  the carpet and it was the whole foam back carpet.
• 2:47
  And as I dropped it back, all this black dust goes all up the
• 2:50
  wall and now I've got to get the vacuum cleaner out and stuff to
• 2:54
  clean all the dust up before my wife gets home.
• 2:58
  And it's hard work being an alcoholic.
• 3:02
  Anyway, I set off around and picked up his car and meanwhile
• 3:05
  I'm drinking. I'm drinking the Scotch as I'm
• 3:07
  driving around and I was off to France that evening.
• 3:10
  So now I've got to get to the airport and I set off down the
• 3:15
  motorway and I'm running like anyway and I must have been
• 3:19
  doing 6070 miles an hour and alcohol by now has got an effect
• 3:24
  on me that it makes me fall asleep and I fell asleep at a
• 3:27
  wheel. I smashed the car into the
• 3:29
  central reservation it and and it was like it was all in slow
• 3:35
  motion and I managed to get the car to the side of the motorway
• 3:40
  and I had what I now believe. Well, I like to go blue light
• 3:44
  sobriety because I knew the police were coming and I and I
• 3:49
  was, I was, I was scared. And when I was scared I did what
• 3:53
  I always did and I ran and I left the motorway.
• 3:57
  I'm over the motorway fence and I'm trucking across this field
• 4:01
  and I'm heading for Epping Forest.
• 4:03
  I am going to clue which way Epic Forest is, but it's the
• 4:06
  equivalent of your Bush in around London.
• 4:10
  And I I was put out. There was two concerned citizens
• 4:15
  who stopped and they they quietly or quickly came after me
• 4:20
  and brought me back to the road, back to the motorway.
• 4:24
  The police arrived and they took me to Brentwood police station
• 4:28
  and I was put in the cells there and that while they bought
• 4:31
  charges and I failed the breathalyzer miserably.
• 4:34
  I was three times over and they let me go and even offered me a
• 4:40
  lift home and I was walking up through Brentwood station or to
• 4:45
  through Brentwood. I'd already made a decision
• 4:47
  while I was in the cells and I'd love to say to you that the
• 4:51
  decision I made was to call A A. But it wasn't.
• 4:55
  A decision I made was to kill myself and I had plenty of pills
• 5:00
  with me because I was on AI was on a trip abroad and as I walked
• 5:05
  up through Brentwood I stopped in an off licence.
• 5:08
  I picked up a bottle of vodka and I knew where I was going to
• 5:11
  commit suicide. There's a little wood behind
• 5:13
  where I live and that's where I was going to commit suicide and
• 5:17
  I didn't end up there. I ended up in the grounds of
• 5:19
  Brentwood Cathedral for, and I don't know why, but they had a
• 5:23
  very active little social flow and I hunkered down behind this
• 5:28
  social club and I took the swallow the pills and I squashed
• 5:33
  it down in the vodka and I'm sitting there waiting to die.
• 5:37
  But as it was an active social club, every time anybody went
• 5:40
  in, in or out of the social club, the door bent and I'm
• 5:44
  sitting there waiting to die and I'm getting a resentment against
• 5:47
  the people who are keeping me awake.
• 5:49
  Anyway, somebody found me. They call the police.
• 5:53
  The police. Police picked me up and then
• 5:56
  took me to Old Church Hospital. I have no recollection of that
• 6:01
  night at all. I the only thing I remember is
• 6:05
  the policeman turning around to me and saying whatever you do,
• 6:08
  do not throw up in the back of my car.
• 6:11
  I woke up in the morning and I couldn't tell you where I spent
• 6:14
  the night, whether it was in a bed, on a chair or on a trolley.
• 6:18
  But standing in front of me was a woman, blonde hair, glasses,
• 6:22
  and a white coat, and I pretty soon figured out that she was
• 6:26
  trying to get me committed. So I did no more than discharge
• 6:30
  myself from the hospital, still determined to kill myself.
• 6:35
  Now Old Church Hospital was in the middle of Romford, and it's
• 6:37
  surrounded by a dual carriageway, but there is also
• 6:41
  an underpass that allows you to get into the town.
• 6:44
  I didn't know this so I crossed the dual carriageway very
• 6:48
  carefully climbing over the barriers. 3 barriers I think,
• 6:53
  and I crossed the road carefully on my way to commit suicide.
• 6:58
  I went to boots. I bought 2200 pair of CD markers
• 7:02
  you could in those days found somewhere to buy a bottle of
• 7:05
  vodka and this is quite a busy town so I've got to try and find
• 7:09
  somewhere nice and quiet to die. Eventually I did.
• 7:12
  I found a the what was the Romford to Upminster branch line
• 7:17
  and I sat down beside the railway line and I wrote my wife
• 7:21
  a letter. I can't remember what was in it
• 7:24
  now. I took a pills, washed it down
• 7:28
  with the vodka and in blackout apparently I walked, wandered
• 7:34
  down onto the railway line, fell between the rails and the train
• 7:39
  came along. The driver couldn't stop from
• 7:43
  what the Transport Police told me.
• 7:45
  The train somehow bowled me over, threw me up between the
• 7:50
  trail wheels and all I had wrong with me was that I had broken
• 7:54
  arm and a broken leg. The the two Transport Police
• 7:58
  phoned for the helicopter from the London hospital and I was in
• 8:01
  intensive care in London hospital for about 3 days when I
• 8:06
  came out with a sort of coma I was in, I was put in a side ward
• 8:11
  and I was put in a psychiatric watch for 2424 hours.
• 8:16
  Psychiatric watch. And while I was there, I knew I
• 8:21
  couldn't drink again. And that was purely out of fear
• 8:26
  that I couldn't drink again. And I know today that I would
• 8:29
  have overcome that fear. And while I'm thinking that
• 8:32
  while I'm there I'm thinking, well, I can't drink again, I
• 8:36
  know what I'll do and smoke dope.
• 8:38
  I wasn't in Township smoker before.
• 8:40
  Well that seemed the old meal alternative to to not drink to
• 8:45
  being unable to drink alcohol. I was eventually move eventually
• 8:49
  got out of that hospital in a private another private hospital
• 8:52
  where they operated again on my leg.
• 8:56
  And then there's the psychiatrist who was who was
• 9:00
  there looking after me was also a medical director of a rehab
• 9:05
  and she said to me one day she said you must have gone through
• 9:09
  the menu at this hospital. She says why don't you come over
• 9:12
  to the primary hospital? She said, and we've got a good
• 9:16
  chef and we've got Sky TV. So I said, all right, I'll come.
• 9:21
  So I ended up in a rehab and I was on a general ward to start
• 9:24
  with and eventually a guy came to see me.
• 9:28
  He said, do you want to come to group therapy?
• 9:31
  I said, will it help me stop smoking?
• 9:34
  I said no. He said no.
• 9:36
  I said I won't bother then. But he he didn't give up.
• 9:39
  And the following day he came back with about 3 full scrap
• 9:42
  sheets of sort of yes no questions and said I've got to
• 9:48
  I've got to put these through the computer.
• 9:49
  I'll be back in a little while. I know today that they didn't
• 9:53
  have a computer to build those through.
• 9:55
  He'd just been away and a cup of coffee cigarette and he came
• 9:59
  back and pronounced me a chronic alcoholic, which was absolutely
• 10:02
  disgraceful medical procedure in my book.
• 10:05
  Anyway, I joined the addiction treatment program and I wasn't
• 10:11
  getting on well. I was telling the councillors,
• 10:14
  well, I thought they wanted to hear rather than what they what
• 10:17
  they really wanted to hear. I was AI meetings were
• 10:20
  compulsory, so I was going to AI meetings as well, but I still
• 10:24
  really wasn't kidding what was going on.
• 10:27
  And then one night I'm sitting in my room and it's like the
• 10:32
  whole of the room opened up. And over in the grounds of the
• 10:38
  grounds of the of the rehab, there was this apparition of a
• 10:41
  monk and I. But I couldn't see his hands or
• 10:44
  his face or his feet, and the whole image moved closer and I
• 10:49
  still couldn't see his house. There was face or his feet, but
• 10:52
  I got this tremendous feeling of reassurance, and I couldn't tell
• 10:56
  you whether that apparition lasted 10 seconds, 10 minutes or
• 11:00
  10 hours. All I know is that something
• 11:03
  changed within me and I I got this spiritual experience or
• 11:07
  spiritual awakening that changed me completely.
• 11:10
  I was able then to start becoming starting to become
• 11:13
  honest and I was able to start engaging with the programme
• 11:18
  within the. In the addiction treatment
• 11:21
  programme I I did steps 1-2 and three in there and then came out
• 11:29
  with my sponsor, the 1-2 and three again the proper way and
• 11:32
  carried on working the steps. But on my I got into hobby very
• 11:38
  early on in A and as I said I had a broken on a broken leg
• 11:44
  from going onto the train. And one night today a meeting I
• 11:49
  went to give the lady secretary a hug and as I went to Hugger I
• 11:53
  got tangled up in my crutches. And as as I fell forward the
• 11:58
  only thing I could cling on to was this lady's chest, which
• 12:02
  from memory was 36 double D and I like to class that as my
• 12:07
  second spiritual away. We were intimate at our first
• 12:12
  meeting but never again. And but I I I was very lucky
• 12:18
  that it was that the compulsion to drink was removed from the
• 12:22
  early on and I was able to carry on working his steps as best I
• 12:27
  could. In fact today is the is almost
• 12:31
  an anniversary of my first step forward by my first step forward
• 12:36
  and I remember sitting down and it was Easter and I had it all
• 12:42
  all sort of written out in front of me.
• 12:45
  I had the big book way and as I sat down to start writing my for
• 12:50
  my four step inventory I'm thinking I could do with a drink
• 12:54
  now and I look at it a fire obviously didn't take that step
• 12:57
  and carried on to do the first step but I've had a wonderful
• 13:01
  life and in a a my daughter's in this fellowship she's I never
• 13:08
  and although I was aware that she that the of the hereditary
• 13:14
  possibility that she may have the alcoholic gene I never saw
• 13:19
  it come. It was a complete shock to me
• 13:21
  but luckily enough she's she's been so for over half her life
• 13:28
  now for me to achieve that I got to live till M94 and I'll give
• 13:34
  it a go anyway decide know on what God's given God's God's got
• 13:38
  in store for me. I've had a wonderful life and
• 13:42
  and and and I've now become addicted to doing tagalongs in
• 13:48
  Australia. My daughter first set me up in
• 13:51
  the year to go to on a Tagalong and I met up with Walkabout
• 13:57
  Wally in Cuba PD and and one of the first things we did was go
• 14:04
  down a go down and open mine And there was my daughter was six
• 14:08
  months pregnant at the time. There was about five or six of
• 14:11
  us who went down and we mined some Opal.
• 14:14
  Anyway as we're about to come out the gentleman who owned it
• 14:18
  owned the mine. He goes up first and he's about
• 14:21
  10 foot up in the air when the when the generator broke down so
• 14:25
  we've got no way of getting out. Eventually he gets out by by a
• 14:29
  different route and goes and gets another generator
• 14:33
  organized. But while we're down there, we
• 14:35
  were down there for about 4 1/2 hours.
• 14:38
  The only thing you could do was have an A A meeting.
• 14:41
  There will never be another meeting down there because
• 14:43
  nobody could ever find that mine again.
• 14:46
  But we had a wonderful time in LED and then we worked our way
• 14:49
  up all the way up to Darwin for their for their round up and I
• 14:56
  got addicted. Saga limes.
• 14:57
  I must admit that was my first time out into the Bush.
• 15:00
  I live in the in the suburbs of Essex and now I'm in the Wilds
• 15:06
  of Australia and we don't have corrugations in the in Essex to
• 15:11
  in ubed and but you you've seem to have quite a few in Australia
• 15:17
  and we went all the way up to Darwin to their round up over at
• 15:21
  the Kakadu and and Litchfield and I I I fell in love with
• 15:28
  Australian Outback. I've done a lot more since I've
• 15:32
  done 4. I've done 4 national conventions
• 15:35
  in Australia. I'm doing 4 dualist daily
• 15:38
  roundups and I I just can't get enough of AA in Australia.
• 15:44
  I love AA in England, but I I loved AA in Australia as well.
• 15:50
  And I'm still, I'm still Cape York.
• 15:53
  Oh yes, Oh yes, Cape York. Dennis was just reminding me,
• 15:59
  well, he called me one day or he texting me one day and said
• 16:03
  we're going to Cape York and I said I'm coming.
• 16:07
  So I booked my airline ticket and a clue I was going to get up
• 16:11
  there anyway. About a month or so before we're
• 16:15
  due to go I start looking to hire a four by four up out of
• 16:20
  Cairns to go all the way up to Cape York and I'm looking around
• 16:25
  and I can't find anything. I'm looking for mining vehicles,
• 16:28
  can't find anything there either.
• 16:30
  Anyway, my wife was visiting my daughter in in Australia in
• 16:35
  Sydney and she went down to the fish and chip shop and there in
• 16:40
  the window was an advert for an old 2001 Prado blank cruiser
• 16:45
  Prado. So she got it checked out.
• 16:50
  She got my daughter to check it out and her her no old Carmen
• 16:56
  and anyway my wife bought it for me and I was like a kid at
• 17:01
  Christmas. I have never been so excited
• 17:04
  about owning a vehicle and I wasn't going to tell Wally that
• 17:09
  I got this 4x4 and I was just going to roll up but risked a
• 17:14
  big man in his four by four. But I was then excited that I've
• 17:19
  that. I texted him and told him I've
• 17:21
  got a 4 by 4. Anyway, he phoned me back the
• 17:25
  following day. He says, are you going to fall
• 17:27
  by for what I said? Yeah, he says, well, Dennis and
• 17:31
  I are being trouble hiring one, Can we come with you?
• 17:34
  So we all went up together and we had a wonderful fellowship
• 17:38
  trip all the way up to the top of Pape York and all the way
• 17:43
  round and various places up around there.
• 17:46
  And it's really wild. And we had a wonderful,
• 17:48
  wonderful trip and then we came back down to Cairns and then we
• 17:52
  set off across the top as well all the way over the Darwin on
• 17:55
  the dirt. And it was wonderful.
• 18:00
  There's so much, there's so much spirituality both in the in the
• 18:03
  territory and and driving through driving through those
• 18:07
  lands that it's it's an experience of I've never
• 18:11
  forgotten and we'll never forget it's and it's part of recovery.
• 18:17
  Recovery means to me the freedom and where I was trapped, if you
• 18:21
  like, in this constant cycle of of alcoholism.
• 18:26
  Today I'm free. I can't believe that my wife
• 18:30
  bought me that vehicle because obviously she's suffered my
• 18:34
  alcoholism. I was never violent.
• 18:36
  But you can be violent when you're tongue.
• 18:39
  You're be violent with your attitudes and you'll be violent
• 18:41
  with it. In many other ways it was in
• 18:44
  physically violent. She obviously must care for me.
• 18:47
  So love me enough to buy me a vehicle and I've still got it.
• 18:52
  I've still got it. I've done thousands and
• 18:55
  thousands of miles in it. I've been to roundups, I've
• 18:58
  built the meetings, I've been up and down the middle two or three
• 19:01
  times. But when I was coming back down
• 19:04
  the down in 2017, I was driving South of Marie and all of a
• 19:10
  sudden I thought I'd had a blow out and I didn't brake very hard
• 19:15
  thank God. But only it actually happened a
• 19:17
  bull joint but failed and a Wheeler Wheeler Co off and I
• 19:23
  pulled up and I'm in the middle of nowhere.
• 19:26
  It's Sunday, there's no fair reception and the one thing that
• 19:30
  really struck me was I wasn't afraid.
• 19:34
  I knew I could do to. I picked a camp spot out.
• 19:38
  I knew I'd like to fire up the road because the road trains
• 19:41
  going through and they don't stuff for innocent and that
• 19:44
  surprised me, the fact I wasn't afraid.
• 19:47
  Eventually somebody came along, fuck it, got the vehicle, picked
• 19:51
  me, got the vehicle picked up. I spent a week in Copley and
• 19:55
  surrounds which is a very quiet little place but I had a lovely
• 19:59
  time visiting wherever I could and and that's that's what it
• 20:04
  means to me. The freedom from fear, the
• 20:06
  freedom to do what I want, and the freedom to be here.
• 20:11
  And I've had a lovely time. And everywhere I've been, it's
• 20:18
  been new to me. It's something fresh, something
• 20:21
  to see, something to believe and something to experience.
• 20:25
  I've had a my daughter's, as I say, is into fellowship when in
• 20:29
  our early days we used to have deeper, meaningful discussions.
• 20:33
  And she'd say to me, Father, how many open steps are you working
• 20:38
  in your program today or the one that really used to kill me was
• 20:42
  father, why don't you phone your sponsor.
• 20:46
  And. And so we have a lovely
• 20:48
  relationship. We have a father, daughter
• 20:50
  relationship and we have an A, a relationship as well and that's
• 20:54
  that's a great thing. Humility, ego and humility were
• 21:00
  two things that bite each other if you like.
• 21:02
  But I had a wonderful restoration to humility by a guy
• 21:08
  who had known he'd been about around about a year and he used
• 21:12
  to phone me up and we chat about how he was doing and all the
• 21:14
  rest of it. And we got talking about he was.
• 21:19
  But actually we stepped forward. I said, well, how are you
• 21:22
  getting on about it? He says, well, I've written some
• 21:24
  of it. He said, and and I said, and he
• 21:28
  sounded like he wanted me to take him through Step 5 or
• 21:31
  that's what I thought. I said, well, I'm going away at
• 21:35
  a bit soon. I said for a few weeks.
• 21:37
  I said I'm, I'm not able to take you through step five.
• 21:41
  He said put your ego back in your pocket, Dave, I wasn't
• 21:44
  going to ask you to be my sponsor.
• 21:47
  So I had a very, very good restoration to humility by
• 21:51
  somebody who'd been around for just a short while.
• 21:53
  And that's it. I learn more from the new caller
• 21:56
  than I can do from the old time. And that's where I hope I can
• 21:59
  keep that open mind forever. And thanks very much for
• 22:02
  listening. We have local meetings for the
• 22:07
  full week in the local area. Monday is Gala meeting at 8:00,
• 22:12
  Tuesday is Elizabeth E at 8:00, Wednesday is Elizabeth E at
• 22:18
  8:00, Thursday is 2 Wells at 8:00, and Friday is Salisbury at
• 22:24
  8:00. There's a meeting at Devron Park
• 22:27
  at 12:00, and on Sunday there's a meeting in Salisbury at 7:00
• 22:32
  and many other meetings in the area.
• 22:33
  For details of your local meetings, please phone 1300
• 22:41
  double 22222. And once again, if anyone you
• 22:45
  know is struggling with alcohol issues, please call Alcoholics
• 22:48
  Anonymous on 1300 double 22222, the website isaasa.org dot AU.