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Sober Talk SA - Bull · Sober Talk SA

• 0:00
  Welcome to Sober talk. I'm Dennis and I have lived the
• 0:06
  experience of alcoholic. If you know of anyone is
• 0:10
  struggling with alcohol, please call Alcoholics Anonymous on
• 0:14
  1300 double 22222 or or check out the website aaorg.org dot AU
• 0:24
  and I'll just do the preamble of Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 0:28
  Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who
• 0:32
  share the experience, strengthen up with each other that they may
• 0:35
  solve their common problems and help others to recover from
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  alcoholism. The only requirement for
• 0:41
  membership is the desire to stop drinking.
• 0:43
  We are no dues of fees free in membership.
• 0:46
  We are self supporting through our own contributions is not
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  allowed with any sex denomination, politics or
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  organization, does not wish to engage in any controversy,
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  neither endorses or oppose any causes.
• 0:59
  Our primary purpose is to stay sober and our other Alcoholics
• 1:03
  achieve sobriety. On today's show we will be doing
• 1:07
  it. We'll be hearing from Bo, a
• 1:10
  member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he'll be telling, he'll be
• 1:15
  telling some of his story, how he's his recovery, his life as
• 1:21
  an alcoholic and, and what it's like to do so.
• 1:26
  I'll just stand it up the ball, I think.
• 1:28
  Malcolm Bull. Yes, Thanks, everyone.
• 1:30
  Yes, welcome to Cyber Talk. My name's Bull and I'm an
• 1:34
  alcoholic. Now to start off with, what I'd
• 1:37
  like to do is just try and explain to people what I mean by
• 1:41
  when I say I'm an alcoholic because I think the natural
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  thing is for people to think of someone in the Parkland and, you
• 1:48
  know, drinking out of brown paper bags, etcetera.
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  But this is, this can be of course, but it's not necessarily
• 1:54
  the definition of an alcoholic as I see the definition of an
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  alcoholic. An alcoholic is someone who's
• 2:00
  stuck in a hopeless condition of mind and body.
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  That means that when I drink, I can't stop drinking.
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  As I drink I tend to get thirstier.
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  And then when I kept eventually sober up and I look at things
• 2:14
  and see that alcohol has caused me so much trouble and drama in
• 2:19
  my life and I decide never to drink again.
• 2:22
  After a period of time, my brain tells me that it's a good idea
• 2:27
  to have a drink. And that to me is the crux of
• 2:30
  alcohol. But anyway, I, you know, I was
• 2:33
  born in Adelaide actually, and I live in the country, lived in
• 2:36
  the country most of my life. But I was born in Adelaide and I
• 2:39
  was brought up in a family where there was quite a, quite a bit
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  of abuse. There was emotional abuse, there
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  was sexual abuse and there was physical abuse.
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  And people say, well this, you know, must be the cause of your
• 2:50
  alcoholism. However, there are many, many
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  people who go through that and never end up Alcoholics.
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  So, you know, I don't wear that as being a cause for alcoholism.
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  However, I did come from an alcoholic bed.
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  My father both my grandfathers were Alcoholics.
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  Anyhow, I I found alcohol when I was about 14 years of age.
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  I was a scared, lonely little child as when I was young.
• 3:17
  As I grew up, I was still scared and lonely, but to not show that
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  I suppose I can't became something of a bit of a bully.
• 3:26
  And I was, I played a lot of sport.
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  I played hard physical sport to try and fit in, to try and see,
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  let people see that I wasn't a scared lonely little boy.
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  But when I found alcohol, it was like the magic elixir of life.
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  All of a sudden I felt like I was part of life.
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  I never felt scared and lonely anymore.
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  I felt like I was the same as everybody else and that I fitted
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  in and that I finally found social solution to my problem.
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  And alcohol was just a wonderful.
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  However, because I abused it quite heavily.
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  Why wouldn't you? It was so wonderful, made me
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  feel so good. By the time I'd reached my mid
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  to late teens, alcohol was definitely a problem in my mind.
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  However, I never thought I was a problem.
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  And really our goal is not the problem, I'm the problem.
• 4:20
  But to overcome this problem. I did a lot of things.
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  I think I'm married young. I was married two days after I
• 4:26
  turned 18. And I thought that that would,
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  that would change, that would help things.
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  I'd left home when I was 15. But of course, things got worse.
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  Things got a lot worse very quickly.
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  We moved, you know, they, they, they talk about that I am
• 4:46
  canolics change their environment often trying to
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  overcome this. So we moved to WA and became a
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  tuna fisherman in WA. We went up to Queensland, we'd
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  come back down to SA. We tried all of the geographical
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  tribe things that we could overcome it, but it never the
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  time. I was 19 years of age.
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  I found myself in my first rehab and in this rehab, at 19 years
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  of age, I was introduced to our colleagues and I remember going
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  to meetings and meeting the people back then. 1975, late
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  1975, early 1976 I went and I met these people and I felt at
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  home. I knew I was the same as them.
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  I identified with their stories, but there was a couple of there
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  was a couple of things that stopped me getting involved with
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  Alcoholics Anonymous at a deep level.
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  And one was I thought I was different.
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  You know, these all these people seem to be saying to me that
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  their problem with alcohol. But if, you know, if you just
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  stop drinking, everything becomes well, everything comes
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  well. And I knew that wasn't the case
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  for me because I already by that time, I knew that I could stop
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  drinking for a period of time, but everything got so bad that I
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  drank it. So stopping drinking, I didn't
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  see the answer to my problem. And the other thing is they kept
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  talking about God, God. And to me, as soon as anyone
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  mentioned God, I immediately thought of religion.
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  I thought of some of my school and my church experiences when I
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  was young, I was sexually abused by a minister of religion.
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  And God just was not going to be the answer for me.
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  Like, and because you said God automatically, that meant
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  Christianity and all of the stuff that I've been through and
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  other people's perception of God does.
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  So for the next 19 years, I continued to try and overcome
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  this problem. I attempted everything at the
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  utmost of my ability. I tried psychology, I tried
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  psychiatry, I tried the the personal growth stuff.
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  I read books about that. I got baptized 3 times.
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  I could go long periods without drinking.
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  But eventually after those long periods, even my wife was happy
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  to see me drinking again in the fence because it seemed that
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  impossible. And when I was not drinking, I
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  would, you know, I love my family.
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  I had two children and I love my wife and love my children.
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  And I'd be riding a motorbike home from work and I'd be
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  thinking on the way home today when I get home.
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  And I was not drinking at this time today.
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  When I get home, I'm going to be a good dad.
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  I'm going to tell the kids, my wife, they've done well.
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  I'd be interested in what they, you know, had to say about that
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  day. I'd be peaceful, I wouldn't be
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  grumpy, all that sort of stuff. I'd get home.
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  I'd walk inside and the kids might bring up their report card
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  or something like that or a project to show me that they're
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  done and they might have got a a being or something like that.
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  And I'd say, well, how come you didn't get paid immediately?
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  I went into critical, I'd put them down and I'd see that fear
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  and loneliness in their eyes. And I knew at that feeling, I
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  knew that look because that was the look I used to get as a
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  child. And yet I could not control my
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  behavior. You know, I couldn't be the
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  person that I always wanted and strive to be.
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  It was impossible. And this would get worse and
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  worse and eventually it would occur to me that would be a good
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  idea to have a drink. And as soon as I picked up the
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  drink, I would continue drinking that you know, that that
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  condition of mine that gets me thirstier as I drink kicked in.
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  And then eventually what would happen is usually I drink for
• 8:52
  about a week and at the end of that week I would be so sick I
• 8:56
  wouldn't have eaten anything. And it got that way.
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  And the finish I drank everything in I thought would be
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  that. I thought, could you know, give
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  me a kick. I drank all the kids perfumes.
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  I drank my wife's perfumes. I drank all the lemon essence in
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  the house. I drank meth.
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  OI remember once I thought that I'd steal.
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  I went out into the laundry. I thought that there was a meth
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  O bottle up on the top of the cupboard that someone had missed
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  clearing out. So I grabbed the bottle, ripped
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  the lid off it. It was a Digger's bottle, brown
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  Digger's bottle and I had a big draft of it and it was bloody
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  cloudy in my the back of my throat.
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  The family, the kids and Jade thought it was AI could talk for
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  about 3 days. In the finish I was a hopeless
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  alcoholic and I would drink anything to try and get off
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  drugs that entered my life. At this stage, I was smoking a
• 9:58
  lot of marijuana on and off. You know, I knew that.
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  I knew that drugs were just part of my alcoholism, but I thought
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  that, you know, that if I just smoke marijuana and didn't
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  drink, then I'd be OK. You know, I might be able to
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  sort of just stave it off that bit, keep some sort of level
• 10:17
  where I wouldn't have to drink. But of course, one thing led to
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  another. I'd smoke marijuana for a while,
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  and then I'd drink, and then it'd be just as big.
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  By the time I was 38 years of age, I was on massive doses of
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  antidepressants and I was on Valium or lots of been those
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  sleeping and that sort of stuff. I was smoking marijuana
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  periodically and I was drinking periodically and I knew that I
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  was hopeless. I knew I was never going to find
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  I wasn't that unique person who was going to find an answer.
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  I knew that I was destined for the gutter.
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  You know, I thought, right, well, this is going to be it.
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  I'll be in out of rehab a few times, probably end up in, you
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  know, one of the homes or dead. And that was to be my life
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  because I had tried everything that I could find at the very
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  best of my ability and not found.
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  Anyway, my my wife had been married for 20 years at this
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  stage. My wife said to me one day.
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  She said, darling, I love you, but I'm not prepared to inflict
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  you upon myself or our family any longer.
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  She'd been going to Al Anon, which is a sister fellowship, I
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  suppose you'd call it, to Alcoholics Anonymous.
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  Weather partners, friends of our children, of the Alcoholics can
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  go and can find a way of dealing with their problem of living
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  with the alcoholic, which is a part of alcoholism.
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  She'd been going there long enough to get healthy enough to
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  tell me the truth. And she could tell me the truth
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  about anger without resentment and any animals and I could see
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  it was the truth because she could tell me it that way.
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  And anyway, I, you know, she said you'll have to leave.
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  And they found a place for me to go.
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  It was a rehabilitation center in Adelaide.
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  When I say it was a rehabilitation, really it was a
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  dumping off place for alcoholic and I was put in there and I
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  didn't think there was any chance for me whatsoever.
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  You know, I'd probably stop drinking for a period of time,
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  make it look all good, get a job, maybe get a place to live,
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  something like that, a relationship maybe.
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  And and then the wheels would fall off again and it would get
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  worse. You know, I was in the circuit
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  of behavior that was going to deliver me eventually into the
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  gutter or into the asylum. So anyway, I was in this place
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  and I was desperate when there was opportunity.
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  I could see the truth about myself.
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  And having seen, having seen the truth about myself, you know,
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  someone said one day, do you want to go to a meeting of
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  Alcoholics Anonymous? And I always wanted to be same
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  as the Whitehead. But we do the right things, get
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  it all the, you know, you got to be able to pull the strings and
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  get the favors and get the good bedroom and get the good jobs
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  and the rehab, all that stuff. I said yes, I'll go to the
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  meeting. Didn't want to go, didn't soon.
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  And I went and the bathing was no different than any other
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  meeting of the Alcoholics Anonymous all over Australia
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  every day of the week. But I sat there near the back
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  and I looked at these people and I'd been going to a A on and on.
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  And I knew these people. I knew some of them.
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  I knew they weren't perfect, but what I saw there, I saw a joy of
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  living. They had joy in their lives.
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  They had hope in them. They hadn't had to drink, you
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  know, some of them hadn't, hadn't had a drink for many
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  years. And I saw that and I thought,
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  well, you know, there's something in it.
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  So I kept going and I just blocked out the God thing.
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  I blocked out a lot of things, I think, but I just kept going
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  because they had something that I wanted.
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  Well, I stated that rehab for seven months and we had a trial
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  and separation of their marriage or a move back into the house
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  and things improved for a period of time.
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  But after two years, my wife says that I was stark raving and
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  everyone who's been sober long enough without a program and
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  they're, oh, knows what that means.
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  I was manically sober and I hadn't had release from
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  alcoholism because instead of not drinking every day, instead
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  of drinking every day, I was not drinking every day.
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  So my focus was still on alcohol, it was on not drinking
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  alcohol. Anyhow, Long story short is I
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  found myself going up for the National Convention which was in
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  Canberra, This is back in 1996. And I saw a guy up there and I
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  said to him, he spoke, I heard him speak and I thought this was
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  the guru, this guy's the captain coach, he's the real view of
• 14:55
  this fella. So I grabbed him after the
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  meeting and I said to him, we'll call him John for the sake of
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  it. I said, now John, I said, now
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  you obviously need to sponsor me, I need you to be my sponsor.
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  I said now I could move up here, probably it'll take me a couple
• 15:09
  of months to organize it, but I'll move up here and you could
• 15:11
  be my sponsor. And he goes, he looked at me and
• 15:13
  he knew what he had. All right.
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  He said to me, he said, well look, he said is there anyone
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  back in Adelaide there who practices the 12 steps of
• 15:23
  Alcoholics Anonymous straight out of the guide book that we
• 15:26
  have called Alcoholics Anonymous?
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  Yeah, I said there is a couple, but I don't like them.
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  He said well I'd be perfect for you, go and ask them, they will
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  sponsor you. So I at least did what he said.
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  I came back and I someone went through the program about
• 15:43
  functional. Now, I knew about the program of
• 15:46
  Alcoholics. It's Anonymous.
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  I could recite it to you word by word, the 12 step, but I had
• 15:52
  never been walked through the program.
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  It's anonymous by someone who had been walked through it.
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  And Alcoholics Anonymous is a lot of people.
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  This is some people who go to meet and stand up, tell their
• 16:07
  stories and don't they? Now, that's not untrue at all.
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  However, the truth of Alcoholics Anonymous is that we have a
• 16:16
  concise program to follow. And if we we get released from
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  the disease of alcoholism and we get a little sure way of living,
• 16:26
  a responsible way of living, we find that we can have a higher
• 16:30
  power, not a God, a higher power in our lives that can give us
• 16:36
  grace to hold us and peace. And that's higher power is close
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  to each and every one of us. Even me who was so anti God,
• 16:46
  anti religion, anti anything to do with spirituality.
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  I have been, and my head's bracing and all the problems of
• 16:59
  the world are in there, and kids and grandkids and friends of
• 17:04
  money and jobs and everything that we all have.
• 17:07
  At night, when I put my head in, I can say, well, I'll put this
• 17:11
  in your hands. But now I'll put this in your
• 17:14
  hand and leave it there and I can be comfortable, at peace,
• 17:18
  and I can sleep. Now.
• 17:20
  This is a vast change to anything I did before.
• 17:24
  Since I got sober in February 1994, my life has had a massive,
• 17:31
  massive change of my I I've. I took up cycling as part of it.
• 17:36
  I've ridden my bicycle around Australia on my own and raised
• 17:40
  money for charity. I've worked now as as a retired
• 17:44
  man, but I work five days a week usually at delivering peaceful
• 17:48
  and mushroom compost for charity raised well over $20,000 for
• 17:52
  charity, the cancer counsel and flying doctor, etcetera and
• 17:57
  doing the peace draw and the mushroom compost.
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  I've got my skipper's certificate.
• 18:01
  I've become a personal trainer. I've run my own business and I
• 18:07
  have one skin will come into things that people that you
• 18:10
  can't do as an alcoholic. I've done lots and lots of those
• 18:13
  things. Or do they truck for many years
• 18:17
  in my sobriety, Interstate track B double trip.
• 18:20
  We've worked for over 10 years in the wine industry, driving
• 18:23
  the truck carting from up in the Hunter Valley down to the
• 18:27
  Margaret River region. I'd go weeks at a time, but I
• 18:32
  had my friends. I could ring up our friends in a
• 18:35
  a I'd ring up. I met people as I'd stopped, I'd
• 18:38
  be coming into oh, and you know, and I'd bring up old Jack and
• 18:41
  it'd say, I'll make you down the line.
• 18:42
  I'll have a coffee and I'd sit down and whatever coffee
• 18:45
  together and we talk and we talk a bit about program, we talk a
• 18:48
  bit about life sort of thing. Just like good old mates, you
• 18:52
  know, this happened all over Australia and then and that's
• 18:56
  all good. Like so many wonderful things
• 18:58
  have happened to him. Felix Anonymous here, just a few
• 19:01
  years ago, back in February of 2016, my darling daughter.
• 19:07
  Now, when I got sober, my daughter wanted nothing to do.
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  You know, when I finished drinking, she said, I don't care
• 19:14
  if I never see you again in my life.
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  And yet we ended up with the closest, most beautiful bond in
• 19:23
  the room, holding her hand when both my grandchildren were born.
• 19:28
  And back in February 2016, she contracted cervical cancer 12
• 19:34
  months before. And I was there just shortly
• 19:39
  before she died. You know, she'd been in that she
• 19:42
  had the cancer with about six months to go.
• 19:45
  She knew she wasn't going to recover.
• 19:47
  And I'd sit with her and talk with her and, and then on the
• 19:51
  last few days, of course, when she was just lying on the bed
• 19:54
  and she was incommunicative, about an hour, bit under an hour
• 19:59
  before she died, my wife had come and it was my turn to go
• 20:02
  home. Wife was going to be there.
• 20:04
  We were doing shifts down there. And I held her hand and I said,
• 20:07
  darling, I'm so proud of you. You've just been the best
• 20:12
  daughter a man could ever have. And I held a hand and I knew
• 20:17
  that she loved me and I loved her and I'd been given the
• 20:21
  opportunity. To be a dad, you know, for the
• 20:24
  1st 1820 years of her life, I wasn't at that at all.
• 20:28
  But because I got sober, because I've got the program in my life,
• 20:32
  because my life had changed because of Alcoholics Anonymous,
• 20:35
  I'd gone, I'd gone from a drunken, useless non father to
• 20:41
  someone who could be a responsible dad who could be
• 20:45
  there in the end for her. You know, and our colleagues,
• 20:48
  Anonymous, the program of AI through the program and the
• 20:52
  people of AI managed and my wife managed.
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  We got through her death. We got through going through,
• 21:00
  you know, we'll go through the grieving from that for the rest
• 21:02
  of their lives, of course. And these things happen to other
• 21:05
  people. I don't think that, you know,
• 21:08
  everything's just wine and roses.
• 21:09
  After you get sober, what you get is you get normal life.
• 21:13
  Yes, a lot of wonderful, amazing, fabulous things happen,
• 21:17
  but there's also tragedy and sporo and grief.
• 21:20
  All the things that life hold are there.
• 21:23
  The totality, the wholeness, the sanity of life is in front of
• 21:27
  us. I am now coming up, I don't
• 21:29
  know. I'm, I'm, I'm 26 or 2626 years
• 21:34
  sober now and people think, oh, well, that's it.
• 21:37
  You'll never drink again. But this disease is cunning,
• 21:41
  it's battling and it's powerful and it's patient.
• 21:45
  And I know that I need to work on my spiritual condition.
• 21:49
  And I do that through Alcoholics advance.
• 21:51
  I work on my spiritual condition on a daily basis, and if I do
• 21:56
  that, I don't think, you know, I've had this experience one day
• 22:01
  at a time for so many years. It's a fact, it's the truth.
• 22:05
  Alcoholics Anonymous works. It works in different ways for
• 22:09
  different people. So in the same way for different
• 22:12
  people, so many, I think that there's over 2 million people
• 22:16
  there that have a different life to buy Alcoholics Anonymous, the
• 22:22
  most successful treatment for alcoholism that has ever been
• 22:27
  known, not just today, that has ever been known.
• 22:31
  I was too clever to join for so many years.
• 22:35
  Please, please don't be too clever to have a look at our
• 22:39
  colleagues Anonymous and then you can join me and so many
• 22:44
  others in the joy of living. Thanks.
• 22:47
  Welcome back. We have a number of local
• 22:52
  meetings in the area. There's a meeting every night in
• 22:56
  the in this in the Salisbury area.
• 23:00
  There's one Monday night meeting at Gawler at 8:00 PM Tuesday.
• 23:05
  Elizabeth E at 8:00 PM Wednesday, Elizabeth E at 8:00
• 23:10
  PM. Thursday at 2, Wells at 8:00 PM.
• 23:13
  Friday in Salisbury at 8:00 PM. Saturday at Devron Park at
• 23:18
  12:00, Sunday in Salisbury at 7:00 PM.
• 23:22
  And for further details of your locking meetings, please call
• 23:26
  1300 Double 22222. Once again, it's up to anyone
• 23:31
  you know struggling with the alcohol issues, please call
• 23:35
  Alcoholics Anonymous on 1300 Double 22222 or check out their
• 23:40
  website ata.org dot AU.