IN RECOVERY - The Ark House Podcast

IN RECOVERY - The Ark House Podcast - S1 EP15 - HIGHLIGHTS PART TWO

• Ark House Rehab • Season 1 • Episode 15

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IN RECOVERY is a companion guide for those on their recovery journey from addiction or for people wanting to make a change in their life. It's also a valuable resource for anyone wanting to know more about the stories and science behind addiction. 

IN RECOVERY is bought to you by Ark House Rehab in Scarborough which opened its doors 34 years ago and has since helped thousands of people on their recovery journeys. 

SEASON ONE has finished but in the second of two special episodes, we take a moment to look at the highlights of our chats with celebrities, professionals in the recovery community and former residents from Ark House who are thriving and want to carry the message of recovery to you. 

Sit back and enjoy chats with some of the most inspirational people you could meet. 

Richard, Sam and the team at IN RECOVERY want to thank your incredible support for Season One of the podcast. Season Two is currently in production and will be with you very soon. 

In the meantime please follow us on Facebook and Instagram for daily recovery content. 

If you or a loved one need help from addiction, please know there is help. Reach out and speak to Ark House today....

PHONE 01723 371869

EMAIL info@arkhouserehab.co.uk

ADDRESS 15 Valley Road, Scarborough, Y011 2LY

WEBSITE www.arkhouserehab.co.uk

FACEBOOK  @arkhouserehabltd

INSTAGRAM @in_recovery_podcast

SPEAKER_14

Welcome to another extra episode of In Recovery, the Ammachamas Podcast, where we look at some more highlights from season one. I'm Richard, and I'm one of the thousands of people who have walked through the jumps of Ammacham's Rehab in Scanborough to start my recovery journey. Along with Sam, we now bring you tips from professionals and chats with celebrities who have battled addiction. We also speak to other former residents of Amakham who offer them messages of faith, hope, and courage. And that's where we start with some of the inspirational summaries from people who have walked in the drums of Ammercamus Producum and have gone on to walk a new path in life free of substances. The graduates of season one.

CARL - GRADUATE

SPEAKER_12

Do you remember when things got out of control?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, when it got really bad. Um it was the start of COVID. What I was doing, I was letting the lads go to work. I was just earning a wage. But that allowed me to have an income and isolate on my own. And that's when I really fell in love with vodka, and that's when uh start going to getting locked up to hospitals, getting closer together, more serious, going to jail, fighting for my life, comas, paralysed twice. But even then, I remember the first time I was paralysed from the neck down. Maybe he's not walking again and stuff like that, but it was irrelevant because once I got on my feet, I was at the corner shop for vodka before I even knew what was wrong with me. You know, that's not once, that's twice. And then um I died out of that pre-mark. Thank God they brought us back, you know, just drinking gin violently. That's the only way I can explain it, and just to black out, I wasn't comfortable in my own skin. You know, it was impossible for me to do good in the world and be a nice person when I hated me. I despised myself, you know, but I forgive myself today. I realised that how like irresponsible it was of me. I am accountable for for what drunk car was doing, but I'm alright with that as well because I know it wasn't me. I love that.

SPEAKER_12

It really shows the insanity of our addictions, doesn't it? Like you've died, come back to life and still carried on.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, absolutely. Um the levels were it didn't take me to, the levels of insanity were looking back now, it was scary. You know, I've got two little beautiful daughters there who I would have just pushed out the way to get a vodka. You know, that my love for them was absolutely irrelevant because I fell in love with vodka a hell of a lot more. And at the end, it wasn't it wasn't a case of you know, I was living to drink, I I had to drink to live. You know, the seizures had got that bad. I was I was out all dependent, but everything just went, you know, kind of my kids went, and even when that stopped, it was a bonus. I was like, well, I won't have the mum's torch for me anymore now, you know. So I was left to my own devices then. And obviously, I was a roofer, I had a roofing company. That that went a pot. I'm an alcoholic how I'm meant to be a roofer and run a roofing company, and uh just everything went, but I'd shut the towel in at the end. I wasn't bothered, it was just a case of like, well, when am I gonna die? Because that's what I'm waiting for now. And I'd completely accepted it. That this life wasn't meant to be for me. And I got a workhouse, for the grace of God. You know, everybody who made it possible in Middlesbrough, life just is not the same today. I could I I can't imagine life without a 12-step program at the higher power. I'm just grateful that I made it through that dark moment because they always say that there's light at the end of the tunnel, and well, if I was waiting for this light, it was worth

BECKY - GRADUATE

SPEAKER_03

it.

SPEAKER_12

Coming into rehab can be a scary thought. Do you remember when you came into our cows? Yeah.

SPEAKER_10

Yeah, um, you know, I was broken, I was hopeless, and I have nothing to live for anymore. You know, I wanted to die on a daily basis, and you know, my experience with coming into this place was um, you know, I I had a glimmer of hope. And what actually got you here? What was the turning point? I wanted to die on a daily basis, you know, um yeah, you know, I had nothing left in my life, I just couldn't see no way out. You know, I've tried recovery in the rooms, and you know, I was really blocked off from anything um because I was still using. I just I it I just I'd just come to a point in my life I wanted to die, you know, and it was it was either death or try recovery.

SPEAKER_12

Yeah, that's the thing, innit? Like it's either carry on doing what we're doing and like you know, end up in a grave or in jails and institutions or seek help, you know. Yeah. If you could whittle it down to just one thing, what part of the rehab process had the most positive effect on you? The 12 steps. A lot of people, when they come in here, they found it difficult, you know, when they get the the book and the 12 steps. How was it like for you?

SPEAKER_10

You know, that that doubt in my head was I can't do this, why are they giving me an alcoholic anonymous book? Um, I didn't know what to do, I didn't understand the book, you know. So I was in a lot of fear around that. Yeah, I just thought, you know, why are you giving me this book?

SPEAKER_12

So, what advice would you give to people that are suffering with addiction, you know, and they're worried about this 12-step book of Alcoholics Anonymous?

SPEAKER_10

You know, my experience is, you know, once I started listening and and and looking at the book, you know, I could see that it's it's for me it was set out in such a way in certain parts of the book I really related to it around my drug issues, you know. So I set aside anything to do with alcohol, you know, and I replaced that for for substances.

JULIAN - GRADUATE

SPEAKER_06

Here we go.

SPEAKER_12

So we kind of touched on it, but what advice would you give to people who may be struggling to cope with life after rehab?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'll say get us also straight away, you know, that's vital that, you know, and um just like the meetings and like you know, the thing about this fellowship, uh yeah, and uh NNA, that's it, yeah. There's just so many numbers you can talk to, you know, it's unbelievable. And I can talk to anybody, you know, it's just fantastic. And not keeping anything to yourself, that's be honest. Get a good sponsor and be be honest.

SPEAKER_12

Yeah, I mean, for those who are listening who are wondering about getting a sponsor, it's such a special relationship. I mean, me and my sponsor, like she's been here from the beginning. You know, I've told her all my darkest secrets, you know, and she does not judge me. Um, if anytime I've got any pressing issues, you know, I could just ring her up, get some sound advice. It's just a beautiful connection to have.

SPEAKER_00

You know, and it's just also it's uh just follow behind each other, don't they? For the for the reason, it's just you know, that book is just it's it's saving my life.

SPEAKER_12

I don't know where I'd be without that big book. What does life actually look like for you now being clean and sober?

SPEAKER_00

When I just got to my mammals, I just went to bed there for ten minutes and get out of there. You know, I went last week and made me amends over there for nearly four hours. And some of the stuff that they were telling me uh about how I made them feel, it was awful, but I needed to wear that.

SPEAKER_12

You do need to wear that. The amends is their chance to actually speak and tell you how they feel. How did your dad react?

SPEAKER_00

Bless him. He's most he's most of us with that. When I did obviously, I and he was saying, like, you know, when I've come down for something to eat, I'll end money. It just looked like the state of me, look like death. And he go upstairs and try his eyes out. Yeah. And at the end of it, all four of us just dubbed each other. Oh. You know, and my mum, I mean, dad, I just can't believe I was I would just go down there for a long time and just chat. I'm just talking all the time.

SPEAKER_12

Nothing wrong with that. I mean, it took me a long time to win back trust. My son can now hopefully use me as an example as he's out in the madness, but you know, it's patience, right? Winning back the trust of those we've hurt can take a long time to happen. It's living amends, isn't

JULES - GRADUATE

SPEAKER_12

it? If people listening are struggling to come to terms with the fact they may need rehab, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_11

I needed rehab to get me away from the habits to break a cycle that I didn't know I needed breaking, and I knew something needed to be done to change, and you know, the best thing I did was give myself time. Time out of the world, the world, yeah, it carried on, but time stopped for me, and I needed that. I needed to come into a time capsule and focus on what it was I needed to do to give myself the life that I have today.

SPEAKER_12

As we know, leaving rehab is another huge milestone in the journey of recovery. How has it been for you?

SPEAKER_11

Tough life's hard, you know, and use the tools you get in the program. So if whether you're at rehab or not, you know, I only have 24 hours to not drink or use. And I have my first 24-hour meeting chip on my mirror, blue-tacked onto my bedroom mirror. So every morning I wake up and I know I'm the problem. I want to live a normal life, but I can't drink safely. You know, I really you really have to remember that. And that, you know, if you're going to a wedding, it's just one day, it's still one day you don't have to pick up a drink. And you know, I have sponsor who use them, get as many women's numbers or as many males' numbers and use them. These people know how to stay sober, and coming out of ARC, the hardest part is the first day. Once you get a couple of days, get in the meeting, stay safe, it becomes a week. But I'm only ever doing that one day at a time. And if I can do what I've done today tomorrow, I should be okay. And that's another thing, you know. You have a group of people I go see in the meetings who they're really proud you're there, and you don't get that, and that that for me is really special.

SPEAKER_12

It is a beautiful thing, isn't it? About the fellowship, like one addict, alcoholic helping helping the next person, and it's just so rewarding in itself, and it helps keep us clean and sober as well. Um, what have you done in your daily routine to help stay clean and sober?

SPEAKER_11

Being humble, you know, I do a lot of things for AA and I do a lot of um things to raise money for charity, but I don't need to tell family and friends about it, you know. I just quietly get on with it and avoid having an ego. Whatever successes I have, you know, I keep to myself or to close friends and family because I'm dangerous of an ego. And if I start telling people I'm raising money, I end up being the queen of like the queen of charity. And well, look at me, I'm gonna be uh all over like Pride of Britain with my fundraising. That's where my alcoholism takes me to this god complex. So I know I need to keep humbling myself, you know. Whatever I'm doing in my life today, I don't need to shout about it. I just need to get on, and also, you know, be proud. I go to bed sometimes and and I'm really good at giving myself a hard time, but just be proud of the fact that you've done it. You know, nobody knows how messed up and hard addiction is unless you've been in it. So, you know, that level of being, you know, you're a survivor. I've lost some really top friends in addiction. You know, they didn't come back from it, and that is the reality. You know, I'm lucky. You know, I still keep my recovery interesting, and I know that I can always learn something from others. I learned so much from a newcomer coming in, like I always will have something I think can take from somebody, whether they're one day sober or 45 years sober.

SPEAKER_14

Every week on In Recovery, we speak to some of the UK's biggest stars who have battled addiction and have kindly given up their time to share their stories, in the hope it will help others. Here are the people who've chatted to us under the Recovery Spotlight.

KAVANA - RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT

SPEAKER_08

Because it was just me and I didn't have, say, fellow bandmates to hang out with in the hotel room, or mind you, they probably got sick of each other too, so the grass wasn't always greener. But yeah, there was a lot of isolation. Hotel room, hotel rooms all over the world, staying in all these amazing hotels. And years later, when I actually found myself homeless, I was just like, I can't believe that was my life, you know. But yeah, I discovered the mini bar. You know, it it I spent many a night just me kind of isolating as we do.

SPEAKER_12

I mean, I wasn't famous, but I isolated. I think most addicts do, don't we?

SPEAKER_08

That's where our addiction wants us. It wants us isolated. I mean, I'm in my in my relapse. It was here with the blinds drawn. I go into the shop at like 8 a.m. Oh no, I used to buy cat food. I'm thinking that my my ego was a little bit messed at up and my mind was horrible. But I don't think oh, it's staring at me because I'm buying like three litres of white cider. So I must get some cat food. Well, my sponsor eventually told me to rehab, the last rehab. He's like, Can he's like, We found like 25 bottles of beer. We have all these tins of cats. That's what we do, don't we?

SPEAKER_12

We hide it, we Yeah, I didn't really care if anybody saw me, you know, I was all deluded or thing. You know, just walk on the streets with cans of uh like super drink beer, you know, I couldn't make appointments because bus fares there, it'd be I'd be in shot getting a drink instead. So, you know, I couldn't even go. So apart from cat food gate, looking back, how did life change for you in addiction?

SPEAKER_08

I would hang out with some of the the homeless people. I was homeless myself for a bit, not on the street but very close to. But I discovered this thing they were talking about called white, you know, and I'm like, I think I was just really drunk one day and I tried it, and uh the next thing I'm in, I'd stay upon a house in the state with this total stranger, you know, showing her pop videos on of me on YouTube, and it's like I'm I had the gift of of desperation to get out of that. But what was the point you realised it was it had a grip? I think when I came back from America because I lived there for seven years, I thought six, seven years after my pop career finished in the UK, I moved to America to LA. And I remember there was a chemical change, something had happened where alcohol lit me up rather than made me relax. It became a liquid drug to me. My father died, and and you know, I ended up losing the house that I bought for my parents, and that's when I discovered the morning drink. And once I started that, that was the insiduous slow. But it was slow with me, it was crafty and it's slow. I'd get away with it, and then I'd be fine for a bit, and then I'd have a consequence, but not too bad. I might break my ankle, but you know, that's all right. And then it was just slow and cunning and baffling.

LEE CROOKS - RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT

SPEAKER_06

Here we go.

SPEAKER_14

That falling off point when you wanted to stop drinking. What made you make that decision?

SPEAKER_05

It was Remembrance Sunday, remember it clear as the day. I went out on the Friday night, Friday night, got absolutely hammered. Followed it into the next day. My daughter had a game, and I got up, just went out of the house. Didn't go with my daughter playing football or anything, just went back out, got on it, I was chasing the beer, that was it. Got in a massive scrap and uh just had enough. Was not disappointed in myself. Walked home, got to Chancery Bridge, stood on top of that fucking bridge at Champshire Bridge. That's it. I'm done, I'm out of here. See you later. Next minute, taxi driver pulled over, pulled me into the taxi, brought me home. The next morning, obviously coming down after a three day, brought down a crying. That was it, front of my kids, front of my wife. I went, that's it. An old teammate of mine, Martin Pemberton, and I reached out to him and he's uh you know just rehabilitation now. I think he he described it we've got to get into that bin now, and we've got to rummage that bin and pull all that shit out that's happened over the years. He says there'll be shit in that bin that you won't even know that's there. He says, But we've got to get to the bottom of it, and it's gonna take time, and you'll always be doing it, but you've just got to do it. And I thought, this is it, I'm ready now, this is it. And I just knew, I just fucking knew, you know what I mean. I thought, even right now, I'm not speaking about it, it makes me it's deep down in it, it makes me emotional.

SPEAKER_14

When I was in Arkania, and you may never have heard of this, it's a 12-step treatment programme for alcohol.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I yeah, I've heard it, yeah, and and I've seen people do it, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_14

And you what you just described to me on that Remembrance Sunday, reaching out to somebody who has had similar problems, yeah, recognizing that you're powerless over alcohol, your life's unmanageable, yeah, waking up to the fact that you need to change your life somehow, and then that bin situation where grabbing all your shit out of your bin, talking about it, dealing with it is what we call step four, which is take a personal inventory on your life, stuck it all in a box, yeah, and then what I get is a bit of freedom. Yeah. What do I do now? Because I can't put a drink in to numb anything, yeah. I can't have a drug to get me up. So what do I need to do?

SPEAKER_05

And like with me, I've had massive eyes in sport, massive lows in sport. I get into the military, I have massive eyes adrenaline-wise with the military, then I've got massive lows. All my life has been massive eyes, massive lows. Nothing ever been on an even keel for me, you know what I mean? But like with him, I I knew with stuff that he'd been through that it'd been pretty similar to me in in the sport world. Back in my day when I were playing, the drinking culture in football was always there. We could have an away trip, we could be going playing Portsmouth away. As soon as we got on the bus, we'd have fucking there'd be creative woodweiser on it. In in in in today's game, so like yesterday I did the City Liverpool game, you know, you see these lads. It's totally different, it's different. The football's different, the the culture's different. If you didn't get pissed and you'd want a drinker in them days, you know, they might as well know a part in that changing room.

LEON PRYCE - RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT

SPEAKER_01

My era of rugby is quite a lot of players that I think have had to really move away from the booze because we're all all nothing people. The the lifestyle and culture, rugby was hardcore. Like, I was play hard, work hard, drink hard. When we say hard, it's extreme. It's not, you know, it's not your average kind of behaviour.

SPEAKER_14

And you retire so early as well, don't you?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, from playing the L35, so you know you've still got a lot of life to live, haven't you?

SPEAKER_14

Working in Ark House, I've seen a number of rugby league players come through here and footballers of your era. You know, at 16 when you're on the when you're on the rugby field playing for England schools and what have you, you know, you don't really look at what the end's gonna look like and how early your career's gonna finish. You don't really plan for that, do you?

SPEAKER_01

Well, well, the smart ones do. Um people like me that you know think thought that you're gonna stay in the game forever, and you know, it's become a little bit institutionalised, and but what you've got to learn along the way to take responsibility for that because it's down to my planning, it's down to me looking ahead. You know, I've got a young family that um rely on me. I've got myself to rely on as well, and you know, I've had plenty of time to plan, but you just think it's gonna I just thought we're gonna go on forever and told what to do, where to go, where to be, what time your days your days and weeks and weekends, everything's planned out to you to the minute, to the second, where you need to be, what you need to wear, what you need to drink, what you need to eat, when's your day off, what time you're back in. You know, everything's planned out for you. So to have that for 20, best part of 20, 23 years or so, then to get to nothing. Yeah. It's a big, it's a big change. And also your identity as well. You know, I all my my all my identity was rugby, I'd all I'd ever known. Straight from being young, straight to playing uh from school to uh playing professionally at 16. My whole personality and and identity evolved around Leon Price, the rugby player, and not just Leon. And finding finding who that was has been, that's probably been this three and a half year journey of from leaving ARC to where I am today. That's been a that's been a great journey. I think I've kind of found myself who I am with Allah Rugby, which I don't, you know, it's two separate people. It's Leon Price, the rugby player, and is Leon who's a dad and a friend, and and just me who enjoys who enjoys doing what he does now.

SPEAKER_14

Yeah, I mean I I I'm related to that. I I when I was in ARC and I went through my step five, I can remember going into my step five, unburdening all the stuff that had gone on, and then I walked out and I and I I went into um into my bedroom and I just looked in the mirror, and it was the first time at 48 years old I had a bit of an insight into who I was.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_14

And you know, I I I relate to that because it is different, you know. I was just a bloody bank manager, wasn't I? You know, you were a rugby player to have two lives really, and one of them you're only just finding out who you are today, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and but and also like you know who you are as well. I think once you do that spent five or five spent four and five were massive for me, also. I think for me it's beginning to have have like yourself, respect myself, you know, because if you work in an honest programme, you start to act in an honest way, you start to get some self-respect back, and then you know, you know, you're acting honest, you can be kind, you can be compassionate, you can be thoughtful, you're selfish, and all those little one percent of actions that you do on a daily basis, day after day after day. Eventually you you you your confidence pulls back up in yourself and you like yourself again, and that's yeah, I think that's the root of it. And then you start to find who you are, and you can be who you are, but you can act how you're feeling on the inside, you can be that person on the outside, so it matches up where I feel like I am now. How I how I am acting is how I'm feeling, and and now I'm you know, I'm trying to work and be as honest as I can. It's not perfect, but it's it's a lot better than what it was.

SPEAKER_14

Yeah, he's present today, yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

MIKE PHENIX - RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT

SPEAKER_14

You're a shining example of somebody who's been in the spotlight who's gone through a lot of stuff, you know, banned from football, which I'm I guess must have been one of the lowest points of your life.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, I think that's when it all starts to hit home. I'd not been bad since the Saturday night. Yeah. So I've been straight through from Saturday night, I've been on a 48-hour shift, and ultimately I got done for steroids. I had an anivar in my system, I got done for the the uh the most amount of coal the FA's ever seen in a single person. They're like, Are you still alive? You know, I turned up to Wembley with about 30 bags of cocaine in my pocket. You know, why would you do that? I was insane. And that was that's seven years ago. So I remember licking bags on the way down to Wembley on the train. Do you know what I mean? Just for another little bit of a hit after two weeks my wages stops. I got sacked by the club. I was at. I think the thing you think about the most is how am I gonna feed this addiction? I've got. So quickly, very quickly, I took out a lot of credit cards. Dealers were still ticking me a thousand pound a dealer. Dad pays paid them off and I ended up owing my dad 20 grand.

RUPERT HILL - RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT

SPEAKER_14

I guess what I found was that I had to look at myself and I had to internally have a look at what was going on to understand the reasons as to why I picked up, you know, is that something that you that you kind of relate to?

SPEAKER_09

I do very much so, yeah. I mean, I think it is you go back to childhood, don't you, even, and you start thinking like what made me susceptible to to addiction and to and it and it's never it, you know, you you can blame the drug to a point, but then you realise, oh, it's my character was so integral to this, or the you know, yeah, my childhood, or or my relationships with people, or the or my self-esteem, or my confidence, or whatever it might be. And then you yeah, and therapy really helps with that because you start going, okay, I thought I always thought that I was quite together. Um, but it turns out that the clues were there all along, you know. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I totally relate to that. I look at it now as it's like, I mean, like Crikey, from the age of uh from becoming 18, look at an 18-year-old birthday card. I mean, and try and find one that doesn't have uh a picture of alcohol on on the cover. And then, you know, for almost every celebration, every commiseration, every, you know, anything to do with enjoyment or you know, it's just pumped into society that alcohol is the elixir of life and this is how to enjoy yourself. It's not true. I mean, it really is not true, but we're you know, society is completely throwing the information at you that this is the way to enjoy yourself. So uh, yeah, um, I I I definitely don't feel like it it is the addict's fault when the when these things are widely available.

SPEAKER_14

I also think as well, it's like you say with society and what have you. I know I know when my parents were were growing up, there wasn't a pub that opened at nine o'clock offering a beer and a and a bacon sandwich. It's encouraging constantly people to do that. And it's become the norm, I suppose.

SPEAKER_09

Yeah, totally. I mean, I I own three pubs in Manchester. I I at that time I owned another three, and I walked away from three of them, which were the ones that I was most kind of hands-on. And I basically said I cannot go anywhere near a pub. I didn't go into a pub, including my own, for a year. That first so that first year I kept thinking if I can do this year, I'll be okay. And that during that year, I went to Glastonbury Festival and I thought this will be a test. I mean, this will be a real test. But I ended up having a great time, and I really, really enjoyed myself. And then I had Christmas, and I remember really enjoying that as well. And it was these big moments that I'd always associated with alcohol that one by one I started to experience sober and really enjoy. And then basically, alongside the therapy I was going through, and I kept reading, kept reading, and and I just I just got to a point where I was just extremely comfortable. And then I I had this trick as well of where if I had a pang of if I walk past the pub and I thought, oh, I could just nip in here now and have a couple, and then I'd stop and I'd think to myself, I I just played out the scenario. So I go, okay, so I'll go in there and I'll have a couple, and then I'll go home, and I might not have any more, and I might go to bed, and then I'll wake up, and then the next day I'll go, see, it worked yesterday, so I had two, and that was okay, so I'll go and have another two, and then that might become four, and then blah blah blah. You know, two weeks later I'm back exactly where I was again, and I knew that that would happen. So, yeah, I kind of had these little tricks to sort of keep myself sane.

YOUNG LEE - IS ADDICTION A DISEASE

SPEAKER_14

Apart from the graduates and celebrities, every week we bring you advice from people working in the recovery community, game-changing tips that come from people with lived experience and the knowledge to keep people well in recovery. The recovery hacks.

SPEAKER_13

The next one addiction is not a disease. The World Health Organization do recognise it as such. But you can understand people that don't understand. Well, you're just making a choice just to just stop it. Are you really telling me that a mother is choosing to burn her life to the ground to the extent that her kids have to go? I know people that has happened to that have got degrees, master's degrees. Why is it they couldn't use their intelligence and their part of history to say, okay, I'm gonna stop this? And and also like a disease or an illness. If I had cancer, I can't think my way better. The same with this. If you could, people would. Yeah. It is very difficult to understand. It's a baffling illness. It's a baffling illness.

SPEAKER_14

And and and with that, I I could then move forward without shame. And and that for me was a one of those light bulb moments where having not read a book for many years, to pick up that and read that in literally the first few pages that I read was like a talk about it's one of them God moments, isn't it?

SPEAKER_13

It makes so much sense, doesn't it? When I'm working with new guys, I'm saying, Oh, and this used to happen to me. I was sober, clean, walking down the street, suddenly my mind would convince, and they were like, That happens to me. And then I I say to myself, I'm just gonna have one, and then six days later, I'm naked on a golf course sniffing ketamine or something. Yeah, you know, and they're like, Yeah, that happened. How'd you know that? And that's what one alcoholic or addict can win the entire confidence of another, and that's what held me in the seat because I could see the other people as well.

SPEAKER_14

So, leadership versus peer support.

SPEAKER_13

It's not a peer support program, yeah. There's no leaders, we walk shoulder to shoulder, there's no one above anyone else, there's no one more important than anyone else. It doesn't matter how long someone's been in or hasn't been in, someone can help you. It's it's an organization unlike any other that shouldn't work. Yeah, but the fact there's no money change in hand is what for me one of the things that makes it so beautiful. Yeah. You know, on paper, I was listening to something the other day, which this is funny, you'll like this. He said, and I'll explain what I mean. We're the only organisation that will pay money not to receive money, right? And I what he meant by that. You can only give, say if we died, you can only leave 12-step organizations a maximum of about five grand. Yeah. Now, over the years, there's been some Auntie Ethel who she's like, Oh, you saved my son, she dies, leaves one of the 12-step fellowships five million, yeah. And AA or CA or whatever the A's have to hire a lawyer to say we can't take it. Yeah, wow. That on paper doesn't work, but it it does. Yeah. Here we

MATTHEW BUTLER - VOLUNTEERING

SPEAKER_13

come.

SPEAKER_14

For me, you know, one of the reasons why we launched our podcast was to give people like that a hope that we can recover. A majority of those people go through the same journey as what I did, you know, and end up volunteering like you did. Yeah, yeah. You know, and and I think we share that same thing as you know, volunteering is a really, really key part.

SPEAKER_02

I think for me, there's something inspirational about working with volunteers who are here giving up their time willingly to something that I'm getting paid to do, but there's something about upskilling there as well. Now, one of the things I like to call my volunteers are experts by lived experience. I think it's it's empowering towards them. And you might not have a qualification in criminology or social work, but you are an expert by lived experience. Nobody understands addiction better than you do. And I think that is really important, and I think it's important for the people who are accessing this service as well. You talked then about uh as far as the importance of uh visible recovery as well, seeing people that have actually done it. It's a it's a double whammy for me to have someone who's competent, um, the values are in the right place, and they can show that empathy towards the people that we're working with. I love that you said when you came in here today, you felt like you were amongst your tribe because you sometimes actually see it where people do get recovery and they almost forget where they've come from, they almost distance themselves from it. And there's there's some hierarchy there, like oh I'm I'm not like you people. Do you know what I mean? It's like, no, you were exactly like them once upon a time, you just have to come back to that. And I think that's the importance of having lived experience within those roles. So if I can take people who maybe don't have the skills or qualifications and have a lot of self-doubt, and naturally will come with a lot of baggage based off the use of substance misuse, and I can say to them, right, I can't teach values. Your values are your values. You're either a good person or you're a dick. The fact that you want to volunteer and help people indicates to me that you are a good person. But I can't teach competency, I can teach people how to be competent at a job uh or doing something specifically in a specific way. I can't teach you to be a good person, and that's why I think volunteering is so important. It's quite hard to recruit into this sector. So I think creating a pipeline of people who are learning, who are passionate into paid employment roles is um especially important. And I can see that. I mean, I can walk around this building. There's about 180 staff that work here, and there's a percentage of them that have gone through me as the volunteer leader and now giving back to the community, both lived experience and not. But that's the importance of volunteering.

SPEAKER_14

We had a guy who's taken over our extended care, which gives people a little bit more freedom, and his whole thing was listen, we need to get these guys volunteering, we need to do a community project and decide litter picking in Scarborough, high business on litter picking, got us a bit of publicity to be fair, but it also grounded people to this is this is payback time now, you know, this is what you need to do free of charge. Because, like me, and like many other people in addiction and alcoholism, you know, we've taken so much from society without giving that little bit back.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I'm glad you said that because I think when I talk to people about doing stuff like that, they might turn the nose up a little bit, but I was like, You said you want to give it back to your community. Yeah, giving back to the community isn't necessarily just volunteering in a drug and alcohol treatment service, but there's all these different ways in which you can give back. Litter picking. I know it sounds stupid, but I found it really satisfying litter picking. It's like colouring to me. You take a certain area, yeah, it's gone from all this litter rubbish to it's really nice. I did the side of the street not so long ago um during the day, came out three hours later, and then it was there was leaflets everywhere. But for those couple of hours, yeah, it was nice and tight. And I felt something quite rewarding just seeing that space looked tired again. Here we go.

MICHAEL WATERS - COPING WITH EMOTIONS

SPEAKER_14

I mean, I you know, I can remember, you know, when when somebody said to me, You're gonna get all your emotions back, and you're gonna feel things that you've never felt before, you know, and then all of a sudden I got these emotions back, and I'm feeling these things that I've never felt before, and I found it really, really difficult to manage that. You know, how I could deal with that on a day-to-day basis because for the last 17 years I've put a drug in and just pushed it all down, you know. Today it's today it's different. I can't have a drug and I have to handle my emotions.

SPEAKER_04

You know, how did you manage to do it for yourself? It's a slow process of learning what works for you, isn't it, personally? Um, exactly as you say, we're not used to dealing with them. What we think of as a coping mechanism, it's just avoidance. And we're denying ourselves the opportunity to learn those skills. For me, social anxiety was a big thing. Drink seemed like an option to solve that. But it wasn't solving it, I was putting a plaster over it and it was making it worse and worse and worse because I could never learn real confidence, for example. And I think this is true of pretty much everyone. We are hardwired to pursue things that cause pleasure and avoid things that cause pain. The very nature of pleasure itself, it's that release of dopamine. The whole point of that chemical is do that again, do that again, you've done a good thing. And it's about rewarding you for like meeting survival needs. Now, in drugs and alcohol, we've had the misfortune to find these inappropriate shortcuts to dopamine, right? It's a load of fake pleasure almost, isn't it? Because it it tricks our body into thinking that we've met a need when we haven't. We've actually ignored all our real needs. It almost establishes like a fake need. You know, we feel like we need it, don't we? It affects what we believe. Uh every time we go, I can't stand this, and we pick up. We're kind of proven to ourselves that we couldn't stand it. Whether it's masking the pain of trauma or it's just a kind of habit of partying that got out of hand, either way, you went up traumatized because the addiction itself is traumatic, right? And addiction kind of limits how we deal with the feelings, it erodes our resilience. It's our own responsibility, therefore, in recovery to slowly build it back up with different skills that look different for everyone.

SPEAKER_14

Yeah, anything that I wanted to feel, I would or had to feel, or something went on, drugs took that away. And I you know, I suppose how do you express that to people who are coming into five ways of, you know, being able to handle their emotions as opposed to closing them off?

SPEAKER_04

There's a few sort of steps you can take with this. There is this idea of kind of turning toward your emotions at the starting point. Emotions are actually signals to unmet needs. Emotions are not the thing that's wrong, they're the lights on the dashboard telling you something's up. And every time we just mask the emotion or self-medicate with drugs, we're basically just putting tape over the lights on the dashboard instead of actually taking the car into the shop.

SPEAKER_14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Do you see what I mean? Okay. If we get curious about our emotions, actually listen to them. What are they actually saying to me? Where is it in my body? Uh, what are my thoughts saying? What are the actual words coming into my head? We start to get closer to what the actual need is that it's trying to point us to. It's really unclear to us at first when the need becomes, I need a drink, or I need to I need a drug. But really, any sense of unease that an addiction collapsed into a craving, it's actually there is something underneath that, there's an unproblematic desire to feel all right. We just need to listen to ourselves a bit more with curiosity rather than judgment.

SPEAKER_14

We want to thank you for supporting us on season one of In Recovery. We'll be back very soon with a brand new series. New graduates, more professionals, and love among celebrities. If you and your loved ones are suffering with addiction issues, then please remember your mum alum. Reach out to us at the help to them. All of our content details are in the episode's description. Stay silly, stay connected, and we'll see you very soon.