00:00:06
Victoria Vanstone, welcome to my podcast. Hi, thanks so much for having me on. This is Victoria Van Stone from
00:00:11
the Soyber Awkward Podcast in Australia. Also, um recently an author, 1,000 Wasted Sundays. Yeah. And and an
00:00:18
international sex machine. Oh, yeah. Apparently, I'm not sure my husband would like it if you called me that. How
00:00:24
are you? You good? Yeah, I'm good. Good. We had a bit of a dodgy flight coming
00:00:27
into Oakland this morning which added to the excitement. There were lots of delays, but we're really pleased to be
00:00:32
here. It's very cold compared to the tropics where I've come from, but we're
00:00:36
excited to be here. Yeah. Where are you in like northern Queensland? Yeah. Sunshine Coast. No, just up from
00:00:40
Brisbane. Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful up there. Yeah. It's lovely. I mean, it's
00:00:44
hot. It's 25 degrees there when I left. So, yeah, this is very different. There
00:00:48
was hail storms and rain as we arrived, so we were like, it was like being back in blighty, quite honestly. Yeah. It's a
00:00:53
[ __ ] of a day for you to land. And you were telling me um the plane had to like had like four attempts at landing.
00:00:58
Yeah. It's a bit scary. Actually, the girl next to me was vomiting. So that was nice. Nice. Welcome to welcome to uh
00:01:04
New Zealand. Although although you know, let's not be too judgmental. You've done
00:01:08
a fair bit of vomiting in your life. I have done a lot of vomiting. That is fair to say. Yeah, we'll get into that.
00:01:13
Hey, first of all, congratulations. Um recently you you were named best well-being podcast at the Australian
00:01:18
Podcast Awards. Yeah, it was incredible. We couldn't believe it when our name was
00:01:22
called out, quite honestly. What a treat. We went down to Sydney for the event and it was just wonderful to be
00:01:27
involved and meet some fantastic other podcasters because often in this game as you'd know it's quite isolating like you
00:01:34
go into your studio, you record, you occasionally meet other people, but you never really know that what you're
00:01:39
saying has impact. So it was lovely to meet some people who listen to the podcast and also all the people that
00:01:45
make podcasts. It was a fabulous night. Yeah, it's it's a huge honor as well, I
00:01:48
think, for a for a small sort of independent, you know, done in your done in your home studio podcast to um get
00:01:53
that acknowledgement. What does um so you you say there's like an award ceremony. What does like an awards
00:01:59
ceremony night like that look like for you guys now? How do you how do you celebrate? Well, yeah, it's difficult.
00:02:05
We went out for cake afterwards. Everyone was absolutely plastered at the do because it was free booze. Of course
00:02:13
it was. So, we just afterwards watched trays of sparkling wine and champagne just kind of skim underneath our noses,
00:02:21
which was very annoying because they were bringing us like massive kind of pint glasses of apple juice, like
00:02:26
child's drinks, and we were like, "Oh god." Then, as the night deteriorated,
00:02:30
everyone got a bit close and a bit smitty. So, we left and found a hotel and had a bit of chocolate cakey. That's
00:02:37
how we celebrate nowadays. It's It's a funny thing, isn't it? Do you what's
00:02:41
your relationship like with um alcohol-f free drinks? Yeah, I'll have one. Yeah.
00:02:45
It's not a sustainable business. I think the alcohol-f free industry just because
00:02:49
you only have one. Of course, alcoholism alcohol companies are designed for you to want more. Yeah. So, it's different.
00:02:56
Yeah. Whenever I'm doing um I do love my wines. I love um I love penonis. But I
00:03:01
um I I did uh Dry July last year and then I listened to a podcast with Andrew Hubman. Yes. And since then, I've um I
00:03:07
have re-evaluated my relationship with alcohol and I do keep a close eye on it. Great. I'm if I'm being completely
00:03:13
honest, I'm probably still in that phase now where I'm trying to coexist with it and before
00:03:19
I'll eventually get to the point where I give up and go, "No, I just can't be
00:03:22
trusted." Wow. It's fascinating. Everybody has their own very very intricate relationship with alcohol. I
00:03:27
find everybody's got a story. Well, some some people seem to just not be not even
00:03:32
sort of think about it. It's not really a thing. Yeah. Who Who are these people?
00:03:35
I never met them in the dodgy nightclub that I was passed out on the floor in. I
00:03:39
can tell you that there are these weird unicorn people who have never even touched a drop. I always say when I do
00:03:44
meet them, like you are incredible because the power that it takes throughout your life, especially at the
00:03:50
ages of 13 and 14. What an incredible superpower to have to say no at that age. I always find it fascinating when
00:03:56
people have never drunk. I I feel like it's probably easier now than what it's
00:04:00
ever been a to say no. and definitely and have people accept your choice. Yeah, everything's changing. It does
00:04:07
feel like we're on the crest of a wave with this. People are starting to change
00:04:11
their attitudes. You're not getting hassled every time you go out. You're
00:04:14
not getting, you know, tapped on the shoulder and someone saying, "Come on,
00:04:17
mate. Just have one." It doesn't happen that often. People respect choice
00:04:22
because we're so aware of the impact on mental health. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And
00:04:26
we'll get into that with you because um Yeah. had a massive impact on your mental health, didn't it? Anxiety and
00:04:32
stuff. Yeah. First of all, what does the term um sober awkward mean to you and how did you how did you come up with
00:04:36
that name? Yeah. So, when you first get sober, which hopefully you'll find out
00:04:40
one day, it's very very awkward because people know you as this one person, this
00:04:46
party animal, this reliable social, you know, soul and then you become someone else and somebody that you're happy
00:04:54
with, but perhaps other people aren't. And that can be really, really confronting for people. So going into
00:05:00
social life again is really really awkward. I often refer to it as there suddenly being a bright light like these
00:05:06
lights that are on us here. You go into a pub for the first time ever without your crutch and you feel totally
00:05:13
overexposed. You feel like you can see and hear everything for the first time and it's like this bright light is
00:05:20
shining on everything that comes out of your mouth and every move you make and it is really really uncomfortable. So me
00:05:27
and my friend Lucy, who I started the podcast with, we were like, what what should we call this? How does it really
00:05:32
feel to get sober? And we weren't going to be all airy fairy about it and be
00:05:35
like, look, this is going to be the easiest thing in the world because it's actually not. It is not an easy choice
00:05:40
to make. And it is extremely difficult to continue the same sort of social life that you've had before, which makes it
00:05:48
very awkward to be like, oh yeah, it's got to be sober awkward. Yeah, I love
00:05:51
it. And it works so well. If you if you to do like a pie diagram of who who your
00:05:56
listeners are, who who who would they be? Like how many how many drinkers are there? How many sober curious people are
00:06:01
there? How many reformed drinkers are there? Our biggest download day is New Year's Day. So that day, it's definitely
00:06:07
the drinkers because they're hung over. They're hung over in bed going, "Why am
00:06:11
I doing this again? I feel like I never want to drink again. And where do I start?" But generally, it's women. I
00:06:16
would say 70% women in their 40s, especially women who have just had children. And and with Hamish coming on
00:06:25
board, that has opened up a whole new area of men to look at their drinking habits. Hamish has come on board a year
00:06:32
or two years ago now as somebody who never had a problem with alcohol. So he's opened this massive funnel saying,
00:06:38
"Look, I'm giving up alcohol. I didn't have an issue with it, yet I know that
00:06:42
it's bad for me, and this is what's going to happen." So we've tracked his
00:06:45
journey along with mine to say, "Look, you can still give up drinking without a
00:06:49
problem." That's kind of our message is that it doesn't have to get to these
00:06:53
lows or actually these massive highs for you to be able to quit. Yeah. He he's he's very funny, isn't he?
00:07:01
He's a new dimension. He's not as funny as me. No, of course not. Sounds a bit
00:07:04
like Stewie from Family Guy, have you? Oh, yeah, he does a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I I listened to the latest episode
00:07:10
which was called Time. Oh, yes. On my run this morning. Like how what's the um
00:07:14
what's the preparation procedure? So you come up with like a general theme of
00:07:18
each. We try to keep it related to booze, but sometimes you go we go off track. You know, we talk about the
00:07:24
impact that alcohol has on domestic violence and we talk about dopamine hits and we talk about mental health and all
00:07:30
sorts of things that affect us in our daily sober lives. Time was a massive one because we have lost so much time
00:07:37
throughout our lives and we gain so much time when we become sober and we have to
00:07:41
fill that space where booze used to reside. So Hamish writes one a week, I write one a week, and we take turns in
00:07:48
coming up with topics. Yeah. You going to obviously you want to, you know, keep it going because it's an incredibly
00:07:53
successful podcast. Are you going to Will you ever run out of themes or things to talk about? We did wonder
00:07:58
that, but we always seem to find something. I've got my little notes in my phone just I always every day come up
00:08:04
with a topic and we've had a few guests on. We weren't doing that originally,
00:08:08
but we had Fat Boy Slim as our first guest and we've had some incredible guests over the last year. So that makes
00:08:13
it a lot easier when you're having someone else's story in there, but generally it's just me and Hamish
00:08:17
waffling on about sober life. Amazing. Yeah. Your fit wim Norman Cook, what what's his what's his journey? What's
00:08:23
his 14 years sober? That was an old mate of mine really. I wasn't I wouldn't say
00:08:28
I was friends with him, but I used to go to where he DJed in Brighton at the Big
00:08:32
Beat Boutique every Friday night. And that was a real sort of full circle moment having him as our first guest on
00:08:38
the podcast. We've still got a few mates in common. And I think that's how this
00:08:42
rolls really, isn't it? It's who you know. So I nudged a few old mates in
00:08:46
Brighton and managed to get him on. We went to his gig um in Brisbane and interviewed him before the show and it
00:08:52
was so good. We were literally like gurning in the audience. Like it was just the most fantastic night. And we
00:08:58
kind of stompy danced away for the evening and then went and met him afterwards. He was absolutely lovely.
00:09:03
Lovely bloke. Did he Did he Did he praise you like he should? Yeah, he did praise me like he should have done. Oh
00:09:09
god, that's low hanging fruit. I'm so sorry. That's good. That's what we like.
00:09:12
So, so um 20-year-old uh Vic who who I've read about in your book, what would
00:09:16
she make of this version of you? Would she think you're you're a boring old
00:09:21
probably? Yeah, she would think I'm very boring, but I think she wouldn't even
00:09:26
know who it was. It's a completely different person. I feel like I've had
00:09:29
two lives, which is why I'm very happy to talk about everything because it's
00:09:34
easy for me to divide these two people. I can look back and go, well, that person was somebody who was quite unwell
00:09:40
and now I'm somebody that's not. So, it makes it a lot easier for me to discuss
00:09:44
everything that I've been through because I see the damage and what was going on. It's very clear that I wasn't
00:09:50
happy and that I was trying to be and I was didn't know. I didn't have any tools
00:09:54
back then. Whereas now, I've got the tools to continue on kind of an upward trajectory. Yeah. And what would you
00:10:00
like to go back and tell 20-year-old Vic? Not that she'd listen. and she'd
00:10:04
probably tell you to [ __ ] off. But I would just like to tell her that being her is okay. Like being you is enough
00:10:11
because I forgot somewhere along the line that I mattered and that how I felt. I became such a people pleaser
00:10:17
throughout my life that I sort of abandoned my own personality to be the entertainer for everybody else. I think
00:10:23
it's a very common thing to do in your social life is to change a little bit to
00:10:27
appease the opinions of others. And I definitely did that probably a lot more than anyone else. So I would tell her
00:10:33
just, you know, be yourself. Calm the [ __ ] down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She did sound like a fun girl. She was
00:10:40
pretty fun. That's the problem though. Everyone else was guaranteed a night out, like a brilliant laugh and a story
00:10:47
at the pub the next day. But for me, I kind of laughed along with it. Whereas in fact, I should have, you know, bear
00:10:54
witness to those red flags that were whipping me across the face all my life. Yeah. going to say some of the some of
00:11:00
the stuff in your book you for a for a girl in her 20s or even early 30s it's
00:11:05
kind of fun and it's uh you know good souvenirs and you know memories um but
00:11:11
if you're still that person in your 40s or 50s it's it's just [ __ ] sad. Yeah.
00:11:15
It's not a good look. Yeah. No, it's tragic. Yeah. But I guess sometimes with
00:11:19
booze especially it's such an acceptable culture that we just go along with it.
00:11:23
And my personality, my whole identity revol revolved around me being this party animal. So I never looked outside
00:11:30
it. I didn't have reason to until I had kids. Yeah. Were you an alcoholic? I you
00:11:36
know what? It's very difficult question. I guess people who have been in recovery
00:11:41
for a long time would say anyone that has a problem um and has struggled with their intake of alcohol is an alcoholic.
00:11:49
But for me, I don't want to label myself. I feel like you can call me what you want. Honestly, I don't really care.
00:11:55
But I was somebody who had mental health issues, I think, and I was somebody that
00:12:00
was drowning out my problems. I prefer to be called sober. I think the word alcoholic and even the word anonymous,
00:12:08
even though AA does work, I do find those terms a little bit archaic now because I don't have any shame about my
00:12:16
behavior. It was booze doing what booze did. So being alcoholic or anonymous, it
00:12:21
conjures up the wrong image of who I am. I wasn't passed out. I was going to say
00:12:25
I wasn't passed out in my own vomit, but actually I was quite often most occasions. I was probably an alcoholic,
00:12:33
but I think it conjures up the wrong image of actually who I was and who I am. It's not as simple as that. It's not
00:12:39
as simple as saying you are this and you are that and that puts you in the box. There was so much more to it than just
00:12:44
that word. Yeah. Also, I think part of the um I don't know, I'm I'm probably
00:12:49
speaking out of a hole in my ass here, but I think part of the problem with the term alcoholic is if if you say to
00:12:53
anyone, "Oh, I think I've got a drinking problem." Yeah. The first thing they'll
00:12:56
say likely is like, "Well, you know, you don't have you don't have the shakes in
00:12:59
the morning. You you're not you're not hiding wine in a coffee cup." You know,
00:13:04
there's this this sort of um absolute ground zero level of what an alcoholic
00:13:08
looks like. Totally. Someone sleeping on the street. So, anything beyond that is
00:13:12
considered almost acceptable. Which is exactly why people don't reach out for
00:13:16
professional support because they don't feel worthy of help because they're
00:13:19
well, well, I'm not Jack down the pub who has 15 pints of Stella on a Friday
00:13:23
night. I'm not passed out on the park bench with a bottle of Jack Daniels clenched to my chest. I'm just a normal
00:13:28
drinker. And I consider myself really I was a normal drinker. The people that I surrounded myself were doing that I
00:13:35
surrounded myself with were doing exactly the same thing. So, how do you look out of a problem if it's
00:13:41
everywhere? It was kind of, you know, absorbed into the people I surrounded myself with and I I drowned it out. I
00:13:49
drowned it out with my environments and it was almost clever because no one picked me out of the crowd and said,
00:13:54
"Oi, mate, you've got a problem." Yeah. Yeah. So, March 10, 2018, how did that day look? That was a long
00:14:01
term long time coming that day. I would say like a couple of decades. Yeah. about 25
00:14:09
years I would say. Why are we so slow at learning? Eh, wow. We are slow at learning. I do. That is my biggest
00:14:15
regret is how slow I was at coming around to the fact that perhaps drinking wasn't good for me. Well, was was part
00:14:21
of it as well that you had a good time and it was just starting to get boring like it wasn't fun anymore or No, it
00:14:25
definitely wasn't fun anymore. And I started to get a little bit of anxiety which I had had from my recreational
00:14:31
drug use in the early ' 90s. I had had an ecstasy overdose and then it started
00:14:37
to creep back into my hangovers after having my first child. It sounds terrible, but I was continuing to binge
00:14:43
drink at the weekends with my new mother's group after having my first child. And I was having repercussions, a
00:14:49
consequence to my drinking for the first time ever, which was a crying newborn in
00:14:53
my arms. There's nothing more impactful from that. But of course, I didn't stop
00:14:57
because I couldn't look outside of it. I wasn't drinking every day. I probably
00:15:01
drank once a week perhaps, but always to a to a toxic level, I would say. Always
00:15:07
kind of running to the toilet to vomit the next day and really the drunkest person at any kind of nightclub or bar
00:15:13
or wake or whatever it was. I had to address it after having my second child when I was near near to that date that
00:15:21
you mentioned. I had a baby. I had another nine months of sobriety, like this beautiful window into another life
00:15:27
where I didn't have to make excuses for not drinking. And I was trying to do
00:15:32
better. I thought, I've got to do better than this. And I went out 6 weeks after
00:15:36
she was born. The mundaneity of becoming a new mom. You know, I've been traveling
00:15:40
the world for years. And suddenly I was in a bloody apartment with beige wallpaper doing the washing every day,
00:15:46
which is real. You know, that's a massive transformation from who I once was. I was bored out of my brain. Quite
00:15:53
honestly, motherhood can be boring as [ __ ] sometimes. And yeah, I went out and
00:15:58
got massively pissed after the 6 weeks after she was born and woke up in the morning with another massive hangover
00:16:05
and this awful fear monster sort of tapping me on the shoulder saying, "I'm
00:16:10
still here. I'm not going away. You need to do something about this." So, my
00:16:14
anxiety ended up being the reason why I quit drinking. I'm really always thankful to my anxiety because it was
00:16:20
really my body screaming out for help. And I walked into the lounge that day and said to my husband, "I can't do this
00:16:28
anymore. I'm failing at moderation. I can't stop drinking and I want to. I go
00:16:33
out and have one and I end up drinking the bar dry. There is something wrong with me and I need somebody else to step
00:16:39
in." H how did you know how did you know that time would be the last time? Cuz
00:16:44
I'm sure you had many last time. I didn't I didn't. I walked No, I walked
00:16:47
into a therapist and I said, "I want to know a better way of drinking so that I
00:16:50
don't get hung over." Yeah. She was like, "Oh, not sure." I was thinking
00:16:56
through the book here. Sorry. Yeah. I thought she was going to say like, you know, beer, you know, water between
00:17:01
beers or fish on a Friday or come up with some really good way that I could just carry on being the only person I
00:17:07
knew because the other option was just too confronting. Yeah. So, so you decided you were going to give up and
00:17:13
then um straight to a therapist. Straight to a therapist that day. Didn't try anything else. 20 like apps or
00:17:19
podcasts or Ellen Car's book or No, I just I needed to speak to someone. I I'd
00:17:26
been to an AA meeting. My sister Louise is 26 years sober and she took me to an AA meeting many many years ago and even
00:17:33
at that point I didn't still feel that my problem was bad enough that I would
00:17:37
stand up in front of a room full of people and go, "Hi, my name's Vic and
00:17:40
I'm an alcoholic." I wasn't ready for that. I just felt like this sort of
00:17:43
twatty binge drinker and I didn't feel like I was bad enough to deserve that
00:17:48
level of support in a room. And I remember going to that AA meeting when I was 25 and just thinking this isn't for
00:17:54
me because I was obviously still in my romance of booze in back in that day. And I remember just thinking I hope no
00:17:59
one slags off my best mate. I hope no one says anything horrible about alcohol. I think I was out the door
00:18:05
having a cigarette pretty quick when it got serious. And when I looked back, I thought, what am I going to do? That
00:18:12
wasn't for me then either. I didn't feel I thought I still wanted to drink quite
00:18:17
honestly. So, there was no way I was going to stand up in front of a group of people at an AA meeting and and confess
00:18:22
to my problem. I just wasn't ready. Well, I suppose it's like what we were
00:18:26
talking about before about the lowest that, you know, the rock bottomist of alcoholics. It's the same thing with um
00:18:31
AI. If there's someone there that says, "Oh, you crashed my car, lost my
00:18:34
license, lost my job, lost my family." Suddenly you're like, "Well, I'm not I'm
00:18:37
not that bad. Gary. Yeah. I think the uncomfortable feeling that I had at that AA meeting, it wasn't because I didn't
00:18:44
resonate with what they said. It was because I did and I wasn't I was in my prime, my booze prime. I just wasn't
00:18:52
ready to address the issue. It was too much. So, I think that's why I shied away from it back then. What What were
00:18:57
some of the things that were said that like cut you to the bone? Oh, it was just cuz it it wasn't so much what they
00:19:01
said. It was that everybody in there was so warm and and so normal. It was like a
00:19:07
parents committee meeting. I was expecting, you know, dogs on strings and like everyone looking a bit rough and
00:19:13
having a rolly out the front. I was like, "Oh my god, this is like going into an accountant's office. Everybody
00:19:19
was smartly dressed and they were all so normal, which of course alcohol, it doesn't differentiate. Everybody is
00:19:27
prone to overdrink." So that's what surprised me. I think that's what was
00:19:31
confronting. So, so then the um therapy that you started um how how many sessions? How long did you stick with
00:19:37
that? I did 12 sessions in the end. That was it. 12 weeks of kind of unraveling the reasons why I drank. Yeah. And what
00:19:44
did you learn? I learned that I had trauma, which I'd always brushed under the carpet. I never even considered that
00:19:51
I had any trauma throughout my life. But once in therapy, it's like a a pack of
00:19:57
cards. like she kind of spread my life out before me and asked me to pick out the bits that I wanted and the cards
00:20:03
that I didn't like. And I could see there were times in my life where things
00:20:07
had changed. There were transitional moments where I was sad and I hadn't really clocked into them because I was
00:20:16
probably scared and I thought it was just easier to go, oh well that happened. Things like that happened to
00:20:20
everybody and that's okay. And they weren't massive things. That's one thing
00:20:23
I learned in in therapy was that, you know, trauma is very relative. And I had, you know, some friends at school
00:20:30
that never spoke to me again. And from that day on, I became a real people pleaser, which meant I not only wanted
00:20:36
to make new friends, I wanted to keep them. And my biggest fear in my life was to lose people. So therefore, I had to
00:20:44
keep entertaining them to the point where they stayed with me. And it was really clear that there was a turning
00:20:49
point when I was about 14 where I sort of didn't care about myself anymore. M
00:20:55
so the therapy thing was real beneficial for you hugely. I wouldn't be sober
00:20:59
without doing that. Definitely not. No. How can you say that? Just because I didn't have the tools. I didn't have I
00:21:05
hadn't done the work. We call it the work on the podcast. You have to do some
00:21:08
work to understand and unravel the reason why you overdrink. And there is always a reason. People think it might
00:21:15
be social pressure or because they like it or because of all these other reasons, but I think there is more to it
00:21:20
than that. There is a void that is being filled where you don't think your authentic self is enough. And that's
00:21:26
definitely how I felt. Yeah. And how was the reaction in those early months with
00:21:31
from your friends and stuff? I didn't tell anybody. You just didn't leave the
00:21:34
house. I didn't leave the house for once. Instead of blurting everything about me to everybody, which is what I
00:21:41
generally do in my life, I thought this is too important. I'm actually going to
00:21:46
keep this within my family. So, I've got three kids. my they didn't know they
00:21:49
were too young and my husband and actually I went out and held on to an alcohol beer for 18 months like it was
00:21:56
sort of my lifeline back to who I was and I never ever took a sip. I was still too scared. I was still too awkward. I
00:22:03
didn't want to go out into this world and shock everyone by not being the person that they thought I was. So I
00:22:09
actually I don't recommend doing that because you know you really isolate yourself which was a silly thing to do
00:22:14
but I just couldn't face the world without my you know my best buddy booze and how so your husband does he still
00:22:21
drink has he not no he's given up really like in solidarity or I think so well I
00:22:26
never asked him to because I don't believe you can tell people to stop drinking I believe you have to leave by
00:22:31
example if you want to be a real cycle breaker here and I think he's just fed
00:22:35
off me waffling on about it quite honestly Yeah. Well, was he much of a drinker anyway or I would say he wasn't a
00:22:43
problem drinker whereas I was. I mean, we knew each other from uni days many, many years ago and we were massive
00:22:49
boozers then, but I think he's one of those people that always had a level of
00:22:52
control. Yeah. Whereas I didn't. Um, and how long after giving up did you decide
00:22:57
to lean into it publicly? I mean, you've got a [ __ ] book now. You've got a
00:23:00
very successful podcast. Um, when did you decide to do that? I needed the accountability. I think really Yeah. I
00:23:07
think it's I've always been a bit of an oversharer and I always when I sat down
00:23:12
to write that book, it was literally on the day I gave up drinking, March the 10th,
00:23:16
2018. And I sat down in a room and I felt like I wasn't an extreme boozer. I
00:23:22
wasn't perhaps an alcoholic. I'm someone that got stuck between the pub and an AA
00:23:26
meeting, which is where a lot of people fall through the cracks because of that reason. They don't feel worthy of
00:23:31
reaching out because it's not that bad. And I thought, well, if someone is feeling like I did, then, you know,
00:23:39
there is someone out there who's going to resonate with what I have to say. So,
00:23:43
I sat down that day and thought, I'm going to write this story. I'm going to
00:23:45
write this story of me giving up a very normal drinking habit, a socially acceptable binge drinking habit, and see
00:23:51
if it resonates with anyone. It turns out like I've made a career out of talking about my pissed-up stories,
00:23:56
which is quite it's quite good at cuz I don't know anything else. There's some
00:24:01
quite good yarns. We will we'll we'll get to that shortly. Um yeah, the book's
00:24:05
quite recent, eh? Yes, it came out in the end of February. How is it like um yeah, you had like terrible like
00:24:11
postrinking anxiety towards the end of your drinking career. Did you have like um book anxiety when that first came
00:24:18
out? Like there's some there's a lot of very confrontational stuff in there.
00:24:21
There so is. And also you are a writer too. Yeah. So you know how that goes. It is quite exciting. You get so excited
00:24:27
about the whole process and then when it actually happens, it's kind of like a
00:24:31
weird dream world, isn't it? Cuz I realize it's a bit like the podcast. You
00:24:35
put this stuff out there, but you never really know whether people like it or people listening or people reading it.
00:24:41
So, it's been lovely to get some good reviews. I'm trying not to read them,
00:24:46
but when there's a good one, I'll read it. Someone will send me a good one, I'm
00:24:49
like, "Okay, I'll read that." But yeah, I don't get stuck into the bad ones.
00:24:52
Yeah. It must feel like in a way um like sort of standing naked in a room where everyone you know I've done that so many
00:24:58
times. Yeah. Like it's just you just you're leaving nothing nothing off the page. Um
00:25:04
how do you think your life would look now? Um say how many years is it? Five years. Six years. Six years. Six and a
00:25:09
half years sober. If you if you didn't change anything, how would your life look now? I just think I would be sort
00:25:15
of lost up sat at a bar in Thailand. I lived in Thailand for many years. I think my mental health may have
00:25:21
deteriorated so much to the point where I might not be here quite honestly. That's how it felt. That's how unwell
00:25:26
alcohol made me. It made me feel like I couldn't control my thoughts anymore.
00:25:31
That's what my anxiety was. I felt like I was going to die. The next day after
00:25:35
drinking, it seems like such an extreme thing to go out for a pint and everyone be like, "Oh, isn't this fun? Yay." And
00:25:42
then for me in the bed in bed the next day, I literally felt like I was dying. I would sit with my fingers on my pulse
00:25:48
thinking that my heart was almost going to explode out of my chest. That was that's how I reacted to booze. And it's
00:25:54
crazy to think that I wouldn't have survived that, I don't think, if I hadn't stopped. So, I'm lucky that that
00:26:01
happened to me. You What do you think that would have eventually killed you or you think suicide or I think I would
00:26:06
have not survived it in some way. I think I may have killed myself. I don't know. I'd never had suicide ideiation
00:26:11
while I was alive when that was happening. But I do think I couldn't have coped with that level of mental
00:26:20
breakdown for a long time. Definitely not. Was so um I don't know if this is a
00:26:26
thing in Australia or the UK, but here that's often called anxiety. Yeah, anxiety. Is that a thing? Yeah. Um was
00:26:32
anxiety just something that sort of crept into your into your life towards the end of your drinking career or was
00:26:38
it always there? I think I'd always had it to a certain level. I definitely suffered with hangovers more than
00:26:43
everybody else. Probably because I was drinking more and I was kind of smoking cigarettes as well probably. It's
00:26:49
something that just got worse, much worse after having children because of course I used to wake up not knowing
00:26:55
what I'd done. You know, I'd be in a blackout. I call it the fear of the
00:26:58
unknown. And that's a frightening place to be. Like checking my body, seeing if
00:27:03
I'm okay, knowing that I'd probably abandon myself, you know, abandoned my
00:27:06
body the night before. It was quite frightening to wake up not knowing what I'd done and to know that I possibly had
00:27:14
to work the next day as well. So, I'm not only dealing with the anxiety in the
00:27:17
moment, I'm dealing with with not being able to remember the night before and
00:27:21
having to function in the week that comes after the hangover. So, there's just so much going on there. It was so
00:27:28
much trauma and stress just from one night out. Yeah. M. And it seems like you were um you're quite a big um like
00:27:37
um hangover hangover vomiter, like a morning vomiter, but you're also an evening vomiter or I was a massive
00:27:42
evening vomiter. You're vomiting all over the place. Just cuz I think I was poisoning myself and then I'd go I'd go
00:27:48
and do like take one for the team. I'll go and be sick and I'll I'll get back on
00:27:52
it. Oh, a tactical. We call that a tactical. Tactical. Yes, I was a I was a good tactical vom. I'm not proud of it.
00:27:59
That's what I mean. I'm happy to tell you that cuz it's like what was that
00:28:02
person doing? Like she was completely off her nut. Yeah. Well, it seems like you're in a really good place now. Yeah.
00:28:08
It's bloody great. I saw um an interview maybe on Diary of a CEO with um Steo.
00:28:13
You know Steo from Jack? Love him. Yeah. And um he's had um massive massive issues over the years with um alcohol
00:28:20
and drugs. And he had a really good way of putting it. I've never heard it framed this way before, but he said any
00:28:25
any disease you have like say cancer or whatever. All you want is to get back to
00:28:30
your old self again. And he said alcohol and drugs, it's the only disease in the
00:28:34
world where once you knock it on the head, your life is going to be better than what it was beforehand. Yeah. And
00:28:39
it can sound quite preachy when you're talking about sobriety, but it's only
00:28:44
because people who really give it a go experience so many benefits. Like it's
00:28:49
so life-changing in every aspect. It can be confronting like cuz you have to probably not go out as much. And I made
00:28:56
a choice very early on to swap my nights for days and to fulfill my social needs
00:29:02
at breakfast or lunch or maybe an early dinner and to have my evenings with my family. Little changes like that made
00:29:09
massive impact on my mental health because I could look forward to stuff for the first time. When I was a massive
00:29:15
drinker, I had become so anxious to the point where I dreaded going out. I knew I had to, but I also knew that I wasn't
00:29:23
going to be able to control my drink and would be the drunkest person in the room, which led to anxiety. So,
00:29:28
basically, I didn't trust myself around alcohol, which is very, very weird to
00:29:32
say that you can't trust yourself. And that's something that sobriety, the most
00:29:36
wonderful gift is that I trust myself now. And I I feel sad for that person that didn't trust herself. It is it is
00:29:43
quite a heartbreaking thought to think that I didn't have my own back. Yeah.
00:29:49
Yeah, it is. That's really sad. Um, did you have to lose any of your friends or are you lucky enough to be in
00:29:54
an age and stage of life where you know, you know, you know, I'm trying to think
00:29:59
back to my 20ies. I had the same group of maybe eight or nine guys and we do the same thing every Thursday, Friday,
00:30:03
Saturday night. When you get a bit older, it's a bit different, isn't it?
00:30:06
Life's a bit different. Yeah. I suppose when you've got kids, like you're so
00:30:09
busy and doing all the kids stuff that you don't notice your social life sort
00:30:13
of being flushed down the toilet as much. But definitely some people have fallen by the wayside since I got sober,
00:30:20
which I'm cuz cuz also now I don't really care what people think about me,
00:30:24
which is another wonderful side effect. Like if you if you don't want to be my
00:30:28
mate anymore, brilliant. It means that I don't have the hassle of trying to stay
00:30:32
in contact with you or you know I don't mind it if people don't like me who I am
00:30:37
now and preferred that person that was really really unwell when that kind of shows their colors really.
00:30:44
Well, it means you sort of being used as um like a foil for their entertainment really. Yeah, 100%. Um, did that did you
00:30:51
reach that point of not giving a [ __ ] about what people care about you through
00:30:54
do you think that was through the the therapy or the sobriety or is it just the whole Yeah, the whole package. I
00:31:00
think it's all of it. And I think it takes time. Like the first few years of
00:31:04
sobriety, you're sort of white knuckling it, just trying not to drink and, you
00:31:07
know, listening to the podcasts and reading the books and trying to work out what life's going to be like. And then I
00:31:12
think a few years in, it sounds super woowoo and cheesy, which isn't me at all, but you start on this pass the
00:31:21
bucket journey of the self, which I never knew. I thought giving up drinking was just about giving
00:31:27
up drinking, not taking a sip out of a bottle or whatever. It's not about that
00:31:31
at all. It's actually about me becoming who I always was, learning who I was
00:31:36
before alcohol came along, and liking who comes after it. So, it's all Yeah.
00:31:40
is about self- loveve. Well, you you use the term white knuckling, but you you kind of have been white like you had
00:31:46
those periods of nine months during your your pregnancy where you you went without a drink just fine. It seems like
00:31:51
you could have week nights without it. You How were you white knuckling? I would say I was white knuckling because
00:31:58
I was learning so much about myself. Not so much I was desperate for a drink. I would say I was just trying to get on
00:32:05
with this sober thing and trying to get through and have three kids and trying to learn what a craving was and how to
00:32:11
get over it. It wasn't maybe so much white knuckling. That does sound a bit extreme, but I was just navigating and
00:32:18
finding it difficult in the first year, I would say, trying to work out what this was all about and was it possibly
00:32:25
for me even like could I do this? Um, but also I will say very early on, I think the day after I finished um,
00:32:33
therapy in a lot of people come out of there and go, "Oh my gosh, this is going
00:32:36
to be awful." But my drinking and my mental health had deteriorated so much
00:32:40
that actually the day I decided I didn't ever have to drink again was like what a relief. It was like the best
00:32:48
feeling in the world. So yeah, white knuckling might be a bit of a strong term, but definitely the first year is
00:32:54
more difficult than the following five. Yeah. Right. Right. And when how long was it before you
00:33:00
just stopped thinking about it since it became like a non-issue in your life? I think after probably 2 years it becomes
00:33:08
easier to to be with it. Easier. Two years. I know. I know. It's a long time.
00:33:16
It's a massive process. I mean, you've been someone I was someone else for 30
00:33:21
40 years of my life. So, I'm 47 now. So 40 years my brain is so wired to go,
00:33:28
"Oh, I'm tired. Oh, I'm angry. Oh, I feel like [ __ ] Drink, drink, drink."
00:33:32
Any emotion. It was celebrations, commiserations, anything that was happening in my life, that was the
00:33:39
answer. So to recalibrate my brain and to rewire it, all that neuroplasticity or whatever it's called, I had to squish
00:33:46
it into shape. And that was really, really hard. And that's why people relapse because it is hard. It takes
00:33:53
time and it takes effort and it takes all sorts of different tools like podcasts and going for walks every day
00:34:00
and having your sober mates and all of this other stuff. It's like this massive
00:34:04
package which can feel like a lot for anyone to take on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about this book of yours.
00:34:10
Yes. Um so there was an Instagram post in May. Uh was it a cute photo of your dad? Oh yeah. Uh the caption was
00:34:19
probably a huge mistake. I'm letting my 86 year old dad read my book. I wrote
00:34:24
skip on the pill popping chapter and international sex machine. Oh, your face public. International Sex Machine. I'm
00:34:32
not sure if he will speak to me again. My last words were, "Don't judge me. I
00:34:36
was pissed." Um, so I got the book on audible uh cuz I knew you were coming
00:34:40
in. I didn't have a time to order it. Um, what was the um pill popping chapter? I couldn't Oh, that was my
00:34:47
ecstasy days. Yeah, there's all sorts of different There was a cult. There's a
00:34:50
tsunami as well. The pill popping chapter was my overdose. I was somebody that wanted to take it to the next level
00:34:58
with drugs as well, of course, cuz I just wanted to be in oblivion most of the time. And just wanted to wanted to
00:35:05
feel good, but you didn't realize you were feeling bad and hiding something.
00:35:08
100%. I think you are I think you hit the nail on the head. I didn't know that
00:35:11
I was doing that because I was feeling sad. I was feeling very very sad about the loss of friendships and all this
00:35:17
other stuff that had gone on. So, I didn't know that I was filling that void. So, I just went harder and faster
00:35:22
than anybody else. So, you know, I would buy a pack of tennies rather than just taking a half like my mates were doing.
00:35:30
And I had a drug overdose and I just didn't feel like my dad needed to hear about that. He's heard a lot. You know,
00:35:36
he had to pick me up when I got arrested for drink driving, which is like one of
00:35:39
my biggest regrets of my life. But so he knows, but I think now at 86, there's
00:35:45
some things that he just doesn't need to know, especially about his daughter's
00:35:49
sex life. You know, me sleeping with a Romanian guy who had wooden teeth is something that my dad just doesn't need
00:35:55
in his brain. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, that is um that is the first chapter I skipped to, the international sex
00:36:01
machine one. Excellent. Yeah. Okay. Um the these are just some of the bizarre encounters from the book. The French guy
00:36:08
who licked your face. Elaborate. Oh, yes. There was a beautiful Frenchman in Bangkok one night. Yeah. Who who greeted
00:36:14
me by licking my face. I was like, "Oh, he's nice. I'll spend a night with him."
00:36:18
But that was it. People didn't have to do too much to make me interest. As long
00:36:22
as they liked me, I would reciprocate. Because I had low selfworth. All you had to do was do something slightly quirky
00:36:29
or peculiar and I'd be like, "Oh, he's nice. I'll go out with him for a year."
00:36:34
So, yeah. So, you think now with the benefit of hindsight and therapy and deep work that Yeah. You you just wanted
00:36:40
sort of validation in a way. Really? Absolutely. I really It's a love story.
00:36:44
I was looking for love everywhere in most ports. Seems like you were finding it. I didn't find it in very shortterm
00:36:51
ways. Yeah. Yeah. Um Oh, the guy that called you Christina. Oh god. He was madly in love with me. He was my
00:36:57
boyfriend for 5 years and he turned around to me once and said, "Yes, I love
00:37:00
you, Christina." I said, "I'm Vic. I've been going out with you for three
00:37:04
years." Really? No, you're That's a joke. No, no. I did find out he had a Swedish
00:37:09
girlfriend. He was a Thai guy and he had a Swedish girl called Christina sending
00:37:12
him money every week which I didn't know about. Oh, so it was like a like a Freudian slip. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um the
00:37:17
the dude on the top bunk in a dorm room in Spain. Oh yeah, that wasn't very nice. Flapping around like a fish. Yeah.
00:37:23
Were there other people in the dorm? Yes. It's not funny though, is it? How old
00:37:28
How old were you then? Oh, probably 20 22 maybe. Yeah. I don't know. See, I feel like you can get away with it at
00:37:34
that age. Yeah, totally. Yeah. The thing is I was in a blackout. It wasn't like I
00:37:38
can remember certain aspects of things like flashes of memories of my behaviors but then I a lot of it is kind of misty
00:37:46
like I can't see through to that person. It's I want to kind of like break the
00:37:50
clouds apart and go what are you doing? Like why are you doing this? Why are you
00:37:54
taking it to the biggest extreme out of all of your friends? Why do you feel the
00:37:58
need to prove yourself? Cuz that's what it was. I was just trying to come up
00:38:01
with a good, you know, a good story down the pub the next day. We'd meet up for a
00:38:05
roast dinner, have a bloody Mary, get, you know, and get a few drinks in. And I wanted to be that person that could go,
00:38:10
"Here is my stupid story. This is the crazy [ __ ] that happened last night."
00:38:14
And make a room full of people laugh. I think really it was coming from a good place. I was so wanting to make other
00:38:21
people happy. So much so that I forgot that I mattered. Yeah. And [ __ ] you accumulated a lot of stories. I did. And
00:38:28
um it would have been even okay back then you were thinking you know what I'm
00:38:31
going to I'm going to get sober in a few years and write this write a book about
00:38:34
this but that wasn't the uh that wasn't the goal at the time tragically. Well
00:38:37
funny enough as part of our live show we do I read some of my diaries out from that time and I do say the word sober in
00:38:46
there because it's one day drunk one day hung over next day wanting to be sober
00:38:51
next day drunk. It's like this kind of constant pattern and I was really surprised looking back at many many 25
00:38:57
years ago in my heyday the word sober was popping up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how you can recall a lot of the
00:39:05
stuff. Uh cuz you you've been a regular diary keeper. Yeah. I've got loads of
00:39:09
diaries, massive ones. My time in New Zealand when I was backpacking, I've got
00:39:13
about five diaries that are this thick. Hamish, my co-host, comes with his little book and mine are like like these
00:39:19
huge diaries like of everything that I did. Yeah, I used to love keeping a diary. I was always a writer. How like
00:39:25
to what sort of degree? Like bullet points of or no? Like full Well, mostly it's exactly what I said like it's
00:39:31
tonight I'm getting drunk. This is who I've met and this is who I've slept with
00:39:34
and then this is how I feel the next day. And it was every single page was like a different story and a different
00:39:39
tragedy. It was chaos quite honestly to read back on those and think that I thought that was okay. Frightening.
00:39:47
Yeah. My dad is not listening to this podcast. I can tell you that. Uh yes, he did. See nothing about the book. He
00:39:54
phoned me up the other day. He's gone to England. He's read it on the plane and
00:39:58
he said I did skip the chapters you asked me to and I thoroughly enjoyed the tsunami chapter. He said it's a
00:40:04
masterpiece, Victoria. So my parents are still drinkers. They always have been, always will be. And I there is a chapter
00:40:11
in there which is confronting about them. There's an element of blame of course because you know I grew up in a
00:40:17
household where it was the life and soul of the street. In the book I describe it
00:40:22
as our house was on a dark street was the sort of glimmering glitter ball. Yeah. Your mom would have balloons out
00:40:28
front. Yeah. It was it was the party house. Um yeah. What's the chapter that's confronting about your parents?
00:40:34
Well, it's just that I had to say, look, I'm not sure that I would have been a
00:40:38
massive drinker like I am if I hadn't if I'd had a choice about it. I don't
00:40:43
necessarily feel like I had a choice about alcohol. It has been coming for me since the day I was born. And whether
00:40:51
that was growing up in my house, whether it was the culture, whether it was my environment, whether it was living in
00:40:57
England and there was a pub on the end of every street, I feel like, and I think many people feel like this is that
00:41:03
alcohol's just been coming for me and I haven't been able to avoid it. So in the
00:41:07
book, I had to talk about these things. You know, in my recovery, I had to say these are the elements that made me who
00:41:13
I am and it's all of these things and it my parents were included in that. And I
00:41:18
said, look, I knew that blaming them was futile because it was going to hurt the
00:41:23
hearts of people that I loved. So I decided very early on and it was very clear when I wrote that chapter actually
00:41:29
that it wasn't any of excuse me that it wasn't any of those things. It I had a
00:41:34
visualization of my hand coming out from my body. This is me reaching out for a drink. This is my hand reaching into the
00:41:43
fridge for a bottle of wine. It's my hand waving a tener at the barman on a Friday night. This hand is coming from
00:41:49
my body. So therefore, it is my responsibility to stop this. Yeah, it's interesting e that the the level of
00:41:57
accountability to put on your parents or your surroundings cuz it's um while um
00:42:01
yeah, while listening to that part of your book, it made me reflect on my own and uh we'd go and visit my nana and
00:42:07
granddads most weekend. Grandad had a bar downstairs in the basement and um yeah, mom and my nana, they'd be
00:42:12
upstairs with the women and the guys would go downstairs and um us kids would be downstairs and yeah, it was an honor
00:42:19
if you got to like pour a beer for your dad or uncle. And then um I didn't realize it was the bad part of the beer,
00:42:24
but we got to drink the froth. How old? Oh, I don't know. Seven, eight, six, seven, eight, like like as as as
00:42:32
kids. So alcohol was always just a like an like an undercurrent in that sort of environment growing up. And so part of
00:42:40
me thinks, oh maybe I was you drawn to drinking cuz I saw it as a right of passage and part of being an adult. But
00:42:45
then now I'm at an age where some of my mates have got like kids that are 18,
00:42:50
19, 20 and they just have no interest in alcohol at all. And yet they had the similar sort of thing, you know, where
00:42:57
alcohol was just in the house all the time. And but maybe that's just more of
00:43:00
a society thing now with this Gen Z or whatever the [ __ ] they're called. Yeah,
00:43:04
Gen Z. I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is I think there is changing. I think they have exposure to
00:43:09
more information now. So whether it's on Instagram or whatever they're watching
00:43:14
because they're watching so many screens all the time. I think they have exposure
00:43:17
to the impact that it has and they're having they're kind of more aware of
00:43:21
their emotions nowadays. They're more aware of of themselves and their safety.
00:43:26
I know me and my friends when we used to go out we didn't give a [ __ ] what
00:43:29
happened to us like the more injured we got and the more people that we slept with the funnier it was whereas now it's
00:43:36
kind of there's people are a bit more caring about themselves and about their
00:43:41
well-being and whether that's exposure from media I'm not sure but I do feel
00:43:45
like things are changing a little bit in that front yeah maybe I don't know maybe
00:43:49
part of it with um the the generation coming through is um also just their awareness of how troubling social media
00:43:56
can Yeah. Yeah. I took I took my mom to um Boston last April for the marathon and we went into like a like a cannabis
00:44:02
dispensary and it was like an Apple store. Mom was filming it on her phone. She put it on Facebook just just as a
00:44:08
novelty sort of thing. My sister said to her, "Oh, mom, you need to be more
00:44:12
careful about your social footprint." Oh, right. Mom's in her [ __ ] 70s.
00:44:16
Like she doesn't care about us. She's out in the woods. Yeah. But it's
00:44:20
interesting. Yeah. But but yeah, maybe um yeah, if you're 18 to 24 at the moment, um maybe that's like a priority
00:44:26
about how this is going to look if someone sees this and it ends up on LinkedIn or Yeah. Well, of course. Yeah,
00:44:30
if somebody sees you when you're out, people have can take footage of you and
00:44:34
Yeah. It's quite frightening, isn't it? Yeah. I'm glad that didn't happen when I
00:44:37
was in my 20ies. Um do you want to talk about your finger or lack thereof? Yeah. So, that is one
00:44:44
of my drinking injuries. That is my classic drinking injury, which I always thought was the funniest thing ever.
00:44:50
Whereas now I'm like, "Oh my god, I really was off my tit." But this is a
00:44:54
it's it's a this is the millennium, right? 1999. It was the Millennium Night. Yeah. It's the Millennium Stump.
00:45:00
You know, a fireworks display in Thailand in Copang. It wasn't a display. It was me lighting a firework that was
00:45:06
in my pocket at 3:00 in the morning after being blackout drunk, having found a bottle of cold red wine in a bar
00:45:14
somewhere. and rolling around on the beach like a chicken snitle and then walking home and lighting a small
00:45:20
firework in my hand and blowing my own finger off. Yeah. So that was 25 years ago. So you were how old then? I was 23.
00:45:27
23. Yeah. Yeah. And um and did you get hospital treatment or you just like tape it up? I was taken on a um one of those
00:45:35
kind of back of a truck where I was passing out and saying I'll never blow the piano again and then passing out
00:45:41
again. Were you a pianist? Yeah. Oh, I just thought the whole thing was hilarious. I thought, "This is going to
00:45:46
be a good story the next day." And I got to the hospital and it was like something out of mash and there was kind
00:45:52
of like syringes in buckets and I was just like, "Oh gosh." And eventually I
00:45:56
flew to Australia where I was supposed to be doing my year work visa and had all like work done on it and skin grafts
00:46:02
and all sorts of things. But I was kind of just winging it. I I remember phoning
00:46:05
my parents and I lied on the insurance forms and said that somebody had thrown a firework at me cuz I thought maybe I'd
00:46:11
get some money, but I didn't unfortunately. I mean, like, you're in a really good
00:46:16
place now. Like, it sounds like you got a great marriage and you got kids and you've got this um you know, it's
00:46:21
amazing the twist and turn life life brings, right? You got a book and you got this amazing podcast. Um, but when
00:46:27
you look back at when you look at your hand now, like do you do like do you sort of laugh with roast tint and
00:46:33
glasses or do you feel embarrassed or sad or No, I don't feel embarrassed or
00:46:36
sad. I love what happened to me. I love everything about it. I wouldn't have a
00:46:42
podcast if I didn't have these stories. That's the joy of it. Every single
00:46:46
moment of my life has led me to here. I wouldn't respect who I am if I hadn't
00:46:51
gone through something. I'd probably just be having a mundane job and not be
00:46:56
very, you know, happy. Whereas now I can look back, I feel like I've had twists
00:47:01
and turns and nave what made me every step of the way led me to here and I couldn't be more thankful for the
00:47:07
journey as it were. Yeah. Yeah. Does it make it you more did you just flip me half? Yeah. It goes up the It's good at
00:47:15
kids parties. Yeah. It has its benefits. I guess that's the that's the bird
00:47:20
thing. That's the half of the bird. Oh, that is pathetic. Yeah. My friends call me the clock cuz I've got one hand
00:47:26
smaller than the other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do get 10% off when I get my nails
00:47:32
done, though. You're so used to it as well. Um I What was the incident where
00:47:37
you ended up in jail for the night? Yes, that was a drink driving incident when I
00:47:40
was about 18. Um terrible it was. I can't believe I did that. But that just proof again of how I was always more
00:47:49
extreme than anybody else. I was working in a pub at the time. My car was parked
00:47:55
where it shouldn't have been. And I moved my car when I was quite heavily under the influence. And I just remember
00:48:00
the blue light straight away. I hadn't driven anywhere. I was literally moving
00:48:03
it up the road. No excuses. And actually, that was a another good thing that happened because it was so
00:48:09
humiliating. I had to breathe into a breathalyzer. I had to go to court. I had to plead guilty in front of, you
00:48:15
know, all of these people that had made such a stupid mistake. And I was embarrassed then back in that day. And I
00:48:21
never ever took a sip of alcohol and drove ever again, I'm pleased to say. So
00:48:25
sometimes there were red flags that I kind of tuned into. It didn't stop me drinking. It didn't stop me taking drugs
00:48:30
and promiscuity and all that stuff, but I think it maybe escalated those things because I was just numbing out the fact
00:48:36
that I'd done some really stupid things in my life. Yeah. Did that cause like a
00:48:41
huge amount of um shame for your family or personal shame? No. No, not at all. It was kind of a funny story of it got
00:48:47
done for drink driving. It was kind it's kind of a path for the core. Is that the
00:48:51
word? It was just like one of those things that added to our repertoire. Like another crazy story. Thank God I
00:48:57
didn't hurt anyone. You know, I look back on that is one situation I look back on. I go, "God, you know, I got
00:49:03
away with that. Thank Thank I'm so thankful for that." Yeah. Um there's
00:49:09
also a story about your husband sharing you after spewing in a taxi. Yeah. You've all got all the good ones,
00:49:13
haven't you? Yeah. Are they Are they all the good ones? Yeah. I'm wondering.
00:49:16
That's the last one I've got. Oh, we could We're at the skin straight with a
00:49:20
huge dick. How can you That was frightening. Like girthy or long or both? Girthy and long down to his knee.
00:49:27
So you you end up running away. I ran away. I thought I thought it was a snake. And he's a ski instructor as well. I
00:49:34
know. It was a shame. I know. Um there are there is more to it than knob stories in my book. I will. But there
00:49:40
are quite this is just all from one chapter. It's just one chapter. It's a
00:49:44
hell of a body count. The lady that edited my book, she's so funny. I always
00:49:48
say to her, "It's not [ __ ] Shakespeare." All right. She said, "Oh,
00:49:51
but Vic, you've got a turd trifecta." I was like, "What's that?" She You've got
00:49:54
the word turd in three times. I'm Oh, yes. That's a sort of quality writing
00:49:58
that we want. What was the uh what was the context of remember? Oh, yes, you can. I've had quite a few turd
00:50:04
confrontations in my time. It could be one of many. Yeah. Um Oh, yeah. So, so yeah, your husband sharing you after a
00:50:10
tax. So he I mean that seems like pretty [ __ ] pretty drastic, right? It's a
00:50:16
it's a pretty drastic thing to do to someone you love. So So he was a drinker
00:50:20
as well. Um he's given up now as you as you mentioned, but he obviously wasn't
00:50:24
didn't have the same um unhealthy relationship to alcohol as what you had. Does like does does he see anything or
00:50:31
like the the next day or the following weeks? There was an unnamed melancholy between us the next day after that. I
00:50:38
would like to describe as What does that mean? It means that there was a sadness
00:50:41
that we didn't talk about. Okay? There was something hanging in the air that
00:50:44
felt very, very uncomfortable because I had panic ripping through me like wildfire in bed the next day, not able
00:50:52
to take care of my newborn. And that was kind of one of the last times I drank actually. and he had used to have to
00:50:59
come in and I would go from being this life and soul of the party that he knew to being this sort of person lying in
00:51:06
bed fragile not sure what she'd done scared for her life and he's the one
00:51:11
that sort of crackled open the packet of paracetal to me and was like are you all
00:51:15
right I'd be like I'm not all right I'm not all right I'm having really bad
00:51:18
anxiety and I feel like I'm going to die but the one thing that my husband never
00:51:23
did was tell me what to do I don't think I would have listened he showed his
00:51:27
concern in other ways which may have been like a cuddle or just a glass of water next to the bedside table, you
00:51:32
know, cuz he knew I was going to be hung over. But telling me was never going to
00:51:37
work. I had to work it out for myself. But I could sense every time that I drank, I was letting him down because I
00:51:44
used to have to listen to my life going on without me. I'd be in bed not able to
00:51:48
move my head because I'd drunk too many tequila shots whilst I could hear my
00:51:52
little baby's, you know, z jacket being zipped up and them heading to the park
00:51:56
without me. And I knew that I'd become sort of a bystander in my own life. And
00:52:01
that was really, really hard and confronting which is why I had to address the problem. I don't know if I
00:52:06
have hadn't had kids, I would have never had a consequence to my drinking. That's
00:52:10
why I wonder whether I would have just carried on. They were my reason why. their little faces looking up at me,
00:52:15
needing me, and not being able to be there had to be and still is now the reason why I stay sober. Yeah. What What
00:52:23
What do you miss about it, if anything? I don't miss anything. Yeah. I don't
00:52:27
miss anything. I love genuine conversations like we're having now. I love my genuine smile. I love being
00:52:33
authentic with people. I love being able to leave and having boundaries and and one of my favorite things is waking up
00:52:40
with a steady heartbeat. I used to come to when I was a drinker. I used to sort of wake up with that palpitations going
00:52:47
on. What have I done? Where have I been? Who am I with? And I'd wake up in this
00:52:50
sort of shocked state. Whereas when I became sober after a few years, I realized I'm just waking and there is a
00:52:58
really soft heartbeat going on and it's pure contentment because I've got
00:53:02
nothing to worry about. I do still have the odd drinking dream which is quite awful because I'm literally like way
00:53:09
back in there snorting coke off a DJ's turntable like like on the dance floor.
00:53:16
So, occasionally I get those, but I try and get the good bit out of those and go, "Well, at least I got to experience
00:53:21
that again and not deal with the uh dusty head the next day." Yeah, you got
00:53:25
some great war stories. That's brilliant. You don't you don't miss the
00:53:29
um you know thought I've thought about this with my own um experience. I think
00:53:34
what I would miss some sometimes now if I'm getting ready for a night out like it's the
00:53:38
anticipation and then when I'm out and I'm drinking I'm actually not having a
00:53:41
very good time. It's seems [ __ ] boring and lame. Yeah. Do you miss the expectation or the I can still get that.
00:53:48
I can still look forward to something and feel and I even look forward to it more because I know that nothing awful
00:53:54
is going to happen. I can just look forward without a hangover and knowing that I'm going to be completely
00:54:00
compassmentous the next day and just get on with my Sunday. You know, I'm so
00:54:05
thankful and grateful that I don't have those thousand wasted Sundays anymore.
00:54:09
That any sort of memories of drinking or any feelings I mean occasionally if I've
00:54:14
had a really long day, the kids are kids are being [ __ ] and I'm finding life
00:54:19
generally hard. If somebody was to walk by me with a really cold beer, that was like my favorite thing would be to have
00:54:26
a cold beer. I would think, I wouldn't mind whacking that down my neck. It's
00:54:31
really fleeting and I recognize it. But that's just because my brain is wired to
00:54:37
think that and I can sit with it for a second, go, "Oh, I remember you. I remember that person that used to." That
00:54:41
was the problem. I wasn't thinking, "Oh, I'd like to take that off the tray and
00:54:45
have a lovely little sip." I'd be like, I want to grab that and throw it down my
00:54:49
face. And lady with the trade, don't go too far. Yeah. Come back. Come back. So,
00:54:54
what do you what do you what do you do now to sort of please that reward center part of your brain or whatever? So, you
00:55:00
you know when you this calls for a celebration, what do you reach for? A lint ball. Sometimes what a lint ball.
00:55:07
Like those chocolate balls. Oh, a bougie chocolate. Yeah, I do like a lint ball.
00:55:12
But yeah, then you have to go up sugar, of course, because then that becomes a whole other
00:55:15
addiction. I can have an alcohol-free beer now. I quite enjoy one of those like on a night out just to stop people
00:55:21
asking me questions sometimes. Um, and I always like to have the thought of a holiday booked. That's something I can
00:55:28
look forward to. But in the short term, I just look forward to being my genuine self in a social situation. Like, I look
00:55:35
forward to going out now, which is lovely. I just look forward to eating good food and being with friends. We had
00:55:42
Lee Mack, the comedian, on the podcast a few months ago and he made a really interesting point about this. He said,
00:55:48
"Alcohol gets all the credit for a night out." He's like, "You go out and you go
00:55:53
the next day, didn't we have a brilliant time? Everybody was pissed and we bonded
00:55:57
and there was all this camaraderie. Wasn't it fantastic?" And then now he
00:56:02
goes out sober like I do. And we realized that it was booze getting the credit for the night out because I still
00:56:08
have those nights out. I went to the Ministry of Sound gig. I've been to the
00:56:12
Chemical Brothers. I will dance all night with a big grin on my face without any drug or alcohol in me. So alcohol
00:56:19
was always getting the credit. And actually, it's not the drug. It's your
00:56:24
mates. It's the ambiencece. It's the music. It's having these nice conversations. And it's the much more
00:56:30
simple things in life that I appreciate now. And alcohol doesn't get any credit
00:56:34
at all. But how do you stay out late if you're sober and everyone's getting
00:56:37
drunk around you? Drunk people are [ __ ] annoying if you're not on the same wavelength. If everyone's hammered,
00:56:42
then there is a point where you're like, "Right, I can't do this anymore. I'm
00:56:46
out." I don't need any more spit in the corner of my eye. Yeah. And that's why
00:56:49
we always say never be the designated driver as a sober person because you otherwise you have to end up waiting for
00:56:55
those people. Last man standing. Yeah. Yeah. Last man stand. You don't want to
00:56:58
be there for that. But I usually just leave early. Like I have boundaries now. I don't need to stay. I've got nothing
00:57:03
to prove to anyone. What have I got to prove? Like I can drink a pint of Snake Bite and Black faster than anyone else
00:57:08
in Luton. I had the university record when I was It's like a p It's like a p
00:57:12
of cider with beer and black currant juice. But I don't have anything to prove to anyone. So why would I stay
00:57:17
out? Because it's not going to make any difference. I just know what when I feel
00:57:21
tired, I'm going to go home. I've had enough. So I don't feel the need to
00:57:25
appease the opinions or the the choices of others anymore. And that's something
00:57:30
that's huge to me as a people pleaser. Yeah. And now you're in New Zealand
00:57:35
doing a live show. That's that's what brought you here. A friend of mine,
00:57:38
Karina, who's uh on the sober journey herself. I think she's like two years. I
00:57:43
think she's 18 months. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, she's doing really good. And
00:57:46
she's found your um podcast like a huge a huge help as I'm sure she told you on
00:57:51
the the ride in from the airport. Yeah. Um Yes. So, what what do these shows look like? These live shows that you do.
00:57:56
So, we do a live show of the podcast. Yeah, we specify sober socializing cuz we totally believe that's why people in
00:58:04
this level of being sober curious, that's why people don't give up alcohol
00:58:07
and why they start again is because of their social life and being so scared of who this person is within. And so we
00:58:14
focus on that, but it's basically a live episode where we introduce the topic. We
00:58:19
try and do it in an alcohol-free environment and we usually get a sponsor on board. We've got Seedlip this time,
00:58:24
so an alcohol-free drinks company. And everyone just comes into a room and there's generally a lot of humor, a lot
00:58:30
of stories. Sometimes people from the audience share some of their drinking stories. Hamish and I read from our
00:58:35
diaries and we just have a laugh. It's just a lovely evening. Yeah. God, those
00:58:40
diaries that you kept, it was like um it was like past you was looking after current you in a way, wasn't it? 100%.
00:58:46
That's a lovely way of looking at it. Yeah, it was. And I still respect that
00:58:50
girl, you know, she was lost and she was sad and I feel closer to her now. Part of um of course part of um therapy is
00:58:58
doing that inner child work where you connect with that person from your youth and you try and understand them a bit
00:59:03
more. And now I definitely have more of an understanding of who she was and why she did the thing she did and it gives
00:59:09
me a sort of peace and contentment that I've kind of made amends with her. Would
00:59:14
you would you change anything? Nothing. Maybe the drink driving thing. Maybe that guy turning away the skirt with the
00:59:21
Yeah. Maybe the bunk beds guy. There's a few of those that definitely wouldn't
00:59:24
have been as satisfied as they were. When I wrote this book, I never imagined in a million years when I sat in my
00:59:30
son's bedroom and wrote this book that anyone would ever read it, which is why
00:59:34
all of those awful stories in there because I was writing it for me. There's
00:59:38
no way I thought I'd get a publishing deal and somebody would put it out there. So, yeah, it's quite confronting
00:59:42
that people know things like that. I have to exit it from my brain. It's cool, though. You must um look look at
00:59:48
this work with a sense of pride like giving given where you are now and think [ __ ] that's a long journey. Yeah. I'm
00:59:53
not sure some people I know feel the same about it cuz they probably think I'm a bit of an oversharer. But at the
00:59:58
same time who cares? Everyone's done this [ __ ] You know, don't pretend you
01:00:02
haven't. Everybody's done this [ __ ] Everybody's done crazy stuff in their
01:00:05
lives. We've all been down the seafront with a traffic cone on our head naked on
01:00:10
Byron Bay. You know, we've all done it. So, I'm just saying, "Yeah, I did it and
01:00:13
now I tried something else and that's better. That's all I can do. Not all of
01:00:17
us have lost a finger in coffee. My stories are quite extreme. It's funny. We always call Hamish, the who I do the
01:00:23
podcast with. We always call him like the normal drinker and like kind of no game H who was a bit of a lightweight,
01:00:29
but his stories, I swear to you, they're as bad as mine. So, he's always got
01:00:34
something that he can push back at me with. I feel like it's good. And if you're going to be the the person that
01:00:38
front foots it, it creates like um an open space for vulnerability, doesn't it? It allows that vulnerability
01:00:43
exchange to take place. And I find that so healing, the vulnerability. You know,
01:00:47
we have a thing called the shame shared on the podcast where people write in their most terrible things that they've
01:00:52
done when they're drinking. And it's like we share this communal blame and it
01:00:56
makes things a lot easier. It's like you get away with this individual shame and
01:00:59
have communal blame instead and it lifts it lifts the weight off everybody. I do
01:01:04
think there is something really deep and meaningful in telling your story in an honest perhaps brutally honest way.
01:01:10
Sometimes the emails that I get are, "I didn't know that there was somebody
01:01:15
worse than me." And it makes people not feel so bad. Yeah. All right. Well,
01:01:20
Victoria Van Stone uh from the Sober Awkward podcast, award-winning and also the book 1,000 Wasted Sundays, which um
01:01:28
it's on audible. You can probably get it on Amazon as well for your Kindle. Um
01:01:32
hey, congratulations on everything you've done. And well, no, congratulations on everything you're
01:01:37
doing and shame on you for some of the things you've done. That's a great way to end. Thanks, Tom.