Welcome to The Crucible, Conversations for the Curious.
I am Hamish, your host.
This podcast is for anyone going through awakenings, trying to make sense of life.
Whether dark nights are the soul, needing to make life -changing decisions, struggling with addiction or critical illness, or simply realizing that their life as they know it is
not aligned to values and purpose.
You are not alone.
You can get through this, promise you.
Life is far more beautiful on the other side.
Getting sober was not easy.
Is it worth it?
It absolutely is.
My life is not chaotic.
I've reconnected with family.
I've got a purpose.
I'm doing stuff that is important to me.
Some of my friends stayed with their partners.
I sadly didn't.
I had to move continents.
I had to leave all my clients behind, all my business, everything.
Regrets?
No, because I got supported, because I was very
very fortunate.
everyone deserves another chance.
Everyone deserves another chance like I did to start
Today I'm going to share some of my story.
The story of how I became an addict and what happened and where it came out the other side.
I grew up as the eldest of four kids in the countryside in a beautiful little village.
In the middle of nowhere my dad worked hard to bring an income, was hardworking and studious and he had this whole concept that you really had to work hard to achieve
anything in life and part of that meant he was always busy, he was always at work, he didn't come home on time, he made promises to be back at a certain time and then he
wasn't.
So there was a conflict there between what...
He told us to do, you know, don't break promises, don't lie and things like that.
And yet he was breaking promises and not keeping commitments that he made.
And these kinds of things stuck with me and it just put a conflict in between what was the reality of life, adult life, and what I was told to do, how I was told to be.
And this theme kept on coming up all the way through life.
there was that constant discontinuity between what I was told to do, what my parents told me to do, what society told me to do, and what I was understanding as a child and who I
was growing up to be.
And that brought in a great deal of disappointment that people would say one thing and expect another.
And I'm not quite sure I understood how to deal with that.
but that was just part of growing up and that was that.
A great deal of my growing up was absolutely wonderful.
I lived in the country, we was kids in the 80s, we could just run around, there's some food, off you go, come back for tea.
Again, the biggest problem was what time do I need to be back?
Back at six o 'clock.
How do I get back?
What time do I know?
What time do I need to leave by?
Well, obviously that depends where you are.
But as a child, that concept was really complicated because sometimes I'd be five miles away, sometimes I'd be two miles away.
So I was always getting told off for being late.
Again, that makes sense, doesn't it?
As an adult, that makes sense.
So many things that happen as a child don't make sense and you just make ways of understanding, ways of coping.
And that's what I did.
I coped with all sorts of things.
I found it necessary to make my own decisions because when I was told stuff, it wouldn't work.
I wouldn't get the results I wanted.
I wouldn't get the answers that I wanted.
So I became highly resilient and I made up my own journey and that caused conflict.
My dad wanted me to do things a certain way and I didn't.
He had a rail track mentality.
I didn't.
I was curious.
I was expansive.
We fought, as a child I fought, growing up I fought.
And until recently we fought and that just was what it was.
He expected me to do things his way.
There was no other alternative.
This is how we're doing it.
And that was it.
End of story.
I never had a chance to voice my opinion.
What was right for me, what I wanted.
So it was, well, just get on with what they said and ignore it and do my own stuff.
And that is the case of what it was.
I would listen to other people and I would do what I wanted.
And that caused more...
discontinuity because there was what I was being told to do on one hand, do this, do this.
And it did not align with who I was and what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be.
So there was this disconnect.
So it was easier not to communicate.
It was easier not to share how I was thinking, what I was thinking.
And so I didn't, you know, I didn't connect in that way with my parents.
My dad was not a role model.
I loved him to bits.
He wasn't present.
I must have done something wrong.
I one of the biggest turning points that I have worked through was sitting next to him one Sunday morning
and he was reading his newspaper and I wanted to play and he told me to go away because Sunday morning was his time to read his newspaper and I just didn't compute.
I wanted to be with my dad, he was my hero, he didn't want me around.
So what had I done wrong?
What had I done wrong that he didn't want me?
And I remember shutting down and I remember just going, well, I didn't understand so that was it.
And these little things,
as a child are traumatic.
make me wonder what I've done wrong.
They make me wonder what I was thinking, was right and things like that.
But I worked out very quickly the way to manage parents was to do what they want and to anticipate what they want.
And
to be loved, I had to do things.
So it became transactional.
And again, this is something I realized more recently that my relationship with my parents was transactional.
I didn't ask them for help.
They didn't ask me what I wanted.
And that's what it was.
And as I've looked back in my life, a lot of my relationships have been transactional.
clients, obviously, to begin with.
Some of them became friends.
More of them were.
More friendships were transactional.
Again, not all of them, but some of them were.
And I would look at people in a fairly one -dimensional perspective.
Not how can I use them, but what is the transaction?
So I didn't make friends.
I kept people at arm's length, and just that was it.
Later on when I got to university, that was just an absolute riot.
I found drinking and drugs and the alcohol was brilliant.
It allowed me to make sense of purpose.
I was more relaxed, I was more fun, I was more engaging, I was able to communicate with people and have fun, and obviously we had shared nonsense in common.
And it was brilliant.
It just helped me overcome things that were...
struggling with, that I was troubled with, know, about the relationships, about connection, about this.
It took away the edge off things that I didn't understand.
And I got my degree, I had a good time at university, I spent more time making videos and films, and I was highly creative and I enjoyed that.
We're going to wind back a little bit to school though.
Primary school I remember drawing, I loved drawing steam ships and...
Somebody would laugh at me and say, why are you drawing steam ships?
Ships don't look like that anymore.
They don't work like that.
That closed down a great aspect of my understanding of creativity.
I couldn't draw.
My drawings weren't nice.
They weren't liked.
Something similar happened with writing.
I remember I wanted to write about something in particular, but no, the teacher said you have to do this.
There was no fun in writing whatever that was.
So again, it was just like, well, I'm not creative yet.
At university I spent most of my time making films and on holidays I was working with a mate's older brother making commercial corporate videos for clients and I loved that.
I loved the idea of coming up with an idea and then working out how to do it and creating a brain brainstorming and doing it and that became my passion and I spent months and
months moving down to London, coming back again, going down to London, coming back again.
to get a job in the TV industry.
And eventually I did.
A part of that going down to London and back, I actually wrote a poem.
got published about the IRA bombings in the early 90s.
And still, I didn't understand that I was creative.
I went into the TV industry.
I had an amazing life.
It was work hard and play harder.
it was okay to drink, was acceptable to drink, we would sometimes have a drink at lunchtime.
I soon realized that wasn't very healthy so I didn't do that.
So I managed to separate the drinking from my work.
But as life got on I became a really successful camera assistant, really really good at my job.
A lot of the cameramen I worked with went on to different things, their lives changed and...
I was left doing stuff that wasn't particularly entertaining.
It wasn't fun.
And after a while, the transition is you go from a cameraman, camera assistant to a cameraman.
And the camera, as an assistant, I was up here.
I was good.
I was doing documentaries.
I was traveling around the world.
was going into the pyramids.
I was going around Ireland on helicopters.
was driving across America.
And then you start again as a cameraman down there, not just there, down, down, down, down, down,
Hoovering I called it.
Hovering things like Big Brother.
Hovering things like reality TV when all you are is a tripod pointing the camera and just absorbing noise.
There was no quality.
There was no creativity.
It was just that and
That was tough.
I didn't like that.
I got out of that business at the same time my mum got sick.
So things were like, I had a job, I didn't like it.
It wasn't fulfilling.
It wasn't what my dream was.
It had gotten worse.
My mum then got sick.
Being God's number one fan, I thought she would be fine.
So I didn't see her as much as I should have done.
And then she got very sick and she died fairly quickly and...
I lived 400 miles away from her in London, she was up in Yorkshire.
I didn't go and see her enough and I beat myself up for that and the drinking really impacted.
So little things in life had knocked me down and down and same with girlfriends.
Every girlfriend I went out with I knew it wasn't the right person.
I still haven't worked out what that pattern was.
Was I attracting the wrong person?
Was I looking for the wrong person?
But that's what it was.
And it was obviously quite distressing.
You're going out with somebody, it's fun, but you're not the right person.
So kind of watch the point.
So there was a lot of dissatisfaction going on there.
And again, the alcohol was a great way just to numb that, just to...
avoid that thinking about what was dissatisfying, what the disconnection was and things like that and it became more and more a theme.
So back to my mum dying, you know a good son is always there for his mum.
I wasn't and I had to realise that all that guilt and shame I piled up on myself which I numbed with the drinking was self -imposed.
I wasn't a bad person.
I had a job, I had a life, I had a career, I had a house, I had commitments.
And those were important.
I didn't have the time or resources to go 400 mile trip every week.
And so I had to wrap my head around the fact that I was beating myself up for something in the past that I couldn't change.
I had to make peace with it.
You can either beat yourself up and drink, beat yourself up and numb.
But at some stage you have to go, that was actually pointless.
There's no point doing that.
There's no point in beating yourself up or making your life miserable because that just doesn't hurt, doesn't help.
is, yeah, it's unhelpful at best.
And to be realistic, you're just shaming yourself, you're beating yourself up, you're not allowing yourself to understand and realize that life goes on.
So I wrapped my head around that later on, that beating myself up is not the way ahead.
But in the meantime I had started to drink a lot more.
and it was impacting my relationships, was impacting my work and I got sick and I got to a stage where if I ate more than a small handful of food, I would have absolute stomach
cramps and so I basically just sort of ate a tiny little bit for, I can't remember, three to six months, maybe nine months, doctors weren't sure.
I mean, I drank more Gaviscon than anything else, which kind of helped.
But the drinking continued and it did become a problem.
I managed to sort myself out.
I left the TV industry, still not thinking I was creative.
And then I started being a photographer and I was very, very good at it.
I went into Tuscany and I photographed hundreds of homes and basically helped this company really get their advertising and marketing off.
And it was spectacular.
I would drink occasionally on these things, was just sociably, it was just with the people I was working with and things like that.
Wind on a few years, I met this incredible person and had the chance to go to South Africa.
And I did.
I sat next to somebody on the aeroplane and I had decided that I am going to...
chat to whoever I sit next to and see what happens.
So I got chatting to this guy, he was a wealthy Englishman who had a house out in South Africa.
And by the time we got there, I had got a job.
I said I would find a film crew and we would make him a film, we would advertise his property.
And that's what I did.
So I found people to make that and from that one conversation, chatting to this gentleman, I started a career in South Africa.
I met the people he did the market who did his marketing and they said we like your work.
I had a job.
I photographed for four or five years hundreds of luxury apartments and villas and houses.
I met somebody else and she was a photographer.
She loved photographing horses.
I helped her get her career off.
I showed her styles and techniques which she picked up and then she just took them like that.
But and this is the magic of talking with people she
was offered a job with a company called Protea Hotels, because one of her friends worked there, and that was too corporate for her.
So she said, Hamish, do you want to chat?
So I went to see them and they said, we love your work.
And that gave me a five, six year contract, photographing hotels, properties, traveling around Southern Africa, doing this.
And it was an incredible experience.
Again, I would be careful.
I would never drink at these jobs.
If I was going to drink, I would either pay cash or I would go and find a bar and drink there.
I wouldn't get drunk, but I was drinking.
It was a dependency.
It was just to cope.
It was just to sort of manage.
And that's what happened.
I just, I did that.
Went forward a few more years.
I was living in...
outside of Cape Town, about an hour and a half out of Cape Town.
And I wasn't happy there.
It was far away from my friends.
was far away from my clients.
It was far away from where I wanted to be.
And I felt very unsafe.
I didn't like it.
And I had got to a stage where the drinking was problematic.
I was buying booze and I'd crack open the bottle of booze driving home.
And I would drink that.
and another one and then get home and pretend everything was alright.
I was blacking out, I was lying and it became a mess.
It became more and more and more of a mess.
And as time went on, it did become an awful lot worse.
I would compromise my shoots so I could get to the bottle store before it closed.
I mean, there's no point getting booze at four o 'clock in the afternoon.
It gets warm, especially in South Africa.
So I would compromise my shoots.
I would compromise my editing.
It just became messy.
It became a drama.
It became chaotic.
And...
It was more and more of a problem.
The blacking out became more of a problem.
Waking up at 2, 3 in the morning sweating and thinking, God, I'm hung over again.
I'm going to be.
And it became more of a problem.
I was lying to my partner.
I was lying to my friends.
we need to get some food for supper tonight.
So off I'd go and go and buy two or three beers, neck them driving home, throw the bottles out of the window so I wouldn't get caught and then carry on cooking and drinking.
And I can
do a mean roast because it's easy.
Bung everything in, check it every however and have a bottle of wine at the same time and this is just the pattern and this went on and on and it was damaging me, was damaging my
relationship, it was damaging my relationship with my friends but I didn't care.
but I did, but that first drink would stop me caring and it would numb that pain, would numb that struggle with, I don't know how to have that conversation, I don't know how to
do this, I don't have the emotional intelligence, I don't know how to say I need help.
And it got worse.
the craziness of cracking a bottle open with a small coin.
Couldn't have a bottle opener in the car.
I that'd just be stupid.
So I'd be cracking them open, holding them in my knee, doing this, struggling and struggling.
Try opening a bottle of beer with a five pp's or a dime.
You know, that's what I was doing.
Initially, I would be at least getting out of Cape Town and over the flyover and then down to out of town a bit.
But latterly, it wasn't even that.
It'd be doing that.
And then once I got to the quieter roads, it would be the bottle of booze, the empty bottle out of the window.
And it'd be like one, two, three.
If there was a thud, I knew it had got to the grass.
If there was a crash, it hadn't.
That's not okay.
I mean that really, really isn't.
It was, however, less shameful than being caught having booze in the car, empty bottles in the car.
And the more I think about it, the more I realized that I wanted to be stopped.
I wanted to be stopped by the police where they could say, hey, you've got a problem.
And I wanted help.
And I didn't know how to ask my friends.
So much shame.
I didn't know how to ask anybody.
So this was my way of doing it.
I was deliberately sabotaging my life so I would get help.
I mean, why can't men ask for help?
Why couldn't I ask for help?
I couldn't.
There's no answer.
There is no answer that I couldn't ask for help.
Of course, every morning I'd wake up and say, right, I'm not going to drink today.
And I wouldn't.
Not till lunchtime when the hangover had gone and the feeling sick had gone.
And then four o 'clock or five o 'clock would come and
We need to get some food for supper tonight and it would begin again.
And that was the process.
And repeat.
I did manage to stop drinking for about eight or nine weeks when I had an operation on my shoulder.
One of those reasons was I couldn't drive for six weeks.
So of course I couldn't get to the bottle store.
But as soon as I was able to, I started again because that time of not drinking, I had to confront all sorts of things and that was really scary.
That was really frightening.
That was really unhelpful.
And I just struggled with it.
And I realized that I know how to deal with this.
I know how to deal with it.
I can drink.
I can hide my fear.
I can drink it away and I cannot look at what I actually needed to deal with.
So that's what I did.
And...
I wondered whether I had a problem, but I didn't.
was coping.
I was coping.
I was able to deal with my clients and serve them and provide them.
Yes, I messed up.
bit of bullshit here and there and apologies.
the weather wasn't very good and things like that.
And when I went away on shoots, I wouldn't drink.
I was really, I managed to do that.
I certainly wouldn't get drunk.
I might have a couple.
Again, as I said, I would pay cash and that was my way of doing it.
But come late.
2018, things were really getting bad.
I was popping the beers, driving over the flyover out of Cape Town.
So there's cars in every direction.
Sometimes we were doing 15, 20 kilometers an hour.
And the bottles weren't in bags.
They were just like that.
It'd be look at, no cars coming, dum.
And it was utterly self -destructive.
The relationship was a mess.
and I didn't know how to sort that out.
didn't know how to do anything.
All I knew is once I'm numb, it's fine.
Once I'm drunk, I'm fine.
Once I can take that edge off, it's fine.
And it didn't matter how appalling I felt the following morning.
It didn't matter about the hangovers because I had managed to hide away from what was fighting me, what was scaring me, what was overwhelming me.
And I just didn't know how to deal with it.
So it was...
November 2018 I spoke to a photographer friend of mine, an amazing human being, and I said to him, hey, I think I've got a problem.
I think I'm drinking too much.
And I picked him for one specific reason.
He didn't know my friends.
We weren't really good friends.
He didn't know all my backstory.
And, you know, he was a different section of my...
of my life.
And he lived in Cape Town and I lived away out of Cape Town.
So it was, you know, it was just that.
And he said, okay, let's have a look.
So I told him and he said, yeah, it sounds like it.
He said, don't worry.
I went to rehab 18 years ago.
And of course my jaw just dropped.
Of all the people I could have asked, dared, braved my soul to say, hey, I think I've got a problem.
I asked someone who had been to rehab, he had no judgement, he just said so.
I went to rehab 18 years ago, I was drinking a bottle of whiskey every night and doing this and that and the other.
And there was no shame, there was no shaming, there was no judgement.
And I had been so brave, I had finally plucked up the courage to say, hey, I think I need help.
And as said, the person I asked for, he just didn't judge me, he just said, what?
You know, it's a coping strategy.
Let's see what we can do.
And that changed everything.
That fact I was judging myself.
I was judge, jury and executioner.
And every morning I would beat myself up.
Every afternoon and evening I would poison myself.
And round it would go.
I would chastise myself.
I would try not to drink.
I hadn't got these coping skills.
I didn't know what to do.
And I was like, so, you know, try doing this.
Let's see what we can do.
That changed everything.
So then I started looking for rehabs and I went to visit a couple.
One was terrible.
One was all right.
And then I found one in a little town called Comakee just outside of Cape Town.
It was by the sea.
had mountains nearby and that is my dream to live by the sea with mountains nearby.
And that was it.
So I said, cool.
So I went to see them and booked myself in and carried on drinking because I knew there was a finishing point.
But the relief knowing that I was going to be somewhere I had going to incarcerate myself for three weeks to sober up to
get away from everything and just see what was going to happen.
So I did.
December 21.
2018 I checked into rehab and everything changed.
I had to confront my fears.
I had to write down my addiction history, what I'd done, how it had happened and they said there's one rule do not blame anyone.
Nobody had got a gun and said drink Hamish.
Nobody had put that can in my hand and made me drink it.
So yes, so I wrote down this, that, clients, partner, family, this, everything.
I blamed everybody.
And it read like a poor me pity party.
It was absolutely flipping embarrassing.
So I rewrote it and the third time it was just about tolerable.
And also what happened is I started crying.
Hi Hamish, how you doing?
Tears.
I cried for three weeks.
quite remarkable.
I hadn't cried for years.
I'd bottled everything up.
I didn't know what emotions were.
Well, I did.
were four.
Love, hate, anger, rage.
Those are the four emotions I knew.
Yeah, and that was it.
Four of those.
So, any more than that.
And apparently there are hundreds of thousands.
I mean, go figure.
Love, hate, rage, anger.
So yeah, so I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried some more.
And we were taught adaptive strategies.
were taught look at things.
We were taught that you've always got a choice.
You're going to react.
Your nervous system, your system, growing up.
Things will happen and you'll react like that.
But between that reaction and doing something there is a tiny
tiny little gap and that little gap is where there are infinite opportunities.
That is where you can choose to react, lash out, bite, be violent, be aggressive, hide, numb, run, whatever.
Or you can go, what can I learn from this?
What do I want?
I don't want to hit that person.
I don't want to do this.
So we were taught that and to look at that little space and say, what outcome do I want?
And with that,
tiny breath.
It is almost like when you breathe in and breathe out.
There's that tiny little point where you're not doing either and it's this small.
And that is where I learnt to make a decision.
I don't do it all the time.
I'm human.
You know, I still lash out.
I still get angry, but that is when I learnt to...
look at what outcome I wanted and that outcome might be peace, might be not to hurt somebody, it might be to well actually this is my opinion and my opinion to me matters.
Boundaries.
So it allowed me to look at things.
We had lots of sessions with a counsellor, I mean I think I got through all of her tissues.
It was very hard but talking about stuff and then realising that all my fears weren't going to kill me, they didn't.
The fact that I couldn't talk about something, that's fine.
I learnt to, I learnt that all my demons were actually encouraging me to look at my fears.
They weren't trying to eat me, they were trying to help me.
And how I reacted to things, those triggers were, what can I learn from them?
So I had to re -parent myself and I had to re -program myself and it was remarkable.
It was hard.
It was very hard.
put me on antidepressants.
They put me...
We had a big program of DBT, which is dialectical behavior therapy.
So again, this is looking at how to respond.
If you're hungry or angry or lonely or tired, you have to check into what you're going to do because those are trigger points where you lash out, where you are not at your best.
You're not functioning because you are hungry.
angry, lonely or tired.
So you know you're not going to be at 80 % or 70%.
You might be at 30 or 40.
But it was a remarkable time.
I met some incredible people, know, everybody's story is different.
I also found out that there are other people who are addicts, other people who are alcoholics, other people who couldn't cope, other people who found ways to do what I'd
done and done stuff that made me look pale in comparison.
And I'd done stuff that made other people look pale in comparison.
But it's not about that comparing.
We all had one thing in common.
We had found a way to make sense of life.
had found a
way to stop ourselves dying.
You know, I didn't commit suicide.
I didn't crash my car.
I didn't go mad.
I had a capacity for survival and the alcohol was that.
It stopped me from dying.
It stopped me from killing myself.
It was a crutch, absolutely.
And unfortunately with any crutch, they get old.
and mine was breaking and it was going to kill me because I was driving drunk because I wanted to get help and I didn't know how because I was compromising my relationships
because I was compromising my work my clients were unimpressed so it was a brilliant way to manage my fears but it was making my world smaller I couldn't
stretch myself, I couldn't expand, I couldn't reach out, I couldn't do all sorts of things.
My world was getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and limited.
And rehab showed me these things and gave me some tools to help and make sense of that.
And it was remarkable.
But all too quickly it was over.
And so February the 5th, I left rehab and had to rejoin the world.
and I liken it to buying a house.
know, once you made that decision to buy a house and you put the money down, it's yours, you bought it.
Brilliant.
That's the easy bit.
You've got to pay the bills.
You've got to pay the upkeep.
You've got to pay the rent.
You've got to pay the everything else.
You know, you've got to make sure it stays going.
You can't just let it go derelict.
Same with rehab.
Rehab's the easy bit because it's constrained.
But after that, then you have to go and live.
You've got to face the real world.
You've got to be out with people who you used to drink with, do drugs with.
You've got to go out with people and places.
So bars, shops where you bought the alcohol.
You know, can't really not go to the supermarket.
And you're still going to get triggered by things.
know, people happen, people let you down, people get angry at you, people expect from you.
All those things, those reasons I drank because I did.
So out in the real world, it was tough.
I'd moved out of my family home and I stayed with a friend who was really, really kind and that was spectacular.
And I felt raw.
I felt that all my skin had been sanded off, all my masks had been sanded off.
And it was quite utterly the most beautiful feeling to feel raw, to feel baby skin soft.
to feel I had no masks.
I also felt secure.
felt I had never ever felt so safe.
It's like all these masks were squeezing me and not allowing me to be Hamish.
And yet when I took them all off, when I stopped drinking, when I had to confront every single fear and doubt and have those conversations and say to people, hey, sorry, I let
you down.
I've been drinking.
I'm now.
getting sober.
and stopping judging myself and stopping beating myself up and being curious.
And then, you know, I'd say to a client, hey, I'm really sorry I haven't been doing really well.
You know, I've been drinking, I've been doing drugs, I've been compromising my work with you, but I'm clean and sober now and I'm on that journey.
And the respect, the...
Kindness and the understanding and the second chance, you know, I was given another chance and being given another chance is incredibly beautiful I had to make peace with people.
I had to apologize.
I had to mend some relationships other relationships fell apart There are consequences there are consequences some people were very unimpressed and that's fair enough, you know,
you can't go through life
blundering along, drinking, letting people down, hurting people and not expecting some people to not forgive you.
And that's fine.
That's absolutely fine.
And you also can't expect those people you went going out drinking with to still say you're friends.
No, because a lot of them just wanted me to go out drinking.
A lot of them wanted me to be a drinking buddy or a bullshit buddy or someone to be there so they can feel whatever.
So I lost friends.
I lost...
All sorts of things, but I found myself.
I went to AA meetings, I went to NA meetings, I didn't like the way, Hi, I'm Hamish, I'm an addict.
I'm not.
I was.
And I firmly believe, well it's not a case of firmly believing, I know that words have power.
If I'm going to call myself an addict, I'm beating myself up.
I'm not.
I'm not even a grateful in recovery addict.
I'm Hamish.
You know, I'm sober, I'm not drinking.
I don't want to.
And I found ways to...
make that more important to me.
Obviously I don't want to be hungover, I don't feel like that, I don't like that, I don't like waking up covered in sweat at three in the morning thinking what happened.
But more importantly through the books I've read and the conversations I had I really began to realize that even a glass of wine
impairs my cognition.
I don't think so well.
I think differently.
I know I do.
It's the same with marijuana.
It doesn't take an awful lot to start thinking differently.
Well, not thinking at all.
So the alcohol changes my chemical balance in my head.
and I didn't like that.
I didn't like not being quite so dextrous, know, not being able to do things like that.
I didn't like not thinking as well.
I didn't like running at 80 % rather than 90%.
I didn't like how it actually made me feel.
So that was it.
That was another reason to not drinking, as was...
I don't know to this day, I don't know whether I could have one and no more.
I mean the AA saying one is too many and thousand never enough is so true because that's what it was.
I was absolutely fine until I had that first mouthful that it was like, that's what it was.
And the chaos and the drama and the nonsense and the bullshit and going to find it at two in the morning You know going to places where I know it is available on a Monday or
Tuesday or Wednesday evening Going to different off licenses bottle stores, so they don't recognize me.
I mean, that's just bonkers bonkers bonkers
go to that bottle store on a Monday.
They don't give a shit and the chances are they might recognise me anyway and so what?
You know, they're too busy around the world.
But, gotta go to different one, I don't want to get seen, I don't want to miss.
Don't have a bottle opener in the car?
Use a coin.
You know, it's...
It's crazy.
And it really was really crazy.
And it was madness and dramatic and unhealthy and you know, the list goes on, I don't need to list it.
But the joy of waking up without a hangover was spectacular.
The joy of being able to run more easily.
The joy of communication and connecting to people because of course I've had to look at all these things.
Look at how I deal with people, how I manage people, expectations.
Look at how I keep people at arm's length and I still do that.
I'm working on that.
Hey, I'm still alive.
It's work in progress.
I can go to bottle stores and buy booze for people.
I don't have a problem with that.
I don't have people have a problem with drinking around me.
If they're to get drunk and act like stupid, I have given myself permission to leave countless times.
I'm going home.
You're drunk.
You're acting like a knob.
Whatever.
Who knew?
Who knew you could give yourself permission to do things?
Who knew you had to...
Who knew you didn't have to take your family's beliefs on board or societies?
I didn't.
I never gave myself permission for the simple reason.
Actually, that's not fair to say the simple reason.
I had had ingrained to me that there is one way of doing it and that's my dad's way.
Full stop.
No answer.
So there's no blame.
But as a child I joined these dots and this because, this because and so I didn't look at my stories, I didn't look at my patterns, I didn't look at my beliefs because they were in
contradiction to what I wanted.
I wanted this, I wanted to be creative, I wanted to be this.
You're not creative, you can't draw.
You're not creative, you're not allowed to write what you want.
I got published, I got a poem published.
I was taking photographs of beautiful homes and helping market them.
I was photographing people.
I would get a client turn up like this and I would get them to soften and interact.
I was brilliantly creative but there was that disconnect between what my vision of creativity was from how I had been told.
I could beat myself up and think why the hell did I not change?
Why the hell did I not?
get curious, I didn't.
It's that simple.
I didn't get curious.
I didn't have that bandwidth to actually look at my life and go, why should that rule be true?
I would just disconnect from it.
If I didn't want something or didn't believe in it or didn't accept it, I would just park it over there under not interested.
But because I hadn't dealt with it,
It was always conflict, was always chipping at me and that is how and why I found drugs and alcohol because they were able to put a blanket over it or tarpaulin or wrap it in
black plastic bag and tape it up but I was always carrying it.
I don't need my parents' beliefs.
I've taken on an awful lot of the good stuff.
I don't take along the stuff I don't want.
might change tomorrow.
All sorts of things have happened in that journey of recovery, that journey of finding who I am.
I am spiritual.
I have a deep understanding of what is important to me, connection with nature, with shamanism, with connectivity with other people.
I'm highly intuitive.
Whether that comes from
Being very aware of what's going on and hypervigilant.
It's more than that.
That's an aspect of it.
I'm also really good at reading people.
Really, really good as a photographer.
could get people to relax and settle down and become comfortable.
And other clients, Hamish, I need some photographs.
I was able to get inside of their head in minutes and find out what they wanted, a style and this, that and the other.
And I've since begun to feel this in that this is intuition.
I am very intuitive.
I'm also very creative.
I've accepted that.
and I've had to look at how I deal with things.
have to look at my stories.
I realized that my dad did love me.
I realized that he was simply doing his routine, which was reading his paper.
And I have rewritten that story as Hamish sitting next to him wanting to have a chat with him and him same go away.
I've now got a beano.
So he's sitting next to me and I'm reading the beano, happy as Larry.
Is that story true?
It's not true, however, it is where I go to when my brain goes, this doesn't happen, this doesn't love me.
It's just like, no, I can rewrite that narrative.
And I've done that on all sorts of things because as an adult, I'm able to look at these things and realize the child was running the show.
I've had to grow up, I've had to reparent and I liken it to...
being in my childish archetype and having to grow up, awaken, ride of passage, whatever you want to call it, to become an adult to live with that responsibility.
The coping strategies are now adaptive strategies.
Hamish the adult can use his experience of 53 years rather than the child's zero to seven experience.
So I have got...
seven times more experience to run the show rather than just that little bit of making sense from that perspective when the child I was had no way of comprehending the subtlety
or lack of of adult.
know, dad wasn't there, dad let me down, dad this, dad that, mum this, mum this, mum that.
They were doing the best they could.
They were bringing up four kids.
They were having to bring money.
Interest rates in the 70s and 80s were 18%.
Now they're three or 4%.
They had huge pressures.
They had so much less than what I had now.
And they had chosen a lifestyle.
And that's what we did.
That's what they did.
know, mommy's not there.
Daddy's not there.
What have I done wrong?
That's the narrative that most children have.
And until, as an adult, until you carry that and look at it,
and realize that as an adult you can understand why they were doing things.
And so that child, you've just got to share that responsibility with them and say, look, I'm not going to react.
I'm not going to have a coping strategy.
I'm going to have a adaptive strategy of looking at how I can do things differently.
But I have had to go through hell.
I had to go through a binary choice.
Do I want to live?
Do I want to die?
to do that and alcohol kept me above that hell until it evened up until I realized that if I don't change, if I don't ask for help, if I don't stop, I am going to wrap myself around
a tree, I'm gonna kill somebody, I'm gonna kill myself.
That's what it got to, it came down to two choices, live or die.
As I got to that point, it was not about people pleasing, know, what will he think, what will they think, what will they think.
It was just like bugger them all, fuck them all.
It's actually my life.
You know, I have to choose.
It's not about will they be upset if I stop being friends with them, if I stop being nice, if I stop this.
No, I actually wanted to live.
I wanted to live.
And the throwing the bottles out of the window, the...
driving drunk was Hamish trying to ask for help because he didn't have that capacity to do it.
And that's the tragedy.
That is the tragedy that I nearly killed myself.
I could have killed somebody because I wasn't able to ask for help, but I didn't.
And I don't know how.
any message can get out to somebody and say, ask for help because men don't do it.
And it's very easy not to.
And it's incredibly sad.
And yet when we do ask for help, when we do say, hey, I've got a problem.
I don't know how to cope.
I can promise you there's people around who are going to say, how can I help?
What to do?
like this friend of mine, the photographer, we're still great friends now.
In fact, I lived with him after, I lived with him for a year, I think.
Yeah.
And it was incredible, know, no shame, no shaming me, no embarrassment, no judging me, just like, yeah, been there, done that.
And so the whole journey of recovery has been about looking at...
how I did things, why I did things, how can I do them differently, what are my patterns?
I love my dad, we've reconnected, which is brilliant.
Since being back in the UK, are friends?
No, we're father and son.
We communicate, he's grateful what I do, I'm grateful for him.
And I can't ask for more than that.
He's not going to change.
He's absolutely not going to change.
There's still one way of doing things.
That's his way.
And I'm still not going to get that validation that I would love from him that I craved, but that's fine.
He's appreciative of me when I'm helping him.
I'm appreciative of him.
I realized that his education to me was, I'm going to be consistent and I want you to be and he's going to push my buttons and
I'm gonna stand up to him.
I'm not gonna bend over and say, whatever.
And that's what it is.
And we, you I love him.
I love my family.
I have reconnected.
I have realized that those old stories were not true.
And being sober is fabulous.
Am I in recovery?
I'm Hamish, you I've made sense of what I want to do with my life.
I've made sense of what I don't want to do with my life.
I don't want drugs or alcohol.
I don't want that craziness.
Was it worth it?
I'm alive, so it was worth it.
What have I learned from it?
Compassion, grace.
I'm aware.
I'm so much more aware.
I'm so much more intentional.
You know, I will look at things and...
Is that helpful for me?
Is it going to serve me?
Is it going to help me to help other people rather than just going off unconsciously, which is what it was.
It's not easy.
It's still chop wood, carry water, but the intention is different.
I'm not doing it from needing to be wanted, needing to be loved, needing to be validated.
I'm not doing...
I'm not living from that.
I'm living from authenticity.
You know, this is Hamish.
Like me, don't like me.
You know, I'm not going to waste my time or cry if you don't.
And I'm going to help you and support you.
And if you don't want it, that's fine.
But I'm doing Hamish.
I'm doing life from that level of...
intention and from authenticity that allows me to be me and I love who I am.
You know, I'm doing a podcast.
It's the best fun you can have your clothes on.
I'm talking to people who have had amazing stories, who've made sense of all sorts of stuff and have gone, I'm not being authentic.
I'm not doing what actually I want to do.
And that's what I'm doing.
I'm able to have that authenticity because I am not hiding drink.
I'm not
doing cocaine on the toilet seats.
I'm pretending.
I'm not hiding.
I'm not using something as a crutch.
I probably am other things, but I'm not using those destructive ones.
And I'm being able to be more intentional.
And the outcome of sobriety is...
is truly joyous.
You know, I've made better decisions.
I'm always making better decisions.
And, which is really good, if, when I mess up, I can go, hey, I'm really sorry.
I'm human.
I'm trying.
You know, I'm going to learn from that.
I'm learning from, I'm learning to appreciate that when I get triggered, I can go, why did I get triggered?
What about that phrase, story thing is unhealthy?
What can I learn from that?
Same with failures, failures I can learn from and I can do things slightly differently.
Setting up a business, what works, what doesn't.
And then I'm able to be curious.
I have now spent 50 minutes talking with you guys here.
It took me an hour to get this set up and in the end I was where I was an hour beforehand because I couldn't get things to do.
So I just do it.
And it's just remarkable.
It is.
fun, you know, I'm having fun.
I'm able to think about what I want to say, what I want to do.
I'm able to be curious.
And the most important things that I have learned in this journey is the seven of them.
The first one is be curious.
You know, I had to become curious.
I had to listen.
I had to understand that Hamish's way is not the only way.
know, there's his and hers and hers and his and theirs and ours and other people's.
Everyone's seen the world differently from me.
So why is my way right?
And by being curious, I've been able to open my mind and think that didn't work.
Why not?
That didn't work.
Why not?
That works.
You know, have a conversation with someone and say, I really like that idea.
I'm going to embrace that into who I am and I'm going to live with that.
I'm going to do things that way.
I mean, this is what kids do.
They learn to walk.
They learn to do this.
I'm learning new things.
So I'm open -minded.
So that's really, really important.
Everyone is doing the best they can with the tools, with the skills, with the situations they are in.
Throwing those bottles of beer out of the window, that was the best I could because that was less shameful than getting home and having to put empty bottles into the bin.
for recycling or whatever, throwing them out was far less stressful than going home.
That was the best I could.
It's not okay.
We're not talking about behaviors.
We're talking about doing.
With that, everyone's doing the best they can.
If everyone's doing the best they can, they can't do any better.
So there's no point judging them.
So that's the third one, zero judgment.
I cannot judge myself for doing 100%.
If I'm tired, I'm doing 40%.
I couldn't do 41.
If I could do 41, I would.
So I'm doing my best.
With that belief, everyone is doing their best they can, it stops me beating myself up.
It stops me shaming myself.
It stops me feeling guilty because I can't do any better.
And if that is something that is hard to get your head around, that's fine.
Give it a test.
Play with that idea.
Realise that when you shout at somebody, you couldn't do any better because they were pissing you off so much.
You were tired, you were emotional, whatever.
And that's okay.
All we have to do is learn and go, I'm not going to beat myself up.
I'm going to try and do a bit better tomorrow.
I'm going to try and change that behavior.
So that was the third thing.
Fourth thing was, as I said, zero judgment.
Once I'm doing the best I can, there's no point judging myself for what I did in the past because it's in the past and I don't have a time machine to hand.
So I have to forgive myself.
I have to not judge myself for it.
Fifth one, I've already mentioned it, is the forgiveness.
Forgive yourself.
Forgive other people.
What's the point of carrying grudges?
Certainly doesn't do any good.
So learn to forgive yourself.
Again, this is something else I learned through my journey.
So by forgiving myself, I can make space for change.
Probably the most important one is triggers.
I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my feelings.
Senses are messages.
Feelings are messages.
Thoughts.
They just come and go.
They are not who I am.
I don't need to identify with them.
I don't need to identify with anger for lashing out.
Anger is a great emotion for, that's not okay, I want to do it this way, for looking at your boundaries.
So I'm not my thoughts or my emotions or my feelings.
They are messages that help me make sense of stuff.
So that was a really, really important one to learn as well.
And then when I get triggered, what's the backstory?
Why am I getting triggered?
If he calls me stupid, why I thinking?
Why is that upsetting me?
Did somebody used to call me stupid?
You know, things like that.
That was a really, really good one.
What I've also understood is, well, in fact, all my guests.
They have had to make sense of change.
I have had to make sense of change.
I'm no longer making tons of money, making other people wealthy or this, that or the other.
I'm helping people make sense of their addictions.
This is aligned to my values and my core and what is really, really important.
So when you start doing stuff that you really love from here, from your gut, important to your values, to what's important and your purpose, you're going to ...
find life easier.
What is happening?
I'm supported.
I'm being given so much help by people left, right and centre because I am doing what is aligned to my purpose.
What I really want to do, what I love.
I get up at six in the morning and do a podcast.
It's great fun.
I'll do one at nine at night.
It does mean I'll get a nap in the afternoon so I'm functioning better.
But I love it.
You I love going for walks in nature.
I'm loving so much of what I'm doing and I'm getting supported.
I've got a business network.
I've got a business mentor.
I've got a spiritual mentor and all these things are there because I'm doing what I'm aligned to do.
So that was incredibly important.
And then the last one, know, life has said you have to change.
You've got the two choices.
You can change or you can stay and suffer.
Change.
Take it.
Do it.
Make that change.
Dare to do it.
And it's going to be a roller coaster.
It's going to be hard.
It is scary.
There's nothing more scary than going, I have to deal with my drinking.
I have to deal with this.
Why am I doing it?
Because I don't know how to have a chat with somebody because my business partner is doing nothing and he's driving me mad because my relationship with my wife is no longer working
because of this, because of that.
You have to deal with them.
But as you do, you learn about yourself.
You learn about what's important.
You learn that the journey never stops.
You just get better.
It doesn't get easier.
You're always going to chop wood.
You're always going to carry water.
But you're looking at it differently.
You're looking at it with intention.
You're looking at it with awareness.
So enjoy the journey.
It's going to be hard.
It's going to be fun.
You're going to meet people.
You're going to have different friends.
Yeah, there's more layers to unpeel.
You're not, hallelujah I'm healed.
No, there's another layer.
But there is some magic to it because you're choosing life and those seven steps are all about choosing life and no longer needing a crutch.
There'll be another one, might be sugar, might be smoking, might be gambling.
But again, you've
started a process of thinking and being more aware and are more able to spot things.
And that's what sobering up has done for me.
It has allowed me to look at how I functioned, not beat myself up for it.
Of course I did to begin with, but then realizing that's not going to work.
So it's, it is that and it is
going, okay, I messed up.
Okay, that didn't work.
Okay, that worked.
But I get out of bed at whatever time in the morning.
Sometimes I want to get up earlier.
Sometimes I don't want to go to bed because I have so much going on in my head and my heart and my mind.
I have to sleep.
I have to do the self care.
That is the bit of me that I'm not doing with because I'm having too much fun.
I keep my studio tidy.
Don't look at the floor.
But that's what it is.
And...
sobering up, stopping the drinking, stopping the drugs which I did a while ago, stopping the unhealthy behavior, looking at the patterns, looking at why I react, choosing to
respond.
My life is still out of control, completely.
I mean what can I control?
I can control my voice, I control how I show up and I control my choices.
So my life is utterly out of control.
This is happening, that's happening, business this, dickheads driving and cut me up.
All these things, I have no control over them.
So my life is out of control.
And I have chosen to respond.
Not react.
Obviously we react, but I have chosen to go, I'm not going to do that.
Look at that space, that tiny little space I talked about where there is infinite possibility.
What do I want?
And I'm getting better at being able to respond to life.
And that, just that choice of saying, I'm going to respond to everything rather than react, it changes perception.
It changes your energy, changes your vibration, it changes your way of looking at things, it changes your way of understanding things.
You know, I'm not looking for the negative, I'm not looking for that tiger behind me.
When it turns up, I will know how to manage.
And you know, there aren't many tigers in England, well, only in cages.
So, you know, I don't have to be on high alert.
and I can trust myself and I like myself.
In fact, I love myself and that's been hard to say.
That's been peering in the mirror in the mornings and going, morning dude, looking good.
Pull the tummy in still.
But that's okay.
So it's a process.
It's not a quick process.
You can either enjoy it or you can fight it.
Fighting it doesn't work.
Fighting doesn't work.
But...
I wouldn't change many things because nothing would have got me here if I had done something differently.
The podcast I've realised I am, I got taught when I was in the TV industry, I got taught how to interview people.
I got taught how to hold space.
I got taught how to listen to somebody and see there's four or five different routes we can go from what they're talking about.
This is what I do and to listen.
I got taught how to listen because when you're interviewing someone for documentary, you don't want the host to go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, quite a lot of podcasts people do.
You want the guests to engage.
You want them to talk.
And one of the gifts I've got from getting sober is I hold safe spaces.
I allow people to be heard.
I encourage people to be heard.
And time and time again, my guests have said, I haven't told myself that.
I haven't told anyone that.
You know, I've gone far deeper with what I shared with you than I have with anybody before, but they feel safe.
And we get wonderful conversations about vulnerability, about making sense of, because I've had to do that.
That is such a gift where I can listen to people, where I can hear what they're saying, where I can acknowledge I'm hearing them.
That's why when I'm doing the podcast, I don't wear these things because this is a barrier.
It's covering what I hear with.
For this, I thought I would do because I'm cutting out the noise outside, I'm talking to me and you guys another day.
But.
Getting sober was not easy.
Is it worth it?
It absolutely is.
My life is not chaotic.
I've reconnected with family.
I've got a purpose.
I'm doing stuff that is important to me.
Some of my friends stayed with their partners.
I sadly didn't.
Some of my friends reconnected.
Some of my friends did this.
Some of them stayed and their lives are similar.
Mine's changed completely.
I had to move continents.
I had to leave all my clients behind, all my business, everything.
Regrets?
No, because I got supported, because I was very
very fortunate.
And now I'm helping people to make sense of their own journeys because everyone deserves another chance.
Everyone deserves another chance like I did to start again, to make sense of, to get curious about.
And for that I'm really grateful.
I'm grateful for this friend of mine who said, no, doesn't matter.
I went to rehab.
Asking that question to that person made such a difference.
Talk to me.
I've got no judgment.
There's no point.
I have no judgment.
I've been in the depths.
I've been down to that binary choice.
We're all in this together.
We're all trying to make sense of life.
And if we can make it easier for ourselves, if we can do it authentically and honestly and yeah, you know.
learn from those mistakes and learn not to ourselves up and learn to let go of things that we can't control.
Who knows what's going to happen?
Do I regret being an alcoholic?
That's not the right answer, not the right question.
I regret some of the things that happened, absolutely.
It has however allowed me to live a life that I am loving and enjoying and I'm making sense of and I'm a nicer, kinder, gentler...
more full of grace, more compassionate, more intentional and more aware being.
And you know, that's good enough.
Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow.
So yeah, so thank you for listening to this.
Thank you for.
giving yourself a chance to listen to my story because, you know, it saved my life and sharing it here is what it's all about and addiction's not the end of the world.
It is a process of a way that we manage to cope and make sense of life.
and it's just out of date.
So it's a chance to look at change from that perspective where, you know, you can create something wonderful with your life.
You've got the rest of your life to live and have fun and love and connect.
Live by yourself, be by yourself.
Doesn't matter whatever you want, but it's no longer controlled by something which is ultimately very, very destructive.
So again, thank you for listening.
Thank you for being who you are.
And I have enjoyed spending an hour talking about myself.
And yeah, I am very grateful that I'm alive.
I'm very grateful for my life.
I'm very grateful for the support and love that I've got.
because it takes a community and connection is the opposite of addiction.
And believe me, when I was addicted, I had no connection.
So reach out, there's everybody, there's always people who are there to help, to listen, and I certainly am.
So yeah, thank you very much.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Crucible: Conversations for the Curious.
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Thank you very much for listening and catch up with you soon.