Dan Rankin (aka Trials)

The math is three beers equals easy show.

So before I do the set is when it hits me the hardest still.

Even last night, every single show, I'm five years sober and I just say to my wife or anybody around, this is the moment right now.

This is the exact moment right now where the –

the very self-critical guy inside me is going to do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, because I want myself to fail.

And I also have that inside me as well.

The comfort that that gives me, knowing that I'm a little bit

fuzzy enough to not think about who I am and all that type of jazz.

It's a weird place to be because I know none of that is good for me.

So I would perform like that often and think that I've done an amazing set.

And then I'd get back and, you know, see footage or something and be like, that's not how it looked.

That's not what it was like up there.

Yeah, it was.

That's exactly what it was like.

Some years ago, I interviewed a journalist who was an alcoholic, but he'd been sober 35 years and called himself an alcoholic, even though he hadn't had a drink in 35 years.

Oh, me too.

And he'd written a book about alcoholism in Australia.

And he said the two most social subgroups that are prone to alcoholism, Irish Australians, Indigenous Australians.

Sure.

But he said also amongst those two groups are the highest number of teetotalers, the ones, the biggest, highest percentages of people who don't touch a drop are in those two communities as well.