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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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For so long, I had these two forces, which was the fear of drinking and the fear of not drinking. I'd started doing CrossFit, that hadn't stopped me drinking. My GP telling me I need to sort my life out, direct quote. I just thought I have nothing left.
Chapter 2: What personal experiences led John Robins to question his drinking habits?
I've absolutely nothing left in my power to get on top of this.
Hi everybody, welcome back to On The Men. This is a podcast where we look back at life's toughest moments to figure out how we move forward. Today we have John Robbins. I'm very, very excited to have you on. Thank you so much for coming on, mate.
You're welcome. Thank you for having me here.
I'm really excited. My wife talked to you last week on the radio. Yeah. She said lovely things about you. Oh, that's very nice.
Yeah, I was talking to her about the book and also about the marathon. And then I had to pick a show tune. Oh, did you?
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Chapter 3: How did John Robins define his struggle with alcohol?
I didn't know what that meant. Because I'm not big in the sort of the West End Broadway world. Are you not? But I managed to sort of scour my past for a show tune. Right. So we managed to... What did you pick? Another Suitcase in Another Hall.
Oh, wow. Okay, great.
The Barbara Dixon version from I think Evita.
Right. Wow. Great. Nice. Yeah. Great. So that went well.
Yeah, it was lovely to chat to her.
She's really nice. Oh, nice. Great. I read something from your book. It kind of blew my mind when I read it in the show brief. It said, I will do anything to feel better. Just don't ask me to change. Who told you that?
That was told to me when I was 18, 19. And it was something my therapist, that therapist said to me. He said, you know, everyone who sits down in the chair you're sitting in is essentially saying to me, I'll do anything to feel better. Just don't ask me to change.
And it always stuck with me, even though at that moment in my life, therapy didn't necessarily help with the addiction I was suffering from. That idea that I am constantly resisting the one thing I need to do. And I think a lot of people I've met when they're going through difficult times are They're sort of avoiding the elephant in the room.
And I think for about 20 years, I was trying to find a way to stop drinking without actually stopping drinking.
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Chapter 4: What moment triggered John Robins' decision to quit drinking?
Like a lot of people say to me, how do you do it? And I say, well, the way I did it was to go to 12-step meetings and they're like, oh, no, I'm not sure I'm that bad.
Yeah. It's bad. Yeah. I read that you had spreadsheets at one point.
Yeah, I tracked my, for the last sort of six years of my drinking, I always got into sort of this obsession about counting up how many days I had off, how many units I was drinking, trying to get it down and down and down. And it did go down. But I was getting more and more obsessed with it. And what was happening was I was still drinking as much as I did on the days I drank.
I was just, because I was denying myself this thing I wanted through sort of brute force, willpower.
Yeah.
it became more important in my life and made me very difficult to be around made relationships difficult then a big relationship ended and then i just kind of chucked all that and just just was drinking every day so that exhaustion of like i'm so tired of trying to fight this every single day
counterintuitively and I think it's one of the great sort of features of recovery is very often these sort of paradoxes is like by stopping fighting it I then was suddenly had a great deal of power over it because I was like I'm not going to step in the ring with you today because for the past 10,000 days when we've done that you have won so you know like when you see a fight kicking off
like walking past is the best way to not get involved in that fight yeah it's a really good way of looking at it yeah yeah that's so interesting it's like i find alcoholism so it's so baffling isn't it so cunning and baffling you're like the way it will trick you into thinking you don't have it like and it will try so it's so strong and it's kind of um in its voice you know telling you you don't have something it's the only disease that tells you you don't have it
Well, I think like in the book, so there's, there's a little, I guess like the tagline for the book is 12 drinks that changed my life. And each of those drinks, I am trying to find out a different like feature of alcohol, like what it meant to me, why it was a problem for me. Why did it make me feel better a lot of the time? Um, and I was only able to do that
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Chapter 5: What tools did John Robins use in his recovery process?
That's not on the government guidelines.
Yeah, the first line of the book is my GP saying to me, you need to sort your fucking life out. And I would say that made me want to stop drinking for about two hours. Wow. And then it made me a bit annoyed that I needed to sort my fucking life out. And then it became a distinct inconvenience.
And eventually I got to a place where I was like, I'm going to drink myself to death because that's the only way I can continue drinking is if I accept that.
Yeah.
Um, So, you know, two years on from my GP saying that, I was still drinking. Relationships had ended. Life was difficult. I was hearing things, seeing things. And I just tried everything. But I don't know why it was in that moment. I'd come back from, I'd been playing golf, which I know you're into. I was obsessed with golf. Another like really alcoholic behavior around it.
I got home and I was like, right, John, you haven't had a night off for like three weeks or something mad. You need to not drink tonight. It's about four o'clock. And as I was saying that out loud, I live alone, so I speak out loud a lot. I was like, right, tonight off. I'd gone through into the back room. I'd opened it. I had a special beer fridge.
I'd taken out a can and I'm like literally drinking out of it as I'm halfway through the sentence going, you can't have a drink tonight. So then I, you know, I carried on drinking for four or five hours and passed out. And I woke up about two in the morning. I said, like, not woke up, just sort of came around.
I mean, that's a, that's a big part of an alcoholic's life is that moment.
That 2 AM, like 3 AM hearts racing. Like you're, you're still a bit pissy.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of 12-step programs in recovery?
Mm-hmm. And I opened up my laptop. I think I was going to listen to a Sherlock Holmes audio book just to get me to sleep. And I just, for some reason, thought, I wonder if there are podcasts about being sober. Because I make podcasts. I've made quite a few. And I'd never thought that. So I put sober into Apple Podcasts. And this podcast came up called Sober Speak. And I just put it on. And...
I just remember hearing these two guys talking. They were very calm. They were very measured. They seemed to be laughing. And just something about the tone of voice more than necessarily what they said was just so different to the way my head had been for so many years. Just like anxious and angry and resentful and bitter and driven and in self.
Yeah.
And I thought, oh, maybe I need to go wherever they go. Hey, me, I need some of that. And I went to a meeting the next day and haven't had a drink since.
What were the first few days like? So you heard this podcast, you go to this meeting and you're like, right, fuck, I've got to make a change. What were those first few days like?
I think really a lot of confusion.
Yeah.
I mean, if anyone is using a 12-step approach to try and get sober, don't worry if you don't understand it all at once, because it is quite a lot. And you're also hearing lots of different things from lots of different people at lots of different stages of sobriety. And I really just focused on I feel safe in this room with these people. I feel they know what it's like to be in my head.
I don't understand what they're talking about, but I'm gonna make sure I come back tomorrow. And in the meantime, anything I do which isn't drinking alcohol is okay. If I eat a kilo of pasta, I was big into the kilo of pasta scene. If I go to bed at seven in the evening, If whatever it is, if I watch 10 episodes or something, if I am getting to sleep sober, that's all I need to worry about.
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