When my partner Thea was pregnant with our first born Sonny, her grandfather died. His name was Robert (Bob). My dad’s name is Robert too, though he goes by his middle name, George. So, Sonny’s middle name became Robert.

When Thea was pregnant with Indy, her grandmother, Dawn, died. We already knew Indy was going to be a girl, so months before she was born, we knew her middle name would be Dawn.

I never met Bob. He lived in New Zealand, where Thea’s dad is from. But I was lucky enough to meet Dawn several times. She was a very kind woman — from everything I knew and everything I saw, just a wholesome grandmother. She loved her kids, loved her grandkids, loved her great grandkids. Dawn was an avid birdwatcher. She spent a lot of her retirement travelling around Australia in a caravan with her husband Joe, searching for and ticking off different birds out of her bird book. One of Thea’s favourite memories of her grandmother, from when she was a kid, was going out looking for birds with her. And one of the birds they used to go searching for together was the Tawny Frogmouth. Thea didn’t know it at the time, but the Tawny Frogmouth would take on extra meaning later.

From about thirty-seven weeks, selfishly, I wanted Indy to be born. I’m an anxious mess at the best of times, and I’d already been waiting the whole pregnancy. I wanted her out and, in my hands, as soon as she was full term — to hold her, see her, touch her, and know she was okay.

But what I wanted for myself has never really been what’s best for everybody. Indy made me wait. She was born at forty-one weeks and six days — an agonising extra five weeks, after an almost forty-two-week pregnancy.

Thea’s first contraction was at 5:30am. Indy was born at 7:02am, on the 20th of March 2025, in Moruya.

7:02am. Sunrise. Dawn.

I knew, from that very moment, that Indy was going to be special.

The Birth

Indy’s birth was dramatic from the very first minute.

Thea came to me at a quarter to six in the morning, in the kitchen, and told me her water had broken fifteen minutes ago and she’d been having contractions since. I said, why have you only just told me? She said she didn’t want to overreact. I thought, well, you’ve certainly achieved that — we need to go, right now.

We’d been waiting for this exact moment for weeks and thought we were prepared, but it still took us a little while to get our shit together and leave. We rang the midwife to let her know. She was calm — no worries, head on in, I’ll meet you there.

We’d maybe been driving for ten minutes when Thea’s screams started to get louder as she became more distressed in the seat beside me. She told me to pull over. No chance. I’m the last person you want delivering a baby, especially on the side of the fucking road.

I rang the midwife back and told her this was really urgent — that we were going to need people meeting us at the front door. I said we’re actually trying to NOT have this baby so we can get there before we have it. She said okay, no worries, and rang ahead to the hospital.

I felt torn. Do I speed and risk getting pulled over and losing the time I can’t afford to lose? Or do I not speed and risk this baby being born in the footwell of my car — where, if there’s a single complication, I have no idea how to fix it?

The rest of the way there, Thea was literally willing Indy to stay in. Just repeating it: hold on. Hold on. Hang in there. Don’t come yet.

When we got to the hospital there was no one out the front. I raced in and the woman at the desk could tell I was in all sorts. She asked if everything was alright? I said, my partner’s about to have a baby in the car park. As I said it, a team of maybe six people came running around the corner with a wheelchair, it felt like they were moving in super slow motion, I can still see it all in my head now.

I came back around to the car and Thea was half standing out of it, sort of draped over it. She asked if they had a bed for her. No deal. Wheelchair was going to have to do. She sat down and they rushed her inside. We burst through into the maternity ward like a cowboy kicking open saloon doors and took the first left into the first room. Thea stood up and put her hands on the bed, and a nurse asked if she wanted to hop up onto it. Thea said there’s no time. The baby is coming out right now.

I pulled her shorts down — I remember being paranoid the baby’s head was going to get hung up on the middle seam of them — and a midwife knelt straight down beside me and caught Indy. Thea never even made it onto the bed.

After almost 42 weeks, she was here, and she was perfect.

Indy would have been born earlier if we’d got there earlier. But we didn’t. Everything happened how it was meant to. She was meant to be born at 7:02. That was probably the first miracle.

Half an hour later, everyone was gone. The room was cleaned up. Indy was feeding. We were sitting there in silence. All I could think was, what the fuck just happened?

Our Big Girl

She was born in March, so by the time she was old enough to do anything other than feed, sleep and shit, it was cold. I remember thinking at three or four months old that this poor girl had had a snotty nose most of her little life.

Indy was a lot like her brother. She fed and slept really well from the start. Despite that, Sonny had only ever hovered around the 50th percentile. Indy was different. She was our big girl. She sat comfortably around the 90th percentile and she was developing fast. Crawling at six months. Pulling herself up to stand at seven months. ten healthy kilograms and ten months old.

She was thriving. She was exactly the chunky, happy baby you’d never think to worry about.

First Signs of Sickness

At ten months old, Indy got what we thought was gastro.

She was vomiting a lot. It wasn’t until she vomited bile that we realised she might be properly sick. The internet told us that if a baby vomits bile you take them straight to emergency, so we did. We took her to Batemans Bay Hospital, for what we thought would be a quick in-and-out — home the same day. We were so unconcerned that I didn’t even go at first. I stayed home with Sonny.

Indy was too small and chunky for them to get a cannula into her so they couldn’t get any bloods from her. They put an NG tube down through her nose into her stomach and started her on electrolytes — which she struggled to keep down.

There’s no paediatrics at Batemans Bay or Moruya, so they told us they’d be transporting her by ambulance to a bigger hospital, and we’d probably be staying a night or two. I remember being shocked. It had escalated so fast.

It’s difficult to watch these videos back. At the time we thought she was just sick with gastro. It was potentially so much worse, and we had no clue. It still scares me.

We went to Bega. They still couldn’t get a cannula into her down there either, but they did a heel-prick blood test — and it showed something was up with her potassium. They didn’t think much of it. They spent the night filling her with electrolytes through her NG tube, and by the next day she was a lot better.

We thought we might be going home. Then the paediatrician came by and said she’d just like to give her another night on the fluids, and we could go home the day after. At the time I thought Indy was better, and I remember feeling frustrated that we had to stay another night, but if it meant Indy got to get another bag of fluids into her than obviously, we’d do it.

Indy vomited the next morning but was seemingly in good spirits. The paediatrician came by again and said that even though Indy had been sick again that morning she thought she was ok to go home and that’s what we did.

Failure to Thrive

When we brought her home from Bega, it was as though all of her progression came to a grinding halt. The crawling, the walking, the climbing, the speech — all of it. It just came off the boil.

We knew something wasn’t right. Indy developed an obsession with water and salty foods. She drank water like she’d been stranded in the desert for a week. She couldn't get enough in, or quickly enough. We had these biscuits that when we would grab the packet she would lose her mind. We thought it was cute because she really liked the biscuits but there was more to it, she was desperately craving the salt.

We thought perhaps she might have diabetes. But we were told by a nurse that there was no real way to test a baby for diabetes and that we would have to wait and see if she crashed out to begin a diagnosis process. Something we’ve since learned to be untrue.

She was also struggling to swallow. She’d chew her food happily enough, but she wouldn’t swallow it. We couldn’t work out why. We just assumed she hadn’t lost her sucking reflex from breastfeeding.

Four to six weeks later she still wasn’t “sick,” exactly — but she was starting to genuinely fail to thrive. Her development was still halted. She was often lethargic. We took her to the GP. The GP thought everything seemed okay, that gastro can be nasty, and that she was likely still recovering. I wanted to believe the GP and I guess I had no other choice, but it still didn't feel right.

Indy had also started to struggle to breastfeed. She was gripping and chewing on Thea more and more aggressively and Thea was really struggling. Thea breastfed Sonny for three years and was hoping to do the same for Indy but this was becoming unbearable and Thea made the decision to stop breastfeeding.

Metrics

At her twelve-month check-up, about two weeks after she turned one, Indy weighed 7.4 kilos. 2.6 kilos lighter than she’d been at ten months old. She’d lost more than a quarter of her bodyweight.

We knew Indy was losing weight, but we felt like we’d done everything we could have by going to the GP. We were hoping that she would soon be fully recovered from this apparent gastro and start to gain weight again. Plus, she was a big baby and almost two weeks overdue, maybe she was coming back to the mean a little. I remember Sonny leaning out around the same age. Once he started to crawl he gradually started to change from a blobby shaped body to a more human shaped body. We thought, or hoped, Indy was doing the same.

The nurse was concerned. She sent us straight over to the clinic at Batemans Bay. The nurse at the clinic said there wasn’t really much they could do — that even if we saw a doctor that day, this was something that would need to be managed longer-term through a GP and a proper plan. We’d already come straight from one appointment to this one, waited a long time, and it had been a long day. So we took Indy home.

That night, Batemans Bay Hospital rang us. They said they really wanted us to see a doctor — that they were concerned. We had booked an appointment with Indy’s actual GP. We explained the situation to the receptionist, and she told us she couldn’t get us in for a few weeks. Later that day, perhaps after Batemans Bay called them, they called back to explain that once Indy’s GP heard about the situation, she made room to see her at midday the following day. As frightening as it was, it felt good that people were starting to show a bit of concern for Indy.

The Morning of

On the morning of the GP appointment I was sitting at my desk at work when my phone rang. Thea and the kids were Facetiming me to say good morning. Something we do regularly. Indy vomited bile while she was FaceTiming me. I was worried, but we’d been here before. Surely we’d just go through the same process as last time. A trip to the hospital, a couple bags of fluids and maybe a trip to Bega.

Thea asked if we should just wait for the twelve o’clock appointment. I said no. This time, I think we should go straight to Moruya. I have nothing against Batemans Bay Hospital, but Indy was born at Moruya and while they don’t have paediatrics there, they do have a maternity ward and I’d always felt more comfortable at Moruya than I did at Batemans Bay.

That was the call. The first time my gut overrode the wait-and-see.

I went straight home from work to and Thea left for Moruya with Indy while I stayed home with Sonny. I told her to pack a bag, just in case we were to end up in Bega again. Moruya were able to get a Cannula into Indy’s hand and as a result, Indy's blood would be tested for the first time.

I don’t think anyone was ready for what they saw on that blood panel. Indy had hypokalaemia, Hypoglycemia, Ketoacidosis, Metabolic Acidosis, Hypomagnesaemia, Hyponatraemia, Hypophosphataemia, and Hypocalcaemia. Essentially, she had critically low levels of all the essential electrolytes.

We worked out that the only thing keeping Indy alive over the previous weeks or even months, was Thea’s breastmilk. Indy had only last a couple of days without it before crashing the way she did. Indy had been struggling to swallow and had a lack of appetite since she went to Bega in February. Her mother’s milk was the only thing that had been sustaining her.

When the World Stopped Spinning

I stayed home with Sonny. We knew from the last time in Batemans Bay that and emergency ward wasn’t a good place for Sonny. Thea was texting me regular updates. I don’t remember what the catalyst for coming into the hospital was. Maybe we already knew a helicopter was coming to take Indy to Sydney and that’s why i decided to go in, but I’m not sure.

Sonny, our Au Pair and myself went to the hospital. I remember feeling a little worried, but even the idea of the helicopter didn’t frighten me too much. I thought at least they’ll get her to the best possible place with the best possible help as soon as possible. I was concerned, but not overly worried.

We arrived and I text Thea to let her know we were there and to come and let us in. Still feeling pretty comfortable with everything.

And then I saw Thea.

For a moment, the world stopped spinning. My stomach sank. My heart sank. I knew, just from the look on her face, that this was worse than anything I’d been allowing myself to believe. I said, what’s going on? And she couldn’t really get it out — she just said Indy had got a lot worse, that she was really sick. She was frazzled. I don’t remember exactly what was said. I just remember walking right up to the back of the emergency ward, to the last bed.

Indy was laying on the bed on her back. She was incredibly distressed. She couldn’t lay still. She was arching backwards and then crunching forwards. She was calling out to us. I could tell she was scared. We were all scared.

There were people everywhere. Ten staff around Indy. An anaesthetist and an anaesthetic nurse. One main doctor in the middle calling all the shots, telling everyone what was happening. A couple of other nurses and pharmacists. Another doctor calling out Indy’s vital metrics. Like a scene from a movie. And then there was Indy, in the middle of it, lying on her back, covered in wires and tubes.

It was the first time I’d ever seen her like that — with so much stuff attached to her. It would become normal. But at the time it was shocking.

Indy looked so unwell and was clearly distressed. i remember asking Thea what was actually going on. What they had been able to tell her. She didn’t really know. She couldn’t tell me much. We had no idea how serious this actually was, but it felt very serious.

We decided once again that this was no place for Sonny and asked our Au Pair to please take him home.

In a calmer moment, Thea asked the head Dr to please explain to me what was actually happening. She came over to me, tilted her head forward, and looked down her nose with a furrowed brow and said to me, your daughter is very, very, very sick… I think she was trying to get me to connect the dots for myself without telling me anything concrete.

That’s when I truly started to understand the gravity of the situation. This was critical.

The Turn

The staff explained that the ICU team in Sydney Children’s Hospital were watching Indy through a camera in the ceiling. They were constantly taking blood markers from Indy, checking her electrolyte numbers over and over as they were topping her up with all different fluids.

Back then, I didn’t know what an acceptable heart rate was for a 13 month old and that was probably for the best. I didn’t know anything about appropriate electrolyte levels like I do now. I don’t know how high Indy’s heart rate got to that day, or how low each of her electrolytes got to. What I do know though, is that her electrolytes were critically low. I know from putting Indy’s discharge paperwork from Randwick into AI that Indy’s numbers were low enough to be fatal. Any of those rapid heartbeats could very easily have been her last.

While we waited for the helicopter, I was listening to everything like a hawk. At one point they read out one of the blood gas results, and some of the doctors sounded really relieved. That settled me a little. I remember the number was 2.1 — I think it was her potassium. Potassium’s meant to sit around four. But 2.1 was a win, because it had been lower than one before that. The main Dr said, we’ve turned a corner. I struggle to find the words to describe the relief I felt when I heard that.

We later found out that they used all of the Potassium Citrate they could source from both Moruya and Batemans Bay hospitals and it still wasn’t enough. They now keep a bigger stock in case this happens again to Indy or other children.

Helicopter

We knew the Helicopter was coming. We just didn’t know when. The first thing we wanted to know was if one of us would be going int the Helicopter with Indy. The staff at Moruya explained to us that sometimes kids needed to go alone to leave enough room for the staff to work on the patient should they need to. I was terrified of Indy going to Sydney by herself. I knew she’d be in good hands. But as a father, I couldn’t stand the thought of my daughter being alone and scared — and she was scared. For the first time in her life, I could tell she was terrified.

We were told the helicopter crew would make the call on whether or not one of us could travel with them, so we would have to wait for them to arrive to figure out our next step.

We heard a nurse say the helicopter was about 20 minutes away. 15 minutes later we could hear it. More relief. When they came in we asked them if one of us would be able to travel with them. The answer was, yes, absolutely. The lack of hesitation in her response and certainty in her voice settled me. More relief.

I had imagined they were going to race in, grab, the bed, race out and take off to Sydney. Not the case. They explained to us that the process would take two to three hours. that it was vital to slowly transfer over all the things that were keeping Indy alive from the hospital equipment to the helicopter equipment.

When they said two to three hours, I turned to Thea and said, I may as well go and get Sonny now and start driving to Sydney. She agreed.

As much as I was feeling a bit of relief that the helicopter has arrived and we were told Thea could in fact travel with them, Thea later told me that Thea told me that they told her they would needed to put a third cannula into Indy first. Their words were: if we start to lose her, or if we lose her in the sky, we’ve got no support up there, and we’ll need to pump her with adrenaline to get her to the nearest hospital. A quick little gut punch in case we were starting to feel a little too comfortable.

Leaving

Saying goodbye to Thea was really hard. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing, leaving. But I also knew I needed to be in Sydney as close to Indy’s arrival time as I could — and it was getting late, and I wasn’t going to get there for another four hours at best. So I went.

Without really thinking about it, I’d parked on the other side of the helicopter pad. So I walked out the door toward my car, and there it was. The helicopter. Sitting right there. And the reality of the whole thing hit me all at once.

I’d been texting my mum — she’d been a midwife for fifty years. She’s the first person I ever reach out to when there’s something wrong with one of the kids. She’s no paediatrician, but she knows some shit. I got in the car and rang her. Dad was there too, and I tried to talk but mostly I just cried. Inconsolable.

Inside the hospital I’d been trying to be brave for Thea. Telling her everything was going to be okay, that these were the experts, that we had the absolute best of the best with this helicopter team and other generic bullshit I didn’t completely believe. Not that Thea needs my help with that — she’s so strong, so matter-of-fact, so damn business when it counts. But the second I was alone in that car, it all came out.

I just broke down. I said, Mum, she’s so, so sick. I said, I’m so scared. All I want is for someone to tell me she’s not going to die. And I don’t think they’re allowed to tell me that — I think there’s some legal reason they can’t tell you whether they believe she’ll survive. I just kept saying it: I just want to know if she’s going to be okay.

Mum comforted me as much as she could comfort a hysterical dad who’s just realised his daughter is critically ill. She said all the right things. She’s in the right hands. She’s in the right place. All the stuff I’d just been saying to Thea but not believing myself.

I got home and asked the Au Pair what she wanted to do. I told her I have no clue how long we’ll be gone for or what the coming days will look like. To her credit, she was determined to come. She cared about Indy a lot. I packed up some stuff for Sonny, Thea and myself and we took off.

Thank god for Sonny. Driving there, my attention switched to him. A perfect distraction. I had to try to protect him a little. Earlier he’d been at the hospital, seen the emergency room, all of it — and he was only three and a half. He was just full of questions, full of that beautiful three-year-old oblivious annoyingness, and we’d had to get him out of there. But now he was mine to look after, and my focus turned to shielding him from the worst of it which was a blessing for me. Without that responsibility I’d have been a mess.

I rang Ronald McDonald House on the way and told them the situation. The girl on the phone said, I’ve got one room — I’ve got to go clean it, but I’ll do it for you. So at least we had somewhere to stay. Trying to organise and pay for a hotel somewhere in the eastern suburbs of Sydney at half past seven at night, while driving, with all of this going on, was never going to happen. I’m so grateful for that amazing organisation.

Thea and Indy took off a while later. They flew from the hospital to Moruya airport to get fuel and then on to Sydney. I thought it was odd the helicopter didn’t get fuel while they were changing Indy over to all the helicopter equipment. I was relived though, I thought if they’re happy enough to go for a fuel stop maybe that means Indy is stabilising. Maybe I was just trying to convince myself of that. They overtook us somewhere while we were between Wollongong and Sutherland.

Welcome to ICU

We got to Sydney around 10pm.

We had no real idea where to go. Which direction, which doors, any of it. We just walked. We ended up right out the front of where we were supposed to be, but there was no one around, so we wandered off in the wrong direction looking for the entrance, then doubled back. I honestly don’t remember how we finally got in — just that we were lost around the base of this enormous hospital at ten at night, unable to find the way to my own daughter.

Once we found the floor, Thea came and let us through the door.

Then I saw Indy.

There were nurses all around her, getting her settled onto the ICU machines. The helicopter team had already gone. Indy was unsettled. But I put my head on her shoulder and rubbed her head, and she settled a little. She wasn’t as panicked as she’d been in Moruya but still needed settling.

One thing that blew me away that first night was how quiet the ICU was. It was the complete opposite of what I’d braced for. For some reason I’d expected chaos — but I think I’d been picturing the emergency department, and my brain had just pinned the two together as the same thing. They’re not. The ICU was still, and hushed, and calm in a way I never saw coming.

The doctor told us that she thought Indy’s kidneys were not working the way they should be, but she should be ok and that we’d likely be home in a couple of days. I felt happy hearing that. Hopeful. We had no idea yet what was actually in front of us.

Next they told us they needed to sedate Indy with some ketamine and fentanyl to get an arterial line into her leg, and that the best thing was for all of us to be out of the room while they did it. So we left her there with the doctors, and came back about half an hour later once it was in. That arterial line would become the constant source of blood to test the effectiveness of Indy's medications.

Indy was starting to stabilise. She was very sleepy form the sedation. So it was time to call it a day. It was about two in the morning by the time we finally went back to the accommodation. I think I got about three or four hours of broken sleep that first night. I was back at the hospital by around six thirty the next morning.

So began our first stay in the ICU.

Tawny Frogmouth

Every floor of the hospital has its own animal. Level one is this one, level two is that one, and so on — big painted creatures on the walls to help you find your way around, and to give kids and families something gentler to look at than a hospital.

ICU is on level one. And somewhere in those first days, we noticed which animal lived on level one.

The Tawny Frogmouth.

Dawn’s bird. The one she loved. The one she and Thea used to go out looking for together when Thea was small.

And here was our little girl — Indy Dawn, named for her, born at dawn — fighting for her life on the one floor painted with her great-grandmother’s favourite bird. Along the bottom of the sign, it even read: *The Tawny Frogmouth says hello.*

I don’t know what to make of things like that. But it settled something in me. I think in moments times like these you’re so desperate for any hope you can cling onto that you let yourself start to believe in things that maybe you struggled to believe in before.

The Blur

The first week in ICU was a blur. It still is.

We had no fucking clue what was going on. Doctors came around every morning and told us what they thought was happening, and none of it made any sense to us. It’s hard for them to explain to us what was happening when they didn’t really know themselves. We were under slept, we were stressed, and we’re not doctors. Different faces kept coming through. I remember feeling like an animal in the zoo. The rooms bordered the ward. The doctors would walk a lap each morning and stop at the front of each room to discuss the needs of that patient for the day. Just kind of staring through the glass at you, they’re talking about you, but you can’t hear them. Like you’re just another work task.

As much as we’d experienced some relief the night before, Indy was still very, very sick. That was made clear to us a couple of times by some of the ICU Dr’s. In the same way the Dr in Moruya did on that first day. She would just lay there. Miserable. For almost a week she didn’t do anything but lie there and stare blankly. She was so sick. So drained. Her sickness had been bubbling away under the surface for months and it had finally beaten her into submission.

That first day was the beginning of the constant interruptions, hourly blood tests, and they never really stopped. People coming and going all the time. Every single time we finally got her settled, someone would come in — a nurse, a doctor, a cleaner, the food people. And Indy was so uncomfortable to begin with. I remember the frustration of it. None of it was coordinated. Each person with their own KPI to tick off. No consideration for trying to do a few things at the same time so Indy could get some rest. Can’t they please just leave us alone for a little bit? I felt like what Indy needed more than anything was sleep. How the fuck do they expect her to get any better if she’s never allowed to sleep?

And the nappies. Because of everything they were pumping into her, she was weeing constantly — it was going straight through her — and every nappy had to be kept and weighed by the nurses. It felt like we were always changing nappies. Constantly. (That part hasn’t changed, actually. I sleep with her now, and I still change two or three nappies a night while she’s asleep.)

In that first week we learned that what Indy had was likely a kidney issue, and we started getting daily visits from the renal team — the people we’d come to know so well. In those first few days it felt like they were getting nowhere, and they were almost telling us as much. We just don’t know yet. We don’t know why this is happening. They were giving Indy incredible amounts of electrolytes, and it just wasn’t showing up in her blood — she was losing so much of it, so fast. They were filling her with saline, absolutely filling her. So much so that a few days after Indy was admitted at 7.4kg, she was weighing 10.4kg. She looked like The Michelin Man.

She was also very rigid. From the moment she got sick in Moruya Indy had thumbs squeezed inside her fingers for the next week. Her arms locked down by her sides, her whole body stiff. It would become important later. At the time it was just another frightening thing about a kid who didn’t look like our kid.

She Came Back

After a few days, we were told that we would likely be going home in another few days. I took Sonny and the Au Pair home. I stayed home for a night and then left Sonny with his grandmother. We wanted him to experience as little disruption to his routine as possible. Being at home meant he could do the things he loved to do, like going to gymnastics and swimming.

I was driving back to Sydney on my own and Thea FaceTimed me. For the first time in almost a week, Indy was responsive. Reactive. Not staring blankly — smiling. Sitting up. She recognised me and she was happy to see me.

That stiffness she’d almost been gritting her way through was gone. All that rigidity — the thumbs squeezed inside her fingers, the locked arms, the whole rigid little body — it had softened. Her joints were loose again. And it seemed to coincide exactly with her coming back online, mentally, cognitively. Like her body unclenching and her mind returning were the same thing happening at once.

I cried in the car. Thank fucking god. She’s back.

Because she had been gone. Even though she was right there — eyes open, alive, awake — she hadn’t been there. And now she’d come back. She was even trying to eat. How good, I thought, we’re going to be home soon!

THAT Night

I was excited to get back to Sydney and see Indy and Thea, especially after the FaceTime I had received. Probably a little too excited, because I imagined I’d get there and Indy would be the same as she was when I facetimed her. She wasn’t. She was still very tired and very sick. While what I saw on FaceTime was real and was happening, it was more like a highlight reel than her constant state. Never the less, seeing her sitting up and playing with some toys gave me a sense joy I hadn’t felt in a long time.

That day we were told that Indy was stable enough to be moved from ICU onto the ward. I was scared to be leaving the level of care we were receiving in ICU. The ICU Doctors and Nurses were amazing and provided us all with the best care. We felt very safe there. But I was also relived. If the experts think she’s ready, that has to be a good thing.

Nothing happens quickly in that place. We were were told we would be moving to the ward in the morning. When you move from ICU to the ward, a whole lot of changeover stuff that I don’t understand needs to happen. We would be handed over from the ICU Dr’s to the Renal Team. There must be some amount of work that has to happen behind the scenes for this to happen because Indy’s final ICU obs weren’t done until late in the afternoon.

Finally, Indy and Thea moved onto the ward. I don’t remember the time, but it was was dark, so maybe 7pm. At this stage we still didn’t have much to do with Indy’s medication — we barely understood it. She’d only been in a week and I think even the Dr’s had only just really figured out what she needed. She’d been going well the last few days. She’d come back. Alert, alive, playing. And now she was being moved to the ward, which I took as the best possible sign. I was starting to think Sonny might not even need to come back up — that we’d all be home soon.

I was excited to get back to the accommodation for a night on my own. I hadn’t slept well since this whole thing started. To be honest, I still haven’t. Indy and Thea were sorted, I didn’t have Sonny with me, I’m going to go to bed and actually get a good sleep. How foolish of me.

I woke up at some time before 3am to go to the toilet. l had a bunch of messages from Thea, starting from about 1am, which wasn’t uncommon so initially I wasn’t too concerned. Then I saw the photo she had sent me. Indy was really struggling.She won’t settle. She’s gone stiff again. Squeezing her thumbs under her fingers into fists. She won’t stop crying.

I rang Thea to ask what was going on. I could hear that fucking heart rate monitor going off in the background. Something that would become a source of trauma for me. Indy was crying. As sick as she’d been, Indy hadn’t been upset through most of this. Only really back at Moruya. Since being in hospital she’d been unhappy and uncomfortable at times, but she hadn’t really cried.

I put back on the same clothes I’d taken off to get into bed, and I ran to the hospital.

I didn't realise it at the time, but on reflection we were very lucky that this happened on one of the two nights Sonny wasn’t there.

By the time I got there she was sicker than at any point since we’d arrived. She was having what looked like febrile seizures — arching her back hard backwards, then crunching forwards, back and forwards, over and over. We couldn’t bend her knees. Her heart rate was over two hundred. Her temperature was climbing — 39.5, 39.6 — and it kept climbing even as they gave her Panadol.

We knew something wasn’t right with her. We just knew. We felt like the nurses and the DR weren’t taking things as seriously as they should have been.

We knew she was on magnesium every six hours. So we asked the nurse: when did she last have her magnesium? 8pm, she said. And why didn’t she have it at 2am? We were told that on this ward they don’t medicate between 8pm and 8am.

We told them that Indy needed medication every six hours. No matter what.

We were furious. We knew that Indy needed her supplements. We’d bene watching her every move for the last week. We knew how she looked when she got here, we knew how she looked after shed started to be medicated. We were trying to explain this to the Nurse and Dr and just felt like we were being ignored.

They told us that she didn’t need any more medication because she was given a double dose at 8pm to get her through to her 8am medication. Magnesium is a diuretic. So almost straight after her double dose at 8pm, she had an enormous poo — and almost certainly cleared most of her electrolytes out of her body. Then they gave her nothing at 2am when her body would have been screaming for medication. So she emptied out, and was left empty, and went into freefall.

The Dr wouldn’t listen to us. He was young and to me, arrogant. We asked, and asked, and asked, for him to speak to intensive care. He refused. Instead he set about trying to solve the mystery of what was wrong with her from scratch like he was Dr fucking Gregory House. Asking all sorts of questions about how she’s bene over the last three months. Dude, not your job, just fucking stabilise her.

They managed to get a cannula into her hand, took blood, sent it off. Results at 7am he said. We’ll know more then. We’ll just wait.

We can’t wait, we said.

It was 4am. her heart rate was over 200bpm still. Her temperature still nudging towards 40 in spite or regular Panadol. No intervention was helping.

He decided she might have a urinary tract infection and that he wanted to get a urine sample from her. He gave us a cup and asked us to try and catch 10ml of urine from Indy while she was laying on the bed. If we weren’t able to do that, he wanted to do something called an in and out catheter where a catheter was inserted only for long enough to take the sample then removed.

Thank God for the nurse in charge who said: there is no way we are putting a catheter into a little girl whose heart rate is bouncing between 195 and 205. We are not putting her through that stress. And she refused to let him.

Thea somehow managed to catch enough wee in the cup for a test anyway — and it came back clear. No UTI. We knew it wasn’t a UTI. We knew what was wrong with her.

We had watched her, for a week, come back to life on electrolytes. And we said it to them, plainly: she has pooed out all her electrolytes. She needs them replaced. It has to happen. And the answer was: I can’t. The doctor won’t give her more medication.

We asked him to come back countless times. We asked, countless times, for an ICU doctor to come down. He refused every single request. He acted like everything was fine — while her heart rate ran 195 to 205 and her temperature crept toward forty. He wanted to play detective while my daughter’s next heartbeat could have stopped her heart.

Things were starting to get tense and the nurses could sense our frustration. That’s when one of the nurses quietly slid a pamphlet in front of us. She said: if you’re unhappy with the treatment you’re receiving, you can call this number, and they’ll do something about it straight away.

I said I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. I don’t want anyone in trouble — I just want you to fix my daughter.

And she repeated herself. Slower. Looked at me sideways. If you’re not happy, use this number.

That’s when I understood. The nurses on shift were struggling with this doctor too. They wanted us to make the complaint they couldn’t.

I was incensed. Our daughter was potentially a heartbeat away from major cardiac arrest and these fucking arseholes ask me if I want to make a complaint? No, stabilise my fucking daughter, listen to us! My next plan was to disconnect Indy from everything that was attached to her and walk her back into ICU myself.

I paced that room. I must have done thousands of steps. Thousands. I felt so uncomfortable. I wanted to run. Part of me just couldn’t handle being in there. I felt my body urging me to leave, but my brain was telling me I couldn’t. I’ve never felt like that in my life.

Thea and I continued to take turns of trying to settle Indy. It was hopeless. nothing was working. It was heartbreaking. I was riddled with fear. Fear that she was about to die. Fear that if she didn’t that all the hard work of the week prior had come undone and we were back to square one. Fear that I might be arrested for headbutting an arrogant young Dr.

It wasn’t until shift change at 6:30am that things finally changed.

A fresh nurse walked in, took one look at Indy, and said: this girl is so sick. I’m really worried. I’m ringing ICU myself. Her heart rate was up around 200, 210 by now. It had been dangerously high for six hours now. She rang and told them to get up here straight away.

Within minutes, a doctor came up — one we’d never seen in our previous week in ICU. He asked us a few questions about the last week. He looked at Indy. He grabbed her legs and tried to bend her knees, and couldn’t. Her thumbs were crushed inside her fists, her body still arching back and crunching forward, back and forward, distressed out of her mind.

He said: give her this much magnesium through the IV then bring her down to ICU.

He went back down. The nurses waited for it to be charted. They gave it to her. And then they started walking her toward the lifts.

The lifts are about fifty metres away. We were on level three. ICU is on level one.

By the time we’d walked the fifty metres and gone down two floors — from level three to level one — Indy’s heart rate was back below 150. By the time she was settled into her room in ICU, her temperature was back below 38.

Fifty metres. One dose. That’s all it took.

Everything that doctor refused to do for six hours, the right dose fixed in the time it took to walk to a lift. They had been willing to let her sit there, hour after hour, with her heart rate high enough that a single beat could have tipped her into cardiac arrest — because one man would not listen to two parents who knew their daughter.

ICU… Again

We were back in ICU, lots of fuss being made over Indy. Nurses everywhere. Thea and I just stood there crying and hugging — relief, stress, fury, all of it at once.

Indy fell asleep almost the moment her heart rate came down. This was when I first started to work out where a safe range was for her heart rate and that if it was above 150 she wouldn’t sleep. She’d been awake for over 24 hours. The second she dropped below 150, she was out.

We’d been out of ICU for maybe 13 hours and now felt like we were back to square one. We were terrified all our progress from the past week had been undone.

The next morning the renal team came by to see us. Usually in ICU we would only see the renal team once a day. We asked them if they were aware of what had happened with Indy’s medication. They weren’t. When we told them, I don’t think they believed us. Their instructions hadn’t been followed and because of that Indy nearly died(again), and we lost a week of progress. The consultant Dr form the renal team came back to see us a second time. She felt bad, I could tell. She wanted to make it clear that if her instructions were followed correctly than none of this would have happened. We were told that someone would have to write a report explaining why Indy had returned to ICU in less than 24 hours.

The good thing was, the IV magnesium worked. We learned that. When shit hits the fan, IV magnesium, stat.

With Indy stabilised and back in ICU, Thea was actually able to go to the accommodation and sleep in a real bed for a few hours. That would end up being the only sleep she had in a real bed for 25 days.

They told us we would spend the day in ICU so Indy could rest before being sent back to a ward. We ended up in ICU another five days. Indy slept through most of it. They talked about bed shortages on the wards, but I’ve chosen to believe they just wanted to leave her the hell alone and let her rest. I think they felt genuinely awful about what had happened.

She Came Back… Again

I remember waking up the next morning and dragging myself together to go back in. By now it was becoming routine — get up, sort my shit out, go to the hospital, try to give Thea a break for a bit so she could have a shower, whatever it was. And I remember thinking, clearly: this is too hard. This is too fucking hard. I can’t handle this.

I felt defeated. Like we were never getting out of there. Like it was never going to get any better. Because we didn’t know any better — we just thought Indy was sick all over again, that all the work of the week before was busted, gone. I had no energy left. I felt tired, my feet felt heavy, but I didn’t know what else to do. So I just kept doing what I was doing, hoping things would take a turn for the better.

Indy’s second stretch in ICU though, was where she really started to thrive. The night from hell sucked. But the second stint in ICU really turned things around for Indy. She received a blood transfusion, iron transfusion and a B12 shot. She’d gone from a lifeless body staring blankly into the distance the week before, to a cheeky, playful, pain in the arse. As she improved, our confidence grew, little by little. That became the pattern of the whole thing — gradual, incremental. Our confidence creeping up alongside her recovery.

I didn’t want to leave ICU. I felt safe there. That’s where Indy got better. When she went to the ward, she was mismanaged, got worse and nearly died. I was scarred. But I knew we were potentially taking up space of someone who needed it more than we did. The move to the ward was inevitable and I had to find acceptance.

Eventually we moved — to a different ward this time. I made it clear when we first returned to ICU that we did not want to return to level three, ever again. Level three wasn’t for us. Level seven was. Up high, nice and open, with views of the Harbour Bridge while the Vivid light show lit up the city. This felt better.

RSV

After the night from hell, we knew we would be staying a little longer than initially thought. We got the Au Pair to bring Sonny back up.

The first thing I noticed when Sonny came back was that he had a cough. And I was annoyed. I didn’t even know who to be annoyed at. My brain was desperately searching for someone to blame this on, as though allocating blame to someone would help the situation in any way, but there was no one. He was a three and a half year old boy getting sick and I had to accept that it was one more thing that was going to be hard to manage in a set of circumstances that was already impossibly hard. Frustrating. Inconvenient. But we’ve gotta live in the solution, not the problem.

A day or so later I felt a lump in my own throat. And I thought: I cannot afford to get sick. No way in the world. I went to Chemist Warehouse and bought the pseudoephedrine cold and flu tablets and did a course of them, but they didn’t do much. And I knew that if those suckers didn’t budge it, nothing was going to — it was viral, and there wasn’t much I could do but wait.

Whenever a patient moves from one ward to another, they are tested for RSV, COVID and Rhinovirus. When we’d first moved Indy to the ward, they’d done the standard swabs. We were told Indy tested positive for RSV — but that she was asymptomatic. The nurse told us RSV was basically the common cold, and that Indy was just carrying it without symptoms. We didn’t know any better. Okay, we thought. No worries. Nothing we could have done anyway.

Then we tested Sonny, and Sonny also had RSV. And since we’d been told RSV was just the common cold, and we’d been told Indy already had it — we thought, well, they’ve both got it. There’s no reason to keep Sonny away from her. So we let them play together.

A few days later they retested Indy and said, she’s got RSV. And we said, yeah, we know — she had it when she arrived. And they said, no. She didn’t. She had rhinovirus. She didn’t have RSV.

This is bad, because RSV is not the common cold. Rhinovirus is the common cold. The nurse told us she had RSV and that RSV was the common cold. That’s the whole reason we let Sonny play with her.

And now we’d let Sonny give Indy RSV.

Soon after, Indy started to get sick. Really sick. And so did all of us — everyone but Thea. The Au Pair, Sonny, me, Indy. I went back to Chemist Warehouse and bought every single thing I could — cough medicine, lozenges, paracetamol, stuff to shift the phlegm off your chest, nasal spray, the lot. It nailed us. All of us. The Au Pair couldn’t help because she was down with it too. I had a day where I physically could not get off the lounge — couldn’t get to the hospital at all. That was the one day in the whole ordeal I couldn’t be there. It was horrible.

Indy never vomited in hospital, not once, until she got RSV. Once she had it, she started struggling to keep her medications and her food down. She coughed constantly, and every time she coughed, it would set off the vomiting. That cough-and-vomit cycle became one of our biggest ongoing battles.

We’d moved up to the ward thinking: how good, we’re nearly there, they’re telling us we’ll be home in a few days. And then RSV hit, and more or less nothing changed for a week while we all just tried to recover. Thea tested positive but never got any real symptoms, thank god.

Another communication breakdown. Another misunderstanding that cost us more and more time. Moving to the ward the first time cost us about five days. RSV cost us at least a week on top of that.

The Au Pair was pretty sick with RSV. She was too sick to work and we had to move to new accommodation. So we told her to go home and get some rest and that we would look after Sonny on our own. This way she could rest and we could save a little bit of money on accommodation.

There are government schemes available where you get rebates on money spent on accommodation which we’re grateful for, but nothing close to covering the amount you spend on a room with enough room for The Au Pair, Sonny and Myself in the wanky Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. So not only did each delay mean more disturbance to Sonny’s routine, more time trying to work remotely when I could while supporting Thea and Indy as best I could, it also meant added financial stress in a time where you don’t really have bandwidth to worry about that. Thank god for parents, eh?

Management

Eventually the RSV settled and we could start focusing on Indy’s ongoing management. We started to talk about a plan for going home. Like most things in this story, it wasn’t as simple as I thought it was going to be.

The only medication Indy was still receiving via IV was magnesium. That was the last thing we needed to transition over to oral/NG tube before we could plan to go home. The issue was, they were only testing her blood twice a day, which meant they could only make two adjustments per day. The thing about electrolytes is, they impact each other. For example: you can’t fix potassium until magnesium is right. You can pour potassium in, but if her magnesium is low, the potassium just keeps leaking out — the number won’t come up and stay up until the magnesium is sorted first. It was explained to us that balancing electrolytes in a kid with leaky renal tubes is like trying to hit a moving target. You can think you have everything right, make one final tweak to one of them, and it’ll knock the other out of whack.

The other challenge is that you can’t just dump a days worth of an electrolyte into a babies body. Some medications don’t interact well with each other and need to be separated. Some need to be taken with food. Some of these medications are hard on her stomach. So not only did they need to figure out the total volumes per day for Indy, but they needed to work out how to space them apart and how much of each medication Indy could handle at one time. It’s a fucking complex and tricky balancing act. One that will need continual adjustment as she grows.

Through all of it, Thea took it on herself to learn everything. She sat with the nurses and learned how to give every medication, how to do the water flushes, how far apart each dose had to be. And she wrote everything down — constantly. Every poo, every wee, every vomit, every dose, every temperature, every heart rate, the time of all of it. Page after page. She was building, in real time, the manual for how to keep our daughter alive.

False Start

Then they told us: you can go. Thursday or Friday, it was. Get some accommodation nearby for the first couple of nights, and off you go. I couldn’t believe it. I was over the moon. Kinda.

I went in that morning thinking I was going to pick them up and bring them back to the accommodation. I was pumped. I started organising things. doing trips to the car, packing things up. Then Indy had two enormous vomits. Massive. And just like that — I was deflated. Again. This journey of one step forwards two steps backwards was to continue. Of course.

There was no way they were letting us go home with a kid vomiting straight after her medication. And honestly, after seeing her have two massive vomits in a short time, straight after her medication, I didn’t want to go home anymore. I was scared. I didn’t feel safe.

Another Lesson

Later that day, one of the junior renal doctors came around to check on us before leaving the next day. She noticed Indy’s heart rate was up a little but put it down the the RSV. It had become normal for Indy to have a slightly elevate heart rate and other fever symptoms of an afternoon.

Shortly after the junior DR left Indy’s heart rate started creeping. 160. 170. Up around 180. Her temperature was climbing. And she started clenching her fists again.

I thought, not a-fucking-gain. It felt like we were destined to never leave.

Thea and I tried to settle her, to calm her down and bring the heart rate down that way. We couldn’t. And I had a feeling the junior renal doctor hadn’t gone far. So I went looking for her. I found her at the other end of the ward, and told her we needed her to come back.

She came back, and we showed her. This is what she does. This is what happens when she gets sick. See her fists? See her heart rate? See her temperature? She had massive vomits this morning — she’s depleted, she’s lost her electrolytes.The doctor was great. She said, alright, no worries and started to prep to put a cannula back into Indy’s hand.

Indy was pretty distressed. Sonny was in the room. We didn’t want him to see Indy like that but we had sent the Au Pair home. We rang Thea's mum who said she could come up for the night and would leave soon, but even she was 4.5 hours away. For Sonny’s sake, I was going to have to leave right when things were at their worst. It was one of the hardest things I had to do.

I took Sonny down to Bondi to ride his bike along the big footpath that you’re not allowed to ride bikes on. He’s three, and cute, whatever. I was texting Thea frantically. I couldn’t help but think maybe we were about to be right back where we were almost four weeks ago. Holding my phone with the message app open, tapping phone screen so the automatic timer didn’t turn the screen off, waiting for the next update. I just wanted to hear that she had been stabilised.

While they were prepping to put the cannula in they gave Indy a stat dose of magnesium straight through the nasogastric tube. And before they even needed the IV — before they used the cannula at all — the oral magnesium brought her heart rate back below 150 and her temperature back down.

As horrible as that experience as, just like the night from hell, it was probably something we needed to experience. We needed to watch Indy get sick and needed to watch her be brought back with oral magnesium. Because oral magnesium is something Thea and I can give her. At home. Ourselves. Of course, if she crashes like that we take her to hospital — but the very first thing we can do, before we even leave the house, is give her a stat dose of magnesium.

There was a reason we didn’t get out of the hospital that day. We had to see that. We had to go through it. As shit as it was, we needed it.

Freedom

When the renal team came around the next morning, they told us we’d be able to leave.

They took the femoral line out of her groin — the one that had caused so much drama, that had to be cleaned and restitched God knows how many times. Indy could finally be detached from the ECG machine, the heart rate monitor, and everything else. I remember grabbing her and taking her to the playroom she crawled around then started to pull herself up on a chair. She was a bit wobbly, but she was happy to be off the bed an playing. So was I.

After nearly four weeks of wanting nothing in the world except to take my daughter home — when they finally said we could go, I didn’t want to leave.

I was scared. So scared. I didn’t want to lose the security of the hospital. To not have a nurse and a doctor on call, right there, ready. But I suppose that’s exactly why they have you stay near the hospital for a night or two before you actually go home.

So we did it. After a visit to the eye doctor for some tests, we got out of there in the afternoon, back to the accommodation, where Sonny was waiting with Thea’s mum

Bondi

That first night back at the accommodation, together as a family, things felt — not normal, exactly, but as close to normal as they’d felt in a long time. As close as they’d been for a long time.

We went down to Bondi. Sonny on his bike, Indy in the pram. We just walked from one end to the other, and then back again. And it felt good. It felt really good.

Indy was playing. Crawling on the floor. Pulling herself up to stand, walking around the furniture, climbing off the bed. She’d been stuck in a hospital bed for nearly four weeks — and here she was, moving, exploring, being a kid again.

I was as happy as I was terrified.

It was the strangest feeling. So torn — so genuinely, deeply happy and relieved, and at the exact same time absolutely terrified. The safety net was gone now. No monitors, no nurses down the hall, no doctor on call. Just us.

But that night we got some fancy Uber Eats — the kind of thing you can’t get in our quiet little coastal town — and we just hung out. The four of us. And it was nice.

It was really nice.

The Drive Home

The next morning we went back to the hospital for a quick check before being properly discharged. Thea’s mum took Sonny home, and we drove home.

We left Sydney with everything we needed to do it properly. The schedule. The pump. The feed. The meds. Ready. The plan was to medicate her and start a feed about an hour south, then keep driving — they’d said it should be fine to feed her in the car. No worries.

We stopped at Engadine to give Indy her meds and start her feed. By the time we got to Waterfall, maybe ten minutes down the road, vomit everywhere. Of course. The rule is, if she vomits within half an hour of her medication, you have to redose it. So we redosed. Got things going again.

We got to Nowra — about halfway home — and Indy vomited again. Another massive one.

At that point I felt completely hopeless. Like there was no hope at all. Like we might as well just turn around and drive back to Sydney, because there was no way in the world we were getting home and sticking to this schedule. A kid who’d sat on a bed for four weeks, now being medicated and fed in a car on the windy road back to the south coast, throwing up everything we gave her.

I’m so grateful for all the learning Thea had done while at the hospital because i genuinely didn’t know what to do and was seriously thinking about drinking back to Sydney, handing Indy over saying, fucking fix her! Like she was a dodgy second-hand car or something. Thea looked at her medication schedule worked a few things out, and we made the call. No more meds. No more feeds. We’re just going to get home and start again when we get there. Risky. But it’s what we did.

As scared as I was, I did, and still do believe, that for Indy to continue her recovery, she needed to be at home. there was nothing left for her at the hospital. She needed to be in her house. Surrounded by her toys. Sleeping in her bed.

We made it home with no more dramas. We caught her meds up that night.

Putting Indy down in the lounge room watching her crawl over to her favourite things, seeing how happy she was to have them back, almost made the near four weeks of hell worth it. Once again, she was happy and so was I.

She Got Sick Slowly, She’ll Get Better Slowly

I wasn’t prepared for was how much Indy would vomit.

I reckon for 16 of the first 21 days at home, she vomited at least once. And because vomiting was the thing that had triggered all of this in the first place, every single vomit freaked me out. I panicked. My brain went straight to, this is it, she’s about to start tensing up, her heart rate’s going to go through the roof, we’ll be back in the helicopter.

But that wasn’t what was happening.

It took months and months for Indy to get as sick as she did. One of the doctors said it to me plainly — she got really sick over a really long time, and it might take a really long time for her to get better. I just had to try to remember that.

I’m an anxious mess. Always have been, probably always will be. And alcoholics think the worst first — that’s just how the wiring goes. So, in the moment, my brain screams we’re going back to Sydney. But the truth was slower and gentler than my brain. It was going to take a long time, and a vomit was not a catastrophe.

So, Thea and I watched. Closely. We paid attention to how she reacted to everything. We worked out that some drink bottles let her take too much water at once, and that made her vomit. We worked out that one of her medications, combined with another, made her vomit. Bit by bit, we just chipped away, and chipped away, and chipped away. At one point she went twelve or fourteen days without vomiting at all.

Indy still vomits sometimes. We’ve since switched her to a different feed — from 1 calorie per mil to 1.5 — which means a third less time on the pump and a third less volume for the same calories. It helps. But it still happens sometimes. And now, we accept that. The thing is, you don’t get to feel okay about it straight away. You have to earn it. You have to get through the days — vomit and she’s okay, vomit and she’s okay, vomit and she’s okay — and stack those days on top of each other until they build into trust. Until it starts to feel like it’s going to be alright.

It’s still horrible. I still don’t want it to happen. We still feel terrible for her when it does. But it’s not killing her. It’s not the thing we used to think it was. And of all the vomits she’s had since we got home, only a handful of times have we ever actually been within 30 minutes of her medication, which means we haven’t had to redose her medication. The rest of the time, she’s holding her meds down fine. It’s a milk thing. A formula thing. A capacity thing. Not a life-and-death thing.

The Strange Question

The first time Thea met our nephrologist — our kidney doctor — She told us that she thought Indy had a kidney injury cause by the months of malnutrition and at the time she believed Indy would likely make a full recovery. She asked a strange question, though: is there any possibility you and your partner are related? Does Indy look different to how you’d expect your child i.e. hair and eye and skin colour? When Thea told me I thought, how rude! Did you head butt her?

Thea and I thought that was a very strange question. And it sounds like one. But it isn’t.

She explained that there’s a rare genetic condition she didn’t think Indy had, but that she needed to rule out. She told us that kids with this condition usually have incredibly light hair, pale skin and blue eyes — and she thought Indy’s hair was too dark for it. So we did genetic testing, to identify whether Indy had this condition, or possibly some other type.

We already knew Indy had renal tubular acidosis. That much was settled. We just didn’t know which type. And the condition the doctor was describing — the one she wanted to rule out — was probably the worst possible outcome for us. But based on everything she’d said to us, we were expecting the genetic testing to rule that particular condition out.

The Phone Call

We’d been home a few weeks. It was a Friday afternoon and I was at the skate park with Sonny, Indy in the pram, when one of the renal doctors from Sydney — one we’d not had a lot to do with — rang me.

She opened by saying she just wanted to check in on how Indy was going. I thought it was odd given we didn’t have much to do with her during our stay, but I being the people pleaser I am wanting her to think good things about us, I responded enthusiastically— yeah, she’s doing well, we’re doing this, we’re doing that, yada yada. And she said, oh that’s great, good to hear.

And then her tone changed.

She said the genetic testing had found a result. And she was wondering if we could come up to Sydney at 12:15 next Wednesday — spend the day up there, and talk through what the results were.

I said, can you just tell me what it is?

She said, not really. But there’s a medication we need to talk about — one you have to come to Sydney to collect anyway — so it’s better we do it in person.

I am not a person who can sit and wait on news like that. I’m an anxious mess at the best of times. I almost begged her. Please, just tell me what it is. I’m going to do my head in until Wednesday. I won’t sleep. And she said, I’m sorry, I can’t really talk about it. Just come Wednesday and we’ll go over it all. Torture.

The Slip

The Tuesday before that Wednesday, I took Indy to Moruya for her weekly blood test — we’d been doing them every week since we left Sydney. It’s actually sad how good Indy has become at having people stick pins in her arms at such a young age. She actually watches. She gets annoyed if she can’t.

That afternoon, one of the junior renal doctors rang to say they wanted a small adjustment to one of Indy’s medications based on the bloods. No worries, I said. And then I asked — hey, can you give me any more information about this new medication she apparently needs to start tomorrow?

And she said, what do you mean?

I said, we’ve been told she needs to start a new medication when we come up tomorrow.

And she said: no one’s spoken to you about the cystinosis medication?

Then I heard someone in the background say something muffled to her. And she recoiled. No — no, no, sorry. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Okay? I can’t talk about it on the phone. We’ll go through it in person.

I said, listen — you need to tell me. You have to tell me now.

She said, no. I can’t.

I hung up the phone. And I turned to Thea and said: what’s cystinosis?

Cystinosis

Cystinosis is the condition. The one from the very first meeting — the light hair, the blue eyes, the pale skin. The one the doctor had wanted to rule out. The worst possible outcome for us.

It’s lifelong. It’s the one that requires a medication every six hours, no negotiation. every cell in the body. Each organ responds differently and the kidneys are usually affected first. It means most people with cystinosis end up needing a kidney transplant — often in their teens, sometimes more than one across a lifetime. It affects growth. And no one really knows yet how it affects people into old age, because it’s only recently — thanks to new medications — that people with cystinosis have started living into old age at all. Once upon a time, before newer medications, they’d die before they were twenty.

So we spent the whole night researching. Reading. Understanding what it was going to be like. And, in our own way, starting to accept it — hours before anyone had officially told us a thing.

The next day, when we got to Sydney and they gently said, she’s got a condition we believe is called cystinosis — we said, yeah. We know.

I think they were a little thrown by that. And there wasn’t much they could tell us that we hadn’t already found and understood for ourselves overnight.

I suppose that’s the one benefit of being an anxious mess!

Grief

Getting a diagnosis like this floors you. It shatters you.

Up until that point, we still had hope. The very first time we saw the kidney doctor, she told us she believed what had happened was that Indy had gotten sick, become so malnourished that she’d injured her kidneys — and that she’d be okay. That we just needed to help her kidneys out for a while, and eventually they’d take back over. We were also told that because she’d been so depleted for so long, her cells had been stripped of electrolytes, and that as they replenished, she might not need so much medication.

And we held onto that. We never lost hope in it. Not once.

A diagnosis of cystinosis blows all of that away in an instant. It’s genetic. It cannot be changed. It’s written into her DNA. It is simply the way she is, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

So you grieve.

My mind starts reaching back through everything. Thea was thirty-eight when she had Indy. For a long time we thought we’d only have one child. We thought about our age, and about wanting to give one child absolutely everything, to be fully present for all of it. Then one day, when Sonny was around eighteen months old and playing by himself in the house, we had the conversation again. Should we have another? And it felt too big, too difficult a decision to make on our own — so we put it out to the universe. We wouldn’t try to have a baby, and we wouldn’t try not to. Thea got pregnant straight away. We got our answer.

And putting all of that together, the alcoholic brain gets nasty. Years ago, before Thea and I had been together long — still house-sitting, still saving for a house deposit in Canberra, in no way ready to be parents — we terminated a pregnancy. We had nothing, no house or stability to give to a child, we wanted that baby but we just couldn’t provide the life we knew they deserved. And my brain takes these pieces and assembles them into a weapon. This is punishment, Sam. This is punishment for what you did. If only you’d never terminated that first pregnancy, this baby wouldn’t have cystinosis.

I‘ve always had this idea that one day I’d be punished for all the wrong that I have done. Particularly when my drinking and drugging was at it’s worst. I always thought something horrible would happen, not to me, but to someone I cared for deeply and that my punishment would be having to watch, powerless to help.

Intellectually, I know none of that is true.

But that’s where my brain goes. I have a self-centred brain that wants me to hate myself by default because if I hate myself, I’m more likely to drink and drug. When something bad happens, it goes looking for a way to make it either my fault, or find a way to make me the victim. Either way it can justify drinking. This was no different. Intellectually, I understand it’s all bullshit. Emotionally, mentally — that’s a different matter entirely. I know it doesn’t serve me. I know there’s no benefit in it. But my brain just goes there anyway. It just does. And it’s hard.

We grieved for the life we thought we were going to have. Not because our life is over, or ruined, or fucked. It isn’t. But for now — while Indy is young, while she relies so heavily on the feed pump and on us for all her medication, while she can’t swallow tablets so everything has to be made up into liquids and syringed into her tube — it is heavily, heavily restrictive. And you grieve for the version of family life you thought you were about to build and provide for your kids.

Grief is hard. It’s not meant to be nice. It’s meant to be exactly what it is, and it’s shit, and it sucks.

The other thing I battle with is my own expectations. I think I should be able to handle this better. Why can’t I be stronger? Why can’t I just be of service to my family and not make this all about me and how I feel? We’re always told to open up and talk about how we feel, but how can I do this without sounding like I’m feeling sorry myself and making myself sound like a victim? It’s fucking insanity.

How can I feel like this, when it doesn’t even affect me the way it’s going to affect Indy? She’s the one who’ll need the kidney transplants. She’s the one who has to take all the medication. She’s the one who vomits. Not me. And yet here I am — a self-centred alcoholic — finding a way to make it about me.

But I know my feelings are real, and they are valid. Indy's disease is not the end of the world. Not by a long shot. But It’s ok for me to think that this sucks. It’s ok for me to say that it’s hard. I don’t have to like it. I just have to accept it.

Through everything I’ve learned that If Indy is sweet, if Indy is happy, then I get to be happy. And we are so lucky that Indy is exactly the way she is. Her nature, her spirit — she has made this so much easier than it had any right to be.

She’s carried us, honestly. More than we’ve carried her.

Indy's disease, our circumstance, all of this, it is not a punishment. Watching Indy thrive in spite of all these challenges, in the face of adversity, is the greatest privilege I’ll ever know.

Hope

It’s now been roughly six months since Indy first presented at Batemans Bay Hospital, and then on to Bega, after vomiting bile. We’ve been home somewhere near two months. My ability to timestamp anything from this period is terrible — it all feels so blurry.

Indy is sixteen and a half months old. And she’s starting to walk. A couple of weeks off, maybe. And soon the nasogastric tube on her face will be replaced by a G-tube.

We’ve come a long way since we’ve been home. And I have to keep reminding myself to look back and remember how far we have come, because if I don’t, it all still feels like too much — like it’s all going to be too hard, like I can’t do it.

The G-tube is going to make things a lot easier. We should be able to do continuous feeds through the night, which means less time stuck on the feed pump during the day. It edges us back toward something like normality.

She’ll still need medicating at 2am, 5am, 2pm, 5pm and 8pm. That’s fine. But right now she spends a big chunk of the day stuck in a playpen, tethered to a pump, while her brother runs around doing whatever he likes, and while Thea and I come and go around her. Cutting that time down will be significant.

The G-tube also means she can get back to things like swimming — and that makes me happy. Because my greatest fear for Indy is that she’ll grow up feeling different. Feeling less than. Getting that tube off her face, and having her walking, all before she’s old enough to understand any of it, matters to me more than I can say. I take her along to Sonny’s swimming lessons sometimes, and she just wants to get in the water, and she doesn’t understand why she’s not allowed anymore. It’s not fair. So I’m glad we’ll be able to give that back to her soon.

There’s more hope, too. The six-hourly medication she’s on now has an alternative that only needs to be taken every twelve hours. If we can get her onto it one day, it would wipe out the 2am wake-up entirely.

And further out — a handful of adults in America have, in inverted commas, been “cured” of cystinosis through a gene-modified stem cell treatment. They’ve now started a paediatric trial of the same thing, in two-to-five-year-old’s, and the first child through it has come out the other side no longer storing cystine in his cells. It’s working.

The treatment is rough. Roughly, they take the child’s own blood stem cells out, use gene editing to fix the faulty gene, then give the child chemotherapy to clear out the old bone marrow, then put the corrected cells back — and the child has to stay in an infection-controlled environment while their immune system rebuilds. It’s not a nice thing to put a small kid through. But it potentially cures the condition.

If we were ever lucky enough for Indy to have a treatment like that, her electrolytes would still need managing, because the damage already done to her kidneys is done — it just wouldn’t get any worse. But it could mean she avoids a kidney transplant altogether, or after the first transplant the new kidney won’t be damaged. And that would be massive, because a transplant doesn’t solve everything — it solves some problems and creates others. So the hope is that somewhere around the age of five, we might be able to get her onto something like that.

The hope is real, and it helps. But it doesn’t remove the fear.

Fear

I still live in a lot of fear.

I’m scared of living in an environment of constant stress can have on relationships — always watching the clock, always making sure the meds go in on time, the feeds go in on time, that she keeps them down so you don’t have to redose. One of us up at 2am, the other up at 5am. It makes for a tense, exhausted, stretched-thin house, and fatigue brings out the worst in people. It certainly does in me.

I worry about what that does to my relationship with Sonny. About the patience and tolerance and compassion I don’t have for him when I’m running on empty. I catch myself expecting him to behave like an adult, and that’s not fair — he’s four. I worry about what this whole thing has done to him. He says to us, often: I don’t want Indy to be sick anymore. I don’t want her to have the tubes anymore. I don’t want her to need feeds anymore, eyedrops, or meds anymore. I don’t want to go to the hospital anymore. And all I can say back to him is: me too, mate. Me too. This is just what we have to do for Indy. And I promise you it gets better.

We have already noticed that when we return from trips to Sydney for appointments with Indy, he recoils. He doesn’t want to do the things we know that he loves. He won’t go to daycare, he won’t go to swimming, gymnastics, skate park. He just wants to stay home. For Sonny, one day everything was fine, next thing he knew he was apart from his mum and sister every night for 25 nights. He’s scared that to be apart from his mum because he’s worried it’s going to happen again.

When he see’s photos of Indy from when she was sick, he gets upset. He cares deeply for his sister and loves her a lot. It’s a beautiful trait, but I worry that it’s going to make him vulnerable to being hurt. It breaks my heart.

But he is a beautiful big brother. He doesn’t get jealous of Indy and all the attention she gets through all of this. He is such a boyish, almost-four-year-old and we love that about him, but this has softened him perfectly and showed us a much kinder, gentler side of him we didn’t know he had.

I worry that when I’m that tired, I can resent Indy for having this condition. That I get on my own pity-pot — this isn’t fair. I worry about my relationship with Thea. We don’t get a normal relationship right now. We can’t go to dinner, or to the movies, because we can’t leave the kids with anyone for long — you can’t ask someone else to make up nine different medications and wake at 2am and 5am to give them. It’s too much to put on anyone, and honestly, we struggle to trust anyone else to get it right. That’ll take time.

We don’t get to the gym anymore. We don’t get time for ourselves. Some days we don’t shower. We both still work full-time, we have to. We still have a four-year-old boy who needs everything a four-year-old needs. Two young kids is hard enough. Throw this on top, and some days it feels impossible. Some days it feels like too much. Some days it genuinely feels like we can’t do it. And on those days, my brain starts reaching for the big lever — sell the house, quit the jobs, one of us stops working, blow it all up. Do some great big dramatic thing that isn’t actually going to help. But I’ve learned to be wary of making a permanent decision based on a temporary feeling.

None of this is through a lack of support. We have good support. Really good support. It’s just that there’s only so much anyone else can do. In the end, this is our job. Our responsibility.

Right Here, Right Now, All is Well

I’ve learned nothing is more important than right now. Something I should have already known being a part of a 12 step fellowship. But sometimes understanding something intellectually and actually learning to implement it, in this case by necessity, are two very separate things.

I consider myself very lucky to be a part of a 12 step fellowship. It has given me the tools needed to navigate difficult things without blowing my life to smithereens. I have been sober for four years and four months. I thought my sobriety was safe. For the most part it was, but this tested me like nothing else. But this fellowship held me up when I needed it most.

Not knowing how we’re going to make it okay is terrifying. But if this whole thing has taught me anything, it’s that I have to keep it in the day. Living in the past is depression. Living in the future is anxiety. I can’t afford to live anywhere but today.

One of my favourite sober people, someone very wise, says it to me over and over: right here, right now, all is well. And I catch myself repeating it, like a handrail. All I can do is my best. All we can do is our best. We wake up, and we see what happens.

I’m grateful for all of it.

Indy

I am endlessly grateful that Indy is exactly who she is.

She’s the best. She’s happy, she’s extremely funny, she’s crazy, she’s friendly, she’s sweet. She loves a cuddle. She loves making other people happy. She waves at everyone, blows kisses at strangers. She is the sweetest little girl you could ever imagine, and she is happy.

The way she has overcome so much already, at such a young age, multiple near-death experiences, weekly blood tests, constant hospital visits, a tube shoved down her nose, constantly being attached to her feed pump, ongoing battles with nappy rash because of all the electrolytes she passes, constantly having her sleep disturbed, and yet, she’s happy. She’s a beautiful, happy little girl, who loves Bluey, loves dancing, adores her brother and is almost never, ever upset.

We are so lucky that Indy is who she is, because this task that at times feels almost impossible, would feel genuinely impossible if she was any different.

Fate

I don’t really know what I believe. I’m still figuring it out. I’ve come to peace with the idea that I may die not having it figured out. Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be. I guess that way I can stay open to learning. But I do, even after this, believe everything happens for a reason.

There was no one reason that I got sober. I just remember knowing with certainty at 3:30am that morning that my life was spiralling out of control and I needed to stop before something tragic happened and I lost everything I cared about.

I don’t believe we choose our kids. I believe our kids choose us. A psychic told Thea that the baby we terminated was a boy. She told us that nothing happened to the boy, he just went back and waited until we were ready. Sonny came to us four months after I got sober.

After we purchased a house and were financially stable at work we let the universe decide whether or not we should have a second baby. Thea was pregnant with Indy a week later.

Even the circumstances that Thea and I met in was sprinkled in suspicious fate sounding narrative.

I know that no matter what happens, we’ll always be ok. We always have been. Through everything.

I do believe, I have to believe, that we are right where we are meant to be. Whether we understand that or not. Thea and I were meant to meet, with our matching, shitty corrupted genes. Sonny was meant to come, but only when he, and maybe more importantly we, were ready.

And I believe there was a baby girl out there who needed a bit of extra help. I believe that after Sonny came down and taught us how to be parents, once we were ready, Indy came and completed our family, exactly when and where she was meant to.

At 7:02am…

However, I also feel a gentle yet constant undercurrent of grief. I constantly long for more time with previous iterations of my kids. It's as though one day they wake up and whoever they were for the previous 2, 3, or 4 weeks is gone forever, like they downloaded a new operating system overnight. It's the classic case of having to shed something to gain something. I don't get the joy of watching them grow without letting go of their previous versions.

I'm grateful that I learned this lesson early in my life. I'm grateful I didn't wait until my mid-fifties—when my kids would be young adults—to realise how precious time with them is.

There's a very played-out saying popular on social media lately: "No one will remember the hours you worked except your kids." I think people see stuff like this and say to themselves, "Yeah, I'm not going to stay back at work. I'm never going to put the company before my kids." But then we do. Things pop up. Deadlines happen. I'm guilty of this, too.

As much as I grieve the time lost with different stages of my children, at my core, I’m still a people pleaser. I'm still susceptible to doing extra things for people who don't appreciate it, just to get a pat on the arse. So it's important to me that I stay aware. I accept that I have to experience some form of grief in order to enjoy my children's growth, but I know I can't get time back. It's the most valuable commodity we have—like a bank account we can't check the balance on.

As someone involved in 12-step recovery, I'm constantly encouraged to "live in the day." But in this case, I think it's healthy to be aware of the potential for wasted time and of not getting enough time with each version of my children. They say, "We don't regret the past, nor do we wish to close the door on it," and I think that's the approach here.

So maybe this grief serves me. Maybe it's the constant reminder not to get caught up in the bullshit and to always come back to what matters. It reminds me that life's about spending as much time as I can doing what's important to me. For the next 25 years or so, the most important thing to me is being a good, present, and sober dad—providing my children with what I wish I had.

For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 151

The longer I chased these elusive feelings with alcohol, the more out of reach they were. However, by applying this passage to my sobriety, I found that it described the magnificent new life made available to me by the A.A. program. "It" truly does "get better" one day at a time. The warmth, the love and the joy so simply expressed in these words grow in breadth and depth each time I read it. Sobriety is a gift that grows with time.

---

I started drinking the same way most middle-class Australian kids did. Drinking luke-warm cans of pre-mixed spirits out of a backpack at a local playground at a night where my mates and I had all told our parents we were staying at one another houses.

I’ve been self-conscious since I can remember. When I was five years old, I signed up to play Rugby League and cried my eyes out at the first training session, refusing to come out from behind my mum’s legs. I was too shy, ashamed, and embarrassed by what the other kids might think of me.

Drinking gave me the confidence to step into who I truly was. To be temporarily unashamed of myself. It was well received. Momentarily, I was accepted for who I was, and it felt great, so why wouldn’t I be drawn back to drinking?

In my late teens, I found stimulant drugs, which only exacerbated the above. I thought I was fucking Superman with a belly full of beer and a brain full of cocaine, and people liked me. Or at least I felt like they did. So why wouldn't I be drawn back to drinking and doing drugs?

What I hadn’t realised, though, was as my drunken and fucked up persona grew more confident, my sober persona was shrivelling into an anxious, anti-social mess.

The longer m,y drug and alcohol abuse went on, the less and less I would be able to socialise when sober. It got to a point where I wouldn’t leave the house on a weekend unless it was somewhere where I could drink.

Ashamedly, I remember getting the shits at my partner for taking us out to somewhere nice for dinner but they didn’t have any “normal” beers on tap.

At the time, I couldn’t give a shit about the food, the experience, or the wanky fruit-filled beers. I saw even date night as an opportunity to drink as much as I could. Most date nights would end with my partner heading off to bed, me staying up drinking, and even getting a bag of coke dropped over so I could sit up until 5 am on my own being fried out of my brain.

Then I got to a point where if I was to be going somewhere on the weekend, I would have to be able to drink there, it would have to have been I would like, and I would have to have had beers before I went and even on most occasions have an order of drugs pre-arranged.

By this point, I was refusing to do anything even remotely social or sober. I would either be drunk, high, drinking or I wouldn’t go. I was a terrible partner, but at the time, I was so sick with self-loathing and self-obsession that I couldn’t see past the idea that I was always the victim of everyone and everything.

Eventually, I stopped going anywhere. Maybe the pub for a few hours, but by the end of my drinking and drug use, I just wanted to get some cocaine, go home to where I knew I had plenty of beers, no one would be around and I could spiral into that person I was so comfortable being yet too ashamed to let anyone see.

I had rid myself of any and all meaningful connection.

I would spend all weekend isolated from my pregnant partner. In the back yard, in the shed, convincing myself I was way too smart for her to know what I was up to. I just wanted to be alone, and get as fucked up as I could.

I despised rugs and alcohol. I despised myself for becoming so reliant on them. But this is the part I think most don’t understand: getting sober is scarier than it is to stay living in that constant state of guilt, shame and remorse because that state of guilt, shame and remorse is familiar.

Life without your most trusted, longest serving and most effective coping mechanism, that’s fucking scary. And I think that’s why so many of us HAVE to hit rock bottom.

As fucked as it was, I’ll always be grateful for hitting my rock bottom and the period that led to it. I have to be. As I sit here with 799 days of sobriety under my belt, not only is my life better than it ever has been, but it’s better than I ever even knew it would be able to be, and it’s getting better.

It’s not perfect, it’s not easy, and it’s not without its faults. But it’s better than ever and the trajectory is good.

Why?

Because I have a program that has taught me that I am unimportant. It’s taught me that a life of service to others is ultimately the greatest way of being of service to myself. It’s taught me that if I just do my best each day to make the right decision when presented with one, things will usually be ok. Irrelevant of what happens to or for me today, the world goes on, and that’s liberating. I’ve always been okay and I always will be. If I’m ever not okay, that’s when I’ll worry about it and do something to change that.

My program has given me peace between the ears, which allows me to be present, and enjoy life for what it is. I am grateful because, without that rock bottom, I would never have achieved that peace.

As they say, if drinkin’ was better than this shit, we’d all be out there drinkin’.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober or sober-curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or think you could help struggling people, we’d love to have you!

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Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, let someone know. Speak to a friend, family member, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

The problem of resolving fear has two aspects. We shall have to try for all the freedom from fear that is possible for us to attain. Then we shall need to find both the courage and grace to deal constructively with whatever fears remain.

AS BILL SEES IT, p. 61

Most of my decisions were based on fear. Alcohol made life easier to face, but the time came when alcohol was no longer an alternative to fear. One of the greatest gifts in A.A. for me has been the courage to take action, which I can do with God's help. After five years of sobriety I had to deal with a heavy dose of fear. God put the people in my life to help me do that and, through my working the Twelve Steps, I am becoming the whole person I wish to be and, for that, I am deeply grateful.

All my life, almost all my actions have been motivated by fear: fear of what others think of me, fear of people finding out who I truly am, fear of failure, fear of not fitting in, fear of being exposed as a fraud, fear of being alone, fear of missing out, fear of responsibility, and fear of letting people down, just to name a few.

We have the ability to fear people, places and things because we need it. Fear is natural. It keeps us safe.

My problem is that my fear has often been unfounded and ungrounded. I’d be paranoid and anxious that something incredibly unlikely would or could happen. My fears, for the most part, were completely irrational.

If I wasn’t irrational about my fears, I was wrong-sized about them. The level of fear I would feel wouldn’t be relative to the level of the apparent threat. It's as though the mechanism that regulated the level of fear I felt was completely broken. If I was scared, I was scared fucking shitless and I was scared all the time.

In a lot of ways, when I came into this program I was as emotionally and spiritually mature as I was when I started drinking at the age of 13. I was, and at times still am, a scared little boy.

Drugs and alcohol took that fear away, albeit temporarily…

Momentarily I would finally feel like I had nothing to worry about. It was bliss.

Eventually, though, drugs and alcohol only made the fear worse. When I was sober, it was as though the fear would continue building in the background while I temporarily numbed myself from it, only for it to hit me twice as hard once I had sobered up.

My program of recovery, though, has taught me to be right-sized about my fears. It has taught me to regulate my fear according to the threat level I’m perceiving. I’m experiencing less unfounded and ungrounded fear. I’ve learned to worry more about what I can control and less about what I can’t.

Ultimately, surrendering the desire to control outcomes of things that are beyond my control has been the catalyst for my overcoming my fears. My fears were all based on control and the lack of control I had.

What I’ve learned is that things happen, good and bad, irrelevant of what I do. I’m not that important. I don’t have that much influence on what happens and that in itself is liberating.

I need to ask myself, “Do I need to worry about this?”. Usually, the answer is no. If yes, I ask myself, “Do I need to worry about this right now?”. Usually, the answer to that is no, as well. On the rare occasion the answer is yes to both, well then and only then do we worry about it, and usually we have the tools at our disposal to sort it out…

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober or sober-curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or think you could help struggling people, we’d love to have you!

We’ve already got a bunch of legends in there sharing incredible stories and supporting one another. Jump in. You have nothing to lose!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Sobering Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, let someone know. Speak to a friend, family member, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

Ultimately though, it’ll be whatever it is meant to be.

I hope you get something from it.

We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. . . search diligently within yourself. . . . With this attitude you cannot fail. The consciousness of your belief is sure to come to you.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 55

It was out of the depths of loneliness, depression and despair that I sought the help of A.A. As I recovered and began to face the emptiness and ruin of my life, I began to open myself to the possibility of the healing that recovery offers through the A.A. program. By coming to meetings, staying sober, and taking the Steps, I had the opportunity to listen with increasing attentiveness to the depths of my soul. Daily I waited, in hope and gratitude, for that sure belief and steadfast love I had longed for in my life. In this process, I met my God, as I understand Him.

---

There are three words that stick out for me.

Loneliness, depression and despair.

I have a love/hate relationship with these negative emotions.

There are two people inside of me. Sam, and The Addict.

Sam hates these three emotions desperately, but The Addict, he loves them.

Because as much pain as they cause, The Addict finds comfort in their familiarity.

For The Addict, these emotions are enough to justify poor decisions and behaviours. They justify using mind-altering substances or behaviours to escape these exact emotions. The Addict is almost pleased to feel the negativity because it knows that with enough negativity, it will soon have what it desires.

When depressed, lonely, or in despair, I am susceptible to making the easy decision. I permit myself to take shortcuts, avoid doing what’s right, and find justification by telling myself it’s okay because I feel a certain way. I let my feelings dictate my actions.

The short-term solution ALWAYS makes the long-term pain worse. I know I am only delaying the inevitable, but for now, I lack the courage to do what’s right and good. The short-term solution is what The Addict wants cheap, easy thrills that will never equate to feelings of peace, fulfilment, or contentment.

That is why I need this program. To help Sam stay ahead of The Addict.

I need a daily reminder to make the next right decision at every possible turn or juncture. I must remember that self-esteem comes from doing esteemable things, which will keep that dreaded self-loathing at bay.

The solution for me to avoid feelings of Loneliness, Depression and Despair is now and always will lie in ACTION, not thinking. I CANNOT think my way into mental or spiritual or fitness, God knows I’ve tried. I need to ask myself where I can be of service to others. I must move my feet first, and my head will follow.

So just for today, I will work my program to the best of my ability to keep the Addict at bay. If I am true to my word, I can rest my head on the pillow tonight at peace, knowing that although I wasn’t perfect, I did my best with pure intentions and that’s all I can ask for.

Progress, not perfection.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

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Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, let someone know. Speak to a friend, family member, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

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G’day Legends.

Have ya’s missed me? Tell the truth. Ya didn’t even realise I was gone, did ya?

Just wanted to send a quick note to let everyone know that I haven’t died, relapsed, or forgotten about you all.

Since my last post, I’ve passed both two years and 750 days sober. Both milestones are ones that I wouldn’t have believed possible once upon a time.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working on myself and learning about who I truly am. As a result, my sobriety is stronger than ever, and I have a lot of things I’m eager to share with you all. I’ve just been struggling for time while I’ve been working my way through The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Initially, I was trying to keep up with sharing a weekly or fortnightly post, and I have a few half-written posts in my drafts. I just haven’t had the time to finish them PROPERLY!

I’ve decided it’s probably best not to share my experience of the 12 steps until I have finished them. In many ways, I feel like some of the steps reinforce previous steps, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to comment on my experience with any of the steps until I have completed all of them, which hopefully won’t be too far away.

However, as an alcoholic/addict in recovery, I do feel obligated to share my experiences in the hope of helping others, and I do feel a sense of guilt for not sharing as regularly lately. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share a little more regularly in the coming months.

It’s frustrating for me. However, I know I’ll be of better service to those in need once I have gone through this journey and uncovered more about my drinking, drug use and me as a person in general.

Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding. Hopefully, you’ll hear more from me soon.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober, sober curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or you think you could help struggling people, we’d love to have you!

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Sobering Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

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NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

G’day legends. Did ya miss me?

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything here, and I apologise. I’ve been meaning to. I’ve just been busy, and if I’m being frank, since I’ve been surrounding myself with more sobriety, the need to write about what’s going on in my life or my precious little feelings is not as strong as it once was.

However, that’s selfish of me. I feel somewhat obligated to share whatever I can, hoping to help other people who are still struggling. Whether it’s drugs, alcohol, other vices, ADHD or other mental health issues, I owe it to people to talk about what is and isn’t working for me because when I need help, it’s there for me too. This shit is circular. I can’t just take. I have to give it away, too.

I feel like I’m finally starting to make some progress on this low self-esteem of mine. I feel like an idiot that it’s taken me as long as it has to have these realisations because, like all realisations, they seem so glaringly obvious only after you’ve had them.

It’s important because I feel like all or most of my mental health issues are ratcheted off of my self-esteem. The lower my self esteem, the worse my anxiety, the more susceptible I am to depression and all around negative thinking.

I’ve realised that my self-esteem and ego are opposite sides of a sea saw. If my self-esteem is low, my ego is entirely in charge. When have you ever seen a sea saw sitting perfectly balanced on its own? My ego was a defence mechanism. It protected me from accepting the truth. My ego would tell me that I had everything under control. It would justify all of my shitty behaviour to me. My ego would convince me that everything wrong that’s ever happened in my life resulted from the actions of some other person or thing. It was never my fault. My ego was that bad influence you don’t want your kids to hang out with. My ego was the voice that told me it was ok and encouraged me to live a life outside of my values.

Being fuelled by ego seems excellent at the time. You walk around doing whatever the fuck you like. You worry about no one but yourself. You invest all of your time, money and energy in yourself. How good is that! You get all the attention, all the money, all the everything you get to spend on yourself. It also helps me achieve things. It tells me I’m capable of things that I myself don’t necessarily believe I am.

The problem for me is that my ego had to coexist with this other thing called my conscience. My ego would take charge during the day, but my conscience was there once the ego was done for the day. My conscience is there all the time. It observes everything that I do. It doesn’t say a lot when my ego is in charge. It’s not like that. It can’t be bothered fighting for airtime with the wanker that is the ego. It knows that arguing with the ego wastes time and energy. It waits until my ego has been knocked off for the day before saying, “Oi! Pssst! Listen up! I’ve got some questions”.

It asks me if I’m happy with how I conducted myself that day. Am I proud of myself? Did I live my day in accordance with my values? Did I try to help someone who needed it today, or did I intentionally avoid situations where I might be expected to help others?

My conscience knows the truth. You can’t lie to your conscience. I tried to anyway, but it was pointless. I’ve spent extended periods of time throughout my life flat refusing to have the conversation with my conscience because I knew it was right. I knew I was doing so many of the wrong things, but I just couldn’t muster the energy to do anything about it. I just wanted to wallow in my own fucking misery. Deflect all blame onto everyone else. Play the victim, let my ego convince me that I was hard done by and that I could do nothing about anything. That’s right where my ego wants me to be. Ripe for the picking.

My ego manifests in many ways. I have a lot of different names for it. It is the addict in me; It’s the guy who justified going on four-day benders with a pregnant partner at home. It’s the voice that tells me to keep eating junk food when I’m overfull. It’s the voice that used to say to me that buying more cocaine at 4 am on a Sunday morning is a good idea. It tells me to have just one more drink before bed on a school night, another ten times. It lt allowed me to lay there on a Monday morning and believe that I never wanted to do this shit again, only to swoop in later in the week and talk me into doing the same shit yet again, convincing me along the way that my partner won’t mind or that I’ll be able to talk my way out of it yet again.

The only way for me to put my ego aside is to boost my self-esteem, but how the fuck do you do that? It’s definitely not as simple as it sounds.

I’ve spent thousands of dollars and countless hours in the offices of psychologists and psychiatrists to get to the bottom of why I felt the way I felt, drank the way I drank and used drugs the way I used drugs. I love seeing my psychologist, and I see her once a month, whether things are good, bad or indifferent.

However, I would always leave an appointment frustrated that whoever I had just seen hadn’t really given me anything tangible I could walk away and practice. My brain worked in a way where everything was transactional. I wanted someone to tell me to go and do this thing, which requires that much effort to achieve this equal and measurable result. But of course, it doesn’t work like that.

So what do you do?

The only way to rebalance that sea saw of self-esteem and ego is to live in a way where I consider how difficult that conversation with my conscience before I sleep every night will be.

It’s hard work, but by surrounding myself with like-minded people and immersing myself in sobriety, I am slowly considering how my daily actions will impact my conversation with my conscience each night. Before making a decision, I try to stop, think and consider how those actions will affect that conversation with my conscience before I go to sleep that night.

It's hard work, and I’m not good at it. Slowly, though, through practice, I’m slowing down and making more and more of the right decisions throughout the day, which takes power away from my ego. It helps me have that conversation with my conscience. The conversation is much lighter and easier to digest because I have done fewer things that don’t align with my values to process each night.

Every night when that conversation is easy, and I can genuinely say that I did more things that align with my values than things that don’t, my self-esteem takes a boost, and that sea saw tips further and further into the side of good healthy self-esteem.

I don’t expect myself to be perfect. I expect myself to try. I expect myself to make progress and improve, but I have learned that I need to stop expecting so much from myself and never expect perfection. That leads to a letdown.

I can’t think my way into feeling better about myself. I can’t think my way into a higher view of myself. I can’t plan to go out for some massive good deed and expect it to make me feel some way. Doing something with a predetermined outcome in my mind will only lead to resentment when I don’t get the exact result I envisaged. That is, doing things, as kind as they are, for the wrong reasons and resentments, hurt me far more than the person I’m resentful of.

All I can do is wake up each day and see what kind of shit sandwich life throws at me and try to make the right decision about each shit sandwich as it comes to me.

That’s where I’m going to get self-esteem from.

Cheers Wankers.

X

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Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

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I have always been an overthinker.

I thought it was just the way I was. The way I was wired.

My overthinking is fuelled by fear. Fear of what others will think of me. Fear of what might happen if I haven’t got a plan A, B or C. Fear of just about anything. It’s something I developed at a young age for a few different reasons, which I have spoken about at length in previous blogs, but the short version is I have insecure attachment, abandonment, issues, ADHD, and I have a mild amount of ASD.

I was resigned to the idea that this was my lot. This is how things were going to be for me forever. I didn’t think I’d be able to change the way my brain worked in any way and that I’d just have to find better ways to live with it.  

When I got sober, naively, I thought all my anxieties, and other mental health issues for that matter, would simply drift away. After all, I was doing my part. It was only fair for my brain to do its share of the heavy lifting.

The other day, I read something that said, “Overthinking is underfeeling”, and it blew my head off my neck.

It makes perfect sense… to me anyway.

We only have so much mental bandwidth, and if I’m spending a solid majority of mine on overthinking, I’m not going to have much left to feel my feelings.

For a long time, I have found myself frustrated that I have a perfectly sound understanding of a lot of the psychological practices that I read about or discuss with my psychologist, but my sticking point has been finding practical and tangible tools to use to help me to feel and process my feelings.

Why couldn’t my psychologist just tell me that if I walk out and do A and B, I will get an equal and relatively measurable improvement in return? Well, because she’s not an idiot and it doesn’t work like that. I was the idiot.

I knew that I was doing a lot of great things to help me manage my mental health and sobriety, but I also knew that I had been lacking genuine community since we relocated to the coast 21 months ago. In recent months, my anxiety and ADHD symptoms alike have dissipated significantly. The only thing I can attribute that to is immersing myself in a community of other sober people.

It’s been a dramatic psychic shift, and for the first time in my life, I am feeling a space between a stimulus and my response. I now can stop, think about what someone has said, think about what I am going to say before I say it, and then speak with much less risk of embarrassing myself or sounding like a fucking idiot. I’m far less irritable, more compassionate, more understanding, and I’m not getting triggered by dumb shit that doesn’t fucking matter. For the first time in my adult life, my brain has slowed, the fuck, down. I’m more present than ever, and I’m starting to feel like the truest version of myself I have since I was a teenager.

But why?

Anyone reading this from a fellowship will probably get pissed off that I’m doing this because you’re not supposed to try to figure this shit out, rather just try that when you do the work, you’ll get the reward you need and not the one you want, but I can’t help myself. I think I’m onto something here.

As a child, I conditioned myself not to feel. For whatever reason, I learned that feeling feelings was a bad thing and it was something that I shouldn’t do. Of course, this is wrong and fucking stupid, but it happened and here we are.

But when you have all of this mental bandwidth to use up, and you don’t want to feel your feelings or even think about them, what the fuck are you going to use it up on? You guessed it, thinking about dumb shit you don’t need to worry about. Allocating more mental energy than required to each task and analysing every fucking thing you have ever done or plan on doing, all the while neglecting the feelings that while you’re not dealing with are slowly but surely piling up in a back corner of your brain waiting for to shit all over you in a moment of vulnerability.

Because I never developed a coping mechanism to handle these feelings when they popped up, I tried to ignore them, and when that didn’t work, I would distract myself from them. Initially with food and later on drugs and alcohol. The problem is that feelings don’t just stop. They keep coming. For me, they built up, and over time, I required more food, drugs, and alcohol to keep pushing them away. If a bucket is slowly filling with water and the goal is to use a cup to scoop the water out at a rate quick enough to prevent the water from overflowing, I didn’t get the memo. The goal was to help drain the water out, but I was adding a cup of water each time rather than taking one away.

So, what is the link between my newfound community and my newfound ability to feel and process feelings?

I think it’s because, after years of feeling like the odd one out, I have finally found a community of people who are just like me. A community that not only puts up with people talking about how they feel, but it’s the literal purpose of the community. You gather in a group, in person or virtually, and talk openly and honestly about how you feel. Vulnerability is encouraged and supported. You are encouraged to share your guilt, shame and remorse in a room full of people who understand you and don’t judge you because most of them have felt the exact same way. They make you feel that not only is it okay to have those feelings, but it’s okay and important to share them and get them off your chest. And it feels fucking amazing.

At the end of each meeting, conversation, or period where the chat group has been overly active, I always walk away from the experience in a better state of mind than what I entered. Even on days when I don’t want to go or have been telling myself I can’t be bothered.

In AA, they say that the program is a program of action, not a program of thinking. I think that’s where I was getting it wrong. I was trying to think about my feelings rather than feel them. I was trying to understand what caused them physiologically and how I could prevent them from presenting themselves or reducing the severity of their impact because I literally didn’t know how to feel them. It was as though that mechanism in me was broken.

What they say about action is true. Since I have been getting off my ass and being an active member of the community, all things in my life are just better.

As I’ve said before, it’s not thanks to AA, one particular WhatsApp chat group, one or two close friends, my psychologist, or whatever the fuck else. The combination of all these things results in me immersing myself in a community of like-minded people who are all working towards the same goal. They make me feel like it’s safe and okay to be me for the first time ever.

In a short period of time, I have come to realise that I was never an overthinker and that it certainly isn’t a trait that I was born with or a trait that I am stuck with. It’s only taken a slight change in how and where I spend some of my spare time to show me that.

I conditioned myself to be an under feeler, which is not someone who feels people under the table, but someone who never developed the ability to feel their feelings because they were conditioned to think they shouldn’t or that it was a bad thing to do.

Whatever the case, the greatest revelation from all of this is that when I catch myself overthinking, I can remind myself that I’m not allowing myself to feel, and I can do something about that. Also, I am not destined to spend the rest of my life overthinking, under feeling and dealing with the negative crap associated with that, and you don’t have to either.

Find a community, keep pushing, figure out something that works for you, that adds value to your life, and then do the shit out of it. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.

Cheers Wankers.

X

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober, sober curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or you think you could help struggling people, we’d love to have you!

We’ve already got a bunch of legends in there sharing incredible stories and supporting one another. Jump in. You have nothing to lose!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

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Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

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Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

I am not the owner of my sobriety.

In the months leading up to rock bottom, where I had finally had enough of the mirage I was living, incrementally, I transitioned from party mode to pity party mode. Unknowingly, I’d become incapable of thinking about anyone but myself. I had a loving, pregnant partner. We packed our house, preparing to move two hours from our hometown. We were trying to rent our house out and buy another home.

A lot was going on. It was a time when we needed to work together to ensure we got everything done, but more importantly, it was when we should have supported each other.

For some reason, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t escape my own negative, woe-is-me mindset. We had chosen to do these things. A fantastic opportunity for us as a family had presented itself, and we’d be mad not to take it. Somehow, I went in the opposite direction to the one I should have.

I didn’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with such significant stress, so I reverted to the only one I knew worked for sure: drugs and alcohol.

The more stressed I became, the more I abused substances, the more stressed I became, and so the violent vortex of self-sabotage grew stronger and stronger with each day that passed.

I realise now that I was too scared to ask for help. I didn’t want anyone to think I had bitten off more than I could chew and couldn’t handle many things simultaneously. I was struggling enough to accept that for myself.

I knew my substance use was becoming beyond my control, but I was too proud to admit that to anyone for fear of what they might think of me. I also genuinely believed that I was the only person on earth who had ever felt the way I was then.

I didn’t want to talk to my partner about it because I thought that it would only stress her out and not only affect her health but the health of my unborn baby.

I was too caught up in myself to realise that I was isolating myself and putting distance between my partner and me when I should have been doing the opposite. My twisted theory led me to isolate myself, putting space between my partner. My effort to protect her from stress was only making her stress more as she worried about what was going on with me, but I’d become a person who she was too scared to raise her concerns with as my reactions were always defensive and dismissive.

I was too caught up in feeling sorry for myself to realise that she was coming from a place of love, compassion, and care, and instead, I would take her worries as criticism.

The hardest thing was, though, that I knew she was right. I didn’t want to or could not accept that at the time.

I carried this self-centred mindset long into sobriety.

I did some fucking horrible things to her, and others for that matter, both in the depths of addiction and well into sobriety. These are things that I will be ashamed of for the rest of my life and things that, to this day, as hard as I try, I can’t figure out how I allowed to get to such a point.

My partner should have left me for her own sake. Several times. But for some reason, she didn’t.

She saw the good in me that I’ve never been able to see in myself. Through all the horrible things I had done, she maintained faith that the person she fell in love with would fight his way back, even when I wasn’t so sure I was capable of it.

It pains me to say, but she loved me more than I loved her. I feel horrible that this was the case. I never fell out of love with her. I think I was just so incapable of any love at all.

Getting sober was by far the most significant thing I have ever done for our relationship and us as a family. I have been sober almost exactly four months longer than my son has been alive, and nothing makes me prouder than knowing he has never seen me under the influence of anything.

But some of our most significant challenges as a couple came after I got sober because, for a long time, I held onto that self-centred, self-serving mindset. My brain would do all it could to somehow shift whatever blame for our situation onto her, and I would believe it because I didn’t want to accept the truth that all our problems stemmed from my actions.

I remember using it to my advantage when we would argue. “I’ve been doing all this hard work. You have no idea how hard this has been for me. All you want to do is criticise me over small things that don’t matter. I’m working on more important things”. I’m embarrassed as I type this.

If I didn’t get sober, our relationship would have ended. There was never an ultimatum, but the trajectory I was on would have taken us to a point of no return. My son would have had a part-time, drug and alcohol-addicted father who, when lucky enough to spend time with him, wouldn’t have been present. Knowing how dangerously close I came to that being a reality unsettles me to my core.

If I’d lost my family before it had even started, I know I would have drunk and drugged myself to death, either by poisoning myself to death or by committing suicide.

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately. As a couple and a family, we’ve been through a lot over the last 22 and a half months. I can comfortably speak on my partner’s behalf when I say things have never been better.

Still, though, I feel conflicted. I am grateful for everything that has happened to lead me to this very second because that’s what has led us to where we are today. Life is so good that now that the worst is over, it’s getting easier to say that I don’t regret a thing. It’s not that I am not trying to excuse the horrible things I have done, but because this is the path we have taken to land in the great place we find ourselves today.

Maybe it is okay to say that you have no regrets and simultaneously wish you could’ve gone about things differently because that’s how I feel.

The point is my sobriety doesn’t belong to me. For so long, I felt like I was fighting this battle alone. I was so determined to show people I could get sober on my own. I resisted all kinds of communal and professional help. That toxic, self-serving thinking was so hard to budge.

But as I gain more clarity of mind and let go of more and more things that don’t fucking matter, I realise that I never did any of it on my own. The love and goodwill of others were getting me through, even though I wasn’t reciprocating that.

I leant so heavily on so many people but was too self-absorbed to see how much I was taking from others.

I was so lucky to have a mate with nearly a decade of sobriety living with me at the time I hit rock bottom. I had other friends, too, who had decent lengths of sobriety up and who opened themselves up to me to contact whenever I needed anything. They weren’t just saving face, either. They meant it genuinely.

I had amazing support from online communities. People I’d been interacting with for years but never actually met sent me their numbers and demanded I call them should I ever need anything.

I started writing this silly little blog, and I was blown away when people responded positively. They gave me the accountability I needed.

After some struggles late last year, I have immersed myself in sobriety by surrounding myself with more sober people and sober communities, and it’s been the most incredible thing I have done for my sobriety. I feel stupid that I waited so long to do it.

Not only is my sobriety stronger than it’s ever been, but my anxiety levels are lower than they’ve been in my adult life. My outlook is brighter than ever. My sense of what matters and what doesn’t has never been more apparent, and my fear of what others think of me is slowly but surely witling away.

None of this happens, though, if not for one person. My partner. My partner, no matter how badly I lashed out, was there for me and loved me unconditionally, even when I couldn’t reciprocate that love or love myself.

My partner, who I gave every reason to leave and prioritise her emotional well-being, chose to risk being hurt again and again because she saw something in me that I’ve never been able to see myself.

My partner is the most naturally gifted, caring, compassionate, intelligent, grounded mother I have ever seen, to both an 18-month-old baby and a 35-year-old baby.

Without her, I wouldn’t be sober. Without sobriety, I would be dead.

My sobriety doesn’t belong to me. I am only the caretaker of it.

My sobriety belongs to all the people who were there for me when I needed it. It belongs to the online community, people who read this blog, my friends, my family, the fellowship that has welcomed me so lovingly, my beautiful, messy, cheeky, funny, 18-month-old boy, and most importantly, it belongs to my partner. I’m just the lucky one who gets to carry it around.

I will do all I can to manage, look after, maintain, take care of, polish the fucking wheels, vacuum the cracks, wipe the edges down and whatever else you can think of to keep this sobriety in the greatest condition possible.

I have to because it’s not mine to damage. I am obligated to keep it only in the same or better condition than how I found it.

Happy Birthday, Nutsy.

Thank you for all you have done and continue to do to make our lives so easy.

I love you.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober, sober curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or you think you could help struggling people, we’d love to have you!

We’ve already got a bunch of legends in there sharing incredible stories and supporting one another. Jump in. You have nothing to lose!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

Alcoholics Anonymous is synonymous with sobriety all around the world, and for good reason. Over the almost 90 years since its inception in Akron, Ohio, it’s helped millions of people achieve and maintain sobriety.

But thanks to movies, television shows and general social assumptions, there is a stigma attached to it.

I first went to AA 12 or so years ago. I went to a Friday afternoon meeting in Broadbeach, Queensland, every week for about 16 weeks. I never got too into it. I would sit up at the back. Too scared to consider sharing my story. This, of course, had a lot more to do with me than it did AA or the people at this meeting. I was just young, confused, and unsure of what to make of it all.

I was at a party one Saturday night, doing my best to stay sober. People were starting to get annoyingly drunk, and I was struggling, I didn’t want to leave my partner there on her own, but I also didn’t want to be the reason why she had to leave prematurely. So, I pulled her aside, told her that I was ready to drink again, bought some beers and even ended up doing drugs that night. A little over 24 hours earlier, I was in a room full of people just like me, saying the serenity prayer, thinking I’d never drink again. Life comes at you fast…

When I got sober a little over 22 months ago, I was determined to do it on my own. I feared AA because of some of the language they used. Admit I was powerless over something? Like fucking hell. I can stop whenever I want. Apparently, I just didn’t want it badly enough yet.

I’ve always been a bit like that. I always felt a little left out and a little bit unseen. I realise it more now on reflection, but I’ve always had a little bit of a “fuck you all, I’ll do it on my own” kind of attitude. To this day, I still struggle to do things in any way, but my own.

I was scared off by the religious aspect too. I thought you had to believe in God to be in AA and that if you went there without believing in God in a traditional sense, it wouldn’t work for you anyway.

The movies and TV shows had me believe the members had this kind of fake, toxic positivity they were using to mask some kind of grimy underbelly. I thought AA was almost cult-like. I thought they would use their woo-woo to draw me in only to trap me and chain me in a basement like something out of one of the Saw movies.

Even though I had good friends in fellowships already, I still just couldn’t accept that something like this could ever possibly work for me. I could never believe in Jesus Christ. I was raised in middle-class Australia, I ain’t surrendering to shit! I’m on top of my shit and I will not be reaching out for help.

It was this exact mindset that led me to rock bottom in the first place, and here I was with well over a year of sobriety still struggling to let go of it.

The more sober I got though, the more I started to consider the idea of going to AA, maybe, one day… I even started to feel as though I would almost certainly end up in AA one day, but no time soon.

Last year, in late November, Early December, I started to struggle with cravings and thoughts of drinking worse than I had since early sobriety. I made no secret that since I we moved away from our home city to the coast 19 months ago, I’ve struggled to immerse myself into any kind of community. It’s fuckin’ hard to make friends when as a grown up, especially when you don’t like people or like doing things.

But there I was, sobriety was getting harder, not easier like it should have been. I had very little sense of community, and although there were literally rooms full of people exactly the fucking same as me, who are not just willing to take new people in, but encourage it, who can help me get my sobriety back on track, I still had reservations.

I was afraid of what these potential new friends of mine would think about me. Was my problem bad enough? Will they believe my story? Was my drinking a little druggy to be going to AA? Will I spontaneously combust when I walk in because I don’t believe in God? Among other things…

My biggest fear though, was what people outside of AA would think of me if they were to somehow find out I was going. Pretty fucked, eh? I think this remains a universal problem relevant to all things mental health and seeking support. Am I a fucking idiot for holding these fears? Yes. Does that make those fears and less real or unfounded? no.

After chatting with a few AA members in the Sobering Thoughts Community Support Group I finally mustered up the courage to go along to a local meeting. To my absolute shock, no one tried to get me to go to their church. No one invited me down to their basement. I didn’t see an ounce of fake positivity or people being awkwardly over-inviting.

Yes, the seats were roughly arranged in a circular formation. They even used the word god quite a bit. And yeah, when introducing yourself you do say “and I’m an alcoholic” because chances are, if you have an issue with the way, you drink and want to change that, maybe that’s exactly what you fucking are, but the thing is, that’s perfectly okay.

What I did find was a room full of people exactly like me. People who thought they didn’t fit in. People who at one point in time, thought they were the only person on the planet who had the problems with substances that they had. There are people in there with decades of sobriety thanks to AA who do not believe in God in a traditional sense and still have no idea exactly what their higher power is.

As an old guy named Ray with 60-odd years of sobriety under his belt said last night, “Is God real? I don’t know. It doesn’t fucking matter. Just keep comin’ ‘ere, doin’ what ya told, and you’ll be right.”

I’m a very analytical person. I think about way more than I speak about. I’m always trying to figure out how things work and why things are the way they are. The exact opposite kind of thinking that AA is about. I just can’t help myself, but I’m getting better.

What I’ve come to realise is, for me, at least, AA has nothing to do with drinking, drugs or abstinence. AA is a mental well-being program dressed up as a program of sobriety, and that is why it works. That is why I hope and believe it will work for me.

When I got sober, my mental health was at an all-time low. I never said I wanted to be sober forever, just long enough to sort my head out. Now that I have as much sobriety under my belt, I know that my life is better without drugs and alcohol and I have no intention of drinking or using drugs ever again, but I’m not naive to the fact that there will always be a drink waiting for me if I want it.

My drinking and drug use got worse as my mental health diminished. Obviously, the substance abuse added to the vortex that was sucking me downward, but it’s my belief that almost all addiction is a byproduct of trauma, ill mental health, and poor coping mechanisms and that is what the AA program provides people, in a lot of cases without them even realising it.

I’m not a sales rep for AA. It doesn’t work like that. No one will ever push you in, but the door is always open. For transparency, I’ve been going to AA for about eight weeks now. I do a combination of online and face-to-face meeting. I have just this week started with a sponsor and we’re going to have a crack at the steps.

What I can say with certainty is that since I have been spending more time with sober people in a welcoming environment that encourages, supports, and applauds openness, compassion, empathy and acceptance, my mental health has improved drastically.

My mind is slowing down. I am for less reactive. I am more patient and less irritable. For the first time in my life, I have a gap between a stimulus and a response. I can stop and consider what I’ve just heard before responding instead of panicking and just blurting out the first words that come to my mind.

It’s not just me either, I see people in the rooms of AA who seem to have exactly what I want. they are calm, calculated and seemingly at peace and for me to get what they have, I just have to do what they do.

You could debate how it works until the cows come home, but why would you? You’re not concerned with the complex mechanics behind the way your kitchen fridge functions, you just want it to keep your shit cold. You just want it to work.

I feel like this is the same deal. It’s not my business how or why it works, and I think the more I try it figure that out the less effective it will be.

They say that AA is a simple program for complicated people and in my case i feel like that’s pretty apt. I feel like an idiot for waiting as long as I did to go to a meeting, but in the same breath I’m grateful that I found it when I did.

I’m not trying to sell AA to anyone. I understand the reluctance. But i do feel it’s my duty to share my experience so far in case someone happens to stumble across this little blog here and it gives them the nudge they need to finally make a positive change that could change the trajectory of their life and the people around them.

Don’t do what I did and wait until you almost compromised your sobriety to at least give it a crack. You don’t have to believe in god. You won’t get trapped. You might hear some shit that doesn’t make sense to you, and it doesn’t have to. You almost certainly will hear things that will change your whole life for the better.

If you are struggling with addiction of any kind, please consider an AA style program. They exist for alcoholics, drug addicts, gamblers, sex addicts and whatever else. They don’t cost you anything but your time and they fucking work. The people who care about you deserve it.

If you don’t like it, just don’t go again. it’s not rocket surgery.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober, sober curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or you think you could help struggling people, we’d love to have you!

We’ve already got a bunch of legends in there sharing incredible stories and supporting one another. Jump in. You have nothing to lose!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

Almost everything of note that I have achieved in my life has been driven by a healthy serving of self-loathing.

It’s terribly unhealthy and hopelessly unsustainable, but it works… albeit temporarily.

I’ve lost over 20kgs on four separate occasions in my adult life, which is excellent, but I’ve also let myself get heavily overweight four times in my adult life. Each time I lost weight, I was motivated to do so by shame and embarrassment rather than the goal of being healthier, fitter and feeling better about myself.

I had a goal of running a marathon since I was probably 15 years old, just like my dad did. I finally got my shit together, trained my arse off and ran my first marathon almost five years ago. On days when I didn’t want to train, I subconsciously thought I was motivated by the end goal. I pictured myself feeling this incredible euphoria when I crossed the finish line… it never came. All I felt was that I should’ve done it sooner. I should’ve run it quicker.

As of right now, I’m a better runner than I have ever been and recently ran some pretty significant personal bests, and still, I don’t get any great feeling from it. Might be something in that…

We spent 15 months living out of suitcases to save a house deposit. House-sitting other people’s houses, looking after their pets, watering their gardens and whatever else they’d written down on their to-do list. In between house sits, we’d drag our suitcases back to one of our parents’ houses and stay until we started the next one.

I should have been motivated to buy a house to provide us with physical safety and financial security later in life, but I wasn’t. I was motivated by my fear of what other people would think of me for not owning my own home.

I was expecting to feel some overwhelming sense of achievement after buying our first home, especially living like gypsies for 15 months to do it, yet all I felt was apathy. I should’ve bought a house sooner. I should be able to afford a bigger or newer house. I fucking loved that house, but I was still self-conscious about what others would think about me and our house.

I spent years being embarrassed about what I did for work, even though it was necessary, honest, hard work that allowed me to travel and live all over Australia doing it while earning reasonable money. I was actually happy with my work. I was ashamed and embarrassed because I feared people would think I was the stereotypical roadworker.

In more recent years, I’ve managed to get my shit together and work my way into an operations manager-style role. Still, it wasn’t financial security, a sense of achievement or purpose in my work or some burning desire to progress my career that did it. I was motivated because I wanted people to see me in a particular light, and I believed my job title would impact that.

Just like all of my school report cards read, I have always been able to achieve things when I put my mind to it. I’ve just never been able to string those periods together. I think I’ve started to realise why.

When I set my sights on a goal, I can narrow my focus and become obsessed. I do everything I can to achieve it, plus a little more. I never focused on enjoying the process. Instead, I’d be fixated on the big shiny thing I was working towards. I always felt apathetic and underwhelmed when I got to the big shiny thing. I would question if all the time and energy I put in to get there was worth it. In some instances, it was, and in others it wasn’t.

So I’d be standing there with the big shiny thing I’d worked so hard for and feel nothing more than disappointment. I’d achieved the goal, done or received the thing, and felt worse than before. It was all because I was motivated by the wrong thing all along. In some instances, I probably even had the wrong goals.

I think this is why I’ve always struggled to keep my shit together for extended periods. I would get all psyched up to achieve a goal, complete it, and feel nothing or even worse than I did before, so why would I keep going in this cycle? Whenever I put effort into doing something good, I feel worse. It’s easier to give up, not try, and idle along doing the same old shit than it is to try to figure out and understand why I am the way I am.

I think the fact that I could get it together for periods actually makes it harder to accept. It would be easier for me to accept if I was fuckin’ hopeless at everything. It’s so much worse when you know you’re capable of more. You’ve proven to yourself that you can be and do better, but you can’t seem to do it consistently. It’s like a constant reminder that you’re not even close to your potential. That you’re letting yourself and others down. It’s a heavy weight to carry. It's exhausting and unsustainable.

The good news is I’m feeling less and less like this each day, and again, I think I have figured out why.

Through regular visits to my psych, our Sobering Thoughts Community Support Group, a weekly face-to-face AA meeting and regular online AA meetings, I’m starting to feel better and better about myself. I’ve found communities of people who are similar to me. I am immersing myself in those communities; the results have been amazing. I’ve found so many amazing, like-minded people who are accepting and understanding, which has helped me realise I’m not alone in how I feel. There is nothing wrong with me; there are people out there who like me the way I am and value whatever input I have to add.

Essentially, my relationship with myself is improving because of who I am choosing to surround myself with, and I think that there is the reason why I’ve never been able to string together those periods where I’m able to get and keep my shit together until now.

I think it comes down to my view of myself at the time. When I’m low, I think I’m not worth the effort. It’s easier to grab something shiny and convenient that gives me some form of quick dopamine boost. Like all things, though, the easier it’s attained, the shorter the sense of reward.

It’s a lot like food. The shit food makes me feel good while I eat it, but shit after. The good food mightn’t give me as much of a boost while I eat it, but I feel better for a longer time afterwards.

When I was using drugs and alcohol, every time I made a poor decision, it was always motivated by how I was feeling about myself and not what was best for my long-term health. The lower my self-worth at the time, the easier it was to justify a poor decision.

I’m starting to realise that if I focus on my relationship with myself, and if I work on how I feel most of the time, rather than constantly working towards some big fucking shiny thing that doesn’t make me happy, I will make better choices organically. Incidentally, I will come to learn that I am worth the effort. That I deserve to do right by me. If I do that, I will become a better version of myself that others will benefit more from.

Maybe the key to long-term success or maintaining progress as a foundation all boils down to our relationship with or opinions of ourselves. Perhaps that’s why people can have periods where they progress but then stop and regress.

It’s all good to educate yourself on how things work and implement the relevant changes to your lifestyle, but if you reach the target you set and all your motivation has worn off, you need something else to keep going.

If you haven’t done any work on your relationship with yourself, as in the things that made you eat poorly, drink, use drugs, gamble, whatever, in time, you’ll resort back to those things or some other unhealthy outlet because although you might’ve changed your habits, have you really changed or grown as a person?

Maybe that relationship with self underpins all of it. Maybe without a healthy relationship with self, we’ll never truly be able to use our growth as a foundation to keep building on. It’s working away, trying to fill a wheelbarrow with a hole in its bottom. This stuff snowballs. We mightn’t realise it because it mightn’t be blatantly obvious, but what we did yesterday affects what we’re capable of doing today. Each choice is a building block for the next.

I think when we do right by ourselves, our selves will do right by us. When we surround ourselves with peers who make us feel good about ourselves, we will reduce our temptation to drink, use drugs, eat bad food or whatever other choices we struggle with. It’s about the place we are in when we are faced with these choices. But we have to put ourselves first to do that.

It’s hard to put yourself first. Particularly in Australian Culture, we’re conditioned by society to put others first. But are we really putting others first by showing up as a lesser version of ourselves?

I think the key is to seek what works for you relentlessly. It might take time to find it, but you can’t just accept that you’ll never find anything that works for you. There is something out there. There’s a place you belong. There’s a community that will make you feel better about yourself.

I spent over 18 months telling myself I didn’t need AA. Ultimately, I let fear of what others thought of me hold me back from pursuing something I was interested in, and I allowed it to become something in my head that was much bigger than it needed to be. I convinced myself that I didn’t need a community. I didn’t need any more support. And you know what? I was right. I didn’t need it, but fuck me, it has helped me a lot.

Is it because it’s the magical enchantment of AA? Of course, it’s fucking not. At its core, I’m just spending more time and energy connecting with people like me, making me feel good.

I’m learning I don’t actually have to do all of this hard work, all of this self-inventory on my own. I have to surround myself with people that make me feel good about myself. It will happen organically.

Achieving goals was never going to make me feel good about myself. Houses, jobs, running achievements, weight loss, none of them would ever make me feel better about myself. They would only help me cover up how I felt about myself.

All this time, I thought it was up to me to lock myself in some dark fucking corner and do some horrible kind of self-inventory where I focused on every single shitty thing about myself and figure out why I was like that or how to change it, but I don’t have to do that shit.

We’re humans. We will never rid ourselves entirely of things we don’t like about ourselves. So it’s fucking ridiculous to even try. I think the answer, for me at least, is to keep surrounding myself with people who encourage me to be and make me feel comfortable being the most authentic version of myself. The more I do that, the easier it will be for me and the better I will feel.

I wasted too much fucking time doing dumb shit that was never going to work. Don’t make the same mistake. Learn from mine. The solution lies in action, not thinking.

Go and get moving.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober, sober curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or you think you could help struggling people, we’d love to have you!

We’ve already got a bunch of legends in there sharing incredible stories and supporting one another. Jump in. You have nothing to lose!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

I’ve spent all my life with an insecure attachment.

Having two amazing parents with an unrivalled work ethic, hellbent on providing us with more than what they had as kids, combined with undiagnosed ADHD, among other things, meant I didn’t get the extra emotional support that not even I understood I needed.

It wasn’t until recently that I started to grasp how this impacted me as an adult.

The Sobering Thoughts Community Support Group is only in its infancy, but it’s already impacted my life profoundly. It’s helped me reimmerse myself in sobriety, and it was the kick in the arse I needed to get myself into an AA meeting finally. Something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time but constantly found a way to talk myself out of it. This is something I’ll talk about in future posts.

Through regular interaction with this group of amazing people, regular AA meetings, and monthly appointments with my psych, I feel more immersed in my sobriety than ever, which is the complete turnaround I needed given it was only a couple of months ago I started to realise I had become complacent in terms of practising my sobriety.

A guy from my local meeting said to me just the other day that when you immerse yourself in sobriety, things… fall into place. And you know what? He’s fuckin’ spot on. Even though I’m having some internal grapples around belief systems/structures, I’m navigating my through what certain things mean to me and my own interpretations of certain pieces of literature to help me make sense of it all.

I’ve learned how that insecure attachment I developed as a child manifests in my adult life.

Control…

I don’t feel secure unless I’m in control. When I’m not in control, I am terrified.

There are far too many uncontrollable things in the world with the potential to directly or indirectly impact my life. There are some things you can prepare for, like setting money aside for regular utility bills. Some things you can’t prepare for, like raging bushfires.

It’s not all bad, though. Being a control freak has helped me professionally. I often get commended on my attention to detail and how thoroughly I plan my work. If only they knew that it has nothing to do with my desire to maximise company profit and everything to do with preventing future stress and anxiety, but hey, whatever works.

But I struggle to turn that control on and off. As much as I would like to, I can’t seem to be that meticulous, organised person at work and then drive ten minutes home, surrender control on the way and arrive home in a present state of mind.

I think this is why I always feel the need to be doing something. I always thought it was about avoiding specific thoughts and feelings, but maybe that’s not it. Perhaps it’s just the uncertainty that comes with not having something to do. I do not control what’s happening when I have nothing to do.

I think this is why, in the past, for the most part, I was able to drink less on weeknights and save the drug use for weekends, although toward the end there, those lines (no pun intended) started to blur. As much as I didn’t love work then, I knew what tomorrow had in store for me, and that familiarity and structure brought me comfort.

I think this is why, when it came to the weekends and, more recently, Thursday nights and Sundays, my substance use got out of hand. Initially, I would drink a little throughout the week, but always plenty on weekends. I didn’t realise it at the time. No one ever does, but I was incrementally becoming more and more reliant on drugs and alcohol substances to calm the anxieties that uncertainty provided. Using a depressant and a stimulant to cure my anxieties… clever.

On reflection, it’s no surprise that the closer I came to hitting rock bottom, the more uncertainties there were in my life. I had a pregnant partner. We were packing our house, trying to rent it out, moving from a city to a small town two hours away, where I’d be starting a new role at work. We were trying to find a new house to buy, secure finances for said house, and then move house before I had to start my new role. We would become parents for the first time four weeks after my start date, coinciding with my partner taking a financial hit as she started 12 months of maternity leave.

Things were pretty fuckin’ uncertain.

I realise now that I was using drugs and alcohol to permit myself to surrender control, albeit momentarily. I still remember the feeling I would get deep inside the bottom of my gut as the first line of cocaine would run down my throat—a taste I loved and hated at the same time. I’d quickly chase it down with a mouthful of beer that I could barely feel as my throat was numbing.

It felt like an electronic turbine starting up. It was like with every lap of the coil, the electric charge would double in speed. I fucking loved it and wanted as much of it as I could get. The desire for that feeling is directly relative to the amount of uncertainty ahead of me. I think that’s why I would drink for so long because I had permitted myself to forget about all the things I was trying to control, and I felt free. I wanted to hold onto that feeling for as long as I could. I had no worries in the world while I was drunk and high, and I loved it, but I would also fight my hardest to stay there in that feeling.

Sadly, that kind of behaviour is probably the least productive thing you can do at a time when you need to be sorting your shit to secure your family’s future, but I couldn’t stop. I knew what I was doing wasn’t sustainable, and I knew I wanted to stop. I knew if I didn’t stop, we would either end up with two mortgages and no one renting the first house, or we’d be in the new town with nowhere for me and my heavily pregnant partner to live, but even then, I just couldn’t fucking stop.

And it was all because of this insatiable desire to control everything at a time when I needed to do the opposite.

Today, I have been sober for 658 days. I’ve been working my arse off to better myself for most of this time. Everything I have discussed with my psych has logically made a lot of sense. The same goes for things I’ve learned on my own and through conversations with others doing similar things.

However, I have always struggled with applying what I have learned. In the past, I have talked a lot about trusting the process, particularly around things like running, fitness and weight loss, but these are all things that give us objective metrics and fancy trend lines so we can see our progress and give ourselves a pat on the back.

Emotional and psychological growth is much harder to measure. It can only be done through active reflection and self-assessment, which requires us to tackle our unconscious biases, which isn’t easy, especially for someone susceptible to low self-esteem.

While the above is true, I know I have made significantly more emotional and psychological progress over the last couple of months than I did in probably the six months before that. I can confidently pinpoint a few fundamental changes that have helped to accelerate my sobriety and improve my mental health.

The first one is the Sobering Thoughts Community Support Group. I’ve spoken more than enough about this group lately, so I’ll keep it brief. The ability to take a group of like-minded mates in my pocket everywhere I go and knowing that at any time I can jump into a safe space, free of ridicule and judgement, to seek advice has been amazing, and the quality of the dialogue in that chat continues to blow me away. Most of the people there I’ve never met in person, yet they’ve profoundly influenced my life over the last two months. You’re a bunch of legends, and I’m so grateful for each of you.

Secondly, I finally mustered up the stones to head along to my first AA meeting. I understand some people might see AA as a bit cult-like or no different to going to church. It was those exact fears that kept me from going for 21 months. This has not been my experience. My experience has also been nothing like the movies.

We do sit in a circle, and sometimes people do cry, but it’s not in some dingy abandoned fucking warehouse or dimly lit community hall with flickering lights where everyone is moping around with the shakes. There’s also no dick swinging. It’s just not tolerated, and because of that, no one is bothered. Ego is left at the door. It doesn’t matter if you have 50 years of sobriety or 50 seconds. Everyone is welcome, equal and as important as anyone else, and that’s truly been my experience.

Lastly, I found a daily online AA meeting to sit in on. I jump on every morning, and it helps me start my day with sobriety in mind front of my mind. While they lack the personal touch of a face-to-face meeting, they have their upsides too.

You can jump on anytime, anywhere. You can do so anonymously. You don’t have to turn your camera on, and you don’t have to share. I think this is great for anyone considering a program like AA but has some reservations. It’s a great stepping stone into AA or even a great way to dip your toes into the water and establish if it’s something you’d like to do or not. You never know until you try and lose nothing from listening to just one meeting. It might be your first and last ever meeting, and it might change the trajectory of your whole life, but you won’t know until you try!

I’ve realised there is no silver bullet to apply the practical knowledge I’ve been picking up over the last 21 months. As my friend from my meeting said, you have to show up with an open mind and allow things to fall into place.

I always associated surrender with weakness, as though it meant giving up. But for someone so conditioned to want to control everything, and the idea of not controlling things terrifies them to their core, surrendering is one of the bravest things you can do.

I know that for some, this might all sound a bit woo-woo, and to be honest, I’m still grappling with a lot of it. The thing is, though, this is your sobriety and your experience of it. You can interpret the literature in whatever way works for you. Like any self-help book, taking one or two helpful things from it is worthwhile.

All I know is that since I have been spending more time interacting with other sober people and being a little more open-minded about things, I have found more peace in my chaotic mind. I’ve realised that it’s not up to me to apply the practical knowledge that I am learning, but it is up to me to allow it to apply itself, and it’s all just from spending more time interacting with a community of like-minded people.

My mind feels slower, and for the first time in my life, I can stop and ask myself, “Do I need to worry about this?" or “Is this my problem?”. More often than not, the answer is no, and I can forget about it.

If the answer is yes, the next question I ask myself is, “Do I need to worry about this right now?” again, more often than not, the answer is no and just like that, I forget about it. If the answer is yes, then we deal with it.

It’s wild because I’ve even written in the past about how 85% of the things we worry about never happen. I know this stuff, but it’s taken until now, until I did these other things, for the message to land for me.

It’s helped me be less cynical, judgemental and critical of others. When we think that way about others, we’re actually seeing traits in others that we don’t like about ourselves. So, by reminding myself that I don’t need to concern myself with others and what they’re doing, I’m actually being kinder to, and more accepting of myself.

It’s hard for me to accept that something so simple can profoundly impact my day-to-day life, but isn’t that always the case?

I feel so much better in almost all aspects of my life. That subtle but constant hum of anxiety that has been following me around all my life is slowly dissipating. I’m worrying less and less about things I can’t control. That feeling of surrender I once got from that first line of cocaine I’m now finding within myself. If only I had known, I could do it on my own all along without all the adverse side effects.

It’s reaffirmed my belief that we just have to do the right thing for the sake of doing it. Not for any result or with the idea of getting something in return. It’s strengthened my trust in the universe, or spaghetti monster, or whatever, that you’ll get back what you put in. It is not our business when it will happen or in what form. We’ll only get the reward when we’re ready to receive it.

I think the most accurate reflection of this kind of growth is when other people can see it.

When my partner mentioned to me just the other day that she’s noticed a fundamental change in me, the last 21 months’ worth of work felt all worthwhile.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober, sober curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or you think you could help people who are struggling, we’d love to have you!

We’ve already got a bunch of legends in there sharing incredible stories and supporting one another. Jump in. You have nothing to lose!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

Recently, I was asked to be a part of ’s Wednesday article Meet the R4R Runners.

In it, founder Matt Breen asked the question, “When you look back on those early days in your sobriety journey, is there any advice you'd give to yourself or someone in a similar position?”

I found it difficult to articulate my thoughts, and although I answered the question, I wasn’t happy with what I had written. I felt like it was clunky, and I didn’t feel like I delivered my message clearly enough.

That’s when I thought it would be much easier for me to answer this question in a letter to my past self. A letter to me at my lowest.

I started writing the letter, and I found myself in some kind of flow state, and I couldn’t stop writing. I felt like the answer was getting too long, but there were too many important bits that I couldn’t leave out, so I kept going.

I told Breeny that if he thought the answer was too long, he could use the original answer, and maybe I could post the letter here and link to it should anyone be interested.

It was a difficult but cathartic process. It's one that I wouldn’t have done if not for being prompted by Breeny, so thank you, mate.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. I hope you enjoy it, but more importantly, I hope this finds someone who needs to hear it.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

“Sam,

You’re in a bad place right now. It’s not a coincidence that you find yourself here. Nor is it because you’ve done anything wrong. You’ve taken on too much. Your desire to satisfy others and your unfairly high expectations of yourself have led you to neglect yourself. You’ve filled your plate to the point where no time or energy is left for you. You’re desperately looking for more time in the day or more energy to get more done. You’re not alone in that.

You feel like the only way to find peace inside your mind is by drinking and using drugs. That’s the only way to get some reprieve from the whirlwind inside of your head. But you hate that this is the way it is. You don’t want to be this way, but you don’t see any other way at the moment. Every Monday, you wake up and swear to yourself you won’t do it again. You mean it from the bottom of your heart. You tell your partner, and you tell your friends, “I’m not doing this shit anymore”. You mean it and want to believe it, but in the back of your mind, you don’t believe that you can do it. You’re starting to wonder how much longer you can tell people you’re done, only to let them and yourself down again until they eventually get sick of it and walk away.

The paradox is that you are completely aware that your behaviours don’t align with your goals. You know they’re holding you back from getting the things you need to do. But the thought of living without them and without that break from your mind is overwhelming. You’re stuck in a cycle. You want to change, but you just feel like you can’t and worry that you’ll lose everything you have if you don’t, but the stress of that alone drives you back to those very behaviours.

Living like this is wearing you down and gradually taking you further and further away from who you once were. Who you truly are at your core. You’re carrying a lot of shame and embarrassment. You don’t feel like this is who you are, and you wonder how the fuck you ended up in this position, crawling around under the dining room table looking for cocaine crumbs at 3 am while your pregnant partner sleeps. But you hate yourself enough to let it happen. You’re exhausted. You’re giving up more and more each day.

You’re doing all you can to lead something of a double life. You’re doing well at work. The bills are paid. Everyone is okay. Everyone except you. At times, you even use this to justify your behaviour to yourself. Deep down, though, you’re not okay with it.

You’re getting tired. Not like a good sleep will fix you, tired, mentally and emotionally exhausted. Carrying secrets around and being dishonest about what you’re doing adds little pieces of straw to your back daily. Sneaking money out of the savings account to pay off drug dealers each week is getting exhausting. You don’t have the energy to do this shit anymore, but you just can’t seem to stop.

You’ve completely isolated yourself now. You don’t go out and drink anymore. Instead, you prefer to sit at home where you feel safe to do drugs and get drunk, free from the ridicule of others. You’ve convinced yourself that no one else on the planet feels or has felt the way that you feel. No one could possibly understand, so how could you ever tell anyone about it? They’ll only make you feel worse than you already do.

Soon, this weight will become too much, what you’ve been doing is unsustainable, and you’re about to find out the hard way. I know you want to stop. You want to stop more than just about anything and hate that you can’t. It’s not often you can’t do something you set your mind to, and it crushes you to feel powerless to change this.

You're approaching a fork in the road, and very soon, you’ll be faced with a decision. A decision that logically seems so simple, yet for the first time in your life, you’re genuinely considering making what you know is the worst decision of all. It’s not your fault that you feel this way. You never meant to hurt anyone, but wonder if your existence is more harmful than hurtful to those around you.

Luckily, at the eleventh hour, when the shit hits the fan, after four days of inebriation, thousands of dollars spent and a 3:30 am breakdown on the lounge room floor, you give up. It goes against everything you’ve ever thought. But you realise you can’t do this anymore. You’re too tired. It’s too hard. Something’s gotta give. You can have your job, partner and unborn baby, or you can have this other life, but you can not have both. You’ve been trying everything in your power to have both for months and have now proven to yourself that it’s impossible. In that moment, you surrender to the knowledge that you have to get sober. There is no alternative.

You don’t realise it now, but it’s the best decision you’ve ever made.

The next 21 months are a wild ride. It’s a different ride to what you’re used to, but wild all the same.

It’s scary. You know that there are unresolved mental health issues waiting there for you that you walked away from in the past. The idea of facing them without your old coping mechanisms is terrifying.

Naively, you think that if you get sober, your brain will kind of, untangle itself and recalibrate on its own. This isn’t the case, but don’t let that scare you off. Believing this gets you through the early stages of sobriety.

One of the smartest things you do is tell yourself that you don’t have to worry about never drinking again. You tell yourself that you just need to stop drinking for long enough for this magical brain you think you have to repair itself. This is a good idea. Telling yourself you’ll never drink again is a form of pressure and expectation, the two things that had a lot to do with getting yourself into this mess in the first place. This teaches you probably the most valuable lesson you can learn in sobriety. You only have to worry about not drinking right now. Just don’t drink today.

You learn that you don’t need to worry about future decisions around drinking or drug use because the future never comes. It’s always just past an arm’s reach away, so why worry about it?

You go it alone for months. You write about it a bit, but for the most part, apart from one or two friends, you struggle to really embrace sobriety. You’re probably not even really sober; you’re just not drinking and using drugs.

Soon, you will learn that the sober part is easy. It’s coping that you struggle with. As the mental fog clears, you find yourself in many situations that would once drive you to substances, and you struggle to cope with it. But you cope.

In time, you become more comfortable with your sobriety and start reaching out to more people. You begin to see that you’re not special or unique like you thought you were. There are millions of people just like you, and the majority of them are amazing.

Gradually, you make a shift away from the people you used to spend a lot of time with and surround yourself with more like-minded people. Initially, you worry about that a lot, but you learn that this is natural. There is nothing wrong with them. There is no animosity, and you remain friends with a lot of these people. You’re often surprised at how supportive people are of your sobriety and realise you don’t need to be so scared of telling them what you’re doing and why.

You’re probably thinking, “Why the fuck do I want to go through all this?” and I get it.

You can’t keep doing what you’re doing. You can’t stay stagnant, either. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards.

In time, you will see that the most rewarding and fulfilling things correlate directly with the level of difficulty of the things you’re going through. The best things are on the other side of hard.

Day by day, you start to feel more and more like your old self, but better.

You know that psychologist you’ve been talking about going back to but keep lying to yourself and saying you don’t have time? You go back. But this time, you make progress because you mentally show up from a better place. It’s slow, but it’s progress.

You get healthier and feel better physically.

The reduced isolation and shame means your relationships improve. Some of them take some work, but you become a better partner, brother and son in time.

You have a fucking amazing son who has never seen you drunk or high. For the first time in your life, you feel unconditionally loved by someone. You experience this special kind of love that only a parent would know, and you have the clarity of mind to feel it in its fullest form. It’s amazing.

You realise that even though you believed your actions weren’t hurting anybody else, they were. Badly. You realise that your partner should have left you, more than once. But she doesn’t. You spend countless hours trying to work out why she hasn’t. But she sees something in you that you couldn’t for so long. Your constant focus on the bad things you’ve done has conditioned you to believe that all you ever did was bad. But somehow, she sees the good in you. She knows that the version of yourself you have wanted to become for so long is in there. You still don’t feel deserving of her. She’s been selfless in standing by you and supporting you, and you hope that one day you can repay her in some way, even though she says you don’t need to. You’re very fucking lucky, Sam. And although you’re not very good at showing it, you’re equally as grateful.

Eventually, you get to a point where people come to you for advice on sobriety. Friends, friends of friends, friends and family of others who are struggling. At first, it’s a bit weird, and you’re reluctant to offer anything up, but you become more comfortable with it and get better at it in time.

As you start to serve others and see your impact on their lives, you start to feel this incredibly foreign yet nice feeling. You’re learning to be proud of yourself.

Do you know that feeling you thought you’d get after buying your first house or running your first marathon, only to feel deflated because it didn’t make you feel how you wanted it to?

You find that feeling. The feeling you’ve been seeking for so long. You find it in serving others. You get it everywhere. You get it changing your son’s nappy, even the gross ones, or helping him walk up the stairs at home for the first time.

You get it when your mate rings you and drops a bombshell about his drug use, and you help him navigate the early stages of sobriety.

You get it when you create an online support group, and people actually fucking join! Then, they actually talk, and it’s fucking great chat!

It’s hard, man. Believe me, I know.

But the thing is, you’re in a better place now than you ever have been, and it’s because of this journey. It’s the hard shit that you’ve done that has got you here. You feel more than you ever have before. You’re healthier than you’ve ever been before. You’ve surrounded yourself with amazing, like-minded people. You’re slowly inching towards that version of yourself you’ve always wanted to be.

You’re doing things you wanted to do but never had the courage. Stuff you thought was weak or would make you look feminine, and you openly talk about it. Your fear of what others think is slowly but surely disappearing. You sit at the beach with your eyes closed, counting your breaths for 11 minutes straight with people walking by, and you don’t care. You’re writing about gratitude and feelings each night before bed, and it makes you feel good.

You just… feel better more of the time.

You’re finally learning to let your walls down and let people love you without wondering what they want from you. You’re understanding that for some people, you, as you are, are enough. You still don’t get it or see what they see in you, but you’ve learned to accept it and let them. It feels amazing.

Most importantly, though, mate, by learning to let others in and love you, slowly but surely, you’re learning that you’re not so bad after all.

Finally, you’re learning to love yourself for nothing more than who you are.

I’m excited for you to get here.”

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober, sober curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or you think you could help people who are struggling, we’d love to have you!

We’ve already got a bunch of legends in there sharing incredible stories and supporting one another. Jump in. You have nothing to lose!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

The idea behind the videos is so that people who are struggling can see that there is a way out. That things can and do get better.

Foremind is big on using the stories of everyday people who people can relate to, rather than a scientist, athlete or actor who has access to greater resources than the common Australian, and that’s why I’m such a big fan of Foremind and the work they do.

I was a little anxious about sharing these, but it’s important to me that my actions align with my values. So I’m sharing them in the hope that they help someone out there make the decision to finally pick up the phone with a friend, a counsellor, or a medical practice and make that appointment.

With the benefit of time past and some hindsight, there are probably a few things I know now that I wish I had added. Still, we chatted for over 90 minutes, and Joel and his team managed to filter through a lot of dribble to pick out the best nuggets and edit them into a couple of neat little packages to not take too much time out of your busy schedule.

I hope you enjoy them and get something out of them. Most importantly, though, I truly hope they help someone.

Drugs and Alcohol.

ADHD.

Foremind is looking to recreate as many of these videos as possible to help reach a larger network of people.

If you think your story could benefit others, please reach out to me or Foremind to get the ball rolling. You might just change someone’s life.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click Here to join our Sobering Thoughts Chat Group. Whether you’re sober, sober curious, have someone in your life in sobriety or active addiction, or you think you could help people who are struggling, we’d love to have you!

We’ve already got a bunch of legends in there sharing incredible stories and supporting one another. Jump in. You have nothing to lose!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

I was really struggling towards the end of last year.

There was no one thing that led to it, which was frustrating. It’s so easy when we can identify the one big thing that’s making us feel a certain way and then channel our energy into changing that thing.

But when there is no one big thing, and it’s the combination of all the little things wearing you down, it’s difficult to know where to start. I think by the end of the year, I couldn’t be bothered to try to fix anything. It was easier to just limp my way to the Christmas break, where I’d finally be able to unwind.

It probably wasn’t the smartest move for someone in sobriety with a past of substance abuse issues.

Holidays are fuckin’ hard for people like me, especially here in Australia, where drinking before 8 am on Christmas Day is widely considered acceptable behaviour. The same applies to Boxing Day.

Before I got sober, most of my christmas breaks were the same. They’d kick off with an almighty bender. Usually, I’d knock off for the year around the 20th of December. That gave me three to four days to tie one on before having to be a little more than a shell of myself for Christmas day, wherever that may be.

One year, I’d been giving my mate money to save for me for an overseas trip. I told him I needed it and that I’d give it back later on. He dropped a couple of grand off to me, and I blew it on drugs over the next four days.

I’ve always struggled with Christmas Day. My inner doomsday prepper gets weirdly uncomfortable with everything being closed and the streets being so quiet. It’s as though the world's white noise has been dialled down, and it feels somewhat apocalyptic.

Or maybe it’s just because I feel obligated to be somewhere with family, and that interrupted my end-of-year drug and alcohol-fuelled rampage. The rampage I’d convinced myself I had earned and deserved because I was some kind of hero for completing another year of work. Just like *checks notes* just about everyone else in the country who wasn’t on a self-destructive rampage.

During past Christmas breaks, it was rare for me to go a single day without drinking and more than a few days without taking drugs. I enjoyed the freedom of having recovery days should I need them and knowing that there was no chance of a random drug test at work until at least the first day back at work. I would be free from the anxiety of wondering if the drugs had cleared my system yet.

Honestly, I struggled with the whole period from the first day of the holidays through to New Year. The magnitude of both these events would stress me the fuck out to the point that I couldn’t wait for them to be over. At least in the past, though, I could drink and drug my way through it, and it was more socially acceptable because, hey, it’s fuckin’ Christmas time!

Last Christmas break was easy, though. Maybe it was because my son was so young, new and shiny. Maybe it was because it was our first christmas as a family or our first christmas in our new hometown. It could even have been that I had that early sobriety motivation still kicking around.

So I assumed this Christmas break would be the same, but it was a lot harder. I struggled a lot with thoughts of drinking in the last week of work and the first week of the holidays. They were never serious enough that I thought they would break me, rather just more constant, repetitive thoughts.

In the same way, the late Matthew Perry referred to his struggles as “The Big Terrible Thing” I like to refer to mine simply as “It”. Doing this helps me separate myself from my thoughts. It helps me understand that I am not my thoughts, nor do they define me. Most importantly, it motivates me to not let “it” beat me.

I don’t want to drink. “It” wants me to drink, etc.

“It” can be pretty clever. It knows your strengths. It knows where it won’t beat you. In my case, if it said to me, “Just drink you fuckin’ pussy”, I’d be able to dismiss that pretty easily. So, it tries alternative ways. This time around, it was a gentler approach.

“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life like this? Missing out?”

“It’s Christmas, it’s summer. Look at everyone else having fun, enjoying time with their loved ones in the sun, causing no harm and enjoying a cold drink”

And, of course, “You’ve done the work. You’re not the same person you were anymore. You’re a dad now. You’re more than capable of having a few drinks, enjoying yourself and going home at a reasonable time without upsetting anyone”

It’s a persistent and manipulative little bastard. Still, while ever I hear those thoughts from a place I don’t associate as a part of myself, I can be stubborn enough to tell it to fuck off for long enough for it to run out of energy and slowly fade away.

I should’ve known that I’d be susceptible to letting “it” back into my head. I’d come into the holidays low on mental energy. I hadn’t been practising sobriety the way that I once did. I was going through the motions. Physically doing things like breathwork, stretching, running and journaling without actually thinking about what I was doing or why. I’d become complacent because life had zapped me of my mental and emotional energy.

We came up with a plan for the holidays. One that encouraged rest and recovery whilst also doing some wholesome, feel-good shit. The plan was simple: I would run every morning, come home, and together, we would make sure the house was in order. Then, we would take our son out for a little while before he needed to come home for sleep. While he was asleep, we would lay on the lounge, watch some TV or some other non-strenuous activity

Then it rained for a week, my son got cabin fever, slept like shit and became difficult to manage.

I was unusually anxious. I think all the ignored stress of recent weeks was catching up with my brain now that I didn’t have work to dive into and distract myself with. I was low on energy, dealing with a lot of head noise around drinking and dealing with an overtired, psychotic toddler all in the time that I had set aside to mentally and emotionally recharge.

I started worrying that I’d start 2024 in the same state I finished 2023. If that happened, how the fuck would I make it to the end of 2024?

But then, as though the universe was trying to push me right to the limit to see where it was, things started to change right when they probably needed to...

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A friend reached out to me and asked if I could help one of their friends who was in the early stages of sobriety. So he started a WhatsApp chat with me, himself and his friend, and we got to talking, and instantly there was some great dialogue.

I’d also been helping another friend of mine in the early stages of sobriety, which I’ve talked about in recent blogs.

I was really enjoying immersing myself in sobriety talk again, and I felt like it was exactly what I needed after somewhat abandoning my sobriety towards the end of last year.

The friend who initially reached out to ask if I could help his friend is very fond of a WhatsApp group. I’m fortunate enough to be a part of a few of them, and I’ve experienced how valuable they can be. That’s when I had the idea to create The Sobering Thoughts Chat Group.

I had very little expectation of the group. I asked my new sober friend if he thought it could work. I told him then that people might jump in, and they might not. It could just be me and you! It might go well for a while, then taper away into nothing, and I was at peace with all of the above. I just wanted to try.

I wanted something that could bridge the gap between someone wanting to get help and showing up in person at a meeting or a professional’s office. Somewhere, people could join without saying anything and maybe just read through what others have said until they felt comfortable speaking up.

It’s much easier to speak in an online forum than to speak up in front of people. Especially for people in the early stages of sobriety or early stages of seeking help who are carrying so much shame, insecurity and anxiety. I wanted something that was gentler and less confronting for people who were already carrying so much fear.

It’s been a massive success so far. We currently have 14 members. We have people in there from four different countries. Everyone in there is at a different stage of their recovery journey. Some have years of sobriety, some only weeks, some still struggling day to day, but the beauty of it all is that each person is pulling in the same direction.

There’s something so special about taking a group of relative strangers from different corners of the world with different stories and challenges at different stages of their own journeys, all heading towards the same place.

There isn’t one person whose contribution doesn’t hold value and not one person whose contributions carry more weight than anybody else’s. That’s because there is no right or wrong way. Some people are in fellowships, some have completed the steps, some are working their way through the steps, and some (like myself) have never been involved in a program or fellowship, yet everyone is equal, and most importantly, no one is a dick.

It’s hard to have an ego in an environment where you have to be vulnerable.

initially, I started the group because I wanted to help people however I could. Whether it be directly or putting two places in the (digital) place at once that I thought could help each other.

But it turns out that this whole thing has helped me far more than I ever anticipated, and already, I feel like I’ve taken away so much more than I’ve put in. I guess that’s the nature of these kinds of communities. You get out what you put in.

I wanted to share a couple of thoughts I’ve shared in the group because I feel like they could be valuable to someone out there. I’d love to share some of the things shared by others, but it’s not my place to do so, and it’s for others to share those things their way, should they choose to.

I’ve always understood why people go to meetings, join fellowships or do programs. I’ve just always convinced myself that it’s not for me or that I don’t need them. Maybe I have been convincing myself of that because it suits me; I have been too self-conscious to take the leap and put myself out there.

But it’s really starting to hit home for me just how important community is. Not just to sobriety but to general well-being. Genuinely being a part of something greater than yourself.

The chat group alone, over such a short period, has significantly influenced my thinking, perspective, and attitude. I’m feeling inspired to dive head-first into sobriety again. To prioritise it, to really see what I can squeeze out of life when I truly put my sobriety first.

I’ve struggled with it over the last 18 months since relocating to a new town. I have some community here. I have some community back in my hometown, too. While I don’t think it’s accurate to say that I haven’t had any community at all, maybe I’m just missing being a part of the right community for me.

Right now, it’s Wednesday afternoon. My most local AA meeting is being held this afternoon. It’s one that I have looked up before, noted down the time and place, thought about going to, and then conveniently convinced myself that it’s not for me or not something I need to do, ultimately because I’m too fucking scared.

I’m too scared to go into a room full of people just like me. It is full of people like the legends who have joined the chat group and have been nothing short of amazing and supportive to me and every other person in it. Logically, I know I’ll be fine going to a meeting. I know there’s a high chance my life will be all the better for it. I’ve just never been able to do it.

This afternoon, I am going to try. I don’t know if I need to do the steps. I don’t know if I want to do the steps. I don’t know how often I want to do a meeting if I do enjoy it. These are the things that I would worry about, but I’ve realised I don’t have to worry about any of those things until I have to worry about them, which isn’t fucking now.

All I know is that the people I have met who have joined their local AA community are better for it, and in turn, the people they care about are better for them going. I feel I owe it to myself and the people I care about to try. I literally have nothing to lose.

I want to keep growing this community of our own. If I don’t like this meeting, if I have a negative experience or for whatever reason, I don’t want to go back, I will focus solely on this great little community we have already started to build and be grateful for it.

I wouldn’t feel this way if it weren’t for my friends in the chat group. So thanks, legends. If there are some people at this meeting half as good as you guys are, I’ll be in a good place. Might even spend next Christmas with ‘em. Ha!

Cheers Wankers.

X.

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Click here if you want to join The Sobering Thoughts Group Chat. You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to be sober. It’s for the sober, sober-curious, people struggling with addiction or people with loved ones currently struggling. Everyone’s contributions are valued, and we’d love to have you.

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

Last week, I (very softly) announced that we were kicking off a completely free community support group.

This group is not exclusively for people in sobriety/recovery. It’s for the sober-curious people looking to reduce their alcohol or substance intake and people who are looking for ways to support a friend or loved one struggling with addiction or recovery.

I’m also hoping there are some people out there with some accredited qualification or lived experience who are keen to help other members do it tough.

As it stands, the group is a WhatsApp chat group. It's nothing fancy, but I think this format can make it easier for those considering making a lifestyle change than lobbing up to a meeting where they don’t know anyone or picking up the phone and talking to a stranger about how they feel.

I’m excited to see what the group could become, and my intention is for the group to decide what it needs to be and allow it to organically evolve from there into whatever is going to be the most effective way to help the most people.

We’ve already had a great group of legends jump in from different corners of Australia and the world. Some of the content has been incredibly insightful, helpful and inspiring.

What better time than New Year’s Eve to join a community that could help you stick to those New Year's Resolutions?

CLICK HERE to jump in. If you find it’s not for you, you can leave, and you’ve lost nothing. But who knows, it might just be the first step towards making those changes you’ve been talking about making for years!

Also, please forward the link to anyone who could benefit from such a group.

I look forward to seeing you guys in there and helping as many people as possible!

Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

It’s Boxing Day.

I wasn’t going to write anything this week, but I felt like I needed to write this one.

I’ve been a grumpy bastard around the house the last few days, and I owe it to my family to snap the fuck out of it.

I woke up feeling the most incredible sense of relief. As though a physical weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about drinking over the last fortnight or so.

All my adult life, I’ve had anxiety between the final day of work for the year and Boxing Day. I don’t know why.

I’ve always kind of felt like the holidays don’t truly start until Boxing Day.

It’s like the period from the last day of work is some kind of anxiety-plagued holding pattern where you’re just kind of aimlessly existing. You can’t do too much because you have obligations around Christmas.

I’ve always struggled to do nothing. Even intentionally. I don’t even know if it’s a fear of sitting with certain thoughts and feelings or just that I hate wasting time and, as someone with ADHD, seek constant stimulation.

In the past, I would fill this void by going an almighty cocaine and alcohol-fuelled bender on the last day of work. It might go for two or three days and cost me a lot of my money and even more of my integrity.

Even before drugs were a big problem, I would drink my way through this period because I couldn’t wait to get this period over with, where I felt an obligation to do “dumb family stuff” so I could take off with some friends somewhere and waste the rest of my holidays away.

Then, I could spend the rest of the time until Christmas curled up on the lounge, fading in and counting consciousness, briefly waking up to gorge on more takeaway or junk food with the occasional trip to the toilet.

Like almost all Australians, I drank my way through Christmas Day. It was one of the only days of the year when I would feel absolutely no shame about drinking before 9 am. It’s just what was done.

In more recent years, I would be secretly high on cocaine at family Christmas events. When it came to lunch to dinner, I would either have to come up with some excuse as to why I wasn’t hungry or force myself to eat something. I reckon I chewed everything four times more than I needed to.

The drinking before 9 am thing I can let slide. Not so much the bumps of cocaine off my house key in the bathroom of my parent’s house at 10 am at a family Christmas. I’d use the flush of the toilet to disguise the sound of my snorting back the coke. I still carry a lot of shame around doing that kind of shit.

I’ve really struggled this Christmas. All the typical thoughts. “Why can’t I drink?” “I’ve done the work now. There’s no way I would end up back like I was.” “Are you really going to spend your whole life being this boring, never enjoying anything?”.

I don’t know why this Christmas has been so much harder than the last. Naively, I thought that the experience of last Christmas would’ve helped me cruise through this Christmas unscathed. But I was wrong.

None of these thoughts were about trying to enhance the time I spent with family or friends. It comes from a place of escapism. When I have these thoughts about drinking, “it” is trying to convince me that this is what people do at Christmas. We kick back, relax, and enjoy ourselves with family and friends. A few drinks in good company, some reminiscing and time spent together where everyone can truly be themselves without the stressors of regular life impacting them.

The problem with “it’s” tactic was this wasn’t how I wanted to drink. If I were to drink, it would have been alone, quietly. “It” was trying to convince me to break by using the enhancing social experiences angle. That’s how I know it wasn’t an actual conscious decision. It was a demon trying to throw me a curveball. A lot like when those pricks call you from an overseas call centre offering you a better deal on your electricity.

This Christmas, we intentionally had fewer plans than last. My partner returned to work from maternity leave this year. I’ve taken a promotion with increased responsibility. We identified that we were feeling more burned out this year than last and planned accordingly.

With no obligation to be anywhere, on any day or at any time, we wanted to spend a day or two getting the house in order and doing some activities with our son. My partner only has one week off work. So this is the only week the three of us will have together until we go away in August. Of course, the weather has been dog shit pretty much the entire time so far. I caught myself being ungrateful about the weather the other day and reminded myself that a little bit of rain and wind is much more desirable than what the people of our community lived through just four years ago…

Look, Christmas or the New Year holiday period is fucking amazing, particularly in Australia. It’s summer. The days are long, and we are fortunate enough to have good weather for a long time to squeeze so much into our days.

But they can be equally challenging as amazing for some of us.

It’s by far one of the most challenging times of the year for people in sobriety/recovery.

We have a strong drinking culture around Christmas.

In sobriety, we become so dependent on routine and structure. Holidays for us are like pulling the rug out from underneath us. We can only be so prepared even when we know it’s coming.

I know there’s something I’m not dealing with because, along with the thoughts of drinking, I spent Christmas Eve mindlessly wandering back and forth from the kitchen, snacking on junk food, something I know I do when I’m anxious or avoiding difficult thoughts. I don’t feel like I have the energy to confront any of those thoughts at the moment. I need a holiday from them too.

Anyway, this is not a pity party. I don’t hate Christmas. I had the most amazing morning with my little family yesterday. For some of us, some of the things we associate with Christmas are tough.

Ultimately, I made it through my second Christmas sober. It is an achievement in itself worth celebrating. The madness of Christmas is over, the sun has come out from behind the rain cloud, my partner isn’t returning to work for another week, and Boxing Day, the actual start of the holidays, is here.

No more Christmas stress, no more obligation.

Thanks for listening.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

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Through a few different recent life events, I have been exposed to just how powerful community and connection to community can be.

That’s why I have decided to start the Sobering Thoughts WhatsApp Group.

This is not an exclusive group for sober people. This is a group for the sober curious, for people who have loved ones struggling with addiction/sobriety, people struggling with addictions to things other than drugs and alcohol, and, of course, for people in sobriety.

If you struggle to get up to meetings like me, this might be a gentler way to break the ice and ease into a community of people who could help change your life.

So what are you waiting for? Lets goooooo!

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

I’ve been a bit of a negative prick over the last few weeks as I’ve been limping towards the end of the year, yearning for a break.

I was trying to identify why. I thought I had everything under control. Sure, things have been a little busy and stressful. I hadn’t had as much spare time to dedicate to taking care of myself. But I couldn’t pinpoint anything.

Yesterday, I finished work for the year around 2 pm. I came home, sorted my things, and started hanging out with my son. We had dinner around 6 pm. Our au pair is off on holiday today, so we had an early Christmas dinner last night and swapped some gifts.

Once we’d done that, around 7 pm, I saddled up on the lounge, put the cricket on, and started to switch off mentally.

The next thing I knew, it was 8:45 pm, and I was woken up by my son. I’d fallen asleep on the lounge. I know what you’re thinking: tired dad falls asleep on the lounge, big deal.

I don’t fall asleep… ever. I wait for sleep. I struggle to go to sleep in my bed, with the aircon set to the perfect setting, with my blanket and pillows set just the way I like them. I don’t fall asleep on the lounge. But yesterday, I did and went on to have the best sleep I’ve had in weeks and weeks.

I thought I had work under control. I didn’t feel like it was stressing me all that much. Even though it had been hectic, I felt like I was handling it well, but maybe I wasn’t. It was odd because I’d identified work as a possible reason for feeling so run down, but I thought I’d worked out that it wasn’t affecting me that much. Maybe it was.

Or maybe everything added together was the reason, and now that I could

remove work from my head, albeit temporarily, my brain finally felt it had the space to relax.

Whatever the case, I woke up this morning and felt amazing. My son is stoked that we’re all home together. The weather is good, and so is the atmosphere. We’re looking forward to an easy Christmas at home.

Over the break, I’ll think about how I spend my time and structure my day. What I’m doing is working, but at what cost? How can I do it better? I don’t mean better as in getting more down. I mean better, as in looking after myself better and showing up at home as an even better version of myself. I’ll let you all know what I come up with.

Last year, we spent every second day redressing the Airbnb downstairs. This year, we have two long-stay bookings.

We’re going nowhere, visiting nobody and having very few people visit us. That might sound horrible to a lot of people. But to us, right now, it’s perfect, and we’re really fuckin’ excited.

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2023 will be the first calendar year I have spent entirely sober in over 20 years (touch wood).

I’ve been sober for 612 days now, yet reflection is still a strange thing for me because sobriety isn’t about the past. Resting on your laurels leads to complacency, and there aren’t many things more dangerous than that for a sober person.

Time itself is a bizarre concept. At its core, the difference between November 30 and December 1 is the same as between December 31 and January 1.

Yet, we experience this overwhelming feeling of finality. As though we can finally shut the door, lock it, and throw away the key. It’s almost as though nothing in the year 2023 is locked in and confirmed until we finally land in 2024, even though we can not change anything that has happened, even one second ago.

Through my sobriety, I have realised just how valuable reflection is. I learned that I wasn’t, and still probably don’t, dedicate enough time to reflect on what I have done. I realised there is very little point in doing anything that isn’t worth remembering later. We’re here on this earth for such a short time; all we can take are memories. Memories that we will lose if we don’t regularly reflect on them. Nothing truly matters more than that.

I’ve been reflecting on the year, and I am proud of what I have achieved. I think it’s important to recognise what we have achieved so we don’t feel like the energy invested was in vain.

I started the year fit and healthy. In February, I had a back injury that, at one point, had me genuinely concerned that I would never be able to exercise again. It took me until July to recover, by which point I had gained 9kgs. Since then, I have lost 17 kg. I’m back down to the leanest I’ve ever been in my adult life, and I’m closing in on running the same times I was two and a half years ago when I ran all of my PBs.

We survived a tough time financially, with my partner being on maternity leave until September and interest rates going up every month. As though the universe was testing us, I landed a promotion and a significant pay rise within a fortnight of my partner returning to work.

I navigated some pretty hairy moments with my sobriety throughout the year. There were some close calls, but mostly, I’m proud because I was conscious enough to reflect on what happened in the lead-up and identify what I’d done differently or failed to do that led to my complacency and then learn from them.

I’m making some good progress with my psychologist, and we’re starting to unearth some of the reasons why I have some of the struggles that I do, a significant step towards resolving them. This is the gritty part of the journey. It’s by far the fucking toughest work, but it’s also the work that netts the greatest results, and I’m anxiously excited to continue next year.

The thing I’m most proud of, though, is that we have kept our beautiful, cheeky, 16-month-old (today) son alive. Not only is he alive, but he is absolutely thriving. As someone who struggles with imposter syndrome, I still look at him and think, “How the fuck are we doing this?”. How are we raising such a sweet, caring and generous child I still wonder how the fuck we were allowed to take him home unsupervised and left to our own devices.

Being a dad is the most incredible privilege I have ever known. I’m a lot of things, good and bad, but first and foremost, I am and always will be a dad. That will first.

I don’t know if I would have ever found the balls to get and stay sober if it weren’t for his impending arrival and continued existence.

They say you can’t get sober for anyone else, and I tend to agree. But my son is what drives me to keep working my arse off to become a better human being, and for me, that is made so much easier with sobriety. He and my partner deserve the best version of me p[possible, and that version of me is sober. It always will be.

With that said it’ll come as no surprise that the one thing that I am most proud of, daylight second, is that my son has never, ever seen me under the influence of any substances. If I manage to maintain my sobriety until the day I die, I’m confident that it’ll still be the thing I am most proud of then.

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I don’t know if I’ll write any blogs over the break. I probably won’t. I really need to switch off and freshen up for next year.

So, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to read my ramblings each week.

I know sometimes it’s boring, uninteresting, self-indulged or plain unhinged. But it’s what I need to do for myself, to get the shit out of my head.

This blog is a massive part of maintaining my sobriety, and I appreciate the accountability each of you provides me with by reading, skim-reading, opening and closing the email so that I get another open to the all-important reader count. I’m kidding.

I hope you all have an amazing break and get whatever you feel you need out of it.

As amazing as it is, this is an incredibly tough time for people in sobriety/recovery. Please be mindful of these people. If you are one of these people, I see you. You can do it. Reach out if you need to. We’re not good with free time and having our routines stripped from under us.

To all those working over the break, from emergency room doctors, paramedics, baristas, takeaway owners, garbage truck drivers, and everything in between, thanks for keeping the lights on while the rest of us get to refresh. I hope you get your opportunity soon.

If you’re travelling these holidays, please do so safely. Don’t be in a rush. Don’t be a dickhead on the road. Getting angry is going to affect you more than anyone else. It’s not worth it.

If you’re travelling to a sleepy little tourist town like mine, please be respectful to the locals. Without those people keeping the town afloat outside of holiday periods, you’d have nowhere to take your big flash caravan. If you live in a sleepy little tourist town like mine, be grateful that you get to live there all year round. Be grateful that all these people want to invest their money into our communities so that we can have nice things at our disposal once they all go home.

The break is exactly that: a break. Don’t sweat the little things, or you won’t get as much out of it as you want or need to.

Relax, don’t be a dick, be kind to strangers and refresh.

HAPPY FUCKIN’ HOLIDAYS.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

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Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

Maybe 27 years ago, we visited some family at their farm outside Goulburn, NSW. They had a Peewee 80 motorbike. I would’ve been around eight years old. I’d never ridden a motorbike before, but we were in a big paddock, and it was only a tiny motorbike, even for an eight-year-old.

My brother and cousins were taking turns putting around the paddock when it came to my turn for a ride. After a quick rundown on where the throttle, brakes and gears were and an even faster run down on how to stay upright on the thing, I, too, was putting around the paddock.

Initially, I was shitting myself. I still do when I try something I’ve never done before. Fear is something of a constant state for me. But after a few laps, my confidence started to build, and I actually started to really enjoy myself.

Being the clever little dickheads we were, we decided to build a small dirt jump in the middle of the paddock. I was confident enough cutting laps of the paddock, but a fuckin’ 20cm dirt jump was a whole new level.

After watching my brother and a couple of cousins confidently navigate the jump, getting all 21cm of air, I figured it couldn’t be too hard. So when it came to my turn, I threw on the sweaty old helmet we were all sharing and cut another lap around the paddock to refamiliarise myself with the beast of a bike.

No one other than me felt the need for the extra lap before taking on the mammoth dirt jump. But I wanted to be sure I had my shit together before taking on such a daring feat. I could hear my brother and cousins telling to stop fucking around and just do the jump already.

Not wanting anyone to know how scared I was, I took off down to the bottom corner of the paddock, got a run up about ten times longer than necessary, lined up the jump and rang the fucking neck out of the motorbikes throttle. I remember thinking I had to hit it pretty fast because the dirt we built the jump out of came from a hole we dug… immediately behind the jump.

As I approached the jump, absolutely fucking shitting myself, I put my head down, tucked my elbows in and launched all of a metre or so, easily clearing the small hole behind the jump. I’d done it, or so I thought.

Because I was so scared of getting my back wheel caught up in the hole behind the jump, and I had a poor understanding of fundamental physics at that age (still do), I’d hit the jump way fucking faster than anyone else had and way quicker than necessary.

As the bike came down from the wuthering 21cm height, I was too concerned with clearing the hole to remember to brace for landing, and I landed with rigid knees rather than soft knees, which would cushion the landing. As the bike landed on the ground, the force of the landing and the tension in my legs forced my feet off the footpegs.

Because I was so fucking scared, I was still ringing the throttles neck. So I was hurtling through the paddock at full noise, laid across the top of the bike, legs dangling off the back. It was like I was doing a Superman. Only the wheels were on the ground, with my feet dragging along the dirt and grass.

I remember looking down, and all I could see was the nubs of the rear tyre. We were using an open-face helmet, and there was no way I was letting go of the bike. I wasn’t keen on smashing my face against the tyre and having the nubs rip all my teeth out or tearing my face up, but the heat from the exhaust was starting to burn my arm.

The other problem was the tighter I held onto the bike, the harder I pulled the throttle back. So there I was, stuck on my belly, laying across the top of a fucking motorbike, with no way of seeing where I was going, feet dragging through the dirt, grass and, by this point, sticks and rocks with no fucking clue when or how this was going to end until fuckin’ BANG!

I crashed into a farm gate…

I looked over, and everyone was laughing. I didn’t get it. Thirty seconds ago, I was certain I was going to die. I wish I could have seen it because, at the time, it was extremely traumatic, but seeing a kid dangling off the back of a motorbike, slowly putting along in a paddock and then crashing into a fence would be pretty funny.

My uncle came over and checked his gate, then the motorbike and then asked if I was okay. I had some slight cuts and grazes on my legs, and my shoes were fucked, much to mum’s dismay, but I was okay.

I was barred from using the motorbike for the rest of the day. Although I was embarrassed, and it upset me that everyone else was allowed to use it except for me and me only, honestly, at that point, I would’ve told them to bash their stupid fucking motorbike up their arse.

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The Metaphor

So, what’s the point of this story? On top of the story being a good laugh, I feel like the part where I was hanging on for dear life but only making the motorbike pull even harder in the same direction is the perfect metaphor for how I’ve been feeling over the last couple of months.

Life is the motorbike, and I’m just barely fucking hanging on, wondering when the prick of a thing is going to run out of fuel and/or crash into a fucking gate. I’ve been feeling a complete lack of control. Everything is happening around me. The days and weeks are flying by; people at work are talking to me; people at home are talking to me; my extended family and friends are talking to me, and it’s all just blurred into one extended experience that has become fucking overwhelming.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, I’ve enjoyed many of the things I’ve done over the previous month or two, but it’s taught me that I need my downtime more than ever. Busy periods mean we don’t get as much of that as we’d like, and often, we forget to prioritise or ensure we make that time to ourselves. When you’re a people pleaser like me, it’s often the first thing sacrificed.

Towards the end of my drinking and substance abuse, most of my nefarious activities were done at home, on my own, late into the night when other people were asleep. I wasn’t getting work call after work call or email after email. Finally, I could switch off. The substances just helped me supercharge that switching off.

I’m realising there was nothing wrong with wanting to switch off. In fact, it was essential to maintain some level of survivable mental health. All this time, I thought every aspect of my actions was wrong or unhealthy, but it wasn’t. Just how I got to that point of switching off was damaging.

I’ve learned that you need to listen to your mind and body and, to a degree, ignore your brain. Ignore the part of the brain that tells you there’s something wrong with spending a weekend at home. When you feel like you’re on the brink of burning out, there’s nothing heroic or tough about continuing.

That’s the exact mindset that led me down the dark path of abusing drugs and alcohol to a point where I was doing damage to my relationships with people I cared about and my relationship with myself. Nothing was wrong with what I was doing, just the method I used to get there.

Drugs and alcohol can help you achieve that switch-off point almost instantly, and I think that’s where the appeal lies. That first drink or line can feel like a literal, physical weight has been lifted from your shoulders. A weight that you put there yourself, perhaps even subconsciously.

To a degree, I had accepted that I wasn’t going to crash my metaphorical Peewee 80 into a gate until I finished work the following Thursday. I’d have to keep holding onto the throttle for dear life until I crashed into the Christmas holiday gate.

The thing about crashing motorbikes into gates is that you can’t really choose how and when you do it. If you do, you’re a fucking psychopath. So maybe the Christmas break was more the motorbike running out of fuel for me. Given the holidays are still over a week away, and right now, I’m referring to things that have happened over the last week, it probably wasn’t very healthy of me to keep hanging on for another two weeks, but I didn’t know what else to do.

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The Few Things That Happened

Thing 1

We had a weekend at home. I made it abundantly clear to my partner that I needed the most regular weekend possible. Just simple, boring, gown up, normal shit… plus a long run.

We did groceries and plodded around the house, catching up on some chores that had fallen by the wayside in the madness of the previous month or so. It sounds fucking stupid, but something is refreshing about getting your affairs in order around the house. You feel organised and in control. Mentally, you feel like you’re on top of things. You don’t have to stress about where you’re going to find the time to get your shit together.

Thing 2

In the middle of last week, I started to feel like I was due for a good long run. I’ve never run to a training plan. I don’t like having to go for a long run on a day; I feel like a short run. Or a slow run when I feel great and want to try to run faster. That’s not what I do it for.

It sounds fucking stupid. Complaining about having too much going on. Feeling like you’re only just holding on, but then wanting to spend six hours out of your Sunday to drive into the bush, run for an extended period for no apparent reason, physically exhausting yourself and rendering yourself physically useless to the family for the rest of the afternoon.

Physically, though, I’m not tired. It’s mental and emotional fatigue that has been dragging me down. Running has always been an escape for me. Even when I was at the lowest point of my substance abuse, I was still managing to run three or four times a week. I’m sure there’s a science to it, and other runners understand that there’s just something about running, particularly long distance, that feels fucking amazing.

So, mid-week, I reached out to a mate who mentioned he was keen to try to run 50k for the first time. I told him I would do it on Sunday and sent him a map of a bush trail I’d been eyeing for a while.

I got up at 4 am and picked my mate up, and by just after 5 am, we were running on Runnyford Rd, from the Princes Highway between Mogo and Batemans Bay, through to Nelligan and back. It was perfect. There was light, misty rain the entire time, and although it made it a little humid, it was just enough to cool us off. We ran up hills, down hills, past farms, horses, cows, fucked up old rusty tractors, rivers, creeks, and bushland, all while talking mindless shit the whole time. Well, most of the time. There were some extended periods of silence towards the end, but those were just as nice.

You feel completely and utterly fucked when you finish. I felt fucked 15k before I finished. But you also feel fucking amazing. I’ve used running to switch off and escape from the rigours of life for a long time now. I use it the exact same way I use drugs and alcohol. The more I stress, the more I want to use it.

I’ve been sore most of the week, but it feels good. Most importantly, though, my mood has been notably better since Sunday. I don’t know how it happens, but I feel like I took some mental rubbish out to the trail on Sunday and left a lot of it out there; mentally, I’m so much better for it.

Thing 3

A friend rang me early this week, and the conversation started as any normal conversation between two mates would. We exchanged typical pleasantries. “Hey man, what’s happening? What have you been up to?” Out of nowhere, he said, “I think I’m going to go to an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting”.

Trying to play it cool, I asked, “Oh really? Why? What’s been happening?”.

He was in a pretty bad way as he explained what had been happening over the last few months. I was shocked for two reasons.

I had no idea he’d been struggling this much. We speak regularly. He has his shit together.

The second reason was how eerily similar his story was to my own. He had done so many of the same things I did only 20 to 24 months ago.

The universe works in funny ways. I’d never wish this experience on anyone, but I’m glad he chose to ring me. I’m glad it happened when it did, too. Just last week, I was talking about how I’d been going through the motions and somewhat neglecting my sobriety and how that was concerning coming into a period where I’d lose the structure of work for an extended period.

I’ve been speaking to my mate every day, multiple times a day. On the phone, via text and in person. It’s been like taking a walk down memory lane. I can see so much of my old self in him. He’s a good person, doing it tough, and his behaviours have become unaligned with his values, and I think that is what we struggle with the most. Often, we can’t believe what we have let happen. That’s the hardest thing to accept.

In our conversations, we’ve been exchanging stories. I’ve been sharing so much of what I have learned over the last almost 20 months, and as much as it’s been a horrible time for him, it’s been exactly what I needed. Every time I say something to him, I have to think about it, then I have to say or type it, and then I have to hear it. By helping him, I am reinforcing all the things that I have done and continue to do to help manage my sobriety and, in turn, my mental health.

It feels good to help others, especially when you feel like you have the knowledge and experience to do so. It gives a sense of purpose and value. I have something to offer my friend that can genuinely help him. I had to go through some shit to get it, but now that I have it, it’s wasted if I don’t share it.

My mate has a tough road ahead, but he’s doing well, and hopefully, I can be as involved as he needs or wants me to be in helping him dig his way out of this shit. I told him that as wild as it sounds, this is a fantastic opportunity for him. He gets to start from scratch and rebuild himself how he wants. As I said, I wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone, but I know I’m better for going through it and coming out the other side, for now…

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Back To Basics

There are some obvious takeaways from this last week or so for me. Namely, having soft knee’s when getting fucking sick air on a motorbike jump…

Seriously though, I think that the answers we are looking for are often correct before our eyes, but we’re looking for them elsewhere. We believe there has to be some grandiose solution to our ever-so-complex problems, but it’s rarely the case.

The things that helped me snap out of my own bullshit were simple.

I set aside time to spend at home with my family, with no time-critical tasks to be done. We created an environment without pressure to get a certain amount of work done by a specific time. An environment where spending time together was the main activity, and anything else done during that time was nothing more than a bonus. Almost actively doing nothing together.

The second thing I did was take myself away from all the places that were causing me stress. I got out in nature, challenged myself physically, and had conversations that weren’t important. Conversations where the result wouldn’t make the difference between the business I run does or doesn’t make money that day. Agendaless, mindless fuckin’ drivel. Something I realised I hadn’t done much of lately. Everything had become so severe recently. I needed to balance that out.

Lastly, I helped someone who needed my help more than I needed my own help. I don’t go to AA or NA or do any programs, but I do believe they are beneficial. One of their core beliefs is that to keep it, you have to give it away. This means that if you want to maintain your sobriety, you have to help others achieve and maintain their own sobriety, too.

I think I was getting too caught up in my own bullshit. I was too far inside my head to see what was happening. It’s like I had tunnel vision, so focused on making it through to the Christmas break that I had forgotten that I was living right here, right now.

I’d shifted away from some of the very things that helped me make so much of the progress I’ve made over the last 20 months. Less time being fully present with my family. Less effort is made to connect with friends. Less time and energy spent on practising sobriety. Although I’ve been running every morning, I’ve been running the same track, at the same time, in the dark and been doing minimal running in nature, away from the buildings, concrete, cars, trucks and buses.

I feel like I’ve learned a lot this week and am in a much better place. I know what to do to snap out of these funks.

The challenge from here is, how do I identify that I’m slipping into a funk sooner and prevent it from dragging on as long as this one has?

I’d love to know your ideas!

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Cheers Wankers.

X.

Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about sobriety. It’s not intentional. I write to help myself understand my thoughts, and lately, there have just been other things I’ve felt compelled to write about.

I’ve been sober for 598 days now. Long enough for it to not be front of mind all the time. It’s easy to see this as a good thing. It means I haven’t had cravings or temptations to navigate. But this mindset can sometimes lead you down the dangerous path of complacency. It can lure you into thinking that you have achieved sobriety rather than sobriety being something you practice every day. I believe this type of thinking is what leads to relapse, particularly around alcohol.

The old thoughts of, I’ve had a long enough break now, I can control it now, I’ve learned enough about myself now to not drink for the wrong reasons, start circulating when your regular practice of sobriety meets complacency. I have implemented a bunch of regular, healthy habits that I believe are a part of my practising sobriety.

I exercise almost every single day. I am currently on a streak of 107 days straight. I’ve done daily breathwork every day this year except for maybe ten days. I write in a gratitude journal every night before bed, and I write these blogs to help me empty my brain of the stressful thoughts that used to lead me to substance abuse.

These things are all great and have been the pillars of my sobriety to date. The problem, though, is that I have been naive enough to think that as long as I do these things consistently, I don’t need to worry about my sobriety at all. It’s almost as though I believe that if I do these things, my sobriety will look after itself. This is not the case.

While they are all very helpful safeguards, they alone will not keep you sober. You have to wake up every day and choose to be sober for that day. You have to forget about how long you have been sober and start fresh again. You have to maintain the mindset that while, yes, your sober streak is worth celebrating at times, ultimately, it is irrelevant. You’re only ever a split second away from one poor choice that’ll end your precious little streak anyway, so the attention needs to shift from what’s behind you to what’s in front of you.

If someone were to look at my life over the last couple of months, it would be fair of them to assume that I am cruising along okay. Objectively, things are good. My partner has been back from maternity leave for almost four months now, and I got a significant promotion and pay rise around the same time. After a stressful 12 months financially, we finally have some much-needed breathing room, and while we are far from wealthy, we have enough to pay our bills, spend a little and save a little.

I’ve also been working with a nutritionist for the last few months. I have lost 17kgs. I’m only 1kg away from the lightest I have ever been in my adult life, so I’m not far off running PB’s again. I'm pretty bloody happy, given that a back injury in February grounded me for three months, and at times, I thought I’d never be able to run again.

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The business unit I look after at work had its most profitable month in its history in November, around 40% more than the previous best. Obviously, it wasn’t all my doing. Still, for someone who regularly struggles with imposter syndrome, it was nice to feel like I contributed to the business’s success and reassured me, albeit somewhat temporarily, that maybe I know what I’m doing.

I’m growing vegetables again, which is something I absolutely love doing. I’m growing way more than we need and giving around 90% of what I am growing away to the community. Next time you’re at the supermarket, check the price of organic produce, it’s fucking insane. It feels nice to be helping people. The best part is I’ve had my son out in the garden with me, and although he’s only 15 months, and he causes more damage than he helps, he loves it, and he’s getting real fuckin’ good at putting the veggies I cut off the plants into the bucket for me.

He’s going from strength to strength in almost every other way. He doesn’t walk. He fucking runs. Everywhere. He’s such a happy kid almost all the time. He sleeps well, he’s affectionate, plays well with other kids and loves to share. I’m so fucking grateful to have such a healthy, happy baby. Even now, with these arsehole fucking molar teeth causing mayhem in his mouth, for the most part, he is just the sweetest, happiest little boy.

I live in a fucking fantastic part of the world. I’m 600m from the beach, ten minutes from work. We’ve arrived at the warmer time of the year, and Christmas is just around the corner. So yeah, things are good.

But I am fucking struggling. I am tired. Not physically tired. But mentally and emotionally drained. I feel like I am limping towards the Christmas break, and I’m worried that I could have a negative impact on my family’s holiday period because right now, I plan on spending the whole fucking 17 days off inside my house.

I mentioned everything above because I want people to understand that what they see at the surface level is only a small fraction of what’s truly happening in people’s lives.

I wrote about the unexpected suicide of an old friend lately, which, if I’m being honest, I’m still a little rattled by and haven’t ultimately come to terms with. After watching his funeral on the internet, I felt somewhat ashamed of myself for the assumptions I had made about him in recent years, which I touched on when I wrote about it. I, too, was guilty of assuming what I had seen on the surface was all there was going on. But how could I be like that when I, too, know what it’s like to be appearing to be succeeding but struggling underneath that facade? Like the duck seemingly floating on a pond, you don’t see the little bastard kicking like fuck underwater.

Sobriety has taught me the patience not to try to figure out precisely what’s causing me to be struggling right now. I do think, though, that I have lost the link between why I do what I do in terms of my sobriety and mental health. I know I haven’t been doing my breathwork as intentionally as I once did. It’s been more of a box-ticking exercise of late. Do breathwork, and sobriety is easier.

I know that, at times, I have been exercising for the wrong reasons. While I have been working hard on my poor relationship with food and exercise, as I’ve gotten fitter and less hampered by injury, I find myself motivated to exercise because I want to have a good weekly check-in with my nutritionist. This is the exact accountability I went to him for, but I know that, at times, I’m on the borderline of taking it too far. The goal is to learn to eat enough each day not to gain weight, eat good food that makes me feel good, and exercise how I want to and when I want to because I want to.

My sleep hasn’t been the best either, primarily due to reasons beyond my control. My son is teething. He needs me. My partner and I are doing a great job of taking turns being sleep-deprived.

I’ve been spending a bit of time away from home, too. We have been travelling for weddings and Christmas parties for three of the last four weekends. Although we love seeing our friends and families, and we understood that this would be something we would have to do when we chose to move away, it can get a little taxing when you travel so regularly, especially with a toddler.

I’ve also been doing a fair bit of travelling for work. Again, it’s part of the role, but it just so happens to coincide with a period where we are doing plenty of travelling in our personal lives.

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On Tuesday this week, I had to head out to the Snowy Valley region (Tumut, Tumbarumba, etc.) to scope some work. It was five hours of travel each way, and I was looking at about 10 hours of scoping work. I packed a bag for the night but didn’t book anywhere to stay. I planned to see if I could return home that night if I had a good run.

I woke up at 3 am, went for a run, popped into work to map out my route, and took off around 7 am. I wanted to avoid staying away. I always prefer to wake up at home than in a cheap motel five hours from home. I had allocated two days to finish the work, so I knew I could afford to sleep in the following day if needed.

At about 4 pm, I was getting a bit tired, and I knew that if I wanted to stay somewhere, I would need to book soon or risk missing out on getting in somewhere. While I was weighing up the pros and cons of staying away, one thought that came to my mind was, “Why not just book a room, go and unpack your shit, have a shower, head to a nice pub, have a few quiet beers, get suitably pissed then head back to your room with a few more beers and drift off to sleep” something I used to love to do, particularly in small country towns. Sitting in a shitty pub, getting drunk, by myself. Then I responded to that thought with, “yeah, maybe, it sounds pretty good, but I still think I’d prefer to get home.

Moments later, I did a mental double-take. Momentarily, I had forgotten entirely that I don’t drink anymore. Usually, when I have a thought like that, this mental wall comes up and reminds me of it. But not this time. It scared me because it was almost like I had no control over my thoughts and, for a split second, had forgotten that I get to choose what I do with those thoughts. As I mentioned at the top, a split second is all it takes to undo every skerrick of work I have put into the last 598 days.

It’s also a timely reminder that this sneaky little fucker can get you at any time. You are never entirely free from it. It will leave you alone for a while if you’re doing the right things, but it’s always ready to pounce the moment you let your guard down.

The thing is, I’ve done the family Christmas thing for the year already. I didn’t struggle one bit. I was far less anxious than at similar events a year ago. Others drinking around me didn’t bother me, and I enjoyed occasions. It was never parties that got me into trouble. It was drinking and using drugs alone where the really dark shit happened, and that is exactly when I was at my most vulnerable earlier this week and had those unwanted thoughts.

I didn’t drink. I finished scoping my work at 8:30 pm. I got home at 12:30 am. I was up with my son at 5:30 am because I knew I didn’t have to do much work that day, and it was probably more important for my partner to get more sleep. I tried. It was the closest call I’ve had in a long time, but luckily, it didn’t get me.

I’ve learned over the last couple of months that I need my time at home. I need my weekends. I’m starting to understand the ADHD trait of masking truly and just how much I do it. From the moment I leave my house to the moment I get home, I feel like I need to be some version of myself depending on where I am going and what I am doing.

Work me, extended family me, me for when my mother-in-law, who is staying in the unit downstairs at the moment. Even socially, the version of myself that I present to one group of friends can be different to the version I present to another. None of them are the real me. It’s stressful and exhausting, but like my friend who took his own life recently, I find it too difficult to be my authentic self around other people, which is probably a whole other blog in itself.

I enjoy my work. I never wake up on Monday dreading going to work anymore, which I am grateful for, as I know many people do. But only since I’ve been sober have I truly discovered the benefits of weekends. In recent months, my weekends have been hijacked by some events that, while I enjoy them, take a toll on me. So, not only am I spending more time wearing a mask, but I’m spending less time than usual with the mask off and allowing myself to breathe.

Sobriety and the things I do to maintain it has had an immeasurably positive impact on my life and the lives of those around me over the last 598 days. I wouldn’t change a thing. But it takes effort and energy to achieve anything, and exerting effort and energy will wear you down, especially if you’re not making time to do the things you need to do to keep yourself okay.

So, these holidays, I’ll be turning inward. I’ll be limping my way in, prioritising myself and my family. Don’t be afraid to be selfish with your time these holidays. We work 48 weeks of the year and only have four weeks off. That’s less than 10%. I have wasted so many years’ worth of holidays doing dumb shit and returning to work the following year feeling worse than when I left. Don’t let other people pressure you into using your precious time on shit that doesn’t serve you.

We’ve had bushfires, floods, three years of COVID-19, and interest rate rises on top of our regular stress. Be kind to people. Looks can be deceiving. The person you’re hounding to come to the pub who seems reluctant might be the duck who looks calm but is kicking like crazy underwater on tired legs. Maybe they’re just trying to get to the bank to lie down and spend some time with their mask off.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

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Click here to check my other blogs. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @sbrngthghts.

Make sure you check out my Writing 4 Resilience friends. They’re all legends.

Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear

If anyone is struggling in any way, make someone aware of it. Speak to a friend, family, loved one, stranger, postman, Uber Eats driver, or me; talk to someone.

Lifeline Ph: 13 11 14

Alcoholics Anonymous Ph: 1300 222 222

NSW Mental Health Line Ph: 1800 011 511

Suicide Call Back Service Ph: 1300 659 467

Mensline Australia Ph: 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline Ph: 1800 55 1800