Speaker 1: She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2: I'm tiff. This is Roll with the Punches and we're
Speaker 2: turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
Speaker 2: to court, and don't. My friends are test Art Family Lawyers.
Speaker 2: Know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Speaker 2: Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
Speaker 2: all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples,
Speaker 2: custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
Speaker 2: and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
Speaker 2: reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
Speaker 2: test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Tim Hague, welcome to
Speaker 2: Roll with the Punches.
Speaker 3: Good morning, Good morning from a cloudy and overcast you.
Speaker 2: Gere at six am in the morning for you top
Speaker 2: of the morning, could you bounce out of four this
Speaker 2: morning to you? Got to work out in first.
Speaker 3: No by thirty, peeled myself out of bed and made
Speaker 3: a very large cup of highly caffeinated coffee to start
Speaker 3: my deer.
Speaker 2: Well, it's an absolute pleasure to connect to you. It's
Speaker 2: pleasure to speak with you. I've dug deep into the
Speaker 2: interweb and I've found you across the globe and dragged
Speaker 2: you into a conversation and I couldn't be more appreciative
Speaker 2: that you've said yes and got yourself here and out
Speaker 2: of bed and caffeinated for it.
Speaker 3: You're welcome.
Speaker 2: Do you want to give both myself and my listeners
Speaker 2: a bit of a bit of an intro to who
Speaker 2: is Tim Haig?
Speaker 3: Tim is now fifty three, married to my wife Donor.
Speaker 3: The kids call it Duna, that little pet name that
Speaker 3: the kids have for her kids I say, eight teenager kids.
Speaker 3: And we are currently building this not just a platform online,
Speaker 3: but a platform and a foundation in the education system
Speaker 3: to give people with lived experience, firstly a voice, give
Speaker 3: them their voice back, but also to educate and empower
Speaker 3: young people to not make some choices that we did
Speaker 3: because the quite painful consequences that can that can occur
Speaker 3: from same choices, and just to again use our lived
Speaker 3: experience to change and alter the course of a generation
Speaker 3: of young people across the globe, to yeah, not make
Speaker 3: the same choices that we made, but to make the
Speaker 3: right choices for their life so they can succeed. And
Speaker 3: hopefully the intention is to create a you know, a
Speaker 3: better local communities or society at large, or even a
Speaker 3: global community of empowered young people.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love it so much so when
Speaker 2: you say lived experience, what comes under that umbrella for myself?
Speaker 3: Grew up in a very impoverished community back in the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies and early eighties. Lived in a government provided
Speaker 3: house we call them council houses here, large family. We
Speaker 3: lived on benefits. But I grew up in a lot
Speaker 3: of poverty. I grew up around a lot of violence.
Speaker 3: My dad was quite violent in the hope, very violent
Speaker 3: in the home. Violence was the norm in my family heritage,
Speaker 3: my dad, my uncle, my granddad, and possibly people before them.
Speaker 3: Some people would describe that as a toxic masculine environment,
Speaker 3: and to a degree was will possibly come back to that.
Speaker 3: But I was still a smart kid, still a very
Speaker 3: bright kid, I believe it. And I had a bright
Speaker 3: ginger hair style. Yes, yes, very ginger, very big, very bright.
Speaker 2: I believe it because of the book color of your eyes.
Speaker 3: Oh there you go. I got the hair from my mum.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I started high school very bright, you know,
Speaker 3: above average sets across the board. For a variety of reasons,
Speaker 3: I disengaged with my studies, whether it was a pursuit
Speaker 3: of popularity amongst my peers, or that kind of toxic
Speaker 3: masculine mindset was kicking in or manifesting itself. I didn't
Speaker 3: like boundaries. I didn't have boundaries at home, you know,
Speaker 3: or very few just go out and come back whenever,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of mindset at home, very few boundaries.
Speaker 3: So when the teaching staff tried to implement boundaries from
Speaker 3: my be fit of my success, I resisted and pushed
Speaker 3: against them and wouldn't engage with them. So my downfall
Speaker 3: at school was very quick. Failed everything at school in
Speaker 3: terms of exams, already built up a comprehensive criminal record.
Speaker 3: But I was also a dad at fifteen.
Speaker 2: Wow, far right, You squeezed a lot into your first
Speaker 2: fifteen years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's half the story, but it's enough. Yeah we
Speaker 3: haven't quite got enough time. But that's a pretty good overview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what were you like as a younger As a
Speaker 2: younger kid like that primary school age, were you were
Speaker 2: you were handful or were you was it kind of
Speaker 2: a shift when you got a bit older and.
Speaker 3: No, I was. I'm speaking you know for myself. I
Speaker 3: was quite cute. I was always pleasant, I was always courteous,
Speaker 3: and that's not just my opinion, that's obviously people that
Speaker 3: have met many years later. I'm not quite sure where
Speaker 3: the shift came about, how it came around, you know,
Speaker 3: that kind of tipping point, shall we call it. You see,
Speaker 3: when we grew up in poverty and around violence and
Speaker 3: lack and need as kids, as a family, we didn't
Speaker 3: realize that what we were experiencing and our home life
Speaker 3: wasn't normal. You know, we thought everybody's family lived like
Speaker 3: we did. It's only when you get a comparison to
Speaker 3: compare your life against the life of somebody else, do
Speaker 3: you start to question your own life, your own existence,
Speaker 3: your own experiences. And I think that really started when
Speaker 3: I was probably ten, last year of primary school before
Speaker 3: I went to the high school. So I think that
Speaker 3: may have been a part of that awareness rising in me,
Speaker 3: the questions beginning to formulate in my mind and my thinking,
Speaker 3: and then resisting or pushing back against the two kind
Speaker 3: of you know, the life I was living and the
Speaker 3: life that my friends were living.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you did you have an awareness or that they?
Speaker 2: I mean, what did that violence look like in the home,
Speaker 2: in the family environment, And are you aware of it
Speaker 2: or was it, like you said, just the.
Speaker 3: Norm that is between my dad and my mom. More
Speaker 3: often you'd hear it, so we'd be upstairs. The house
Speaker 3: walls were quite thin, so a lot of the time
Speaker 3: you'd hear it and then see the effects of it
Speaker 3: the next morning. Obviously in my mom, I mean sometimes
Speaker 3: she'd give as good as she got, but there was
Speaker 3: those occasions were quite rare. But it was very violent
Speaker 3: towards kids, all of us, well, certainly the older ones anyway,
Speaker 3: So obviously we experienced that side. And it wasn't just
Speaker 3: a click around the ear, you know, it was very aggressive,
Speaker 3: very violent, you know, probably go to jail stuff round.
Speaker 2: And what was that lack for you?
Speaker 3: Were you?
Speaker 2: Were you scared of that? Did you push back against that?
Speaker 2: Did you did you become a version of that? Were
Speaker 2: you ashamed of that?
Speaker 3: I mean we lived in fear of my dad, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, definitely lived in fear of him in and
Speaker 3: around the house. But it was a mixed emotion because
Speaker 3: you know, you live in fear of this person, but
Speaker 3: it was my dad and I loved him. He got
Speaker 3: the job. He's the only dad I had. So you know,
Speaker 3: you've got this dual kind of emotion, this this kind
Speaker 3: of negative and positive thing going on. And then now
Speaker 3: and again he'd do something, you know, we'd go off
Speaker 3: for the day and make a den or something, you know,
Speaker 3: and he take the techn the knives or the tools
Speaker 3: with him to cut down trees and stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: and you just have an amazing day and all the
Speaker 3: negative memories would fade away because you know, my dad
Speaker 3: is now my hero because he's made a day or
Speaker 3: is you know, we've had full or whatever. And then
Speaker 3: they'd be back to his normal self today after that
Speaker 3: for many weeks or months, So yeah, it was. It
Speaker 3: was a little bit confusing at times, but definitely painful.
Speaker 3: But then again using strength as sorry, using aggression as
Speaker 3: a form of strength, which is kind of one of
Speaker 3: the pillars of toxic masculinity. Not pillars, you know, one
Speaker 3: of the facets of it that then started to filter
Speaker 3: through my life. You know, that aggression towards it was
Speaker 3: towards other men on my part, you know, seeing or
Speaker 3: hearing or experiencing the domestic balance in the home between
Speaker 3: my dad and my mum actually shifted something in me
Speaker 3: that I would never be physical called towards a woman
Speaker 3: but I would use aggression verbally to anybody, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, just displaying that anger, displaying that aggression to
Speaker 3: try and get what I wanted in life, and that
Speaker 3: again filtered through my relationships and my activities in high school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when did you start, so I know you
Speaker 2: have you had quite the running with gangs, drugs, prison.
Speaker 2: When did all of that started start to become I
Speaker 2: guess your social surrounding.
Speaker 3: Probably eleven or twelve. Again, not many boundaries at home.
Speaker 3: There was always other children, siblings, younger siblings, so we
Speaker 3: were kind of left to our own devices. We would, yeah,
Speaker 3: go out of the house and the mantra would be
Speaker 3: come back home when the street lights come on, you know,
Speaker 3: so when the street lights around the community would come on.
Speaker 3: But it was difficult when we were playing in an
Speaker 3: old issused coal mine where there were no street lights,
Speaker 3: so often we'd come home late and get a kicking
Speaker 3: for it. But yeah, kind of eleven twelve, but it
Speaker 3: started with different gangs. But I was always looking for
Speaker 3: a sense of belonging, always looking for an identity, which
Speaker 3: is quite often the inner focus of a person that
Speaker 3: has very little identity. At home, my dad was at
Speaker 3: home but he was. He was a present dad, but
Speaker 3: he was an absent father. My dad was present, but
Speaker 3: he was an absent father. There's a big difference between
Speaker 3: a dad and a father, huge different. So I looked
Speaker 3: for that identity in gangs. But it took on the
Speaker 3: form of different gangs over my high school years. But
Speaker 3: it just all kind of tumbled out. Maybe it was
Speaker 3: just a young man carrying a lot of hurt. It
Speaker 3: all just came tumbling out in you know, in various ways,
Speaker 3: but all pretty much negative.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and prison, left school.
Speaker 3: Jumping around with another group of kids, started going to
Speaker 3: the football which back in the eighties had a very
Speaker 3: aggressive and violent following, and football hooligans didn't get involved
Speaker 3: in it too much. But it was the people that
Speaker 3: I was jumping around with got in a gang fight.
Speaker 3: And since prison on my seventeenth birthday, to an adult prison.
Speaker 2: Oh for how long? What was your first sentence?
Speaker 3: Well, in total, I got nine years nine months. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: I ended up doing about three the cost of just
Speaker 3: how the sentencing works. But yeah, I kind of freaked
Speaker 3: out because I didn't quite know how long a sentence
Speaker 3: was because the judge you kept just throwing three years
Speaker 3: two years, three years, nine months, six months, six months,
Speaker 3: So it sounds more than it actually was, but I
Speaker 3: didn't know that at the time. Absolutely. I was actually
Speaker 3: quite relieved to get three years, you know, because I
Speaker 3: thought it was nine plus. So actually when the said nine,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, great, lovely, thanks, you know, but
Speaker 3: actually that was way too long anyway. But yeah, unfortunately
Speaker 3: that was the consequence of my choices. This is the
Speaker 3: reality of choices, and not only the prison sentence. You've
Speaker 3: got to bear in mind that we'd hurt people and
Speaker 3: that's unacceptable. But we didn't think like that back then.
Speaker 3: We didn't know that. Back then, we didn't you know,
Speaker 3: comprehend or perceive. We just went round being violence people.
Speaker 2: What was it? Can you record what it was like
Speaker 2: in the middle of that, being sixteen sixteen, seventeen, sixteen sixteen,
Speaker 2: being sixteen and being told and going through the sentencing
Speaker 2: process that you are going to be put in jail
Speaker 2: now for like you're only sixteen.
Speaker 3: So oh sorry, it was my seventeenth birthday.
Speaker 2: Sorry, yeah, oh happy to day around. Yeah, what a gift.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so at seventeen, you've one year is a
Speaker 2: long term. Look, one year is a lifetime at seventeen.
Speaker 2: So what was it like being put in jail for
Speaker 2: a number of years, of prison for a number of years.
Speaker 2: Can you remember what that felt like and what your
Speaker 2: perception of that was.
Speaker 3: Yeah'll never forget it. I mean, you know, you don't
Speaker 3: forget things like that. It's so real, it's so vivid.
Speaker 3: I can remember it. I can remember the first time
Speaker 3: going there, you know, the experience. So the jails in
Speaker 3: the UK, some of them, they're old Victorian jails and
Speaker 3: they were built and design in prominent positions around cities.
Speaker 3: You know, basically it's put the fear of God into
Speaker 3: the people living in that area that if you're a
Speaker 3: bad person, that's where they send you. You know, it
Speaker 3: was they were deliberately built around that, that kind of
Speaker 3: design and driving up to it. You know, kid seventeen,
Speaker 3: you know, handcuffed to a strange person. Police everywhere, you know,
Speaker 3: the transport, the police that transported you from court to prison.
Speaker 3: And then you get through the gate and you've got
Speaker 3: the high walls, the barred windows, You've got the noise,
Speaker 3: you you know, the smell, it stinks. You know, it's
Speaker 3: a mixture of filth and clinical cleaning products. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: then and then you go through the regime of you know,
Speaker 3: everybody that goes into prison, you have to take your
Speaker 3: close off to to you know, to leave them in property,
Speaker 3: so you can take on your prison uniform. But as
Speaker 3: part of that routine, they've got a kid to make
Speaker 3: sure you've not got any concealed drugs or weapons. So
Speaker 3: it's basically strip off and bend and squat. I'll leave
Speaker 3: the rest of yourself. Yeah, I was seventeen. I've got
Speaker 3: strange men and a male doctor, do you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? You know, and it's like you having a
Speaker 3: laugh with me, like no, stripping, squat, you know, it's
Speaker 3: kind of you know, next, next, next, not very nice.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I can remember it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What did that do to your identity? Does it?
Speaker 2: Like you've got this you're looking for a sense of
Speaker 2: belonging from the start, so you're exploring these gangs and
Speaker 2: looking for who you are, trying to find belonging, and
Speaker 2: then you're thrown into this prison environment. What does that
Speaker 2: do to your identity at seventeen? Like do you bick?
Speaker 2: You go, I'm a prisoner now this is my life.
Speaker 2: Did did it change you? Did it make you reflect?
Speaker 3: No? In a very what way. It actually enhanced my
Speaker 3: standing in the gangs. I have now got the badge
Speaker 3: of honor. I'm now in prison. I am a criminal.
Speaker 3: Like everybody's going to be talking about me out there,
Speaker 3: you know, in a very warped way. It just, yeah,
Speaker 3: enhanced my street profile, my street credibility that people will
Speaker 3: be talking about me or you know whatever. That went
Speaker 3: on for quite a few months until the reality kicked
Speaker 3: in and you know, and then you're just getting on
Speaker 3: with doing your jail. But I guess because I grew
Speaker 3: up in a very feral type of environment with very
Speaker 3: few boundaries and whatever, I just adjusted to my time
Speaker 3: in prison. I adjusted to being in prison. I ad
Speaker 3: just had to living in a cell. I adjusted to. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you just adapt, and feral people often do adapt. It's
Speaker 3: just another place to lay your head. It's just another
Speaker 3: place to do, you think. So, yeah, it was quite
Speaker 3: the opposite. Not really much time for reflection. Actually, my
Speaker 3: activities got worse in prison. Started taking drugs, carried on fighting,
Speaker 3: got into a lot of trouble. Yeah, quite the opposite
Speaker 3: to a rehabilitative environment.
Speaker 2: What type of drugs were you getting your hands on
Speaker 2: in prison?
Speaker 3: Cannabis, LSD and cocaine. Hell, do you really want to know?
Speaker 3: I mean, some of them come through visits, you know,
Speaker 3: people passed them over in visits and the people in
Speaker 3: the prison secrete them very without the officers seeing where
Speaker 3: they're secreting them. Yeah, we call them. Some officers bring
Speaker 3: them into prison because obviously the value is hugely increased
Speaker 3: in prisons nowadays. A lot dropped into prisons by drones.
Speaker 3: So the drones fire over and drop them in the
Speaker 3: prison yard, or people throw them. Yeah, all this is
Speaker 3: well known. I'm not giving you any state secrets or anything,
Speaker 3: but yeah, this is kind of how it works.
Speaker 2: You are in my noive little bubble.
Speaker 3: Thank thank thankfully you are in that now, you bubble.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so the stuff gets in in many under
Speaker 3: many guysers, and it's got its own market. You know.
Speaker 3: The prices increased probably fourfold, you know, for the substances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you're in prison, how does have it?
Speaker 2: How do you get the money to how does that work?
Speaker 2: How do you have the money to be at seventeen
Speaker 2: years old to be purchasing drugs?
Speaker 3: You? I mean, you know you can't you get a job,
Speaker 3: so you can't work. You know, in the prison. Now
Speaker 3: you don't get physical money, but you get credit, so
Speaker 3: you can, you know, if you want to buy something
Speaker 3: off someday, they'll give you a shopping list of things
Speaker 3: they want. You go and buy the stuff out of
Speaker 3: your money and then pass on the you know, pass
Speaker 3: on the shopping list. Or you can get money to
Speaker 3: their you know, from your family to their family outside
Speaker 3: you know who, then tell them that you know, said
Speaker 3: money has arrived, and you know, the transaction can continue
Speaker 3: in inside the prison. Prison Prisoners knock daft. Prisoners are
Speaker 3: not stupid. There's some very very very smart people in jail,
Speaker 3: some incredibly smart people, and if they only just shifted
Speaker 3: that direction of their life choices, they could succeed legitimately legally.
Speaker 3: There are some very very clever people.
Speaker 2: I am. Yeah. I love that. I've spoken to quite
Speaker 2: a few former prisoners in the past on the show,
Speaker 2: and I you know, the rehabilitative services that we have
Speaker 2: and the justice system as a whole gets me quite
Speaker 2: fired up because it's, you know, I see crime, especially
Speaker 2: here where I am at the moment, in our community pages,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of youth crime happening in this particular
Speaker 2: state I live in. Kids are kids are committing adult crimes,
Speaker 2: and then nothing's happening because they if they get taken
Speaker 2: in by the police, they get out on bail straight
Speaker 2: away like nothing. It's just getting a bit crazy, and
Speaker 2: so people are starting I see people in fear of
Speaker 2: these of this stuff that's happening with these youths. But
Speaker 2: then I'm also I'm not on board with the jail
Speaker 2: the process of putting people in jail, and we fail
Speaker 2: to rehabilitate properly. We're not rehabilitating people. We're punishing punished people.
Speaker 2: We're taking hurt people and we put them in them
Speaker 2: in a shitty, toxic system that actually doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 2: help them do whatever you've done, which we will talk
Speaker 2: about to really those I hate to change their laugh
Speaker 2: direction and make something of themselves. And I find that
Speaker 2: so frustrating and hard, and I have seen it from
Speaker 2: the inside.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's funding. It's clearly money, government money.
Speaker 3: It's financing the prison system, it's financing the services within
Speaker 3: the prison system. You know, I'm not a liberal that
Speaker 3: says we don't put them in jail. You know, some
Speaker 3: people need to go in jail. Society does have the
Speaker 3: right to be separated from people that can make criminal cs.
Speaker 3: So you know, I'm not like, don't send them to jail.
Speaker 3: If there's legitimate reasons, then absolutely, But when they are
Speaker 3: in jail, that's when we need to help them. You know,
Speaker 3: they're in a static position. They're not going anywhere. You know,
Speaker 3: they're in a position where they can apply themselves in
Speaker 3: terms of reflection, self awareness, getting help, or just trying
Speaker 3: to lay a foundation when they get out they can
Speaker 3: then build a new life upon. But there's no opportunity
Speaker 3: to build a foundation in the prison system, not in
Speaker 3: the UK anyway. M hm.
Speaker 2: So when you went into prison, was it just one
Speaker 2: stint in prison or did you Did you go in
Speaker 2: and out for a period of time.
Speaker 3: No, I did one, and then I managed to avoid
Speaker 3: going back through a variety of reasons, which is we
Speaker 3: don't have time for that. But yeah, I only went
Speaker 3: the ones. But when I got out of jail, I
Speaker 3: got even worse than you know what I'd been before
Speaker 3: I was in jail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what was the sense of getting released?
Speaker 3: Quite euphoric. You know, I'm happy to get home, happy
Speaker 3: to get back with my family. But yeah, the downwards
Speaker 3: spiral continued from there. You know, prisons are full of criminals, surprise, surprise.
Speaker 3: So you get phone numbers, you get connections, you learn,
Speaker 3: you know, it's a university of crime, so you know,
Speaker 3: you come out with a degree, you know in burdling techniques,
Speaker 3: stealing techniques, drug techniques, selling drugs, you know, criminal behavior.
Speaker 3: And I just delved into that world myself personally. Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, And what direct what was your immediate direction? What
Speaker 2: was Did you have a plan?
Speaker 3: Yeah, by drugs and start selling them. Wow, that was
Speaker 3: my plan. Yeah, easy money, you know, quick, easy money. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was a bit of a weird one because not weird,
Speaker 3: it was a bit of a strange one because there
Speaker 3: was a massive shift in social culture. So when I
Speaker 3: went to when I went to jail, there was a
Speaker 3: lot of violence, a lot of hooliganism around football, a
Speaker 3: lot of gangs. That was the that was the social
Speaker 3: norm that I grew up in. And then when I
Speaker 3: out of prison, all that had stopped and the rave
Speaker 3: scene was kicking in. So everybody was taking you know, MDMA,
Speaker 3: ecstasy and amphetamine and LSD. So the people that you know,
Speaker 3: a few short years ago that we used to fight against,
Speaker 3: we were all now going to clubs and dancing around
Speaker 3: telling each other we love them because we were off
Speaker 3: our head on drugs. Yeah, and this thing happened, this shift,
Speaker 3: this cultural shift. Actually it only took I don't know,
Speaker 3: two three years, four years, major shift socially among young people.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the fighting stopped and the drug taking started.
Speaker 3: And that's when I got out of prison, and you know,
Speaker 3: off I went down that path in life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and I'd read that you ended up with
Speaker 2: a quite a significant heroin addiction, correct. Yeah, how did
Speaker 2: that start? How did that play out? How did that feel?
Speaker 2: Excse me?
Speaker 3: I I went down the party drug rave scene kind
Speaker 3: of for a few years. Getting out of jail. I
Speaker 3: I met somebody in my partner at the time. We
Speaker 3: had a daughter together, but I was a terrible dad
Speaker 3: to us, taking drugs, selling drugs, non committed to the relationship,
Speaker 3: you know, would disappear for days on end, you know,
Speaker 3: just off dancing around some field or some warehouse or
Speaker 3: some derelict building somewhere. That relationship, as you can imagine,
Speaker 3: broke down. She kicked me out, and rightly so. But
Speaker 3: at that point I hit such a law, you know,
Speaker 3: the reality Now I don't know. I was in my
Speaker 3: early twenties, but I'd lived such a chaotic life even
Speaker 3: though I was in my early twenties, and it's almost
Speaker 3: like i'd lived a twenty thirty year, you know life.
Speaker 3: Everything that I'd crammed into that short few ten years.
Speaker 3: Some people wouldn't normally go through that in maybe thirty years.
Speaker 3: So it was quite intense and anyway, so the relationship
Speaker 3: brought down. I ended up living on a couch somewhere,
Speaker 3: and it was the one drug that I swore to
Speaker 3: myself I'd never never take. So I was happy taking
Speaker 3: everything else. You know. Apparently you know that that was okay,
Speaker 3: but in my mind, I swore to myself that was
Speaker 3: the place that I'd never go. But I got to
Speaker 3: a place in life where relationally, mentally, emotionally, physically, socially,
Speaker 3: I was in such a mess that the mess that
Speaker 3: I was in was greater than my resistance to heroin.
Speaker 3: The mess that I was in was greater than my
Speaker 3: resistance to heroin. So I gave him. You know, I
Speaker 3: just needed to suppress the mess. I needed to escape
Speaker 3: from the mess. I needed to forget about the mess,
Speaker 3: and I gave in. I smoked a little bit, and
Speaker 3: to be honest, he kind of worked to begin with,
Speaker 3: and I worked. You know, all the negative feelings and
Speaker 3: emotions and kind of mindset all disappeared till the next morning.
Speaker 3: Then we repeat the process, and then we repeat the process.
Speaker 3: Within two weeks, I had a habit. I was addicted.
Speaker 3: Two weeks doesn't say it long. Within three weeks, I
Speaker 3: was injecting myself and I was scared of needles, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't like going to the dentist or the doctor. Yeah,
Speaker 3: three weeks having injected myself. That was quite a decline,
Speaker 3: Quite a quick decline.
Speaker 2: Isn't it fascinating and equally terrifying? How we can have
Speaker 2: There's part of you that knew and knows how this
Speaker 2: would play out. But then there's the part of you
Speaker 2: that's experiencing a life, and in that moment, there's the choice.
Speaker 2: Was easy to go down that path, And there would
Speaker 2: have been part of you telling a story that I'll
Speaker 2: just do this for a minute because I need to,
Speaker 2: and then I'll sort this out or whatever, and then
Speaker 2: next minute, three weeks later, you're injecting and assume it
Speaker 2: grows from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one one injection at least two to four. I
Speaker 3: started selling heroin, got involved quite heavily in that lifestyle. Again, Yeah,
Speaker 3: nothing to brag about. It's just an appalling lifestyle, to
Speaker 3: be perfectly frank, but at the height of my addiction
Speaker 3: because I was selling it and I had an endless
Speaker 3: supply kind of thing. Yeah, I'm not exaggerating when I
Speaker 3: say that I would inject myself ten times a day,
Speaker 3: so all my veins collapsed, you know, my surface veins
Speaker 3: on my body, legs, arms, feet, toes, fingers. Yeah, not
Speaker 3: a very nice place to be in.
Speaker 2: Can you remember your lowest point? Was there? Was there
Speaker 2: a low point? Was there a tipping point?
Speaker 3: Yeah? One of them, so barely in mind. You need
Speaker 3: to find a surface vein to inject yourself, you know,
Speaker 3: to to you know, to administer the heroin into your bloodstream.
Speaker 3: Because of my massive use you know, the surface veins
Speaker 3: on my arms, my legs, my thighs, my toes, the
Speaker 3: act to my feet because they all collapse, you can't
Speaker 3: use them to inject. But I needed a vein. I'm
Speaker 3: a raging heroin addict. So I had a bright idea.
Speaker 3: One day I found one. O great, I found a vein.
Speaker 3: I have injected myself in parts of the male anatomy.
Speaker 2: You're going there and I'm like, no, this.
Speaker 3: Is not what he make a tear a man's cheek.
Speaker 2: God. Also kind of the big story ever, it's.
Speaker 3: Like an after dinner story, you know, you know, and
Speaker 3: it's like it's got a great tale. And my wife
Speaker 3: will look at me like, oh my gosh, here it
Speaker 3: comes again. You know, never a go moment with me,
Speaker 3: you know, And it's finding a way to attach appropriate
Speaker 3: humor when necessary, way you can to some of the choices,
Speaker 3: some of the stuff. You know. Now you'll be pleased
Speaker 3: to know that I stopped going at him very quickly
Speaker 3: because I didn't want to break it and you know,
Speaker 3: and it hurt, and it did hurt. Yeah, and it
Speaker 3: still works because I've got children. Yeah, it's the after
Speaker 3: dinner story that you know, Donna said it quite a
Speaker 3: few times now, you know. Again, it's just it's a
Speaker 3: depiction of just how bad, you know, the things that
Speaker 3: people do, the choices that addiction drives you to do.
Speaker 3: The desperation, the pain, the horror, the indignity, the embarrassment,
Speaker 3: the shame, you know, all that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 3: after that, I started injecting myself in my main femeral artery,
Speaker 3: which is in the neck of your leg, in your hips,
Speaker 3: which is the main artery that leaves your heart, goes
Speaker 3: down your leg and back up. It's a very very
Speaker 3: dangerous place to inject yourself, but it was better than
Speaker 3: the other one, you know kind of thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: just all of the above. You know that little kid
Speaker 3: year year seven, above average student across the board, with
Speaker 3: all his future ahead of him within you know, fifteen
Speaker 3: sixteen years.
Speaker 2: That's where it got to incredible. What at what point
Speaker 2: did you decide you wanted or needed to turn it
Speaker 2: all around? And was it a want or a need?
Speaker 3: It was both. I mean, there was a culmination of
Speaker 3: things that happened. My mum would see my daughter, who
Speaker 3: was probably five at the time. I couldn't see her
Speaker 3: on my own because I was so irresponsible and just
Speaker 3: watching her from a distance, and you know, the guilts
Speaker 3: and the regret on my part that I couldn't be
Speaker 3: a dad to it, I couldn't be responsible. You know.
Speaker 3: It was quite painful. And by the time I was
Speaker 3: twenty seven, fifteen of my school friends had sadly died
Speaker 3: as a direct link to overdose. Fifteen of them, you know,
Speaker 3: same school uniform, same school dinners, same school playground. Number
Speaker 3: fifteen was quite what's the word. It was awful. The
Speaker 3: circumstances around it. I can't really go into it, but
Speaker 3: the circumstances around it were pretty bad. And to be honest,
Speaker 3: I didn't want to be number sixteen, to be perfectly honest.
Speaker 3: But I didn't know how to get out of it.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if you could have been bear in mind,
Speaker 3: you know, heroine was kind of the new drug on
Speaker 3: the street kind of thing, and it had been for
Speaker 3: a few short years. So people that had got off
Speaker 3: it and left that lifestyle and were, you know, signposting
Speaker 3: other users how they can get off it. Well, there
Speaker 3: weren't anybody, you know, There wasn't anybody that had broke
Speaker 3: free and was creating a signpost path of this way
Speaker 3: to rehabilitation or this way to recover it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: just didn't want to die.
Speaker 2: So what was your path?
Speaker 3: It was a multifaceted path. It was I needed a rehab.
Speaker 3: I needed somewhere away from my geographical location, and I
Speaker 3: found that rehab in actually South Wales, not New South Wales,
Speaker 3: where you live Wales in the UK, which is a
Speaker 3: very green and very wet part of the UK. My
Speaker 3: Christian faith was massive in terms of having a north star,
Speaker 3: having a focal point to to help me something to
Speaker 3: focus on, something to you know, just something that doesn't shift.
Speaker 3: You know, we lived in a world where the social
Speaker 3: shifts were quite frequent. You know, social trend social trends
Speaker 3: and shift. You know, when you've got things that are
Speaker 3: emin and flowing all the time. For me, having a
Speaker 3: faith was something that was stable and steadfast that I
Speaker 3: could fix, you know, fix my eyes on and and
Speaker 3: just keep moving forward towards and then so I've got
Speaker 3: the rehab, I've got my faith, whichever order you want
Speaker 3: to put that in. Then what happens is the further
Speaker 3: into that path and that journey you get, you start
Speaker 3: to kind of build up some credits, you know, building
Speaker 3: my relationship with my daughters, start building my relationship with
Speaker 3: my family. You know, I get a month clean, I
Speaker 3: get two months clean, I get six months clean. You know,
Speaker 3: once you start building up some credits and you're carrying
Speaker 3: those credits, it helps you to keep on track. It
Speaker 3: helps you to keep going forward, you know, because you
Speaker 3: don't want to give it all up. You don't want
Speaker 3: to throw it all away kind of thing. But addiction
Speaker 3: is quite deceived, deceitful. Addiction is very deceptive. You know,
Speaker 3: just once, you know, just once, that little whispering voice
Speaker 3: on your shoulder. You know, it's all right, It's only once.
Speaker 3: But I've known people come through recovery and try one
Speaker 3: or just have it once for you know, nostalgic reasons,
Speaker 3: and it's killed them. Yeah, I know quite a few
Speaker 3: people that that's happened to, and I didn't want to
Speaker 3: be one of them. You know, I kind of enjoy living.
Speaker 3: It's quite nice, been alive. So I'm as guarded as
Speaker 3: I can bey in terms of what I do. And
Speaker 3: you know that that kind of lifestyle choices now. But yes,
Speaker 3: that was coming up to twenty seven years ago. I
Speaker 3: went into Rio, which is not a bad doom. Twenty
Speaker 3: seven years clean.
Speaker 2: And did you did you have any dips and falls
Speaker 2: from Grace in that period or was it were pretty
Speaker 2: stead first in.
Speaker 3: No, I've never touched heroine since, never took Heroine. I've
Speaker 3: I mean, it's been not dips like you know, going
Speaker 3: back to heroin and stuff, but it's been a tough journey.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's been an absolute flipping journey because I'm
Speaker 3: not just fighting for my freedom, I'm fighting for the
Speaker 3: freedom of those that come after me, and that primarily
Speaker 3: is my children, but then it's also people other people
Speaker 3: caught an addiction, you know. You see, I've got somebody
Speaker 3: who's ten years in front of me that I keep
Speaker 3: in contact with. Were good friends, you know, and he,
Speaker 3: you know, he's the one that's always kind of pulling
Speaker 3: me forward from his position of thirty odd years of recovery.
Speaker 3: Whereas I can extend that same batton of hope and
Speaker 3: batton of empowerment to people coming up behind me. And
Speaker 3: as long as we keep that chain moving them, helping people,
Speaker 3: we are using what was our mess, We're turning it
Speaker 3: into a message and using it to empower people to
Speaker 3: you know, to move through recovery.
Speaker 2: I love that miss to men. Yeah, I did always
Speaker 2: write down cool things you say. That could be a
Speaker 2: good title. I was like, Oh, from missed to a message,
Speaker 2: that's awesome. You're first, the first child you fathered at fifteen?
Speaker 2: Do you have contact with them? Did you ever?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So about twelve years ago. Very long story short,
Speaker 3: but I decided. I spoke to my wife about it,
Speaker 3: the possibility of having a child, and she's great, she
Speaker 3: was like, great, let's find him. And I'm like, oh, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: what kind of Yeah. So we we We actually looked
Speaker 3: for him through an agency in the UK Social Services agency,
Speaker 3: but we looked for him with his biological mum. So
Speaker 3: his biological mom gave him up as well. Oh well,
Speaker 3: he was fourteen at the time his biological mum, so
Speaker 3: I was fifteen, she was fourteen. So when the baby,
Speaker 3: when the baby was the decision was made by social
Speaker 3: services to put him in the adoption system. You know,
Speaker 3: she lost him as well.
Speaker 2: Wow, well, and so what was what was that lock
Speaker 2: to contact him? Was he receptive?
Speaker 3: Well, we contacted her first on Facebook, you know where
Speaker 3: you go for all life's information. Now, we contacted her
Speaker 3: and we went to an agency. It took about a year,
Speaker 3: but because we weren't because me and his mum weren't
Speaker 3: together as a couple, but we were looking together. At
Speaker 3: the end of the journey or the process, it was
Speaker 3: decided that she would contact him first if he responded,
Speaker 3: which he did. So he met his biological mom and
Speaker 3: her side of the family first. And then he obviously
Speaker 3: wanted to meet me, and he asked his biological one
Speaker 3: about me, and she knew about my past, so she
Speaker 3: was like, you better ask him. You know, I'll let
Speaker 3: your dad tell you, you know, kind of thing. I
Speaker 3: met him twelve years ago. He was twenty five at
Speaker 3: the time. Great guy. Interesting that if any of you
Speaker 3: listeners have ever experienced this, they will understand this. But
Speaker 3: if you haven't experienced it, you won't get it. As
Speaker 3: soon as I saw him, I loved him like the
Speaker 3: rest of my children. It wasn't formed, it wasn't built upon,
Speaker 3: it wasn't worked out, It wasn't it didn't even come
Speaker 3: through relationship. He was mine and I loved him.
Speaker 2: And the conversation I've got goose bands that is so powerful.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and what was what was it like for him?
Speaker 2: Did he talk like, was it yeah, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I wish I was there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, it was. I mean, it just it's
Speaker 3: like me, you know, it just it just rolls with
Speaker 3: the punchers. It does. So when it when he when
Speaker 3: he met his mom, his biological mom, they contacted with
Speaker 3: a letter and then had a phone call. And once
Speaker 3: you know, once you get a name go on the
Speaker 3: stalker book app, you know, get on Facebook, you know,
Speaker 3: start stalking people. His biological mum's family had arranged a
Speaker 3: birthday party for her eldest daughter, which was our son's
Speaker 3: younger sister. And you know, this was the night after
Speaker 3: that was already pre arranged and he turned up on announced.
Speaker 3: He literally just turned up at the part and said hello.
Speaker 3: You know, they obviously recognized him because they've all been
Speaker 3: on Stoker book and yeah, and that's the kind of
Speaker 3: thing that he did. But that's the kind of thing
Speaker 3: that I would do, you know, instead of messing around.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like just just rock up and roll
Speaker 3: with the punches. See what happens.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Well, and what's he like as an adult?
Speaker 2: What was he like? Was he like you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like me? And he's a bit taller than me,
Speaker 3: which the height does come from my granddad's side of
Speaker 3: the family. I have got some tall brothers. He looks
Speaker 3: is the spit double of my cousin. He is very
Speaker 3: well educated. His parents and dad, and they are his
Speaker 3: mum and dad that chose him to adopt him. You know,
Speaker 3: I've met them a few times. They were a lovely couple.
Speaker 3: My wife's met them. You know, we're not here to
Speaker 3: you know, take their place. You know, they chose him,
Speaker 3: They chose to love him and be parent him and
Speaker 3: be parents to him. So they did a fantastic job.
Speaker 3: He's a great guy. Doesn't know when to stop, which
Speaker 3: is a bit like me. And we always have these
Speaker 3: nature nurture conversations. You know, we do speak quite a
Speaker 3: lot on the phone. It doesn't live too far away.
Speaker 3: But he's got family, he's got four children, and you know,
Speaker 3: he's got life, so we do speak a lot on
Speaker 3: the phone. And yeah, the nature nurture. So when I
Speaker 3: meet with him and his wife and my wife, the
Speaker 3: wives are always looking at each other, rolling their eyes,
Speaker 3: might say, you know, looking at us too, and looking
Speaker 3: at them too, And how we behave and how we
Speaker 3: respond in any given situation, and the nature side of
Speaker 3: it is the fact between us in terms of our
Speaker 3: mannerisms and our just the way we process stuff, the
Speaker 3: way we do things. It far supersedes the nurturing aspective
Speaker 3: of how he's been raised. Now obviously me and my
Speaker 3: son Dwayne, we don't really see it, but actually onlookers
Speaker 3: like our wives that know us best see it all.
Speaker 3: The time, and it's quite evident to them.
Speaker 2: Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 3: That's a podcast in itself in itself, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's just one other dynamic and facet of my life.
Speaker 2: Just you know, yeah, that's pretty amazing. Have you written
Speaker 2: a book?
Speaker 3: I have? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Good, because I was If you haven't, you better because
Speaker 2: it's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 3: I'm looking. I'm just looking at on my library here.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there is one somewhere, so I been rude.
Speaker 3: I'm looking to see the booking. Do you know what
Speaker 3: the book's called? No, the Leopard that Changed Its Space?
Speaker 2: That's right, I remember gaze. Yeah, I feel like because
Speaker 2: I feel like I looked at that title and went, oh,
Speaker 2: that's a good title for the podcast too.
Speaker 3: I thought we had one.
Speaker 2: Oh and when did you write that? What was it
Speaker 2: like to write that story?
Speaker 3: Twenty six Well I started in twenty fourteen. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: started speaking to young people in prisons and schools before them,
Speaker 3: young people that were struggling, disengaged with the studies in prison,
Speaker 3: you know. So I started doing that in two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven. I kind of always had the idea in
Speaker 3: the back of my head for a book and not
Speaker 3: to be become an author. You know. It wasn't about
Speaker 3: the ego or the prestige. You know, it is about
Speaker 3: you know, that book never gets tired. I do so
Speaker 3: if I could write and conduct into the story, that
Speaker 3: would you know, continue spreading the story of recovery. That
Speaker 3: book can go further than I ever can. And it
Speaker 3: never stops. You know. One person reads it, passes it
Speaker 3: on and passes it on, you know, and it's the achievement.
Speaker 3: You know. Nobody in my family's ever wrote a book,
Speaker 3: But why can't I? You know, I'm that kind of person.
Speaker 3: You know, you tell me what I can't do, and
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what I can.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, kind of that kind of mindset. So starting in
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen, it probably took all together, it probably took
Speaker 3: two years. But I've got a wife and two young kids.
Speaker 3: I've got a business that I'm running, I've got life
Speaker 3: and responsibilities. The World Cup football tournament was on, so
Speaker 3: that took six weeks away from my writing because I
Speaker 3: do like in football, so I think all together, and
Speaker 3: I didn't want to rush it either. You know, it
Speaker 3: was quite therapeutic to write the chapters and things. Can
Speaker 3: you know, remember and recall some of the experiences in life.
Speaker 3: And it was important as well. And I would say
Speaker 3: this is not just for myself, but for anybody that
Speaker 3: thinks of writing a book. It's it's okay to show
Speaker 3: your scars, but it's not okay to show your wounds. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's okay to show your scars, but it's not okay
Speaker 3: to show you wounds. Because if you're writing a book
Speaker 3: from a place that you haven't healed, you can actually
Speaker 3: start to cover people with blood that haven't cut you.
Speaker 3: I know that's quite a graphic.
Speaker 2: No, I love that.
Speaker 3: Analogy that that book has actually been very kind to people.
Speaker 3: The book is not a blame game to other people.
Speaker 3: I'm not angry, I'm not hurting. I'm just telling the
Speaker 3: narration to empower and help people to connect with people,
Speaker 3: to relate to people. You know that actually, do you
Speaker 3: know what? If he can overcome certain things in life,
Speaker 3: if he can roll with the punches, if he can
Speaker 3: get back up after being knocked down again. And that's
Speaker 3: what the book is. It's not about looking at me,
Speaker 3: look how good I am. It's not about that. It's
Speaker 3: about listen, been through some shit, taking some punches, taking
Speaker 3: some low punches, taking some punches below the belt, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, some illegal punches, you know, to
Speaker 3: use the boxing metaphor. But the fact is, and again
Speaker 3: you know, this is, this is my opinion. But I've
Speaker 3: got a little saying. Listen, if you're alive, if you're breathing,
Speaker 3: and if you're not dead, you're on the winning side.
Speaker 3: You still you've still got a chance. Okay, until you're dead,
Speaker 3: until you stop breathing, until you're not with us anymore,
Speaker 3: you still have the potential to change, to recover, to grow.
Speaker 3: You know, I played the victim a lot, and to
Speaker 3: be fair, I was. I was the victim of many things,
Speaker 3: some of the things I haven't mentioned to you on
Speaker 3: this podcast, but some things that I mentioned in the book.
Speaker 3: Been through some really not nice stuff. And you know,
Speaker 3: so I'm responding from a place of respect for other listeners,
Speaker 3: for other people, But I played the blame game. It
Speaker 3: was always somebody else's fault. It was always, you know,
Speaker 3: because of X, Y and Z. But then somebody one
Speaker 3: said to me, but every time you point the finger,
Speaker 3: there's always three pointing back at you. You know, you've
Speaker 3: got to take personal responsibility for what part you've played now.
Speaker 3: You know, when I was much younger, there was no
Speaker 3: responsibility that I could have taken because I was a victim.
Speaker 3: But when you just when you round it all up
Speaker 3: your life story, when you come to that place of
Speaker 3: I need to change, I want to change, I will change,
Speaker 3: you know, not just a need to, not just I
Speaker 3: want to, but I will change. You know, it's changing
Speaker 3: the narration in your head. It's changing your confession, it's
Speaker 3: changing the words that you speak over yourself. I totally
Speaker 3: lost my train of thought now because this is what
Speaker 3: happens with me quite often in the club.
Speaker 2: Might do it all the time.
Speaker 3: Great, we're in good company.
Speaker 2: You're in good company.
Speaker 3: I anyway, back to the book, so something two years
Speaker 3: we did a print run, but most of the people
Speaker 3: that became beneficiaries of the book of people in prison.
Speaker 3: So we did we you know, we have sold some.
Speaker 3: We have yeah, we have sold some, but primarily ten
Speaker 3: eleven thousand copies have gone into the prison estates or
Speaker 3: you know, secure accommodation again to help people just see
Speaker 3: that they can change like I changed. You know, if
Speaker 3: you if you're breathing, if you're not dead, if you're
Speaker 3: still alive, do you want to change you know? Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know I've been punched here, I've been punched there,
Speaker 3: and you know I've been knocked down. Yeah. But are
Speaker 3: you still alive? Yeah? Well you're still on the winning side.
Speaker 3: And I don't want to sound callous or quite harsh,
Speaker 3: but do you know what recovery? You can't pussy foot
Speaker 3: around it. You can't you know, Molly coddle or put
Speaker 3: cotton wool. You know, you've got anybody that wants to
Speaker 3: recover from anything, and it doesn't just have to be drugs,
Speaker 3: can be anything. Do you want to move on from this? Yeah?
Speaker 3: But this? Yeah? But that? Yeah, but this, yes, but that? No, no, no,
Speaker 3: Do you want to move you know, let's forget that's foliage.
Speaker 3: Do you want to move on from this? Do you
Speaker 3: want to leave it where it is? Do you want
Speaker 3: to leave it in the past? Do you want to
Speaker 3: become victorious and overcome? That's the question that we start with,
Speaker 3: you know, and then we address all the other stuff
Speaker 3: as as you journey that recovery in whatever way, shape
Speaker 3: or form, you know that lands in a person's world.
Speaker 2: So good, can my listeners grab a copy of that
Speaker 2: book and anything else that you've got to share or
Speaker 2: where they can find you and follow you.
Speaker 3: Lived Experience Speakers, Lived Experience Speakers. That's a website. It's
Speaker 3: got a QR code and contactors if they want to
Speaker 3: copy of the book and follow what we're doing on Insta,
Speaker 3: on Facebook, LinkedIn. You know, we put out reels, we
Speaker 3: show what we're doing. We've got a diary on the
Speaker 3: website that shows where we're speaking and to how many
Speaker 3: young people or staff training, or a variety of things, sorry,
Speaker 3: a variety of arenas or events that we're speaking at.
Speaker 3: And the book is is about how we've how I've
Speaker 3: rolled with the punches, how I've you know, journeyed my recovery.
Speaker 3: And we always attribute recovery to a drug addiction, but
Speaker 3: recovery is anything. It can be health, it can be grief,
Speaker 3: it can be bereavement, it can be separated, you know,
Speaker 3: it can be anything. Mine's primarily addiction, drug addiction, but
Speaker 3: there are other areas, you know that I had to
Speaker 3: recover my dignity, my self, respects, my mental health, my
Speaker 3: emotional health, you know. So it's multifaceted, and it empowers
Speaker 3: people to be victorious. It empowers people to be overcomers
Speaker 3: that we are a profound piece of work as human beings,
Speaker 3: you know we are. We've got to give ourselves some credit,
Speaker 3: and we've got to refrain from playing the victim, even
Speaker 3: when we have been the victim. And I said that
Speaker 3: respectfully as somebody who's been a victim. You know, for me,
Speaker 3: it was about my narration, the words I was speaking,
Speaker 3: my mindset and my determination to roll with said punchers
Speaker 3: and change and then I can be a voice back
Speaker 3: to other people. And that's what lived experience is. It's
Speaker 3: giving the person with the lived experience a voice, whether
Speaker 3: it's myself, whether it's my wife or other people that
Speaker 3: we kind of work or partner or collaborate. But it's giving,
Speaker 3: it's empowering our voice. And it's not being ashamed, because
Speaker 3: victims often feel shame, but actually that shame needs to
Speaker 3: be put back on the perpetrator. Is that shame needs
Speaker 3: to be put back on the shelf or in the
Speaker 3: place where it came from. And there is no shame.
Speaker 3: Do you know what. We've all made choices in life,
Speaker 3: some more than others. We've all done some stuff that
Speaker 3: we're quite embarrassed about or a little bit shamed of
Speaker 3: or actually, you know, we'd rather not talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: but I think the more people are vocal, I think,
Speaker 3: you know, people like yourself doing podcasts and just creating
Speaker 3: a healthy platform for a voice, not an opinion, you know,
Speaker 3: not opinionating people. You know, a healthy place with a
Speaker 3: healthy voice, with a healthy perspective. And that perspective might
Speaker 3: not be everybody's, you know, there's always a different of opinions.
Speaker 3: You know, this is my opinion. These are my life lessons,
Speaker 3: these are my you know, steps of recovery for me.
Speaker 3: They've worked for me. I'm unique, I'm individual. I've got
Speaker 3: my own take on life. I do try and keep
Speaker 3: it as balanced and respectful of other people. However, it's
Speaker 3: my recovery, you know, it's my journey. It's it's you know,
Speaker 3: when when you're getting punched around in a boxing ring,
Speaker 3: it's not pretty getting back up, do you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? You might be fitting and sweating, there might
Speaker 3: be a bit of blood going all other people, you know,
Speaker 3: those that are watching those bystanders, But it doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that how that person gets back up is wrong just
Speaker 3: because I don't agree with it. Well, he should have
Speaker 3: got up on his left leg. You should have got
Speaker 3: up on his right leg, should do you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. It's like somebody getting up, He's never going
Speaker 3: to fit the mold. For everybody that anybody that is
Speaker 3: looking to pursue recovery, that's entering into recovery, they've got
Speaker 3: to find what works for them, you know, by all means.
Speaker 3: Listen to these podcasts. Take little bits from here to
Speaker 3: little bits from there. Gather information from anywhere and everywhere
Speaker 3: that's good and sound, but that has a track record.
Speaker 3: You know, Recovery is not a science. Recovery is not
Speaker 3: an intellectual property. Recovery is flipping hard. It's dirty, it's sweaty,
Speaker 3: it stinks at times. You know, it's not really nice.
Speaker 3: But we can do it. You know, we all can
Speaker 3: do it. So the book and the reason that I'm
Speaker 3: very vocal and you know, I speak up about my
Speaker 3: life experiences, my lived experiences, is to empower people because
Speaker 3: if I don't do it, who will? Or if somebody
Speaker 3: else doesn't do it, who will? So you know, we're
Speaker 3: not doing it for glory self satisfaction of sorts, because
Speaker 3: you know, talking about some of the things that I do,
Speaker 3: it's like putting you dirty washing up on the washing
Speaker 3: line for everybody to see. Yeah, you know, can you
Speaker 3: get the analogy that actually, you know what, it's a
Speaker 3: very thing that people like myself and others do. It's
Speaker 3: a very brave and courageous thing. We're not doing it
Speaker 3: for self satisfaction or glorification of ourselves. You know. We
Speaker 3: see human beings as powerful and profound and special and
Speaker 3: pressures and we want to help. We want to help
Speaker 3: where we can because the government funding local authority funding
Speaker 3: is minimal at best, whether in the UK or Australia
Speaker 3: or Tasmania or other countries, it's minimal at best. So
Speaker 3: we've got to play our part.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love what you do, I love
Speaker 2: what you share, I love how you talk. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for bringing parts of your story to this show.
Speaker 2: And I'll have a link to your website and the
Speaker 2: show notes so everyone can go and grab that book
Speaker 2: and hear all the gory bitch that you haven't told us.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I wish you all the best, keep up
Speaker 2: the great work.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, thank you, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Said it's now and never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2: Got it quite a coast got it. Little gur gotta
Speaker 2: lot of coast got it.