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Ep.79: Is alcohol a problem for your teenager?
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Does your teenager drink? If they're of legal age, how much do they drink, and do you worry that it's a problem? Is the partying at University becoming more of a regular drinking habit? What is normal drinking at that age, and when should you worry about addiction?
Ian Hawkins talks about how his addiction began at university, how it helped him, then got in his way, and how he recovered. He talks about anxiety, using alcohol as a coping mechanism, and to "fit in"socially, and when he realised it was a problem. He has advice for parents who are worried about their teenager's drinking.
Who is Ian Hawkins?
Ian Hawkins is a keynote speaker and business journalist who has risen to the top of his game – in spite of a lot of physical and mental challenges. Born with congenital heart disease in the 1970s, the odds were stacked against him. At the age of 6, he fell seriously ill, resulting in a 3 month hospital stay. Surviving this ordeal, he had to endure further challenges, including a traumatic struggle with alcohol addiction. But Ian says it’s adversity that has driven him to fight and become the success that he is today, working with some of the best known performers and on some of the best TV programmes in the UK.
More teenage parenting from Helen Wills:
Helen wills is a teen mental health podcaster and blogger at Actually Mummy, a resource for midlife parents of teens.
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the Teenage Kicks podcast to hear new episodes. If you have a suggestion for the podcast please email [email protected].
There are already stories from fabulous guests about difficult things that happened to them as teenagers - including losing a parent, becoming a young carer, and being hospitalised with mental health problems - and how they overcame things to move on with their lives.
You can find more from Helen Wills on parenting teenagers on Instagram and Twitter @iamhelenwills.
For information on your data privacy please visit Zencastr's policy page
Please note that Helen Wills is not a medical expert, and nothing in the podcast should be taken as medical advice. If you're worried about yourself or a teenager, please seek support from a medical professional.
This episode is produced by Michael Cunningham.
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Transcript
Introduction to Teenage Kicks Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Helen, it's a thing we all have to do for ourselves is we are either the lead player in our own stories, our main character, or we are a bit part player. And it's a very simple choice. What do you want to be? Do you want to be a bit part player in your own story? No, you do not. You want to be the hero.
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to the Teenage Kicks podcast where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager. I'm Helen Wills and every week I talk to someone who had a difficult time in the teenage years but came out the other side in a good place and has insight to offer to parents and young people who might be going through the same.
Meet Ian Hawkins: Overcoming Heart Disease and Addiction
00:00:51
Speaker
Today I'm talking to Ian Hawkins. He's a keynote speaker and a business journalist who's risen to the top of his game in spite of a lot of physical and mental challenges. Born with congenital heart disease in the 1970s, the odds were stacked against him. At the age of six, he fell seriously ill, resulting in a three-month hospital stay.
00:01:14
Speaker
Surviving this ordeal, he had to endure further challenges, including a traumatic struggle with alcohol addiction. But Ian says it's adversity that has driven him to fight and become the success that he is today, working with some of the best known performers and on some of the best TV programmes in the UK.
00:01:34
Speaker
Adversity and overcoming it and thriving anyway is something we talk about a lot on this podcast. So I'm going to ask Ian how his illness shaped him, how he approached his addictions and what he'd say to any young person who's currently struggling with a difficult diagnosis. Ian, welcome to the podcast.
00:01:52
Speaker
Hello, Helen, thank you for having me. I always think... You said you weren't unpolished. You said you weren't unpolished. I always sort of tense up when I hear people say, oh, in spite of his problems, he's managed to do this. Because I always think it's because of these things that I've had an interesting life. And, you know, looking back on it, I think, well, it's given me quite a lot of stuff to go on, quite a lot of experiences.
00:02:21
Speaker
And I'm not really, you know, you say, would you change anything? I look back and I go, well, I wouldn't want to hurt some of the people I may have hurt, but I definitely for myself, no, I can't think of what I would change.
00:02:35
Speaker
I'm quite happy where I am.
Adversity Stories: Type 1 Diabetes and Life Challenges
00:02:37
Speaker
I hear that so many times and I've done work with people in addiction and in recovery from addiction and the majority of them, when they're out the other side, you're never finished with an addiction. I know it's a lifelong piece of work for most people.
00:02:58
Speaker
When they're in a better place on the other side of that they will all say very similarly and I can relate to it because my daughter has type 1 diabetes which is a life changing illness and very dramatic and difficult to come to terms with and very difficult to live with on a day to day basis for the rest of your life.
00:03:16
Speaker
Now, I think that she would say, yeah, I'd give it back in a heartbeat, but she's 19. And I would say give it back in a heartbeat because it's incredibly painful to watch your child have to deal with that and know that it's for life. But.
00:03:33
Speaker
I've seen quite how much she's done and I don't know if it's because of, in spite of or if she would have got there anyway but I do firmly believe that it's made her who she is quicker than she would have otherwise got there, if that makes any sense.
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think it might be an empathy thing. You can see things from the other side better. If you sail through life without a care in the world, then when somebody says, oh, this terrible thing has happened to me, you know, it doesn't compute.
00:04:07
Speaker
If somebody says that something terrible has happened to me and you go, oh goodness, yes, I went through something similar. I went through this, I went through that. And it's not the same, but your troubles and traumas are slightly closer to the surface, shall we say. Well, you've experienced pain. Yeah. And you can then go, well, I know that what being hurt feels like, so I'm with you on that.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I actually some of the people I'm closest to now are people whose children have awful diagnoses and horrible situations in their lives that I can't relate to because they're not the same as mine. And they can't relate to mine because they're not type one diabetes. You only really get another person who's got exactly the same thing as you.
00:04:58
Speaker
But you can absolutely relate to the pain that someone else has been through of something entirely different but that causes similar levels of pain.
00:05:11
Speaker
No, I can't think of a response to that because I just think you've nailed it. Because you feel very silly, don't you, when you say, oh, it's something, I know how you feel because that's a terrible thing to say to anybody, isn't it? I know how you feel because dot dot dot happened to me. And you don't really, but what you can do is say, I have some empathy because I've had a little bit of that, or I've had a tenth of what you've gone through.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's the empathy, as you said, having empathy is a learned, should we call it a skill? It is a skill. For some people it's innate and for others it comes through adversity and difficulty. With that in mind, let's get started.
Teenage Rebellion and Consequences
00:05:57
Speaker
Ian, always begin this podcast with
00:06:01
Speaker
talking about your childhood and in particular your teenage years. Now obviously what happened for you happened much earlier and I wonder how much of it you remember but I'm guessing it had a huge impact still throughout your teenage years so I'd love to hear about that.
00:06:18
Speaker
Sure. I think as a teenager, it was quite a difficult thing to look back on and process what had happened. So I was in hospital for a long time. I had very traumatic open heart surgery, which means they break your sternum, they pull your heart out, they cut it in bits, clean it out, stitch it back together, push it all back in. And as soon as you are up and walking around and out of hospital,
00:06:46
Speaker
then you are cured. You are better. The story is finished. Go off, they said, and live a normal life as best you can. Unfortunately, I mean, you've read my biography, haven't you, Helen? So you'll know that a normal life was not what I ended up having. No. But as a teenager, I think I always had this
00:07:10
Speaker
sort of balancing act, which I think a lot of teenagers do, between wanting to rebel on the one side and feeling that there are actually quite dire consequences if you don't. The sort of taste of consequences and being told, also trying to emerge from the cotton wool which parents will inevitably wrap you in.
00:07:32
Speaker
completely understandably at a time in your life when actually you just want to get out and have some independence and stay out late and find the off-license that will serve a 15, 16 year old and do which I count as all the quote unquote normal things. Doing all that, I still maintain but so very good friends with my best friend from school.
00:08:01
Speaker
And we'd look back and we'd go, my God, we were really good kids, weren't we? Really? Not because I think we behaved impeccably, but we never got in trouble because we never got caught. And I think that's quite... If you're getting caught, you're causing trouble to somebody.
00:08:22
Speaker
And so I'm quite relaxed about saying I was certainly not a saint when I was growing up, but I don't think I caused anybody any more trouble than I gave myself. I hope. I don't think so.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, no, I get that because yeah, even if you're fine, if you're worrying somebody, that's painful for that person. And on that note, I just want to pick up on what you said about the normal teenage struggle with parents who want to keep you safe. What's that?
00:08:58
Speaker
more so throughout your teenage years than your friends who hadn't had a medical condition to deal with because I'm just wondering, I mean, I'm relating because as a parent of somebody who faces quite difficult challenges with normal teenage behaviours, i.e. alcohol and insulin can be a lethal cocktail, literally.
00:09:25
Speaker
I've really struggled as a parent to know how to let my daughter be a normal teenager and do everything that her friends are doing, which I always wanted and swore I would make sure happened from the day she was diagnosed, and keeping her safe. And so I've often worried that I'm a
00:09:46
Speaker
I've been more, well, of course I've been more protective of her than she would want me to, but I could let her do anything and I'd still be a thorn in her side from that point of view because she's a teenager. Did you sense that sort of fear from your parents? I think a little bit. That said, I do think my parents did give me quite a lot of
00:10:08
Speaker
latitude. In that, I do remember jumping on my bike and cycling half an hour across town to go and spend nights out with my friends from about the age of 15, 16. Great. Normal life, right? Normal life.
00:10:26
Speaker
cycling on roads without really worrying about it. Without a helmet. Without a helmet. It was the 90s. We did this kind of stuff. So the first thing, the reason why me and my still best friend are still, were best friends back in those days is because we had this love of theatre. We put on a theatre production at my local theatre and we literally went, wrote this show, took it to the local theatre and went, what can you do for us?
00:10:54
Speaker
And they said, well, you can't have the main house, but you can have the studio theater and it's 150 seats and we'll split the box office with you 50-50. Now I know that's a terrible deal, but back then. Yeah. Or you do anything for money when you're 15. So we put on a show when we were 16 years old, invited all our friends to it, sold it out two nights. And I think six months later we did it again for three nights and sold it out and took the money. Thank you very much. Amazing.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah, but we're still friends. And we both went to a comprehensive school. We both wanted to be writers. And he's a journalist and a writer now, works in telly and all sorts. And I, you know, I've made it my life. So I think I think it's so we were we were basically good kids with ambitions. And all right, we did go and
00:11:51
Speaker
do a bit of boozing and caroozing. But we were, you know, we did all right. And he was, we felt we had the freedom to do this kind of thing. I think my dad's quite entrepreneurial. So he was never, so I think he quite liked the idea of us going off and, you know, build the show here. And it's quite
00:12:15
Speaker
You know, I look back on that and I think it's quite something for a couple of 16 year olds to gather a bunch of friends and go, let's write a two hour show with music and write up a, we were both doing GCSE drama, so we knew how to write a cue sheet for the technician and to have the moxie to say, to go into this Edwardian theatre and say, can we borrow your theatre for a couple of nights?
00:12:41
Speaker
Brilliant. My nephews were like that. Really enterprising was playing a really good musician and was playing in string quartets at weddings at the age of 16. That was his Saturday job. It was brilliant. I would love to have had that sort of enterprise. I just worked at the local swimming baths. Well, horses for courses, but even
00:13:06
Speaker
just going out and taking a job and saying, this is what I want to do this. Just going out and having the thinking, I need some money, get a job, spend that how you like. That gives a young person quite a lot of
00:13:22
Speaker
freedom and responsibility as well. My uncle, now sadly, he died last year, but when he was at school, he was a sixth former, he used to get banned to his local school. And who did he get? David Bowie. No. Yes. Oh my God. Well, look, even David Bowie had to start somewhere.
00:13:48
Speaker
I don't think it was starting. I think he was, he was headlining this, this mini music festival. Amazing. All right. It wasn't Ziggy, Stardust and Spice from Mars, but it was, it was just prior to that. I think it was quite exciting.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, very. Oh, I love that sort of enterprise. But look, as you're talking, I'm thinking, so this sounds like a normal childhood, normal teenager, just really shitty thing happened when you were six, but you're fine. But clearly, given everything you've said about your life after that, you weren't. When did things start to hit for you from a mental health point of view?
University Struggles: Depression and Alcohol
00:14:23
Speaker
I think it was a university. I think when I was suddenly on my own and cut off from my friends and my family, I started getting quite this sort of underlying depression. And depressions are quite an interesting
00:14:40
Speaker
illness. What do they call it? They call it the common cold of psychiatry. Do you know why they call it that? Because nobody cares if you've got it really. Nobody really gives a shit. It's of depression. How unexciting. Come back when you've
00:14:56
Speaker
I care. I'm nearly a qualified psychotherapist. I care about depression a lot. I know, but that's not the impression you get when you've wafted in front of your GP or then, indeed, go see a psychiatrist and then go and have therapy. That's therapy on the NHS. Anyway, all through my 20s, I was having this quite bad depressive episodes and self-medicating, of course, with alcohol because
00:15:25
Speaker
like all the affective disorders, depression, anxiety, you go, right, I want to take the edge off. And the world is very, very big. And alcohol, the beauty of alcohol as a drug is that it really
00:15:39
Speaker
brings in the blinkers and you see less and less and less and you get deeper, more and more tunnel vision. And marvelously for a drug which is freely available, often given to you as a treat that has all these associations with it and wonderful history and background of
00:16:00
Speaker
how it was produced. Socially acceptable. Very socially acceptable. And just completely, I totally fell in love with alcohol. What a brilliant drug it was for me. Because it took away all the edge and all the worry and all the anxiety. And if you're not feeling happy, you just have another drink. Fantastic. Don't know what to do with your afternoon. Have a couple of drinks. You stop worrying about the time ticking by.
00:16:30
Speaker
And that's pretty much how I spent about a decade of my life. Right. And were you around other people who were doing the same? No, I was a very solitary drinker. And now I would go out with other people, of course. And now they all tell me, God, we used to drink with you and we used to think, how are you drinking way too much? You know?
00:16:52
Speaker
Oh, really? Even students and 20-somethings. Yeah. And my doctor would say to me, how much do you drink? And I would say, not as much as a junior doctor. And she would laugh. And I feel I've made my point.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of people with alcohol addiction who are very funny and have really snappy comebacks and defence shields I've found that again are quite socially acceptable. It's something that you laugh about. You wouldn't say that about heroin, would you?
00:17:23
Speaker
No, but we sober up. We see the world. We have these ideas. We get drunk. We put all those ideas and those difficult things into this nice, safe place beyond the blinkers, beyond the veil, if you like. And we look at it with a slightly different view. And then when we are challenged by clean, bright, non-addicted people. I can't speak for anybody else, but I thought about my addiction a lot.
00:17:53
Speaker
the smarter you are, I think the more good reasons you have for carrying on. And I had lots of good reasons for carrying on, I have to say, which were that it did get me through the day. It did mean that I was able to function and do all kinds of things that I didn't think I'd be able to do if I didn't have a gin and tonic in one hand. Of course, now I've sobered up and I look around, I go, blimey, I've written three articles before breakfast.
00:18:21
Speaker
Yeah. This is remarkable. How have I done this? Oh, because you don't have a hangover. That'll be it. Yeah. Yeah. So what, I mean, you must know now that you've, you've been through that recovery process, what wouldn't you have been able to do without alcohol back then?
00:18:40
Speaker
I think I'd have found it. Alcohol was a great social enabler for me because I find small talk really difficult. And then of course I've discovered I don't really have very much big talk either, but small talk, very, very tricky.
00:18:56
Speaker
And being out socially, I would find that I couldn't really do it unless I had a drink in one hand and chatting to people. And I was working in events where it was essential that you chat to people and network and do all that kind of thing. Now, of course, I still don't like chatting and networking and quite like networking, but I don't like
00:19:19
Speaker
I don't like the trying to make myself heard or do small talk with strangers in a noisy room. So I'm very good at telling myself, you can do this for 30 minutes. I'm very good at slipping away when I can sense that the consumption of alcohol in the room around me has reached a point where if I slip away, nobody will notice. And I can go in and
00:19:45
Speaker
now manage those conversations and get out of them something that's useful for both of us. I went to a networking event this week and while it was filling up, it was all very manageable because there weren't too many people around and you could just go, oh, I'm early as well. Look at you and have some nice chats. And by the time we were about an hour in, everybody had arrived.
Navigating Sobriety in Social Situations
00:20:08
Speaker
Everybody was noisy. They turned the music up. I couldn't hear anything anyway. So I just,
00:20:14
Speaker
slipped away having completed my dance card, Helen. Well what you're describing is knowing yourself well enough to respect your own boundaries.
00:20:27
Speaker
Hmm. I guess so. And I think, I think that's a very important lesson for anybody to learn what their boundaries are, what they're going to put up with. So I was invited on one occasion to speak at an event. And if there was, it was all, it was all very poorly organized and it was running over time. And I just said, I volunteered, look, you're running over time. I don't think you can have time for all the speakers. So not me. Thank you.
00:20:57
Speaker
And they're like, oh, are you sure? Are you sure? And I said, do you know what? Let's respect the audience. They said they're going to be out by 3 o'clock. If I speak as well, it'll be 3.30, 3.40. That wasn't a paid job, I have to say. That was me doing it as a, this is a little while ago when I was trying a few things out. And I thought, this isn't right for me in all sorts of ways. And I'm just going to step back from it and go,
00:21:24
Speaker
It's actually gonna do more harm than good if I go on. I don't want any audience sitting there going, oh God, another one looking at their watch going, come on Hawkins. But actually kudos to you for being able to say that to the people in charge because that's, oh well, we talk a lot about psychological safety in the workplace now and that is feeling psychologically safe. If you're able to go to the powers that be, the organisers and sailor are not comfortable with this, I wanna do it differently.
00:21:54
Speaker
So again, that is boundaries. As you said, that's knowing yourself and knowing that you're okay with doing something that someone else may not be okay with. It is remarkable. So I look around some of the bosses I've had, the ones that have created a safe environment and the ones that haven't. The ones that have created a safe environment have done this trade-off of short-term pain because it's like, oh, I wanted this to happen, but you've said you're not going to do it or you're not comfortable with long-term
00:22:24
Speaker
benefit, which is that they retain people, frankly. The people I've worked with, there's someone who's fired me twice, but I find it very hard to say a bad word against them because they
00:22:44
Speaker
there's no sign to them. There was never any passive aggression. There was never any nonsense. They were, they do, it does what it says on the tin. And if somebody says, should I work with this person? I say, talk to them in five minutes, if you'd like them, you should work with them. And if you don't like them, tell them you don't like them and hang the phone, hang up. And they'll be, you know, it will not hurt their ego one little bit.
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah, well that's where we all need to be striving to be, isn't it? Showing up as our authentic selves and coping with the fact that some people won't be for us because of that and that's okay. But that's a really difficult thing to get your head around.
00:23:28
Speaker
Well, I was going to say, through recovery from addiction, I think you learn to show up as your authentic self because that's the thing you've been avoiding with the addiction. That's the thing that you've been shutting out, blocking, numbing, moving away from.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, Ian's a lot of fun. It's like, well, yes, he is because he's a bit drunk and a bit charming and a bit funny. So that solves a lot of problems. Yeah. But then when you recover and you do show up as your authentic self, the world gets a lot richer. But that's a very difficult thing to know, understand and act on as a teenager.
00:24:12
Speaker
Teenagers are very sensitive, aren't they? And I think it's because they're learning about their boundaries. They're learning about how to have defenses that are that are healthy. Whereas my defense is always a gin and tonic or a glass of wine, but a defense mechanism that's healthy.
00:24:28
Speaker
Okay. So a friend of mine just changed jobs and his old job was making him sick. His old job was making him depressed and anxious and all these kinds of things. And he's just walked into a new job. And I said to him, how many interviews did you have in the end? And he said, well, I had three interviews with three different companies.
00:24:46
Speaker
And I went, right, okay, so can we agree that you're in demand and that you never ever have to let a job or an employer make you feel like that again? And if they start giving you any nonsense, you just go, do you know, I turned down two other jobs to be here. I'm sure, I'm sure that there's, there's plenty more out there where they will treat me better, pay me better, give me more time off and give me more dignity and respect and not drop, drop that, drop it on me that I'm working late every night for the week, you know, on the day.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah. And I hope that that is, you know, he was very anxious and very upset about things a month ago. I hope that that has sort of sunk in. He's gone, oh, I don't need to feel like that again. That's about security and safety as well, isn't it? Well, security and safety is about belonging. And that's the thing that I think the teenagers have got to struggle with. Of course, they're finding out about themselves, who they are, what their boundaries need to be. But they're also
00:25:46
Speaker
needing to fit in. And that is a biological need to be part of a tribe that comes from, well, that means survival. If you don't fit in, you don't survive. That's historical in our race. Yeah. And don't we give teenagers really bad messages at the moment, which is, oh, teenagers are all awful. Yeah, don't get me started on that. We could be here all morning. I get so angry about that message.
00:26:15
Speaker
It's like, oh, I used to love my baby when he was 18 months, two years old. Like, yeah, but they're not going to stay that way. Yeah, to not love him now.
00:26:26
Speaker
I'm saying, okay, I'm not a parent and I would make a terrible father, I know that, but I tell you what, I think I'm a pretty good gay uncle, a very good gunkle and I have my nephew staying with me at the moment and he goes out, he's 17 and he goes out and he sees his friends, he goes to, he says, I've just walked to Camden, I've just done this, I've just done that, I'm delighted to see him in the evening, I'm turning to proper old
00:26:51
Speaker
Nice. I bet he loves that. I'm like, what do you like eating, Owen? He says, I really like curry. It's like, great, I make a curry in the slow cooker. And I'm really pleased to see him in the evening and find out what his day has been and what he's been up to while he eats my food. By the sound of it, you'd probably be a good parent.
00:27:11
Speaker
But okay, so look, getting back to you in your 20s, late teens at university, drinking, not struggling with addiction because for all you're telling me, it sounds like you were perfectly happy like that. I was not struggling with addiction. I was embracing it full on. Yeah. Do you know now what you were hiding from?
00:27:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think I was hiding from, I was avoiding confrontation with, I was avoiding a confrontation with being responsible for my own future. And I think I was very good at saying, this is somebody else's, somebody else can deal with this. Yeah, I
00:28:02
Speaker
And yeah, I think that was it. I've just done a whole course on LinkedIn about avoiding filler words and I've just given you about a minute of filler words. Well, do you know what though Ian, what that tells me is that this is not an easy, comfortable subject for you. Yeah. Right. So.
00:28:26
Speaker
big boy pants on, I was avoiding confrontation. I think I was avoiding confrontation with being responsible for my own future. And that led me to making, we never stop making decisions. Sometimes the decision is to let other people make the decisions for us. And that's a decision. And I think I did quite a lot of that. And I have noticed in the last five years or so,
00:28:53
Speaker
that since I have taken on board making my decisions, not all of them have been great, but in aggregate, they have led to a healthier, better life and a more relaxed, stable and sustainable lifestyle, I think. Hmm. Hmm.
Taking Control of Your Life Story
00:29:19
Speaker
That's really profound.
00:29:22
Speaker
And it's reflective of what all of us, I think need to know that we are responsible for our own lives and our outcomes. Because if we don't take responsibility and that backfires on us, eventually people will walk away from us. And so it forces us to take responsibility. But once we've done that, not every decision we make is going to be perfect. And that's okay. That is okay. What?
00:29:50
Speaker
I talk about as a keynote is storytelling and the tentpole that every story hangs on is a decision because plot and character are kind of the same thing. Plot is driven by a character's decision and the decision tells you everything about a character and a plot cannot happen unless that character makes that particular decision. So plot, character, they will go together and it's a decision that is the main thing.
00:30:18
Speaker
If you take your favourite book, your favourite film, and you go to the middle, you will discover the main character in that narrative is making a decision. And that is kind of what the whole story is about. And that's why I talk about the importance of storytelling and the importance of
00:30:44
Speaker
the responsibility of that decision. So when I was in hospital and I would tell people I spent three months in hospital having this surgery, okay, that's a great story. And it is a great story because at the time I was in hospital, it was something like 90% of people born with my condition didn't make it to adulthood.
00:31:01
Speaker
And now it's 10%. So it's 90% survival rate. So what a fantastic story of flipping the statistics. What a fantastic story of surviving against the odds. But it's not really my story because I didn't make a decision. I just got sick and somebody else came in and fixed me. And they said, go off and live a normal life. Good luck.
00:31:25
Speaker
It wasn't so I had ended up like my, my story was sort of told and over by the time I was eight, nine years old. And, and every time somebody said, you can't do that because you, because of your heart condition, you can't do this. You can't do that. They're just saying, that's the end of your story. Sorry. I know you want to do this, but you've reached, uh, reached the final chapter, the end. Right.
00:31:50
Speaker
And it wasn't until I went, actually, no, that's not the end of my story. That's the beginning of my story. OK. What happens now is a decision. And in that decision, you make that story about yourself. And Helen, it's a thing we all have to do for ourselves is we are either the lead player in our own stories, our main character, or we are a bit part player.
00:32:22
Speaker
And it's a very simple choice. What do you want to be? Do you want to be a bit popular in your own story? No, you do not. You want to be the hero. And once you start making those decisions, you then start going, ah, the story continues. When you get to the end of a book, it's done. When you're in the middle of the book, anything can happen. You've still got a twist in front of you.
00:32:46
Speaker
You still have the denouement. You still have somebody coming in, a character coming in at the last minute and surprising you. Thank you for sharing all that. As you were talking about what happened to you when you were six and how it happened to you, you weren't part of it. And the fact that statistically you shouldn't have survived.
00:33:12
Speaker
I could totally see why you might have had a reason to try and avoid part of yourself in later life, because that felt, as you were describing it, like a massive responsibility to carry that six year old story as an adult who shouldn't have survived.
00:33:39
Speaker
feels like such a heavy burden. Is that anything like how it felt for you? I think you've articulated it very well but I don't think that in the moment that's how I experienced it because
00:33:53
Speaker
thank goodness the distilleries and the brewers of this world had got in the way and had stopped me from quite getting to that point by myself. And so these things are all interconnected. I think, yeah, I don't think I ever had it in my mind quite like that, but certainly it was bubbling away under the surface.
00:34:17
Speaker
And this idea of what you do with this responsibility, which is why are you wasting your time? Why are you wasting your life doing stuff? Don't you have a responsibility to be much more successful, to be much richer, to be much happier? And that's the terrible thing when you're addicted to a depressive substance like alcohol. And cumulatively, it's making you sadder and sadder.
00:34:44
Speaker
And you're going, what right do I have to feel so sad and to be depressed? That's the feeling I was getting. You beat the odds and therefore you have to have this great amazing life that finishes the story. And that's a lot of pressure. Anybody would want to escape that.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yes, happiness is like trying to fish a shard of eggshell out of a mixing bowl, isn't it? You know, when you put your finger in and you go, I'm just going to take this bit of eggshell out and every time you get close to the eggshell, the viscosity of the egg white moves it away from your finger and you dab away.
00:35:31
Speaker
it all because I was too lazy to get a spoon. I was just going to say pop tip on a practical note, a teaspoon. It does it. Welcome to Bake Off with Ian and Helen. And you're just looking at the card, sitting there, I've got a wet finger and a shard of
00:35:53
Speaker
And I was just trying to make a cake. And isn't this a metaphor for life? Yeah, it really is. Right, so Ian, tell me how you in the cake baking of your addiction and recovery, where you've man how did you fish that eggshell out? Tell me how things went for you when you when did you realize that you had to do something about
The Decision to Quit Alcohol
00:36:20
Speaker
it? And what did you do?
00:36:21
Speaker
I had a very... I traumatized myself with a night on the source that was... It was one of those moments where I just thought, if there was cleaning fluid in this house, I would drink it. And I just had one of those moments where I went,
00:36:42
Speaker
I am totally this is so far out of control. And, you know, woke up at a friend's house. And I just thought to myself, Oh, my God, if this is not rock bottom, and to have humiliated myself in front of friends, which was the worst of it. And I just thought, if if this is not rock bottom, I do not want to see what rock bottom looks like. Because it was
00:37:11
Speaker
bleak and I don't think you quite get that how bleak it can be until you've got a, you know, you're mired in it and you are deeply into an addiction.
00:37:30
Speaker
And you've got to hang over on top. And the strange chemical nature of proper depression is because you can tell you can tell when it's on you that it's that it's that it's not of yourself. There's something quite otherworldly about about depression and just this feeling of of going. Everything feels shattered.
00:38:00
Speaker
And the horror of it is that it can't be put back together. But then you have a moment where you go, actually, you can't put it back together as it was. But if something changes, you might be able to salvage something from this mess. And decision one,
00:38:29
Speaker
was I'm not going to drink again today. Right. And I fell on that as my I'm not going to drink today, maybe tomorrow, because forever is a very long time. And forever, if you say I will never do this, you're setting yourself up for a failure. But if you say I'm not going to drink today, today is manageable.
00:38:55
Speaker
I've heard Davina McCall say that with her drug addiction she's been very vocal about how she can't think about forever because that would be overwhelming and she'd immediately relapse.
00:39:09
Speaker
Yeah. And people do say to me, oh, you're never going to have another drink again. Oh, God. Don't say that. Don't say that. Let's not say never. The other one was yesterday, which was, it's amazing you don't feel temptation anymore. I said, oh. Is that the impression you've given? I've given that impression. I'm like, well, OK. Good, fine. But I can resist temptation for today.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah. So that's fine. Yeah. And did you do that alone or did you have some support with that? No, I did that by myself. Wow.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't, I did about 18 months after I sobered up, I went to AA and I went to one meeting with a friend and it was so not me that I just couldn't do it. I could not, I couldn't do it. I mean, and also AA doesn't even have a very good success rate.
00:40:19
Speaker
I mean, if you're watching this or listening and you're finding it very helpful, good, I'm glad, I'm really glad. But its success rate is not good. And higher power, sorry, I don't want this to reflect on anybody else that has found it useful.
00:40:44
Speaker
My personal experience is that if you need God to tell you not to have a drink, I'm really sorry, but we're grown-ups. God doesn't exist. OK. And I'm really sorry that I have to break that news to adults, which I seem to have to do quite a lot. Right. God doesn't exist. Therefore, there is nothing actually stopping you from there's nothing actually stopping you from going and having another drink. The only thing that's stopping you is you.
00:41:15
Speaker
And to having made such a journey of personal responsibility to say, I will not have a drink, to then outsource that to a non-existent God is insanity. And it's no wonder that people that put their faith in a non-existent super being are inevitably going to find that it comes up short. Whereas if you go, actually, it's down to me, the buck stops here, you've actually got half a chance of success.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's really interesting because I know people who love AA and have recovered because of AA and will say that, but that's their personal story. And I think the important thing for anyone recovering from addiction or not recovering from addiction, recovering from any other kind of mental health issue that they have or looking after their mental health.
00:42:14
Speaker
is to find what works for them and it's your own personal journey that matters for you and everybody outside of that personal journey and their opinions and their desires for you and the way they want you to do it is actually completely irrelevant. It's what works for you and when you find something that works for you,
00:42:39
Speaker
stick with it and it is about that, as you said, taking personal responsibility. We were talking about boundaries before. It's about knowing who you are, what works for you, what feels good and what makes you feel not great about yourself and having the strength to avoid the things that don't make you feel great about yourself. There is that. I don't think I'm a particularly strong person. I just think I've
00:43:05
Speaker
I just think I've taken on board that actually the responsibility for having a good life does stop with me and I can't be busy and drunk at the same time. And ultimately,
00:43:19
Speaker
Booze was very good at propelling me through a lot of social stuff in my 20s. It was very good at holding me back from success in my 30s. And now as I go into my mid to late 40s, I'm now finding that it's something I'm doing very well without.
00:43:39
Speaker
But I do sometimes walk through the, I do a lot of travel for my work and every time I go through an airport, you have to, when you clear security, you have to walk through the bozile of duty free. And for me, as I'm rebuckling my belt and checking my headphones, it's just like walking through a party full of exes.
00:44:02
Speaker
Hello, Chivas Regal. I remember you. I remember you. Gordon. Thought you had some nights. Oh my God, but you're not tempted to hang out with them again. That's amazing. O Kallua, you saucy minx. How have you been? That is really funny.
00:44:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's very funny. I often think actually people with addictions should be given a separate channel to go through should they wish to avoid all of that because it must be really hard. I have a knee jerk reaction at the airport, which I find very hard to avoid, which is airport security with medical kit for diabetes is very, very stressful.
00:44:45
Speaker
And my daughter was nine when she was diagnosed, so I've taken responsibility for that until recently, and she's stepped up and seems to handle it with way less stress than I ever did. But I developed a habit, and it could be six o'clock in the morning, of getting through airport security and heading straight for the weatherspoons in the airport to get a celebratory glass of prosecco.
00:45:12
Speaker
Ostensibly and in my narrative to get this holiday started but really it was to calm down after all of that stress and I still know that I don't need it and I know it's not healthy and really I don't want it because I don't want to be asleep before I land at lunchtime in my holiday destination. I find it very hard to resist because it's an habitual thing.
00:45:33
Speaker
But that's OK, because that's just part of being on holiday. Right. Whatever else has happened, getting to the airport is a stress and a struggle and a pain and getting through security, all that. OK, here is my line in the sand and it looks for you, it looks like a glass of Prosecco. And who hurts anybody? It's not like you if it was like I've done the laundry glass of Prosecco. That would be a completely different matter.
00:46:02
Speaker
The one good thing about me is I'm not a Puritan and I can be around people enjoying a drink. In fact, I love seeing people have a drink. And if you ask me for a cocktail recipe, I can tell you a few. And I love seeing people enjoy themselves, but I just know that that is not for me now. And that's fine. And also,
00:46:26
Speaker
A drink or two, I can handle that in other people. Tipsy, I can handle, there comes a point where I go, do you know what? You are in the boozy world and it doesn't matter whether I'm here or not. And that's the point at which I go, I'm going to slip away now. Yeah, yeah. Because I, and thank goodness, because I know some people can't be around it at all. And I think if that was me, I couldn't do my job, which is working in events, doing dinners, doing awards, doing conferences.
00:46:53
Speaker
So tell us about your job and how you came to be doing that and where people should find you if they want to connect.
The Role of a Moderator and Keynote Speaker
00:47:01
Speaker
I have the best job in the world because we live in a very fractured and divided world at the moment.
00:47:11
Speaker
And it's really important to bring people together. It's the most valuable thing I think we can do. You know this, Helen, you're a podcaster. Bringing people together is the most important thing you can do. It's the most valuable thing. And that's what I do. I go around the world. I attend events. I'm a moderator, so I help people have conversations. I bring people onto stage.
00:47:30
Speaker
go into the audience and get questions for the people on the stage, the experts, the world leaders, all sorts of people. And I also keynote in my own right. So I talk about my own story and I talk about the value of storytelling and why storytelling is important for you as an individual, as a business, as an organization. Everything you want is in a story. Stories are the software we use to program our little brains.
00:47:54
Speaker
And if you want to change what your brain does, you have to change the software. And you do that by changing your story. That's kind of my shtick. And if you want to find out more about it, you can find me. I'm on most social media platforms with varying degrees of enthusiasm at Smart Mr. Hawkins. So I think it's Twitter slash X and Instagram and threads. It's at Smart Mr. Hawkins. But the best place to find me is LinkedIn.
00:48:24
Speaker
Okay. I'll find your links and I'll put them in the show notes so people can find them easily. Fab. And Ian, before I let you go, what would you say to any young person who is going through something really serious as you did as a child and how they cope with that without hopefully resorting to the coping strategies that you had to?
00:48:51
Speaker
I think first of all, to be very honest, so I hate it when people say relax because it means something unrelaxing is about to happen. And this won't hurt is a lie. It always hurts. So what would I suggest to somebody that is going through this? I would say this is the beginning of your story. After this,
00:49:16
Speaker
you can make all kinds of choices and all kinds of decisions for yourself. This is not the end for you. This is a new beginning. So think about what you'd like to do with the rest of your life and think about where we go from here. Actually, that's pretty much the advice I gave to a friend of mine who's having a heart surgery at the age of 56. It doesn't matter whether you're six or 56 in these circumstances, because you've
00:49:44
Speaker
his heart symptoms have been holding him back from doing all kinds of stuff for a good few years. And I said, ask your doctors how long it will take you to recover and then figure out, use that time to lie around and figure out what you wanna do with your new lease of health, which you will discover. Very, very good advice. Ian, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for, hello, it's been a real pleasure.
00:50:15
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Thank you to everyone who's already rated and reviewed the podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Amazon, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review. It really helps get the word out, as well as making me very happy to read what you have to say.
00:50:34
Speaker
If this episode strikes a chord for you, please share it with anyone else you know who might be in the same boat and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. If you have a story or suggestion for something you'd like to see covered on the podcast, you can email me at Teenage Kicks Podcast at gmail.com or message me on Instagram. I'm, I am Helen Wills. I love hearing from all my listeners. It really makes a difference to me on this journey.
00:51:04
Speaker
See you next week when I'll be chatting to another brilliant guest about the highs and lows of parenting teens. Bye for now.