Sober in the Country changing Australias casual alcoholism
[Music]
it is such an honor to be here at tedx
canberra
i’ve come all the way from northwestern
new south wales
and i’ve come here with a very specific
purpose and point in mind
i’ve come here because i need your help
and i’ve come here because i’ve got a
challenge
to throw down not just to you guys here
but to australia in general and
particularly to my favorite humans on
earth
that’s my family back in rural and
remote australia
typical to my own form i’ve picked a
really tricky topic
and a really tricky demographic
i want to bring a conversation into the
public
i’ve already been doing it and i want
your help
to get that conversation further and
wider
and to the breaches of our rural and
remote areas
it’s a conversation about modern day
addiction
and it’s a conversation about what i
call casual alcoholism
it’s a real thing and it’s impacting
people and it’s happening out west
this is not an imaginary epidemic and i
take this really seriously because i
love my country mates
and i’m pretty worried about them right
now as you can see
that’s what out west looks like at the
moment has anyone been for a drive into
regional or remote parts of the country
recently
yeah not that many of you which is
understandable it’s a long way to go
um it looks horrendous i’ve never seen
anything like the drought that we’re
experiencing right
now and i’m concerned because
the demographic that i want to speak to
my peers and professionals in remote
australia
are typically and historically a very
stoic tough bunch of people right
we don’t like to ask for help we don’t
like to admit when we’re doing it tough
and we we tend to just keep going and
going and going and being extraordinary
because that’s what country people do we
are pretty amazing i have to say
until we’re not so our it’s funny our
strength can also be our weakness
i want to just show you something for a
moment some statistics on alcohol
at the moment in australia every year
we’re spending about 36 billion dollars
on alcohol
related illness injury and death
at the moment about 6 000 people every
year are being
wiped out dead you know due to alcohol
related
injury or death and we’ve got about 156
000 hospitalizations going on annually
now those are really really frightening
statistics are they not
but what concerns me is it kind of means
nothing to the people i want to talk to
because we look okay
we sound okay we’re pretty intelligent
people with mortgages and cars and good
haircuts and
you know kids in fancy schools and all
that sort of thing
and these statistics don’t tend to
penetrate
because we think we’re immune and
there’s a few there’s a few issues in
this area
because we’re obviously not immune we’re
not immune
at all to being part of these statistics
but high functioning people are what
concern me the most
and when we look at these numbers
and i think about my mates i think about
me
i get really frightened because where i
come from
we measure a bloke by how many beers he
can drink
where i come from if a lady is embracing
and worshiping one o’clock that’s the
done thing
and i know that’s not reserved solely
for rural or remote
australia but we’ve got about half a
million people
in rural and remote australia who cannot
access information
or support in this area and if push ever
comes to shove
in that demo demographic and someone
needs to reach out and ask for help
there really often is no help to be had
now i’m sure some of you are sitting
right there going but hold on a minute
who are you
to speak about these things are you a
politician
are you an economist no i’m obviously
neither of those things i’m just a girl
from the country
but what i bring is something
that hasn’t really been done before i’m
a small town girl
with a history of living all over rural
and regional australia
i’ve been doing that for 44 odd years i
know
i know this area i know this demographic
and i know these people
and i love love love being a country
girl
but it also is a challenging challenging
space
it’s a very challenging space to dwell
in because
we are prone to doing things our way
and not acknowledging when we’re not
okay and i was a person
exactly like that so i speak
from a small town lived experience point
of view
and i don’t think anyone’s done that yet
because everyone tells me i’m bloody mad
for starters to be doing it but i’m so
glad i’m doing it
i would change nothing about this you
see
four years ago i had what you call i
believe in the media
a rock bottom experience four years ago
i i was at my absolute end
i was oh i should have died i did want
to die
i did want to take my own life
but i’m standing here
when that was all going on for me in my
life
i was in such a state of denial because
i looked okay
i sounded okay i had a really successful
career doing photography and traveling
and speaking
i just i refused flatly when people
suggested i might be an alcoholic to
even take that on board because thanks
very much i never drank
every day and i never drank during the
day and i wasn’t a homeless guy in the
gutter
so how rude how could someone dare
suggest that to me
funny isn’t it how how we love to kid
ourselves and i guess
what was going on all around me was a
lot of people saying no you’re right
shane you’ve just had a crap life
you’ve had a few tricky things happen to
you and i have
and i did but in in as much as i was in
denial
i think my mates were in denial with me
because it’s a really uncomfortable
weird space to be in
contemplating where you’re at but in the
true nature of a stoic country person
i just kept going i just kept going i
just kept going
and uh i should have gotten help a lot
sooner than what i did
but i refused to admit as i said
acknowledge it or admit where i was at
now i’ve had a wonderful life of
privilege and something people often ask
me is hang on well
if you had a supportive family and
you’ve got a loving husband how did
things get to this like what’s the go
with that
so i’ll take you for a little step
backwards into my past if you like
and when i was a young very fresh-faced
very naive country kid and i was
about as socially inept as you could
possibly get
my family weren’t big on socialising i
wasn’t exposed to a vast you know array
of
social situations but holy moly i knew i
loved to socialise
and when my gap year came i sprinted out
the front gate i couldn’t i couldn’t go
out there
into the world of adult english quickly
adoptingly
into the world of adulting quickly
enough
i couldn’t i was just beside myself i
thought oh this is going to be great
but unfortunately for me it wasn’t great
my gap year was an utter disaster
and i don’t need to go into the details
but it was a story as old of time as a
good kid
young kid naive add some alcohol
add some country parties had some blokes
who probably should have known
better than what they did and a few
ordinary things happened to me that year
that set me
on a path to self-destruction
self doubt fear shame
guilt and the events of that year would
really alter the trajectory of my life
in a big way
i was shattered but i did what we do
in the country and i forged on i kept
rolling
i kept going and i didn’t ask for help
and i think to be really honest had i
even asked for help would it have been
there
i doubt it because that’s what i’ve
learned about what’s going on in the
bush
come back into the future a step or two
and 38 year old me
still doing okay i look all right on
paper i’ve got a beautiful husband
best bloke in australia sorry ladies
but i’m not so great i’m still that
little wounded kid inside
and i still haven’t had support or
treatment
i always cry when i get to this bit we
found out when i was about 38 that it
was unlikely we were going to be able to
have children and then that seemed like
a certainty
and the truth of that utterly
crushed me i had spent all my life just
wanting to be a mum
i loved kids kids loved me and it’s just
what i had lined up for my future and
for my husband because he’s an amazing
bloke
and when when that was obviously not
going to happen
i uh i took this destructive
relationship that i had with alcohol
i took it to a whole new level my
passionate love for wine o’clock became
an utter
self-destructive cycle of blackout
drinking
and all the while i looked pretty normal
somewhat attractive perhaps if you look
at
vaseline on the glass you know i looked
like a normal person the whole time
i kept the facade going but i was
falling apart
in increments and it nearly killed me
and you know what happened i’m so glad
it nearly killed me because i finally
desperately reached out for help and i
was put onto a lady
who was a recovered alcoholic in the
country
and i met her and i sat with her and she
told me her story
and for the first time in my entire
entire
life i saw that i was not alone in this
in one hour of talking to a woman who’d
been there and done that and who was a
normal
functioning regular looking human my
eyes were just opened wide and i went
what how did i how have i not been given
access to this information
this kind of real honest talk how how
have i never been
my mind was just blown i thank god for
that girl you know
i went home and i just put everything to
one side and i worked harder than i’ve
ever worked in my whole life
to become a 100 sober australian country
person
i studied it like it was a university
degree
and i made it i recovered completely and
i do call that a miracle because plenty
of people don’t
and i have a really big problem with
that
because if we dug deep
as a rural community and started having
better chats with our mates
about the truth of addiction and the
reality of casual alcoholism
we would be able to change the course of
the lives of
countless shannas out there and i
remember i was a couple of years into my
sobriety and i had this little light
bulb moment and i turned around to my
husband and i said
sweetheart i think i’m going to be the
girl who does that bit but on a bigger
scale
and he went that’s nice darling one step
at a time
but you know it was a light bulb moment
and i hung onto that little kernel
and down the track when i knew i was
going to make it i knew i knew for sure
i was going to make it i can’t explain
how that is
but i knew and i started studying
and i started sharing the odd thing on
my social media
and the long story short is that over
time that little share became a blog
became a conversation became this became
that became
something bigger than i ever anticipated
and i went
holy moly this is going really well
wow this is working i mean i wasn’t
surprised but i was
i was so encouraged that i thought i
better brand this thing
and so i did i changed my page and i
called it
well hang on one moment came up with
this funky little logo
sober in the country that’s me a little
bit skinnier and my dog and my husband
i wanted to brand it and i wanted to
create a virtual place where other rural
people
could come and chat and be part of this
conversation
no i had no intentions no goals no
nothing in mind i just wanted people to
know
that they weren’t alone that’s all i had
in mind but it’s blown my mind and gone
far above and beyond that
and in two years of me doing what i do
which is talk a lot
often this has reached the far corners
of rural australia
into the hardest hardest toughest aussie
blokes of all
and women people who are not supposed to
be able to talk about these things are
talking about it
it is mind-blowing and it is beautiful
and it is the most humbling thing
i get emotional it’s the most humbling
beautiful thing i’ve ever been a part of
because we are
changing lives and we’re saving lives
and we’re giving people a place to go
and you know what drives me really crazy
about this whole thing
in the country we will sit there and we
will stand next to our mates and we will
slap them on the back
and tell them to have another drink and
we will laugh when they get full down
drunk in public
time and time again that’s fine that’s
not a problem
but when someone is brave enough to
stand up and step out and say
uh i think i might have a problem here i
need some help we cannot cope
we either tell them to wake up to
themselves and have another drink
or we isolate them by telling them to go
off and be
anonymous and what i’m doing is
challenging that paradigm utterly as
ineffective in every
single way in rural and regional
communities
we are all about connection we’re all
about supporting each other
we’re all about being together and
lifting our mates and baking things and
delivering things and picking up dogs
and babysitting kids
so how do we ever think isolating
someone
and telling them to be anonymous in
their struggle is going to work
it strikes me as the cruelest paradox of
all
and that is one of the reasons i blew my
anonymity sky high and said no way
this doesn’t work we’ve got to treat our
mates
with alcoholism the same way we treat
our mates with cancer
it doesn’t matter what the disease is
everyone
in our country towns is just as
important as the next girl or the next
guy
and we need to start talking about this
we need to
look at prevention rather than waiting
until someone’s got a diagnosis that’s
terrifying and life-ending
i often joke to my mates and say my
purpose is to be enough of a pain in the
bum
and to have this conversation publicly
enough times
that i’m going to start infiltrating
this sector
with information so that
maybe one day joe blow standing at the
pub with his best mate
watching him get full over drunk and
drink drive home to his wife and kids
again
might just say mate do you reckon do you
reckon maybe we should talk about your
drinking
you know i’m not here to demonize people
who drink it’s never been about that
i’m just here to raise this conversation
so that those of our mates
so that our mates who do recognize as an
issue and step up
have got access to information and
they’re less afraid
and so that those of us who don’t have a
problem understand we’ve got to go
gently
we’ve got to look after our mates and do
what we do best in australia
and support our friends you know it’s
not a big stretch
so my challenge to my friends to rural
australia and in fact australia as a
whole is
let’s get real let’s get honest let’s
get authentic in our chats
let’s take this further you know one day
my my goal hopefully next year is to get
funding and support so i can actually
get programs in place
to support people because the power of
this conversation and the realness of it
and how far and wide that’s going
is proving again and again and again
that people want this conversation
and they need it it’s become like a me
too movement
for people who are sick of our boozy
alcohol worshiping culture
it’s like a little me too movement going
on and it’s so
amazing and it’s got legs and it’s got
merit and it’s happening
and it’s just one girl with a laptop he
started a yarn
how incredible is that i want to leave
you with a thought which is that
alcoholism does not discriminate
so why should we
you so much
you