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