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Transcript 

00:00:00 Andy 

We acknowledge the Yuggera and Kaurna nations as traditional custodians of the land on which we work, live and learn, and their continuing connection with the land waters and community. We pay our respects to them and their elders past and present. 

00:00:14 Louise 

All content related to this programme is for general informational purposes only and contains stories and discussions around mental health that may be disturbing to some listeners. 

00:00:23 Louise 

If you’re concerned about yourself or someone you know, please seek professional individual advice and support. More details are contained in our show notes. 

00:00:33 (Intro Skit) 

NARRATOR: This week in Once Upon a Time travel, 2002’s Lonely Louise is visited by the ghost of future self at New Year’s 

FX – party, large crowd, the sounds of new year 

MC: OK everyone, before I drop some more sick beats, grab your new year’s partner for that midnight pash, and if you can’t find your own partner, borrow somebody else’s! 

Young Louise: (drunk, loud) Pash me Mr. DJ! 

MC: Whoa! Looks like someone’s on the prowl for their new year’s resolution! 

Young Louise: Pucker up and taste baby, New Year! 

MC: Didn’t I see you vomiting earlier? Not sure I want to be tasting any of that, thank you ma’am! 30 seconds! Get those glasses ready! 

Young Louise: You wish you could taste this! 

FX: Like a genie entering 

Young Louise: Fu- wha… who the fuck are you? 

Today Louise: I’m the ghost of Louise Future, and I’ve come let you know it gets better 

Young Louise: Get off it lady, I’m not into chicks 

Today Louise: Well, I’ve got some news for you there… 

(In the background, the crowd counts down to midnight, cheering as the new year emerges) 

Young Louise: What do you want? 

Today Louise: I just want to let you know that even though you’re going to end up crying in the gutter later tonight, and drunk dialing your unrequited crush at 3am, future you knows her value and has found people who see her for who she is. You don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not anymore.  

Young Louise: Happy New Year! 

Today Louise: Louise 

Young Louise: Why won’t somebody love me? 

Today Louise: They will, and more importantly, you’ll love yourself 

Young Louise: I just want one new year’s pash! (starts crying) 

Today Louise: Um… I’m just gonna… slip away now, but please don’t do anything silly 

Scene fades as Today Louise flashes away 

FX: Knocking on an internal (bedroom) door, door opens 

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, back in 1991, younger repressed Andy is interrupted “in the middle of something” 

Yesterday Andy: Oh, hi 

 
Andy’s Friend: Andy Pandy! What’s your dandy? 

Yesterday Andy: Just trying to get some study done. Got my major essay due next week and I haven’t started writing it yet. It’s all… up here, you know? 

Andy’s Friend: You’ll shit it in, you always do. Come down to the uni bar tonight. The Doors cover band’s playing 

Yesterday Andy: Oh… nah… I really need to 

Andy’s Friend: Vanessa will be there… she really likes you 

FX: Genie like sound as today Andy flashes in 

Yesterday Andy: Um, who are you? 

Today Andy: Hey! The Ghost of Andy Future! I’m you in about 30 years’ time 

 
Yesterday Andy: I knew that weed floating through the dorm was affecting me 

Today Andy: Nah, I’m just here to tell you to relax. Have a bit of fun, life doesn’t have to be so serious 

Yesterday Andy: But I really don’t feel like going out to the bar, it’s just full of loud drunk people 

Today Andy: Dude, I’m you and it’s the early 90’s, I know why you don’t want to risk losing your inhibitions 

Yesterday Andy: I don’t know what you’re talking about – I’ve got a mountain of study to do. I don’t have time for a girlfriend 

Today Andy: Fine, but you don’t have to have to drink to be included. People love your sense of humour and who you are regardless.  

Yesterday Andy: I just don’t feel like I fit in 

Today Andy: And you’re gonna realise why in two years time you get a massive crush on a guy in one of your classes and write him a love letter with the lyrics to I Honestly Love You  

Yesterday Andy: Oh. So does that work? 

 
Today Andy: Nah. But you find someone much better for yourself. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you, my friend. You won’t get this part of your life back again. Just put the books down for one night and go out with your friends. You don’t have to drink. 

FX: Genie disappears 

 
Andy’s Friend: Just come out for one drink 

Yesterday Andy: (sigh) OK, I think I’ll pass on the drink, but I’d love to come anyway. 

Andy’s Friend: Cool! We love your company! See you at seven!  

NARRATOR: Next time in Once Upon a Time travel, more people ignore their future selves and make the same choices anyway 

00:04:33 Louise (Normal, Podcast Intro) 

You know, Andy? I don’t think that past me would have listened to future me if I’d zapped there. 

00:04:38 Andy 

And I definitely wasn’t ready to hear what current me would have had to say. 

00:04:42 Andy 

Back then either. 

00:04:43 Louise 

Those scenes are very close to home, aren’t they? 

00:04:45 Andy 

Yeah, and this. 

00:04:46 Andy 

Is re frame of mind. 

00:04:48 Louise 

The podcast that cuts through the platitudes and gets to the core of living authentically, challenging our assumptions and improving mental health with the guidance of good science, philosophy and learning from other people, lived experiences. 

00:04:59 Andy 

We’re your hosts Andy Le Roy and Louise Poole. 

00:05:02 Louise 

I think we’re on a bit of a hero’s journey. I suppose you could say Andy. 

00:05:04 Speaker 8 

Yeah, we’re definitely putting it all out there on. 

00:05:06 Andy 

The line in our quest to. 

00:05:07 Andy 

Maintain good mental health. 

00:05:09 Louise 

’cause unfortunately we don’t have a time machine and we can’t actually go back and change things. Gotta start from where we are. 

00:05:16 Louise 

Which at the start of the podcast series was you’d recently lost your father to cancer and died? Ended my 20-year radio career. 

00:05:23 Andy 

So, we’ve been looking at the traumas of adjusting to our new worlds and we’ve covered quite a bit of ground in. 

00:05:27 Andy 

Trying to find. 

00:05:28 Andy 

A way to relate differently to the world. 

00:05:31 Louise 

One in which we love. 

00:05:32 Louise 

And value ourselves. 

00:05:33 Andy 

Yeah, and honour ourselves with strong boundaries when it comes to living our values, but sometimes it’s something more than conversation and perspective alone doesn’t fix it. 

00:05:41 Louise 

Yes, last episode. We had a pretty in-depth conversation with Professor Marie Teesson. See she’s the director of the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and substance use on mental health and addiction. 

00:05:51 Andy 

Yeah, and because she gave us so much information, we thought we thought. 

00:05:53 

So much information. 

00:05:55 Andy 

That would be great just to break it down a little bit and refer back to some of those points and just look at it. 

00:06:00 Andy 

From our current perspective. 

00:06:01 Andy 

You know, as people will often tell me that hindsight is a wonderful thing. So yeah, hopefully in this case our hindsight might help someone who is. 

00:06:09 Andy 

Now where we were. 

00:06:10 Andy 

About 18 years ago. 

00:06:11 Louise 

You know, I’ve often thought if I could have a conversation with me from 18 plus years ago, what things I would say and what advice I? 

00:06:20 Louise 

Give them. 

00:06:21 Louise 

Honestly, I don’t know if I would. 

00:06:23 Louise 

Listen, yeah, it’s. 

00:06:24 

One of those things that. 

00:06:24 Andy 

Crops up pretty often on social media. 

00:06:27 Andy 

Isn’t it like if you could say 3 words to your 20 years ago? So, what would they be? I mean, I know the things that are important. 

00:06:33 Andy 

To me now, but honestly. 

00:06:34 Louise 

Like invest in Apple. 

00:06:38 Andy 

Dappled like it’s at that stage it. 

00:06:40 Andy 

Would have been like. 

00:06:41 Andy 

The old record label that The Beatles had wouldn’t have even kind of hear the radar, although that computer, I suppose. But you know I. 

00:06:47 Andy 

I just don’t think. 

00:06:48 Andy 

That we can necessarily think that if we had that information then that we would have actually acted differently. But you know, you never know, do you? 

00:06:55 Louise 

Good news is though that passed me actually would have listened to somebody else talk about the subject and actually gone. 

00:07:01 Louise 

Well, that’s a good point, even though I would have thought that future me was full of **** So hopefully because we’re actually not talking to past Louise and Andy, someone actually might get some value out of this one before they have to go down the future US paths themselves. 

00:07:14 Andy 

Fingers crossed so. 

00:07:15 Louise 

I think I think that I confuse that as much as a time travel paradox. 

00:07:22 Andy 

Well, let’s hop straight back into. 

00:07:23 Andy 

The subject matter that we. 

00:07:24 Andy 

Had with Marie and when. 

00:07:25 Andy 

We’re talking about substance is what do we mean? 

00:07:27 Louise 

I think most commonly there’s things like alcohol or cigarettes. We say drugs a lot, and that obviously has. 

00:07:34 Louise 

A few different meanings. 

00:07:35 Andy 

Yeah, so you know. I mean, I’ve been a smoker in the past and we’ve all had a drink, or I say all, but we can’t always make that generalization. 

00:07:43 Andy 

But you know, sometimes these substances aren’t legal. 

00:07:46 Andy 

But they’re the. 

00:07:46 Andy 

Ones that can have monstrous effects from people and. 

00:07:49 Andy 

The people who love them. 

00:07:50 Louise 

And often the people around us are suffering in silence. As Marie pointed out when she spoke about how long it takes for people to ask for help. 

00:07:57 Maree 

People do run into problems with alcohol. There’s a sense of shame and stigma, and it’s just devastating we see for people who have problems with alcohol, it can take up to 18 years before they’ll talk to anyone about those problems. That can mean they can start to have problems when they’re 18 or 19. 

00:08:18 Maree 

And they really wait until their mid 30s before they say to a GP or to a friend. Hey, I think I’m, you know, this is really interfering with my life and maybe I need to do something about this. 

00:08:29 Maree 

That can take 18 years. 

00:08:32 Louise 

Now Andy, I know that I have thus far 15 episodes into re frame of mind received a lot of free therapy from our guests. 

00:08:41 Louise 

I’m not afraid to not afraid to milk it for my. 

00:08:45 Louise 

Own free therapy. 

00:08:46 Andy 

You got to put it out there. 

00:08:47 Andy 

And if they’re willing, why wouldn’t you? 

00:08:50 Louise 

And Marie is exceptionally qualified so. 

00:08:53 Andy 

And very giving. 

00:08:56 Louise 

Why not try and get my free therapy from Marie as I had the audacity to compare my depression and anxiety with addiction to substances. 

00:08:58 Speaker 5 

Why not? 

00:09:07 Louise 

But that thing that she said about the research around it taking people 18 plus years to ask for help, really struck a chord. 

00:09:14 Andy 

It’s a long time, isn’t it? Like we don’t think of that lead up time or people I guess suffering for so long are they suffering as much in the beginning as they are at? 

00:09:23 Andy 

That 18-year point. 

00:09:25 Andy 

Don’t know, but it is a long. 

00:09:26 Andy 

Time when you think about it from. 

00:09:27 Louise 

In the pot it’s what I say. You know it starts off with something small as I can handle this. 

00:09:32 Louise 

The next thing you know times gone by the pots boiling and the frogs just. 

00:09:36 Louise 

In there, chilling. 

00:09:37 Louise 

Like you don’t realise how much of the heat is turned up and how bad of a situation you’re in until it starts to affect your life. 

00:09:44 Louise 

I have a goldfish memory, you know this. 

00:09:47 Andy 

Yeah, I do. 

00:09:48 Andy 

Every day I’m reminded. 

00:09:51 Andy 

By you saying I’ve. 

00:09:52 Andy 

Got goldfish memory or you are forgetting something. 

00:09:54 Andy 

But I’m reminded. 

00:09:54 Louise 

I mean, I actually I think the goldfish probably have better memories than me. That’s how bad it is. I’m really good at remembering obscure bits of information and the overall concept and feelings of so. 

00:10:06 Louise 

If not so great at remembering things that maybe I’ve done or we’ve experienced or often I will hear a story from somebody telling me something that I’ve done in the past, and I think, oh yeah, that sounds. 

00:10:18 Louise 

Like something I do. 

00:10:20 Andy 

Because I can probably quote somebody verbatim from 25 years ago. 

00:10:24 Louise 

And so, it’s handy to have you around Andy, because we worked together in Darwin, and you can remind me of things like did you actually smoke then? 

00:10:32 Andy 

Yeah, I did. 

00:10:33 Andy 

I was a smoker back then, the 2009. Yeah, I was probably at the peak of my smoking my smoking habit so. 

00:10:41 Andy 

I would have been in May. 

00:10:43 Andy 

Or roughly a pack a day is kind of where I averaged at, I’d say. 

00:10:47 Louise 

Yeah, like hearing it for the first time. Honestly, I can’t remember you ever. 

00:10:51 Louise 

Smoking you wouldn’t. 

00:10:51 Andy 

All of those breakfasts that we had down at Cullen Bay and dragged out the ashtray and. 

00:10:58 Andy 

Before the meal came. 

00:10:59 Louise 

Not gone from my memory, which is good because now I can interview like I’ve never heard the story. 

00:11:05 Andy 

Go for it. Is this my therapy time? This is my. 

00:11:05 Louise 

OK yeah. Well I don’t charge as much as Marie I imagine I mean. 

00:11:07 Andy 

Therapy session OK. 

00:11:12 Andy 

Well, you better not. 

00:11:13 Louise 

00:11:15 Louise 

So, when did you start smoking? 

00:11:18 Andy 

OK, there’s a couple of tears to this answer because I tried to start smoking and then I actually was successful in starting smoking. ’cause it does take practice you know. 

00:11:28 Louise 

It’s a skill. 

00:11:28 Andy 

He needs it. 

00:11:31 Louise 

One like this best not learned. 

00:11:31 Andy 

So, the first time I thought that I would actually like to become a smoker was when I was in university and OK. 

00:11:38 Andy 

So, I’m going to have a bit of the goldfish effect here, and I can’t remember whether it was my first year or my third year. 

00:11:43 Andy 

My final year, I think it was my final year of UNI. Pretty sure that was the so that would have been about 94. 

00:11:49 Andy 

About 1994 when I. 

00:11:50 Andy 

Thought **** it, I’m just going to have a smoke. 

00:11:53 Louise 

Was that stress related? Do you think there was so much going on that you thought it would? Or was that kind of everybody else is doing it situation? 

00:11:59 Andy 

Yeah, it wasn’t what everybody else was doing. Definitely because I don’t think I knew a lot of smokers, only a couple of smokers, but I didn’t feel inclined to want to kind of join a peer group with it for me in 1994 when I decided that I was. 

00:12:13 Andy 

Going to try and smoke was me actually coming too. 

00:12:18 Andy 

The conclusion that I didn’t want to be here anymore, and if smoking was one way to die, then I might as well add that to the list of possibilities. 

00:12:25 Andy 

So, I remember sitting down by one of the lakes on the university campus and rolling myself a cigarette, thinking, Oh well, he’s an alum. Mcguffin sounds very dramatic, doesn’t it? 

00:12:35 Louise 

It’s very sad. 

00:12:36 Louise 

And yes, that’s I’m sorry that yeah. 

00:12:39 Speaker 7 

I’ll just make. 

00:12:41 Andy 

Myself to death. 

00:12:42 Louise 

I’m sorry you ever felt that way. That’s not a nice Place to have been. 

00:12:46 Andy 

No, it’s not a nice place to have been. Clearly, I’m OK with it now talking about it, but if I think back to that period and what led me to that endpoint of why I decided to then reach for a cigarette because I wanted to kill myself. But a silly way to do it. But anyway, people do kill themselves every. 

00:13:03 Andy 

Day with cigarettes so. 

00:13:04 Andy 

I, I guess what led me to that was, you know, a big picture of me not being myself, me feeling like I had to be somebody else, me feeling excluded in some way or other. 

00:13:17 Andy 

But also, you know within that me excluding myself from situations for different reasons, you know at that sketch at the beginning of today’s episode. 

00:13:25 Andy 

You know with young Andy and older Andy and that sort of things like that. That was me. That was me saying, looking, I’ve got time for a girlfriend so my grandmother haven’t got time for a girlfriend ’cause I’ve got too much study. 

00:13:35 Louise 

Study that is that is that why you didn’t have time for. 

00:13:38 Louise 

A girlfriend, is it? 

00:13:39 Andy 

That’s well. 

00:13:40 Andy 

That’s what he maintained. This well maintained at that age, so there’s all of that kind of underlying stuff there. 

00:13:45 Andy 

That made me really not value myself to. 

00:13:47 Andy 

The point where. 

00:13:48 Andy 

I thought Oliver smoke and have a smoke, but I didn’t. I didn’t actually succeed, so I think I got through. 

00:13:55 Andy 

One in football? Actually, that’s ******* disgusting. And I actually don’t want to. 

00:13:59 Andy 

Smoke didn’t fix the actual underlying issue, mind you, but then kind of put the tobacco always a stupid idea and just kind of persevered. 

00:14:07 Louise 

All right, so 1994 you took up smoking briefly and then you stopped again, but you was to start. So, if you were smoking when we were in Darwin. 

00:14:12 Andy 

Yeah, I actually. 

00:14:17 Louise 

Then there’s more story. 

00:14:18 Andy 

Oh yeah, there’s definitely more so. 

00:14:19 Louise 

Well, what’s the story? 

00:14:21 Speaker 8 

Well, tell me about. 

00:14:23 Louise 

The worst times in your life. Louise is listening. 

00:14:25 Speaker 5 

This this. 

00:14:28 Andy 

This is the second tier of the story of anti starts smoking where in 1995 I had come out of the closet. 

00:14:37 Andy 

As we colloquially say, when homosexuals decide to declare to the world their homosexual, because that’s what everybody does. 

00:14:44 Speaker 2 

Hello, I’m heterosexual who ’cause you didn’t have. 

00:14:47 Louise 

Time for a girlfriend. So, you found a. 

00:14:49 Louise 

Boyfriend in his day. 

00:14:50 Andy 

Perfect, uh boyfriend instead? 

00:14:52 Andy 

So anyway, 1995. I actually had finished my course, so I graduated like so towards the end of my final year of UNI. 

00:15:03 Andy 

I was starting to experiment, and I was starting to you get in touch with that part that touches me. 

00:15:09 Andy 

That kind of thing. 

00:15:10 Speaker 6 

Oh, really. 

00:15:12 Louise 

This is the precursor to Andy sexy sluty times from like episode 5, I think. 

00:15:17 Andy 

Some years before some years before actually when you met me, I was kind of at the tail end of that. But anyway, I digress so. 

00:15:26 Andy 

So, 1995 I’m processing a lot emotionally and a lot personally. 

00:15:32 Andy 

Because for me how it panned out was OK. Well, I came out to myself. 

00:15:36 Andy 

And you know, as a. 

00:15:37 Andy 

Lot of people who go. 

00:15:39 Andy 

Through the coming out process will tell you find people to test the safety of a width. 

00:15:44 Andy 

So, I had a friend at the time who had recently come out himself, so he was a pretty safe bet that I could say, hey, by the way. 

00:15:52 Andy 

Me too kind of thing and then I found a few more people, but nobody in my family. Because you know, we’ve talked about that in previous episode. 

00:16:00 Andy 

That’s how being gay wasn’t OK and that was very much kind of promoted in conversations. So, I kind of had this sense that you know, I needed to keep it quiet, but you can’t keep it quiet. 

00:16:12 Andy 

There comes a point where you’ve got to actually be true to yourself, and so 1995 was the year that I came out to my family come. 

00:16:20 Andy 

Whole other story, the smoking part of it. I met this guy, and he was cute man he was. 

00:16:31 Andy 

Yeah man, drop that one in. 

00:16:32 Louise 

He was nice. He was 1995 sexy so like what does he? What did he look like Jeremy Jordan or? 

00:16:38 Andy 

He was a bit shorter than me. He had, you know, nice short hair like it wasn’t a crew cut, but he had a nice style and. 

00:16:46 Andy 

He had not totally, but with a bit more attention, probably could have had, like a had a really cute Lantern jaw like headline. 

00:16:46 Louise 

Did look like a boy band. 

00:16:48 Louise 

Member no OK. 

00:16:57 Andy 

Really cute square jawline and he’s a great kisser. He was a really great kisser, and for someone who has just met their first boyfriend, obviously. 

00:17:00 Louise 

OK yeah. 

00:17:07 Andy 

He’s the one and he just kissing, kissing, kissing and he was a smoker. You know we’d be sitting in the back area at the piano bar at the Aubrey Hotel, which. 

00:17:15 Andy 

It’s a gay bar that’s long closed down now, but you know we’d be smooching or whatever. And you know, spending time with their friends. 

00:17:21 Andy 

But he would take a drag from his cigarette and then he would turn to me and kiss me. But he would actually then blow the smoke into my mouth. 

00:17:30 Andy 

When antique. 

00:17:32 Louise 

I’m sorry, sexy. 

00:17:33 Louise 

Is that sexy? ’cause that sounds just ******* gross. 

00:17:38 Andy 

Well, suppose it turned me on at the time. 

00:17:41 Louise 

My best you know, and I’ll bet you there’s a category on ******* just for that. 

00:17:41 Andy 

But think of it. 

00:17:45 Andy 

I’m sure there is. 

00:17:46 Andy 

Haven’t gone there, but the look on the sort of it is then that introduced me very mildly to cigarette smoke in my system. 

00:17:53 Louise 

Wildly but mildly it through it right down your guts is what? 

00:17:56 Andy 

It did well, yeah, through right in my guts. 

00:17:59 Andy 

But it also had already been in his guts. So, he. 

00:18:01 Andy 

Was it was? 

00:18:02 Louise 

Diluted pre smoked smoke Yum. 

00:18:06 Andy 

Because passive smoke is to me like not as strong as smoked directly from the pipe. 

00:18:11 Louise 

Would you call that passive? 

00:18:13 Louise 

I don’t know if you. 

00:18:14 Andy 

I’m going to call it recycled smoke. 

00:18:14 Louise 

Would that? 

00:18:16 Louise 

Yeah, it’s not quite passive path. 

00:18:18 Andy 

My point is, my point is yes it was gross and all, and also that the smoke didn’t cut into my lungs the same way it does when you’re taking it directly from the cigarettes. 

00:18:21 Louise 

So, your point is, yes you were gross, yes. 

00:18:29 Louise 

Again, I don’t necessarily believe that to be fact we’ll have to ask. We’re going to. 

00:18:32 Andy 

You can fight you. 

00:18:33 Louise 

Have to one day we’re going to talk to Maria again and we’re going to have to say Marie now as a hypothetical. 

00:18:33 Andy 

You’re going have to try it. 

00:18:38 Andy 

OK, now look, I know but listen like that that that was my experience orbit though. So, you know what I mean? So, for me like. 

00:18:42 Louise 

OK yeah. 

00:18:43 Louise 

That was, yeah, yeah, I, I know. 

00:18:46 Louise 

Taking it so seriously. 

00:18:46 Andy 

It didn’t. 

00:18:48 Andy 

I know, but you got to have your fun. But you’ve also got a, you know I’m not being a scientist. 

00:18:54 Louise 

Mm-hmm, but that got you addicted again. That’s when you that’s when you picked it. 

00:18:59 Louise 

Up for a second time, yeah. 

00:18:59 Andy 

Well, I hadn’t been addicted, but what it did though was then, you know, over the course of time, because now I was in a peer group of smokers. So, then someone would offer me a cigarette. At first, I declined. But then. 

00:19:11 Andy 

I thought I will be. I’ll try one as you do because I’d been primed with that secondhand smoke. 

00:19:17 Andy 

It didn’t have the same choking effects as it would have when I was trying it at the lake a year or so earlier. So, then I started to become a smoker, and that’s when I really started smoking. And then, you know, I met my first long term partner. 

00:19:32 Andy 

After that guy and he was a smoker. So yeah, we were too old smoking Queens together. You know you would. 

00:19:38 Andy 

We’d wake up and have a cigarette, then have our morning coffee that. 

00:19:40 Andy 

Type of. 

00:19:41 Andy 

It developed overtime like that. It became a habit I didn’t consciously at the time when I was kissing that guy and receiving the smoke into my lungs via him. 

00:19:51 Andy 

Think that I’d like to be a smoker, but the other things in the background there with the people that I was hanging out with and enjoying the company. 

00:19:59 Andy 

I felt like I wanted to be included. 

00:20:00 Andy 

In in more. 

00:20:01 Andy 

Ways you know. I remember the year prior I felt like I wasn’t included. I didn’t belong. 

00:20:05 Louise 

You trying quick in that time, when did you first try to quit then? 

00:20:06 Andy 

Oh, good night. 

00:20:09 Speaker 2 

That probably would. 

00:20:10 Andy 

Have been probably late 90s, so we’re talking mid 90s. When I took it up. Always very conscious of how bad it is for me though, so really. 

00:20:18 Andy 

Kind of thinking. 

00:20:19 Andy 

I really don’t want to do this, but. 

00:20:21 Andy 

I’m young. 

00:20:22 Louise 

Yeah, actually that kind of the messaging around the quick campaigns of the late 90s was quite aggressive, I think so, and that’s even when I think they started to put the damage on the actual cigarette packets, isn’t it? So, every time you open it up? 

00:20:22 Andy 

Whatever you know. 

00:20:29 Speaker 2 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:20:35 Louise 

You see someone missing a hand. 

00:20:36 Andy 

That was late 90s from memory, so it wasn’t long after I started because what happened? 

00:20:42 Andy 

Was when they introduced that because nobody wanted to look at the gross amputated limbs or look at the lungs or look at the dying baby on that was now on their cigarette packet. 

00:20:52 Andy 

The cigarette companies would produce tins that didn’t have those images on them but had their brand on it. So, you’d buy the soft packs of the cigarettes and put them in that in so that you know you had your nice sturdy. 

00:21:02 Andy 

Nice and you had you had you Ziggy’s? That didn’t have the reminders of how? 

00:21:07 Andy 

Bad they are for you. 

00:21:08 Louise 

And that’s pink capitalism right there. 

00:21:10 Louise 

Absolutely, absolutely so. Now that you found a way to not have to look at the lungs, the dying. 

00:21:18 Louise 

Lungs on the front of the pack. 

00:21:19 Louise 

It’s did that help you quit no. 

00:21:21 Andy 

No. 

00:21:23 Andy 

So, you know the motivation to quit came about. 

00:21:25 Andy 

Because my parents weren’t smokers. 

00:21:28 Andy 

They didn’t smoke or my dad smoked when I was quite young. He go up in 1982 when I was about 11 years old, so. 

00:21:35 Andy 

Uh, my mum tried to have a smoke once but then one day when I saw my grandmother, I said yeah Mom smokes and then she never smoked again. 

00:21:42 Andy 

I don’t know why when I was a smoker and I was with my first long term partner, his parents were smokers, and we would observe how it was impacting their health and they would try and quit every now and then. 

00:21:54 Andy 

So would go something like this, you know. Like they both quit. So yep, I’ve given up the smokes. Smokers call from that kind of stuff happening. So good time to give up. And then. 

00:22:02 Andy 

One of them would start sneaking cigarettes behind the other ones back and spray things around so they wouldn’t get busted, but they knew, and so they’ve got to the point where they’re both kind of cheating behind each other’s back with the cigarettes. 

00:22:14 Andy 

So, when we go under the shade and have a cigarette and one would go out to the front garden and have neither of them acknowledging that they eat that they were smoking themselves or they knew the other ones were smoking and then it all came out and then start smoking again. 

00:22:27 Andy 

So, you know all these funny little patterns that kind of happened in the people around us. You know, a partner and I at the time thought, OK, we should probably stop. 

00:22:34 Andy 

’cause you know, we don’t know kind of end up in bad health. You know 80 years. So, we decided to quit. 

00:22:39 Andy 

And we tried a few times, but there’s one time that does actually like hit my memory quite strongly, and we both given up together and we’re really, really happy with the money or saving and the progress we’ve made were about a month in. 

00:22:54 Andy 

And I thought I’m going to. I’m going to buy a three awards CD. I’m going to buy us some music. 

00:22:58 Louise 

Oh yeah. 

00:22:59 Andy 

As a celebration that we’ve got this far. 

00:23:02 Louise 

A reward CD people used to play. 

00:23:04 Louise 

CDs yeah. 

00:23:05 Andy 

Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And you know you think of the money you save so you think OK, well with the money I would have smoked I’m now buying this CD. It’s a pretty common kind of quick tactic. 

00:23:14 Speaker 6 

Doesn’t that speak? 

00:23:14 Louise 

A lot for how much the price of. 

00:23:16 Louise 

Cigarettes has gone up though like. 

00:23:17 Louise 

Back then, a month of savings got you a. 

00:23:18 Andy 

Oh yeah. 

00:23:19 Louise 

CD and now. 

00:23:21 Louise 

It probably gets you half a motorcycle. 

00:23:24 Andy 

Well, I don’t know if it would. 

00:23:25 Andy 

Have been a full month for a CD there. 

00:23:26 Louise 

Was it part of a CD club though? Maybe it got you a membership to a. 

00:23:28 Andy 

No see. 

00:23:30 Louise 

CD club no, not even that I. 

00:23:32 Andy 

It was just like me going OK. Well, this is something that I actually definitely wouldn’t have purchased if I was smoking because I wouldn’t have had enough money to do it. The American but now can buy this and I can do other stuff. 

00:23:41 Louise 

Out with it. 

00:23:43 Louise 

Who was it? 

00:23:45 Louise 

Come on out with it, it’s going to be embarrassing, isn’t it? 

00:23:47 Andy 

That’s great, it was KD Lang. 

00:23:51 Andy 

Was Katie Lang? She’s a great artist. Sadly, the release that she had at the time was her CD called Drag, which for anyone who doesn’t know, is a CD full of songs that are about smoking. 

00:24:03 Speaker 2 

I didn’t. 

00:24:07 Andy 

Which I didn’t actually realise I knew. I kind of knew, but I didn’t. It didn’t kind. 

00:24:11 Andy 

Of click that. 

00:24:12 Andy 

That would be a bad idea to listen to a full CDs worth of songs about the joys and ups and downs of smoking. 

00:24:19 Andy 

And my partner. 

00:24:20 Andy 

Said to me, you’ve brought us a CD. 

00:24:22 Andy 

About smoking and within a week, we’re both back on them. 

00:24:24 Louise 

But you know, props to you for supporting the lesbians of the 90s with, you know. 

00:24:28 Andy 

Totally, I love Katie Lang. It’s grace. 

00:24:32 Speaker 2 

All I need is the air that I breathe. 

00:24:36 Speaker 2 

We use that to love you. 

00:24:38 Louise 

Was that on there? 

00:24:40 Andy 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:24:41 Louise 

Was there a song on the album about inhaling someone secondhand smoke from Apache? 

00:24:46 Andy 

I don’t think I don’t think so. 

00:24:46 Louise 

So, it’s not. It’s not a common thing, then it’s not. 

00:24:50 Andy 

I don’t think it’s uncommon. 

00:24:51 Andy 

I think I. 

00:24:52 Andy 

Think there are certain. I think there are certain places where you will find people blowing smoke. 

00:24:56 Louise 

Into each other, I do find certain places where people blow smoke up their ***** so. 

00:25:02 Louise 

OK, so. 

00:25:05 Louise 

You did try to quit. Reward yourself with KD Lang’s drag and then fail. OK. What was the success in Darwin then when you gave that up? 

00:25:13 Andy 

No, I didn’t give up in Darwin was still smoking down. 

00:25:16 Andy 

Actually, I’d continued smoking until 2012, by which time I admit my current partner, who every time I lived a cigarette would go. 

00:25:24 Andy 

Yeah, you’re disgusting. Stop it, put it away, yuck. I’m not sitting nearly all that kind of stuff which actually also didn’t motivate me to stop smoking. 

00:25:32 Andy 

But there with. 

00:25:33 Louise 

Ben Motivate you to hide it. 

00:25:36 Andy 

It motivated me to smoke away from him. Definitely because who needs. 

00:25:39 Andy 

That, but also. 

00:25:40 Andy 

Contributing factors to help me stop were things like I wasn’t smoking inside like I was with my first partner. We would both smoking indoors on my God when we moved. 

00:25:49 Andy 

Out of our place that we were renting, and we decided to clean a little patch on the wall. 

00:25:55 Andy 

We actually ended up having to clean the whole room because that little patch was actually nicotine, and it exposed a really bright patch of the wall which was really. 

00:26:03 Andy 

Obvious, don’t smoke, don’t smoke. 

00:26:04 Louise 

All these things yeah, all these things are truly reinforcing my happiness at having never picked up smoking as a habit. 

00:26:12 Louise 

To be honest. 

00:26:12 Andy 

Yeah, for sure beat be joyful. 

00:26:15 Andy 

Be glad at that. 

00:26:16 Louise 

I can see how you easily fell into that pattern of becoming addicted to smoking and I. 

00:26:21 Louise 

Think I could have fell into that pattern of being addicted to smoking. It’s not hard to be in that place. 

00:26:28 Louise 

The only reason I think that smoking never appealed to me is ’cause my father was a heavy smoker and he used to, well, I think he was a bit in that situation as well. He was constantly trying to quit. You know Mum didn’t let him smoke around. 

00:26:41 Louise 

The house or anything, so we’d have to kind of hide out at the back of the shed like it’s his dirty little secret. 

00:26:47 Louise 

And I notice like in the UNI had sometimes you know there’d be like empty cigarette packets shaft underneath the seat and down behind it like hiding. 

00:26:56 Louise 

Merman and he, you know, have a beer down in his shed and he’d smell like cigarettes and smoke. And I think that combination for me that smell of cigarettes, beer and I think sweat like sweaty man. 

00:27:11 Andy 

I mean, you know in certain circumstances, but that the. 

00:27:14 Louise 

Look, I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it does it for you earlier in. 

00:27:17 Louise 

The episode but. 

00:27:17 Louise 

For me. 

00:27:19 Louise 

I just anytime I smell those things, particularly together, it makes me feel like I think I associate sometime. 

00:27:26 Louise 

Is some of. 

00:27:27 Louise 

The negative experiences that I had as a keyed and some of that trauma that we’ve discussed in previous episodes with that, and so I’ve never wanted to pick up smoking because it feels like that, and that was. That’s something that I didn’t want to be in. 

00:27:43 Andy 

So, what about? 

00:27:43 Andy 

Your friends at school and like 3 university or even through like working in radio like because people love to have a smoke. 

00:27:49 Louise 

Mediaeval art, yes. 

00:27:52 Louise 

Yeah, I think I’ve been the odd one out in terms of that, I would say in my personal life I probably look. There’s not many things that would be. 

00:28:00 Louise 

What I would call a deal breaker when it comes to relationships with people, whether they be friendships or romances. 

00:28:07 Louise 

But honestly, smoking is probably one of them. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have friends who smoke, but I definitely 100% wouldn’t have a relationship with somebody who smokes, and that is purely because of that kind of. 

00:28:20 Louise 

PTSD around that form. 8 that smell. 

00:28:24 Andy 

Yeah, so any ladies listening? No smokers play. 

00:28:27 Speaker 2 

You know? 

00:28:28 Louise 

What like I got the same problem with moustaches, so that’s a whole different story. That’s not right, that’s not a. 

00:28:33 Andy 

Why we’ve never kissed. 

00:28:35 Louise 

That’s it’s not a childhood story that goes back to a first relationship, and maybe the subject of another podcast. But no, I also could not date somebody with a moustache. 

00:28:46 Louise 

Sorry I it’s not. It’s not a reflection. 

00:28:47 Andy 

The filter again. 

00:28:49 Louise 

On you as. 

00:28:50 Louise 

A person, it’s me. It’s absolutely on me. 

00:28:52 Louise 

Like I do have a couple of good friends who smoke and now and I’ve just been honest with them with my boundaries like one of my dear friends, he has tried to quit over the, you know, ten years or so. 

00:29:05 Louise 

I’ve known him so many times and he has done it and he’s you know he’s been smoke free for a year or so and then, uh, situation has come up. 

00:29:13 Louise 

And then I notice he’s carrying around his little rollies again. I know he really wants to give it up, so for me to be around a friend like that, that’s fine because he respects my boundaries and will never make me sit in the same room and blow smoke in my face. You know you’ll go out to the balcony or go out to the car park and that’s. 

00:29:25 Andy 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:29:29 Louise 

It’s fine. 

00:29:30 Andy 

Yeah, and look. Yeah, there were times in between finally giving up that I was successful for maybe a year or so. 

00:29:36 Andy 

Only one job. 

00:29:37 Andy 

That I was in I was particularly stressed in, and I had stopped smoking. But I decided one lunch time to go down and buy some cigarettes and sit. 

00:29:45 Andy 

There is Circular Quay and have a smoke because I just I, couldn’t I? I couldn’t deal with what was going on and I didn’t want to be there. 

00:29:51 Andy 

Like he came down to that, I just don’t want to be here. What’s my quickest? 

00:29:55 Andy 

To Skype, it wasn’t as suicidal ideations. At that point it was actually ****** I just I can’t deal with this. 

00:30:02 Andy 

What’s my best route of escape my best route of escape is just too so. Now with a cigarette and you know that allowed the chemicals to do whatever they did to me to relax me. 

00:30:11 Louise 

It’s interesting that you should identify smoking as a coping mechanism. 

00:30:16 Louise 

Marie told us about a model that she came up with for personality types and how their coping strategies might make them actually more prone to addiction. 

00:30:24 Maree 

One way of thinking about this is Harry Potter. For me, you’ve got the shyness and the awkwardness in Hermione. 

00:30:32 Maree 

You’ve got that sort of more negative thinking more seeing the doom and gloom in the world. If you think about Ron Weasley. 

00:30:41 Maree 

And the third set in the triumphant is Harry. And Harry said, go get he’s a sensation seeker. And that’s the third group of ways of thinking about teenagers and the 4th group is more the impulsive kids, and I think Voldemort or Tom Riddle. 

00:30:59 Maree 

Is the most impulsive kid you can imagine. 

00:31:03 Andy 

OK, so going by memory model here, I’m definitely on, you know like. 

00:31:08 Louise 

You worry wart. 

00:31:09 Andy 

I know like Mom used to call me that all the. 

00:31:11 Andy 

Time and it’s going well. You just buying. 

00:31:12 Andy 

Again, you’re a worry wart. 

00:31:13 Andy 

You know the worry? Juju does run pretty strong, so it’s no surprise that I was a smoker for on and off. Here’s the magic #17 years. 

00:31:22 Louise 

Yeah, close to those 18 years definitely. Yeah, I reckon I’m relating hard to Hermione. 

00:31:24 Andy 

Go ahead. 

00:31:30 Louise 

I mean, I, I guess you would say now I’m not shy and awkward. Well, actually no, you’d still say I’m awkward now for sure, but maybe not shy. 

00:31:39 Louise 

But certainly, when I was in the adolescence, the young adult ages, I would describe myself as a bit shy, definitely awkward. That’s never changed. It’s just, perhaps my awkwardness is. 

00:31:51 Louise 

Become a little bit more popular quirkiness. 

00:31:53 Louise 

Is cool now. 

00:31:54 

Right? 

00:31:54 Andy 

Yeah, absolutely. And also, when I only had. 

00:31:56 Andy 

A cat yeah, she. 

00:31:57 Louise 

Did so you know. Ron had a rat though, so, have you? 

00:32:02 Louise 

Got a rat? 

00:32:02 Andy 

I’ve got a cat called Mouse does. 

00:32:04 Louise 

That count Ron had a rap that. 

00:32:05 Louise 

Was actually a. 

00:32:06 Andy 

Human, yeah, I haven’t got one of those, so I wasn’t behind the game. 

00:32:08 Louise 

Yeah, what if you would what if? 

00:32:10 Louise 

Your cat. 

00:32:11 Louise 

What if your cat called Mouse is secretly an old man called Fred? 

00:32:15 Andy 

In what sometimes I think he is because I bust him regularly seeing on my chair on the front porch. 

00:32:21 Andy 

I’ll go out there. He’s like lazing back. He looks up at me like yeah, what do you want? I think I might actually have a cat called mouse. That is a human called feed. 

00:32:31 Louise 

Called Fred an old man called Fred he’s. 

00:32:35 Louise 

An old man course. 

00:32:36 Louise 

That’s not one of Marie’s characters, though in working at personality types. 

00:32:41 Andy 

We can pitch it to her next time maybe. 

00:32:42 Andy 

She can do a whole Flintstones model. 

00:32:45 Louise 

I think we all have a little bit of Voldemort, nice though a little bit of that impulsive Tom Riddle, although we haven’t really tried. 

00:32:51 Andy 

I think that’s the thing. 

00:32:51 Louise 

To kill everybody and a massive wizard fight. 

00:32:52 Andy 

Though it’s not easy. 

00:32:55 Louise 

You know, I’d like to. 

00:32:55 Andy 

Think that all of us have got a little bit of all of those things in there, but like what Mary is getting at is that these trays are kind of. 

00:33:02 Andy 

And I say trace because somebody says trays and I always say traits normally, but I do think I think trace is actually the correct way. 

00:33:02 Louise 

Yeah, you just say trays. I know you said I say traits too, but yeah, traces the correct way of saying it. 

00:33:10 Andy 

I’m going to defer to Marie. 

00:33:11 Andy 

On this one, it’s no. 

00:33:12 Louise 

Surprise that Marie is smarter. 

00:33:14 Louise 

Than us, I suppose. Well, no, no. 

00:33:14 Andy 

Myself dumping name. 

00:33:18 Andy 

But no, I think that her model is it great in highlighting that you know there are so. 

00:33:24 Andy 

And trace that actually do become more prominent in US, you know, like. 

00:33:28 Andy 

I was unknown. 

00:33:29 Andy 

Warrior, so it it’s useful to be able to say OK. 

00:33:33 Andy 

Well, look, you know young Andy over there worries a lot so he might be prone to doing this. He might be prone to becoming a smoker because could quite easily become addicted to that habit. That one reason. 

00:33:41 Andy 

Or another suits him or maybe young Louise. 

00:33:44 Louise 

Who was a little bit shy and awkward? Needed a drink for social lubrication? 

00:33:48 Andy 

I know and you know, like the 90s, the 1990s. There was a binge drinker dream. 

00:33:53 Louise 

Or nightmare. 

00:33:56 Andy 

Yeah, like I, I suppose we were both. 

00:33:58 Andy 

Drinking in the same era even there were ten years apart like. 

00:34:01 Louise 

Close to the same era, 90s nineties Andy would have been drinking. But yeah, I actually think it was more like 2001 Louise that probably started drinking. 

00:34:03 Andy 

Close to the same year. 

00:34:09 Louise 

So, you would, yeah you were drinking too. Maybe MC Hammer and I was drinking to Britney Spears. That’s the difference. 

00:34:09 Andy 

Oh OK, you’re very late 90s thing. 

00:34:17 Andy 

I was binge drinking to groove is in the heart. 

00:34:19 Louise 

OK, yeah, here’s the question that will separate us. 

00:34:24 Louise 

What was your first night clubbing song? 

00:34:26 Andy 

Geez, it’s really hard question because I’m not a nightclub are so we’re talking. 

00:34:29 Louise 

00:34:32 Andy 

We’re only talking. 

00:34:34 Andy 

Talking early 90s, I want to keep throwing back to groove is in the heart, but that was a couple of years later. You know, like. 

00:34:39 Louise 

Yeah, or not even necessarily a nightclub song, but you know how we link emotion and memory and OK, so when I first started learning to drive, I felt like every time I got in the car the mighty Mighty Bosstones the impression that I get. 

00:34:51 Louise 

Was on and so every time I hear that song now, I remember learning to drive. 

00:34:52 Andy 

Yeah, right? 

00:34:55 Louise 

Yeah, you know I don’t. 

00:34:57 Andy 

I said I don’t feel like I. 

00:34:58 Andy 

Have that kind of link I. 

00:34:59 Andy 

Mean I’ve got very strong links to music and lyrics and stuff growing up and. 

00:35:04 Andy 

Through my early adulthood and stuff like that, but you are saying that I can’t think of a similar kind of connection. 

00:35:10 Louise 

’cause the ones that I associate with those first times of going out drinking night clubbing when you hear this when the song comes on, you’re like this is my jam. Yeah, it’s like the vengaboys 

00:35:24 Andy 

Ha. 

00:35:25 Louise 

And least two times. 

00:35:27 Andy 

Right actually black Box right on time was actually big when I was for exceeding the clubs. 

00:35:31 Louise 

OK, yeah, around the same vintage but slightly after. 

00:35:35 Louise 

Was every time I get excited this this was the one where I’d scream at the bar was pink. 

00:35:42 Louise 

Oh, get the party started and so then you don’t get. I’m coming up so you better get. 

00:35:46 Andy 

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be perfect. 

00:35:49 Louise 

The party started. 

00:35:50 Andy 

Yeah, I remember. 

00:35:51 Andy 

That one don’t talk to that. 

00:35:51 Louise 

Yeah, absolute screamer of a nightclub. 

00:35:55 Louise 

Song, and that should hopefully shed some light on our difference in eras when we’re having this conversation. 

00:36:01 Andy 

So why I was actually mentioning that we were both drinking in the 90s, but I know, I know. But you know, like so, both of us. 

00:36:03 Louise 

Yeah, I just wanted to talk about our party songs, but yeah. 

00:36:10 Andy 

I think even though we don’t necessarily have the 90s drinking income and we’ve both got the binge drinking implement and. 

00:36:15 Louise 

Oh yeah, we got the 90s binge drinking culture in common. 

00:36:17 Andy 

Exactly so you know like well, I was drinking to suppress whatever I could whenever I needed to. We’ve ascertained that you also had the binge drinking relationships. So, what formed? 

00:36:27 Andy 

That for you. 

00:36:28 Louise 

Ah, you know. I think a lot of that was. 

00:36:31 Louise 

Probably peer pressure and expectation. I didn’t really have anything to drink until I turned 18, and even when I started uni I don’t know if it’s a Queensland thing. 

00:36:40 Louise 

If they let us into primary school earlier or whatnot, but when I first went to uni I was 17 and so I was at UNI for pretty much almost six months while everybody else. 

00:36:51 Louise 

Was out drinking. Oh, I was the 17-year-old who actually wasn’t drinking and being a little bit of a stickler for the rules at the time. 

00:37:00 Louise 

So, I was a good girl. I didn’t want to knock that. I didn’t want to rock that good. 

00:37:01 Andy 

Yeah, I can imagine. 

00:37:03 Louise 

Good girl and. 

00:37:04 Louise 

That’s a whole other episode in that. 

00:37:06 Louise 

But I didn’t want to, didn’t want to rock that good girl image, so I actually didn’t drink anything more than just disappear or there to just, you know, taste it until my 18th in which passion pop. 

00:37:15 Andy 

Just to be social. 

00:37:20 Louise 

You can taste it, just buy it. Just you just hear the word passion pop. 

00:37:25 Louise 

You can taste it right. 

00:37:26 Andy 

Oh yeah, it’s. 

00:37:28 Andy 

Passion pop I suppose is your I mean I did taste the passion pop when I went to university because you know that was the drink Dejour because it was affordable. 

00:37:36 Louise 

Shape yeah shape and sweet. 

00:37:38 Andy 

When I was entering that age, I suppose when I was 16, tropicana was being only getting drunk when I was about 16 at my brothers. 

00:37:46 Andy 

I think it was his 21st birthday party. It must have been, and I didn’t mean to get drunk, but I, you know, mom and dad. 

00:37:51 Andy 

Let me have a. 

00:37:51 Andy 

Couple of sips of. 

00:37:52 Andy 

Tropicana and Wolf. I was the life of the party. 

00:37:56 Louise 

I turned up to. I was invited to like a party. Once this is and this is in the early like I must have been under 21 or so when this was. 

00:38:04 Louise 

Happening and you had to bring a 6 pack or something and I bought a 6 pack of. 

00:38:08 Louise 

West Coast coolers because. 

00:38:09 Speaker 2 

Oh man. 

00:38:12 Louise 

I liked them and what was the thing I was consistently made fun of that with that group of friends. 

00:38:20 Louise 

I think for decades to come that my idea of a big drink was a West Coast cooler, which was pretty much almost no booze and just a. 

00:38:27 Andy 

Lot of sugar. Well, you know I’m. 

00:38:28 Andy 

Actually, known these days, if we go. 

00:38:31 Andy 

To a barbecue and we’re told to take drinks. I don’t drink normally, but if I do, I don’t want to drink anything too heavy, but I will get the vodka mud slides. 

00:38:41 Louise 

Yeah, OK. 

00:38:43 Andy 

Because I love that sweetness, that’s what it’s about for me. It’s about the flavour and the sweetness for me. 

00:38:47 Louise 

And. 

00:38:47 Andy 

I don’t like to drink hard liquor as such. I’d like to have a bit of flavour, a bit of bit of depth to it, you know, like a cocktail. 

00:38:55 Louise 

So those for me, those eras of I would call it binge drinking because I never had just one drink, right? 

00:39:02 Louise 

I never just came home from Uni and said Hey, I’m just going to have a passion pop tonight to relax just one. 

00:39:08 Andy 

Just gonna just gonna crack up in one bottle. 

00:39:10 Louise 

I’m just going to sit down in front of the TV and just have a passion pop and you know with Medina to. 

00:39:16 Andy 

Relax magic. 

00:39:18 Andy 

You imagine. 

00:39:20 Andy 

Do you often ATC? 

00:39:21 Andy 

Hi honey, I’m home. It’s OK sweetie I got your passion pop ready. Here you go just the one. 

00:39:27 Louise 

Just the one actually. 

00:39:29 Andy 

I know how much you. 

00:39:30 Andy 

Like her cold where you? 

00:39:31 Louise 

Come in from work that was never what I did. 

00:39:33 Louise 

So, what I did was what I think almost everybody else that I went to union with at the time. 

00:39:38 Louise 

Did which was not just one passion pop, it was one bottle of passion pop followed by another bottle drunk in quick succession on a Saturday night before the club lockout time. 

00:39:50 Louise 

You know, like when you I think it was like if you weren’t in by 10:00 o’clock then you couldn’t get in or something like that and you had to get drunk beforehand because you were poor and drinking. 

00:39:58 Louise 

Passion pop and he couldn’t really buy much there. 

00:39:58 Andy 

Yeah, yeah exactly. 

00:40:01 Louise 

Yeah, it’s that. 

00:40:02 Louise 

Consuming a lot of alcohol in a very short amount of time. 

00:40:05 Andy 

Often gave a fight as well. I’m not playing drinking games; we’re playing drinking games so. 

00:40:06 Louise 

Gamified yes. 

00:40:10 Andy 

And the game was always such that you know involved maybe a tongue twister or something, or some kind of thing we had to keep a rhythm or something. 

00:40:16 Andy 

And if you dropped it, then you had to skull. So, the more you scold, obviously the more you dropped and then you had to scroll some more so they will read. 

00:40:24 Andy 

Obviously to make. 

00:40:25 Louise 

You drink more. I’d say that our drinking games involve vodka, jello shots except. 

00:40:30 Louise 

I don’t think that. 

00:40:30 Louise 

Happened until many years later ’cause we couldn’t afford vodka, passion pop jello shots. I’m quite the same thing. 

00:40:39 Louise 

The thing about this is that there’s a lot of great experiences that came out of this right. Like that you have some friends, you have some drinks. 

00:40:47 Louise 

It’s fun, you have that gamifying you go out for a dance. There’s a lot of positive memories that I still have of times that I went out with people in that situation, however. 

00:40:57 Andy 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:40:58 Louise 

However, there are also a lot of terrible memories that I have of that situation, because when you binge drink like that when it’s not just one glass of passion pop when you get home from work. It doesn’t take many glasses till you’ve lost all that inhibition. 

00:41:13 Louise 

So, you lose control. I think of a few things. You lose control of your inside voice, your ability to regulate the words that are coming out of your mouth. I call that Louise uncensored. 

00:41:26 Andy 

I’ve seen Louise uncensored. 

00:41:27 Louise 

Where Louise Uncensored thinks she’s saying something quietly to somebody, and she’s actually screaming exactly what she thinks of people to other people where they can hear it. 

00:41:39 Andy 

And suddenly people are shuffling away. 

00:41:42 Louise 

And then the next day at work I’m having to justify why did or didn’t say that thing about somebody. 

00:41:47 Louise 

That’s a story for another time. Well, maybe later in the episode. The other thing that I think happens is, besides OK, the next day you feel like **** right? The absolute next day, 100% whatever. 

00:41:56 Andy 

Oh, totally yeah. 

00:41:59 Louise 

You were drinking the night before. If you binge drink, you feel like shed. 

00:42:02 Andy 

I always felt terrible after that as well, not just because I felt like **** but felt like that I was wasting the day. 

00:42:07 Louise 

The other thing that used to happen, which 

00:42:09 Louise 

Is probably how this ties more into negative mental health for me is because that alcohol would cause that sort of lack of control. 

00:42:18 Louise 

It didn’t just affect, you know inside voice. It also affected my ability to control my own thoughts. And so, what would be at the start of the night? The best night ever we’re going out for a drink. 

00:42:29 Louise 

The dance could very easily flip if someone said something, or if I thought something or if it got to 3:00 AM drags and nobody had hit. 

00:42:37 Louise 

On me could and. 

00:42:38 Louise 

Did flip to a breakdown. I suppose a drunk and I can’t control my emotions and I can’t intellectually reason with myself and nobody else can intellectually reason with me because my brain is poisoned. 

00:42:52 Louise 

A breakdown on a on a park bench about my life. Having a breakdown in the gutter about something. 

00:42:59 Louise 

It is a horrible place to be. 

00:43:01 Andy 

I’m guessing this wasn’t a one off. You know, like this is something that I’m assuming happened over a prolonged period many times. 

00:43:08 Andy 

So, did you have a sense that the alcohol might have had something to do with it, or there’s something like under the way you use alcohol? Had something to do with it? 

00:43:15 Louise 

I think not for a long time. The fact that everybody used alcohol and when I describe having you know those flip moments where you go from best night to crying in the gutter. 

00:43:24 Louise 

I wasn’t the only one that had that happen. You know plenty of times I’d be out with a friend. 

00:43:27 Louise 

It’s 3:00 AM. We’re on the walk home and then you know she sits down in a park and starts crying about her life so. 

00:43:33 Andy 

Yeah, the owner of the kebab shop is probably the next best counsellor after the barman. 

00:43:34 Louise 

The kebab shop is yeah, kebab shop has seen it all. 

00:43:39 Andy 

And I did say Bowman and I’m sorry, but we are talking in 90s, the barkeep. 

00:43:41 Louise 

By person. 

00:43:44 Louise 

Barton that doesn’t care ’cause they can’t hear; they just keep serving you the drinks. 

00:43:47 Andy 

That’s where they just smile or take your money. 

00:43:48 Louise 

Just take your money. We’ve discussed in the podcast before my long-term struggles with depression and anxiety and how I didn’t really become aware of my patterns around that. Until I suppose. Recently yeah, Young Louise was not nowhere near self-actualized enough. 

00:44:08 Louise 

See that alcohol was a contributing factor not to causing the depression and anxiety, but to exacerbating it. So, I think the removal of inhibitions through the alcohol itself meant that my mind didn’t have that ability that I had been having to compartmentalize and. 

00:44:29 Louise 

And almost like detach dissociate from. 

00:44:33 Louise 

Those feelings of you know depression, anxiety that I was experiencing in my life because. 

00:44:39 Andy 

’cause you’re just going out to have a bit of fun? Yeah, that’s what people that age. Do we go out and have? 

00:44:44 Andy 

A drink and. 

00:44:44 Andy 

Have a bit of fun and then suddenly for whatever reason, we’re having a really bad time of. 

00:44:48 Andy 

It and don’t know why. 

00:44:50 Louise 

Then you know next week when your friend says, hey, let’s go out again. Yeah, you remember 3:00 AM in the gutter. But you also remember it was a good time and it’s even my boring friends. 

00:45:01 Andy 

This is a terrible way of putting it high boring friends. 

00:45:05 Andy 

Thankful its name. 

00:45:06 Louise 

Even my what you would call boring friends my book. 

00:45:10 Louise 

Firm, you know, conservative. I have a friend who is now an archivist and hope she doesn’t listen to me call or a boring friend, but OK, she’s not boring, but I mean when you think, archivist, you don’t think party animal. 

00:45:14 Andy 

Types here. 

00:45:27 

Right? 

00:45:27 Andy 

Correct, yeah? 

00:45:28 Louise 

But even my air quotes boring friends drank every weekend. So, who was there to spend time with? 

00:45:36 Louise 

That wasn’t a part of that. 

00:45:37 Louise 

Culture do you know? 

00:45:38 Louise 

What I mean and? 

00:45:40 Louise 

The world has changed since the 90s. Two, you know, like I was meeting new friends on ICQ back then. 

00:45:47 

And that. 

00:45:47 Louise 

Was the only way to meet people outside your immediate sphere? You know, like you made friends with? 

00:45:52 Louise 

The people who are around. 

00:45:54 Louise 

There were around you because you didn’t have access to anybody else, but now you could find someone that had a shared interest. 

00:46:00 Louise 

You could find it through a meet up group. You could find out through a discord. You could find them anywhere else but. 

00:46:04 Louise 

I see Q was like. 

00:46:06 Andy 

That was the thing that was the place to be. I actually started showing the people on IRC which was to precursor to ICQ. So, on the Internet relay chat exactly. 

00:46:17 Andy 

Don’t think that. 

00:46:19 Andy 

I wasn’t in the computer lab until 5:00 AM thinking where the hell that I’m gone. 

00:46:23 Louise 

I love I love that any listeners of hours that are under the age of No 40 I’m not going to know what that sound. 

00:46:30 Andy 

Not gonna get it now. 

00:46:31 Louise 

Mean is not. 

00:46:37 Louise 

That’s an insult for your parents’ guys that is. 

00:46:39 Speaker 2 

So, you guys. 

00:46:43 Louise 

Oh, so that early binge drinking culture. I think where I picked up those habits. 

00:46:47 Louise 

Definitely based around that. So, when Marie talks about 18 years for someone to get help, imagine if I had continued with that culture. 

00:46:54 Louise 

I didn’t continue with that binge drinking culture. That was something that I stopped doing on my own, but I could see how you could get to because that would have been close to 18 years ago for me. You could get to be, you know, 40 now and then go, oh. 

00:47:08 Louise 

That’s where I picked up all these ******* bad. 

00:47:09 Louise 

Habits this idea that you’ve got a drink to have. 

00:47:12 Andy 

Fun, so what was it that made you stop? 

00:47:14 Andy 

Using alcohol like that. 

00:47:15 Louise 

I used to joke. 

00:47:16 Louise 

That I don’t drink to drink. I drink to get drunk and I wanna say like I would never consider myself at all anywhere near the scope of alcoholic I mean yeah at uni and those first few years of what I’d call. 

00:47:29 Louise 

Young adult. 

00:47:30 Louise 

Life. Absolutely every weekend there was drinking involved. 

00:47:33 Andy 

But you weren’t coming home every day. Having a passion pop. 

00:47:35 Louise 

No, and I didn’t I actually. I’ve never been someone who gets to the end of the day and has a stressful day and has a passion Popeye. 

00:47:36 Andy 

Hasn’t visited from steam. 

00:47:42 Louise 

I understand why people do that. It never it was something that I was interested in. It was we drink to get drunk. 

00:47:48 Louise 

What’s the point of it? If it’s not to get drunk, what’s the point of just having one glass of wine or one glass of passion but we drink to get drunk? 

00:47:49 Speaker 2 

Yeah, yeah. 

00:47:54 Andy 

Well, you know. 

00:47:55 Andy 

The pretext for a lot of New Year’s events pre COVID, isn’t it? You go out, you get drunk, you have a good time and then and then you don’t have a good time. 

00:48:01 Louise 

So, I think when I started working, believe it or not, after I left uni and I got my first job in Canberra, I think that I drank more in Canberra in that first job than I ever did at UNI. 

00:48:12 Louise 

So maybe it was because I had disposable income and I no longer had to drink the passion pop, which was great because at some point in uni, after a very large 

00:48:21 Louise 

Right, I had severely thrown up on the passion pop and I **** you not I could not touch anything. Passion flavoured for about a decade. 

00:48:29 Andy 

You know, up until that point I was going to say to you we should get a sponsorship from passion Pop, but I think you just killed it. 

00:48:34 Louise 

Even now, someone says hey, would you like a passion flavoured thing and my stomach kind of goes. 

00:48:41 Andy 

Yeah, I’m a bit like that with local mirror. 

00:48:43 Louise 

I’m like that also like that with garlic bread. After I had the great the great gastro of 2019. 

00:48:52 Louise 

No garlic bread is such a shame, ’cause I. 

00:48:55 Louise 

Really used to love garlic bread. 

00:49:00 Andy 

So, when you left uni and that peer pressure wasn’t there anymore, did the binge drinking stuff. 

00:49:05 Louise 

Ah no. So, when I was at uni here was to connect with people. That was the only social way to do it. 

00:49:11 Louise 

When I was in places like Canberra, used to work shift work, I’d work, you know, 10 days on, four days off and my social circle was really limited to the people that I worked with and. 

00:49:21 Louise 

It was a. 

00:49:22 Louise 

Real workplace culture. 

00:49:24 Louise 

Thing to go out together and bond and have a lot to drink though. Those times that I was in Canberra, and I was going out and binge drinking and then still crying in the gutter is just in crying in the Canberra gutter instead of the Walker gather. 

00:49:39 Andy 

Yeah, you didn’t have a major SHG. You had some other projects useful work instead. 

00:49:42 Louise 

They also coincided with some of the more depressed times in my life, because yeah, if we go back to episode, if you want to go back to episode three, there was that moment where I was, you know, sitting on the floor of the shower with the suicidal ideations. I think when I was drinking in that time period and binge drinking. 

00:50:03 Louise 

When my mind was flipping so easily, it was coming up to the surface very quickly and very easily. How I was really feeling about myself in my life when I drank, so it might seem like a good idea and to belong to that workplace culture to go along to these things and to drink. Especially because the first part of it is fun, but that underlying sense. 

00:50:24 Louise 

Of depression and worthlessness. Very quickly and easily would come about. 

00:50:29 Andy 

So is at the moment he decided to stop. 

00:50:31 Louise 

Binge drinking not. 

00:50:35 Louise 

You would think that I’d learned by then that was the moment that I slowed down. So instead of doing it every weekend, every time I had a weekend, I started working on other things. 

00:50:46 Louise 

I started working on, you know I want to get into radio and doing other things with my time. So, it wasn’t happening as often, but I still had that mentality. 

00:50:55 Louise 

Of we drink to get drunk. The differences it wasn’t happening every week and I continued to carry that mentality. 

00:50:57 Andy 

Yeah, right? 

00:50:59 Andy 

00:51:02 Louise 

UM, the moment where I said no more binge drinking is unfortunately not as young. Louise, it’s really Louise of only like the last 8. 

00:51:12 Louise 

Years I reckon we were at a work party. It was an after party for the Commercial Radio Awards and I was already really drunk then someone. 

00:51:13 Andy 

Yeah, right? 

00:51:21 Andy 

I have seen you legally. 

00:51:22 Andy 

Drunk so I can. 

00:51:24 Andy 

Picture this, but yeah. 

00:51:25 Louise 

And then someone said last drinks bars closing so you can stay here because we’d paid for the venue. 

00:51:31 Louise 

You can stay here, but we’re not allowed to serve after this time, and so someone bought a bottle of vodka over the table. 

00:51:37 Louise 

The pouring bottle. 

00:51:38 Louise 

That this bar staff is supposed to have with a little nozzle on the top right. 

00:51:42 Louise 

So, we could all pull our own drinks. Yeah, Louise didn’t pour her own drink. Louise poured the bottle of vodka. 

00:51:42 Andy 

Yeah, yeah uh-huh. 

00:51:49 Louise 

Down her throat. 

00:51:51 Andy 

Oh my God, what? 

00:51:53 Louise 

A nice culled. Oh, I think 1/3 of a bottle of vodka. 

00:51:57 Andy 

Oh wow. 

00:52:00 Louise 

And I put it down after everyone was cheering I, I think I don’t know. I mean, I’ve got no. I’ve got no perception of time because they essentially poison. 

00:52:08 Louise 

To myself, I said that was a mistake and I walked over to the toilet, and I started hurling so bad that one of the new staff he’d been working for us for a little while. He’s like grab my phone and. 

00:52:21 Louise 

Called my partner at the. 

00:52:21 Andy 

Welcome, I’m Louise. 

00:52:24 Louise 

And this is how we got to know me. Caught grab my phone, call my partner got into, picked me up and he walked me down votes anyway. 

00:52:32 Andy 

I mean, we’re laughing. 

00:52:34 Andy 

But that’s really quite as serious. 

00:52:36 Andy 

All seen look. 

00:52:37 Louise 

100%. Never do that. OK, the moment that I said never again was when the next morning I woke up surrounded by a couple of cheeseburgers that I had made him drive team with the drive through and get one. 

00:52:52 Louise 

As in my hand half eaten, I woke up. 

00:52:56 Louise 

In a bit of cheeseburger wrappers. 

00:53:01 Louise 

And when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see right. Everything had a white film over it, and I looked around and I got up and I was really woozy, and that white film didn’t go away. I was genuinely concerned at that point that I might have poisoned myself. 

00:53:17 Andy 

Probably tied. 

00:53:18 Louise 

It took me about; I think it was two or three days before my eyesight went back to normal. I was obviously vomiting. 

00:53:24 Louise 

The next few days and that was that was the moment where I don’t think so. 

00:53:30 Louise 

Like no, no more. I don’t want to do this anymore. 

00:53:34 Andy 

Yeah, Meridian is talking as well about how you know alcohol is very commonly used as the social lubricant. I mean yeah, we go out and have a bit of fun, but it does kind of go over that edge. 

00:53:44 Andy 

Like you know, when I was in uni I drank so much one night that I passed out and they shaved off one of my eyebrows. I had no idea they took stuff out of my room. 

00:53:52 Andy 

Thankfully, they were also responsible after having their fun with me, and they made sure that I didn’t choke, but that could have ended. You know, with me dead to be honest, because I could have actually asphyxiated. 

00:54:04 Louise 

I mean our part and he does want to laugh at the eyebrow thing, but. 

00:54:08 Andy 

It was pretty funny at the time. It was embarrassing for me, but my 3-year-old niece at the time. 

00:54:11 Andy 

Thought it was amazingly funny. 

00:54:13 Louise 

Yeah, I mean and that part of me that doesn’t want to. 

00:54:15 Louise 

Laugh at that also. 

00:54:16 Louise 

Remembers feeling like so drunk myself that. 

00:54:23 Louise 

00:54:25 Louise 

This is taken a turn, but. 

00:54:29 Louise 

Sexual activity. 

00:54:31 Louise 

That I wouldn’t have consented to if I was sober. 

00:54:36 Louise 

So, the fact that you are passed out and to the point where someone can shave your eyebrows off is a place where you lose all your own control. Any anybody could have done anything to you, and in some of those drinking moments. 

00:54:53 Louise 

It’s like this is OK, like a horrible turn for the conversation here. This is not where I thought it was going, but one night I was so drunk and hadn’t. 

00:55:05 Louise 

That I only had sex with somebody because I thought they would rape me if I didn’t. 

00:55:10 Louise 

And I thought. 

00:55:11 Louise 

That was a better option than being raped is half consenting to it? 

00:55:17 Andy 

Holy shift. 

00:55:18 Louise 

That’s how the conversation goes. 

00:55:21 Andy 

And it was because he was in that vulnerable state of being drunk. Yeah, which you know, is a. 

00:55:27 Louise 

Vulnerable state, I’m drunk. I haven’t got any control. I haven’t. I’m isolated. I don’t want the situation. 

00:55:37 Louise 

But Sord escalating. 

00:55:39 Andy 

And thought that that was the lesser of two evils. 

00:55:42 Louise 

Yeah, because I could just get it done and get it over with quicker. If I did that instead, there’s two things to obviously that admission is that one. It shouldn’t matter what state someone is in. 

00:55:44 Andy 

That’s really box. Yeah, yeah. 

00:55:55 Louise 

Alcoholic league 

00:55:55 Andy 

No, absolutely it shouldn’t. No. 

00:55:58 Louise 

In our. 

00:55:59 Andy 

You don’t go ****** people. 

00:56:00 Louise 

No, yeah. So, it I mean. 

00:56:02 Louise 

It shouldn’t matter. 

00:56:04 Louise 

And if someone looks like they are so drunk that they couldn’t actually give informed consent, then it’s not consent and also the other thing is, you know. 

00:56:13 Louise 

I’m not saying that I deserved that situation, or anybody deserves that situation. If they’re drinking, and so the onus needs to be on you not to drink so it doesn’t happen. 

00:56:23 Louise 

I just mean that poor binge drinking choices that can lead to you feeling out of control and powerless. 

00:56:32 Andy 

Yeah, OK, so here’s another example that doesn’t involve sexual exploitation or rate so. 

00:56:37 Louise 

Sexually grey area and sexual assault. 

00:56:40 Andy 

Yeah, so to furnish the example. 

00:56:43 Andy 

In a different way that. 

00:56:44 Andy 

That you know isn’t about sex. 

00:56:47 Andy 

There was one night where I got drunk with some friends at a house party. 

00:56:51 Andy 

And we got. 

00:56:52 Andy 

Very drunk and we had driven to the party, and it was time to go home, and I hopped in the car. 

00:56:57 Andy 

With a drunk driver. 

00:56:59 Andy 

And yeah, I never drive drunk, and I shouldn’t have looked into that car and thank God the ditch we rolled into. 

00:57:07 Andy 

Wasn’t stupid because that could have again ended up in very serious injury or death, but we ended up taking a curve too quickly and we had to crawl out of the car because it had rolled down into a ditch. 

00:57:18 Andy 

When we drink too much when we drink to excess, whether we’re having fun at the time or not, there is that element of. 

00:57:24 Andy 

Losing control. 

00:57:26 Andy 

What makes us keep doing that? If we know that we’re going to lose control, what makes us keep doing that so that we, you know, we keep going back for more and you know, is there a wake-up point at some point that says gotta stop? 

00:57:38 Louise 

I don’t want to get out of control again. I haven’t stopped drinking permanently. I just hardly ever drink now. 

00:57:44 Louise 

I started from them saying instead of we only drink to get drunk. I started saying I only have a drink if I’m already in a good mood. 

00:57:52 Andy 

Yeah, that’s a big difference. I actually started the same. You know, I really kind of cut off drinking. 

00:57:57 Andy 

When my mom died because I knew that if I was going to have go out and have a drink with people, I would be that emotional mess because I already was and I made a pretty firm choice. 

00:58:07 Andy 

Then I’ve stuck to it ever since that if I feel happy enough, I’ll have a drink, and even then, I might not even want one, and that’s OK, but I’ve become more accustomed to not having your drink than actually. 

00:58:17 Andy 

Going out and then bowling into yeah. 

00:58:20 Andy 

Yeah, do you have a drinking animate? 

00:58:22 Andy 

That kind of stuff, because that. 

00:58:23 Andy 

Doesn’t work for me anymore. 

00:58:25 Louise 

I think once I started working on my mental health for real once I started to realise my long-term traits of depressive episodes anxiety once I started. 

00:58:35 Louise 

To cut through the platitudes and get to the core of living authentically. 

00:58:40 Louise 

Uhm, I didn’t. 

00:58:41 Louise 

Need to drink, it’s actually detrimental to my health. 

00:58:45 Louise 

Not only does it now would it affect the medication that I take, which makes me. 

00:58:50 Louise 

Feel better, but there was. 

00:58:51 Louise 

There’s been more. 

00:58:52 Louise 

Negative things that have come from it than positive. 

00:58:55 Louise 

You know, sadly, I think that alcohol. 

00:58:59 Louise 

Being a lot of the reason for unconsensual sex is going to. 

00:59:02 Louise 

Be so relatable. 

00:59:06 Louise 

Isn’t it that it’s ******* awful? Isn’t it that? 

00:59:10 Andy 

Well, because people will get drunk, and they get horni and bigger walls. It’s very ******* corn term as well. 

00:59:16 Andy 

You know, like people will get so ***** they’ll just accept a FCK, and I think that works both ways. 

00:59:22 Andy 

You know, like people will regret cracking onto someone because that’s where the bigger wolf things really have. It’s like. 

00:59:28 Andy 

Genesis, but really like a girl with beer goggles in this case, doesn’t feel like she can actually say no. 

00:59:35 Louise 

Yeah, I don’t know if I’d call that beer goggles, but. 

00:59:38 Andy 

No, I know it’s clumsy, but you know what I’m saying though? Like it’s, it’s that lack of lack of discretion that that comes about because you drunk the lack of control. The lack of being able to. 

00:59:40 Louise 

I think you know I I’m yeah. 

00:59:48 Louise 

That that that feeling of. 

00:59:49 Louise 

Yeah, van like it’s the negative of vulnerability. It’s yeah, it’s a real grey area because if two people are affected by alcohol and one person doesn’t in that situation he was pushing for sex and you know, kissing me and pinning me and that kind of stuff and. 

00:59:54 Andy 

It’s complete exposure basically. 

01:00:09 Louise 

It’s like I didn’t. I didn’t explicitly say no. 

01:00:10 Andy 

You know what’s funny? He’s the way he’s his alcohol there is. He’s actually brought out a part of his personality that he probably wouldn’t do either. But let me finish the thought here ’cause it’s not excusing his behaviour. 

01:00:22 Andy 

Like he’s exposing who he really is by doing that when he’s drunk, because if he’s doing it when he’s drunk, he’s thought about doing it when he’s not drunk. 

01:00:29 Louise 

And I would back that up by saying that you are absolutely right, because when he was sober the next day, he kept pressuring me after that to see him again, and I said, no, I don’t ever want to speak to you again. And he was married and cheated on his wife. 

01:00:46 Andy 

There you go. 

01:00:46 Louise 

So yeah. 

01:00:48 Louise 

So, there you go and the only way I got him to leave me alone was I said if you. 

01:00:51 Louise 

Don’t leave me alone. I will tell your wife what you did. 

01:00:53 Andy 

Yeah, and then of course you. 

01:00:55 Andy 

Would have been the pitch. 

01:00:56 Louise 

And you know, do you know what that was? Younger, Louise, but older Louise thinks that I probably would have ******* told her for a start, older Louise would have punched him in the throat and told him to get the **** out of my house. 

01:01:08 Louise 

I will never been in that situation with him to begin with, and then I would have gone around and told his wife that she’s wasting her life with. 

01:01:14 Louise 

A ******* scumbag. 

01:01:15 Andy 

Yeah, if we were kind of taught younger to kind of lookout for ourselves in that way. 

01:01:20 Andy 

Rather than follow society’s norms. 

01:01:23 Andy 

Of have a drink get loose ********** 

01:01:26 Louise 

Because you have to wonder, is it premeditated? Is that part of his thing, you know, bring around a bottle of wine ’cause he did say he was bringing food, but then he didn’t bring much in the way of food, so there wasn’t much food. 

01:01:36 Andy 

Just the wine, yeah? 

01:01:36 Louise 

Uhm, it’s that thing that you know. Do people say now? Is that if it’s not a clear yes, then it’s a no. And I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t say no. I thought no. 

01:01:47 Louise 

Who kind of tried to pull away and in the. 

01:01:49 Andy 

Which should have been enough for him to go OK, no. 

01:01:52 Louise 

And then in the end I just said just hurry up sooner. We could get it over with the. 

01:01:56 Louise 

Sooner he could leave. 

01:01:57 Andy 

Wonder how many other people who got raped stories? 

01:01:59 Louise 

Well, most of rape is about power. 

01:02:03 Louise 

I don’t know if I’d call mine a. 

01:02:04 Louise 

Rape story, I mean it. I suppose it is a rape story. 

01:02:08 Andy 

Yeah, it is. ’cause represents 6. It’s about control. 

01:02:09 Louise 

Because there’s that. 

01:02:11 Louise 

Yeah, but because both parties were drinking, I don’t know it’s. 

01:02:15 Andy 

Yeah, that’s apologist like the even drinking any drinking it’s no excuse for him. 

01:02:19 Louise 

To rape you, yeah, but if I didn’t outwardly say no. 

01:02:22 Andy 

It’s still not your fault. 

01:02:26 Andy 

Are you telling me that he didn’t know what he was doing by bringing a bottle of wine and then by the next morning when he was sober trying to continue it anyway? 

01:02:39 Louise 

Hmm we make apologies for ****** men. 

01:02:44 Louise 

I truly hate that that story is going to relate for people. I truly hate that other woman that are listening to this part of the conversation are gonna say yeah, that’s happened to me as well. 

01:02:55 Andy 

Well, you know like I got catfished once very early on in the Internet days. Yeah, I was doing the early version of online dating. We’d go on and you kind of have a chat to someone chair each other. 

01:03:05 Andy 

Keep decided to meet. He sent these photos. He looked really cute. I drove over and nothing. It was nothing like the photographs, but I did not feel confident enough to say, look no. I’m not going to go through with this, and I was pressured into having sex with him. 

01:03:20 Louise 

Same thing, isn’t it? 

01:03:22 Andy 

It is. 

01:03:23 Andy 

It’s exactly the same thing. 

01:03:24 Louise 

It’s a whole other episode I had sex. 

01:03:26 Andy 

It’s all about coercion ends. 

01:03:28 Louise 

Yeah, it’s coercion had sex with someone once because it was his birthday and he said he was alone for his birth. 

01:03:35 Louise 

Day and I said, come over, I’ll make you a steak that was all it was going to be. We were just friends. 

01:03:41 Louise 

But then when he was there, he was like it’s not fair that I don’t get some birthday sex and. 

01:03:47 Louise 

You didn’t get me a birthday present, so maybe I could have some birthday sex and then starts grabbing me. 

01:03:54 Andy 

Stocking what’s up? 

01:03:56 Louise 

Anyway, and I’m like, yeah, OK ’cause. 

01:04:01 Louise 

Oh God, this is going to sound. This is going to sound terrible. 

01:04:04 Louise 

’cause I did say come over for a steak, but I actually don’t cook very well. So, when he got there, he saw that I was struggling with it and I thought well, to be fair, asked him over for a steak and I didn’t cook it well and he had to cook it. 

01:04:15 Louise 

So maybe I should pay him back for it. So, I gave him some birthday sex and it was terrible for me and great. 

01:04:20 Louise 

For him it. 

01:04:20 Louise 

Was like a little ******* Energizer Bunny jackrabbit. It was just ******* 

01:04:24 Louise 

Bangla being done. 

01:04:27 Andy 

Happy birthday 

01:04:28 Louise 

Awful, yeah. 

01:04:29 Louise 

There was no alcohol involved in that one that was just that was coercion via guilt. 

01:04:35 Louise 

That one by guilt, yeah. 

01:04:37 Louise 

It strikes me that as we’re having this conversation that that relationship that I formed with alcohol when I was just starting to drink as it being not just a rite of passage, but it being fun, it being a thing that you have to do, you have to be a part of it, even though along that journey. 

01:04:54 Louise 

It’s resulted in some terrible experiences for me that it’s still more overwhelmingly been, but I still have to take part in alcohol culture for those almost 18 years, you know. 

01:05:04 Andy 

And you know what, it is as well. It’s not just that, it’s just that it’s my responsibility to make sure that I get myself into those messages, because you know, how much were. 

01:05:12 Andy 

You are blaming yourself for being raped. 

01:05:14 Louise 

Yeah, well, you know, I don’t really think about it like it’s not like I mean I. 

01:05:19 Louise 

It’s that’s probably something to you know. Bring up with the therapist at some point, but it’s not like I certainly know people who have been raped in what I would call a real rape way. 

01:05:29 Louise 

And I don’t think that that’s even a good way to quantify a real rape versus a thinning rate, but. 

01:05:35 Andy 

No, but you know people who have. 

01:05:37 Andy 

Been violently raped? 

01:05:38 Louise 

Yeah, yeah, that’s the difference. Violently raped. 

01:05:41 Andy 

’cause the ranks not about sex. It’s about the coercion in the control. 

01:05:44 Louise 

Yeah, and so I think in my mind have minimized that experience and chalked it up. 

01:05:49 Louise 

Through a bad drinking experience. 

01:05:52 Andy 

But also, you did say specifically that you decided to get it over with because you felt that if he resisted, he would become quite aggressive. 

01:05:59 Louise 

Yeah, I did, and I did think that because he was being aggressive with how he was trying to push me to kiss him and stuff like that. And then like literally in that situation, I even vomited, and he kept going. 

01:06:13 Louise 

Then you know what I also did is. I turned that story into a joke, and I actually reframe that story into what I would call, you know, a great tale to retell at parties. 

01:06:25 Andy 

Yeah, right? 

01:06:26 Louise 

You see the net with Hannah Gatsby? Yeah, and how she you know. She says that she made all those jokes about situations and how she told the story in one way. 

01:06:36 Louise 

And it sounds like a joke. But then when she tells the rest of the story, you know they’re kind of being beaten up as sexually assaulted and it’s not a joke, she’s. 

01:06:41 Andy 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:06:44 Andy 

The packs of projects. Yeah. 

01:06:44 Louise 

Not the punch lines. 

01:06:46 Louise 

I’ve reframed that story into one that I told for ages which. 

01:06:50 Louise 

Which was he being so bad that I said just get it over with and through a dill doe at him etc. etc. 

01:06:57 Louise 

Because that was an entertaining story. 

01:06:59 Andy 

Yeah, and one in which that you weren’t actually as victim. 

01:07:02 Louise 

And one in which I had control. Yeah, so looking back on all of that and there’s some. There’s some interesting food for thought in there. That is, I suppose, a bit unexpectedly coming out of this episode certainly wasn’t planned for me to. 

01:07:20 Louise 

Say those things definitely. It definitely wasn’t in the run sheet. Was it to talk about coercive sex? No. 

01:07:21 Andy 

What is the waltz and all? 

01:07:27 Andy 

I think it falls somewhere under the bit that says, Louise explained. 

01:07:34 Louise 

It’s interesting in this conversation it does strike me that even with those stories which are now arguably awful, not even arguably just awful. 

01:07:46 Louise 

Uhm, it wasn’t until I had that experience where I thought I’d poisoned myself with alcohol that I actually gave it up. 

01:07:46 Andy 

They’re awful. 

01:07:53 Louise 

It turns out that you know coercive sex wasn’t enough to rid myself of that idea of I have to. 

01:08:00 Louise 

Be a part of. 

01:08:02 Louise 

Drinking culture. 

01:08:03 Andy 

So, after all that, you know it kind of would look on the surface like you just kind of went cold Turkey at one point that you just decided to give up the bottle. 

01:08:12 Andy 

Land and start living differently and. 

01:08:14 Andy 

I think yeah, it’s. 

01:08:15 Andy 

Pretty rare that it’s the case that someone can just go cold Turkey. 

01:08:18 Andy 

You know whatever substance it is they’re addicted to, whether it’s alcohol or something. Otherwise, you know cigarettes, hard drugs. It’s pretty rare for someone to just be. 

01:08:27 Andy 

Able to switch that off. 

01:08:28 Louise 

Yeah, and even though it’s much easier to make a change when we’re younger, apparently ’cause our brains aren’t formed yet and are fully formed yet and they’re more plastic. Murray did have some encouraging words for any of us in our middle or later use. 

01:08:44 Louise 

I think I’m identifying as a Hermione. Is it too late for me now if I don’t have a nice fresh teenage brain with all of its extra neurons and I’m setting my routine pathways? 

01:08:54 Maree 

Oh, my golly never too late never too late and you know it’s not as easy as when you’re 13 and 14 or 15 but we know that don’t we? 

01:09:04 Maree 

Know that with most things in life, it’s a lot easier to do it when you’re 1314 or 15, but it is absolutely never too late to turn it around and to. 

01:09:14 Maree 

Create positive coping mechanisms rather than relying on what? 

01:09:18 Maree 

Can be short term, you know it does make you feel better when you’ve had a drink, but the problem is that that quickly shifts from being a short term positive to a long term, not positive. 

01:09:30 Louise 

Hey there, just wanted to take a little breather from today’s episode and say thank you so much for listening to us. Make sure you never miss an episode by hitting the follow button on your podcast. 

01:09:39 Louise 

App now and. 

01:09:39 Louise 

While you’re there, we’d love it if you left us a review. It really does help to boost us so we can reach even more people. 

01:09:45 Louise 

You can also cheque out our Patreon page to see how you can access even more content at patreon.com/re frame of mind and remember to tell everyone you know about us, because the more people we get talking about mental. 

01:09:57 Louise 

Health the more supported will all be. 

01:10:01 Louise 

So, we talked about my relationship with alcohol, and we’ve talked about your relationship with smoking, and we’re talking about addiction and being addicted to a substance like alcohol or nicotine. I actually don’t think. 

01:10:16 Louise 

Hopefully this is not one of those things where I’m gonna need an intervention. I actually don’t think that I was addicted to alcohol. I don’t think that I was alcoholic in that way. I think I was addicted to. 

01:10:27 Louise 

The thought pattern that I needed to have alcohol to have a good time. I needed to do it to be a part of Australian culture. 

01:10:35 Andy 

Let’s face it, like we’re sold those messages, at what time I do are we have prime ministers that go out to the cricket and booze on. 

01:10:42 Andy 

And, you know, give that that thumbs up saying, yeah, do this have go out and? 

01:10:46 Andy 

Have fun, it’s. 

01:10:47 Andy 

It’s something that’s almost expected of us. 

01:10:48 Louise 

So, because I wasn’t going home every night and having a passion pop with my TV after a stressful day, I don’t think it was. 

01:10:55 Louise 

I have to have this thing which I think is different than it was for you with nicotine, because that very much is a physiological craving. So how did you actually? 

01:11:05 Louise 

Weight smoking. 

01:11:07 Andy 

They came out. I’m ready so that I definitely needed to. Because, you know, talk through these things that we’ve been talking through that does come that point where we know that, OK, this has to stop. 

01:11:18 Andy 

So, whether it’s that relationship you have with binge drinking, or whether it’s me with the nicotine. I knew that for my own health and even socially because smoking. 

01:11:27 Andy 

You know has become ill or less corn, but I wanted to quit. I wanted to give it up, so I then came across an app that was produced by Quit essay at the time and I remember years before when I had tried to quit. 

01:11:42 Andy 

And I had almost like, I guess, a paper version of something to keep you motivated along all the different points of giving up. 

01:11:50 Andy 

So, they would set out a calendar over the 1st 30 days of your Quit journey and say you know by this stage your lungs are doing this and by this stage you’re doing that and by this stage you’ve reduced that and something else which yeah. 

01:12:03 Andy 

That’s the sort of stuff that I can relate to kind of keep me motivated with the goals of it. So, the app from quid essay was quite a similar kind of tactic. 

01:12:14 Andy 

And so, I had the app, and it was sending little reminders of encouragement every now and then of yeah, you’ve got smoked food store on regulations, and even though it wasn’t a person doing that, it was enough of a reminder that I’ve gone this long without cigarettes and my body was repairing that. It was recovering and. 

01:12:34 Andy 

I guess you know there are a lot of studies out there. How much damage is permanent, and I shouldn’t have spoken in the 1st place and all that kind of stuff, but that’s not the point like when. 

01:12:41 Andy 

You’re giving up. 

01:12:42 Andy 

Smoking it’s hard. Yeah, when you give you up anything like that. 

01:12:46 Andy 

It’s bloody hard and any little sign of encouragement, not negative reinforcement, but encouragement for me anyway, is the thing that really helped me to then stop all together in 2012. It’s ten years in April. Since I’ve had a cigarette. 

01:13:01 Louise 

So as Maree points out technology does play a vital role in providing evidence-based information for people to access in a non-judgmental way. 

01:13:09 Maree 

I think that is where there is incredible power about making some of those first Connections through mediums like digital mediums. 

01:13:17 Maree 

So, I just really encourage people. There are evidence-based sources of information and it’s reaching out to those you know. Our websites core cracks in the eye. For example, for methamphetamine. 

01:13:29 Maree 

It’s reaching out for those and going to those trusted ever. 

01:13:32 Maree 

In space resources, because there is a lot of stigmas. 

01:13:35 Andy 

I wonder if that’s a risk. Sometimes it was falling into a. 

01:13:37 Andy 

Trap of toxic 

01:13:38 Andy 

Positivity where some people started being that for them works. 

01:13:43 Andy 

Do we really need to start looking more into what we’re saying and how we say it now that might be supporting us or. 

01:13:48 Maree 

Otherwise, I really love that term toxic positivity. I think that’s amazing. 

01:13:53 Louise 

We’ll get it printed on the page at wow. 

01:13:58 Maree 

I, I think let’s Chuck out toxic positivity in toxic negativity and let’s talk about greater compassion, so you know it’s being self-compassion and compassion to others. So, I do love that toxic positivity makes me want to throw it out but. 

01:14:18 

I think. 

01:14:18 Louise 

We found the subject of your next research paper. 

01:14:21 Speaker 2 

No exactly. 

01:14:23 Louise 

Kinda proud we introduced Marita. The concept of toxic positivity. 

01:14:26 Andy 

Yes, you really love that term, didn’t she? 

01:14:29 Louise 

She wanted to throw it out, but she loved the name for it. 

01:14:33 Andy 

Yeah look, I mean a common theme that started cropping up ever since we spoke to Nathan Parker way back in episode 6. Is that we need to look for one small thing. 

01:14:42 Louise 

Yeah, Nathan was our guest who wanted to be a fighter pilot since he was a kid, but then was in a bus accident where he had to have his hand amputated and then had to teach himself to, well, function and fly again every day by making small choices. That was his philosophy. 

01:14:58 Andy 

Yeah, so this is really the first time that together we heard this concept of. I suppose what other people might call chunking; you know so. 

01:15:06 Andy 

Where you look for something small that’s manageable that you can use to move towards the change that you want, and you know people do communicate that in different ways. 

01:15:15 Andy 

You know we hear it when we’re ready to hear it, I suppose is what it comes down to. 

01:15:18 Louise 

So true. 

01:15:19 Louise 

Through the advice I really loved from Marie was that concept of letting ourselves do social experiments to see how we feel when we’re trying a modified behaviour. 

01:15:29 Maree 

I’d like to think that eventually we can get to the sophisticated space where we can have work events, we don’t have to have alcohol associated with them, but you know, that’s a bit of a way off. 

01:15:39 Maree 

It’s both individuals, so having those skills and testing it yourself like can I go to the party and not drink and still have fun? And that’s a great behavioural experiment. 

01:15:49 Maree 

That you can run with yourself. Maybe you don’t have to do it every party, but you try it for one or two parties and test. 

01:15:55 Maree 

Did what we call behavioural experiment, which is go to the party see what your behaviour is like. Without the alcohol you might enjoy it. 

01:16:01 Maree 

I think you know we were just talking about that. Sometimes it can be more fun to do that. 

01:16:05 Maree 

And then it’s also being around peers and having the conversations with them that maybe this is what you’re going to choose to do, and in gathering strength, you’ll be surprised how many other peers. 

01:16:15 Maree 

Will also be thinking that that’s something that they might like to try. We have an experiment and see whether we can actually have fun without drinking. 

01:16:23 Andy 

Well, I can happily say that I’ve never felt like a cigarette, even with everything that’s happened. 

01:16:27 Andy 

In the last two years. 

01:16:28 Louise 

And I don’t drink to cope anymore. Now we take prescription medication. 

01:16:36 

But you’re. 

01:16:36 Andy 

Not addicted. 

01:16:37 Louise 

Not well. 

01:16:38 Louise 

Addicted no now I cope with things by looking at my feelings and talking to a psychologist. 

01:16:44 Louise 

And getting to the bottom. 

01:16:46 Louise 

Of what’s going on and. 

01:16:48 Louise 

I think that’s a lot healthier. 

01:16:49 Andy 

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it is possible to overcome addictions and even if it does involve more than a, you know you’ve just. 

01:16:57 Andy 

Got to do. 

01:16:58 Andy 

This, or you’ve got this. Just do it. That kind of product units you got this Boo. 

01:16:59 Louise 

Just do it. You can do it. 

01:17:04 Andy 

Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t, but you. 

01:17:06 Andy 

Know there’s always a lot that’s underneath that. 

01:17:09 Andy 

Band aid of a platitude. 

01:17:10 Louise 

So, when we initially reached out to Marie, we wanted to explore whether our behaviours are embedded in habits that can also be seen as addictive. You know, when we want to do something, but we can’t. 

01:17:20 Louise 

Parts and then we beat ourselves up on it for not being able to. 

01:17:23 Andy 

And Marie pointed us towards what she termed as the six big risk factors for adolescents. 

01:17:29 Maree 

We talk about them as the big six risk factors for poor health and adolescents. 

01:17:33 Maree 

So, alcohol, tobacco, sleep, sugar intake, physical activity and screen time and they are big six risk factors for. 

01:17:42 Maree 

Poor health in adolescents and you can switch it around knowing this information to increase healthy behaviours, not just decreased. 

01:17:50 Andy 

I’m really interested that you included sugar as a part of the Big Six. There. It’s something that we don’t often. 

01:17:55 Andy 

Think about as far as addiction goes. 

01:17:57 Maree 

Yeah so. 

01:17:59 Maree 

The sugar and you know in terms of a risk factor for poor health and sugar intake, is absolutely one of the big. 

01:18:06 Louise 

Six, it’s really interesting to hear Sugar identified in. 

01:18:10 Louise 

One of the big six. 

01:18:11 Andy 

Yeah, I am a Big Sugar addict. I have been since I can ever remember. I’ve always had this sweet tooth as it’s nicely termed but there have been times that I’ve gone off it and then it takes just. 

01:18:25 Andy 

Little bit of something with a bit of. 

01:18:28 Andy 

Sugar and Andy are eating. 

01:18:30 Andy 

Sized block of. 

01:18:32 Andy 

Chocolate within 2 1/2 minutes again. 

01:18:34 Louise 

Can I tell you that when we put the run sheet for this episode together, I think it planted this idea and what this sugar idea in my head. Last night I actually had dreams. I was eating Eminem. 

01:18:48 Louise 

I think I was eating like a packet of M&M’s and then I don’t know if it was you or someone that could be you but didn’t look. 

01:18:54 Louise 

Like you in the dream saying, don’t do it. 

01:18:57 Louise 

Don’t eat the M&M‘s you’ll ruin your out of sugar or whatever you said, and I just kept getting another packet of M&M. 

01:19:03 Louise 

‘s So I mean. 

01:19:07 Louise 

That’s how I felt in my dream because I don’t have refined sugar now it is I, I wanna say because the first thing that people think when I say something like I don’t eat refined sugar is oh you wanna lose weight? 

01:19:20 Louise 

No, not at all. I’m happy being me. I’m happy being fat. I’m all good for that. I am. 

01:19:25 Louise 

a plus size queen and proud of it. I don’t eat sugar because I have chronic pain and sugar leads to inflammation. That’s worse. Refined sugar that leads to inflammation. That’s worse. 

01:19:34 Louise 

And I’m got sick of having chronic pain and so much like any other lots of other things I’ve tried in my life, like going gluten free and not eating dairy. Cutting out sugar was a part of that. 

01:19:46 Andy 

How’s the chronic pain to gave it up? 

01:19:48 Louise 

Still there better. It’s not as bad, not gone, just not as bad so earlier in the episode I said I didn’t think I was addicted to alcohol; it was just I was addicted to the thoughts and the culture. 

01:19:58 Louise 

100% addicted to sugar. I was 100% addicted to sugar. Giving up sugar refined sugar. I will say refined sugar because I do still have. 

01:20:00 Andy 

Yeah, OK. 

01:20:09 Louise 

Things like coconut sugar, Maple syrup, anything. 

01:20:12 Louise 

That is kind of a slower burning lower GI thing, and that’s to do with the way that cane sugar spikes in your blood. Or Anne Rice sugar actually is. 

01:20:22 Louise 

I’m not a scientist and this is also not a dietary podcast, so you might need actual to consult actual information here, yeah? 

01:20:28 Andy 

Dietary advice will add that to the disclaimer at this time. 

01:20:30 Louise 

Talk to an. 

01:20:31 Louise 

Actual dietitian about this. But like OK. One of the vegan sugars that is often in things is rice sugar, but rice sugar is really high GI, so it acts very similar to cane sugar. That is important information. 

01:20:43 Andy 

01:20:46 Louise 

For this for this. 

01:20:47 Louise 

Part of the conversation in my in my sugar discussion. 

01:20:50 Louise 

But giving up refined sugar or high GI sugars exceptionally hard because my body was definitely craving them. 

01:20:58 Andy 

Because your pleasure receptors are programmed to expect them into want them in slaving it. 

01:21:04 Louise 

My little dopamine hits yeah, because it does it. It causes that not a nutritionist again, but it does cause. 

01:21:12 Louise 

That flood you get all those good feeling chemicals and your brain and body associate’s. I eat this and it causes that. 

01:21:22 Louise 

But it doesn’t seem to associate. I eat this. It causes that and then 10 minutes later because it’s peaked in GI and its major blood sugar peak, it also causes it to drop. 

01:21:33 Louise 

Significantly after as well, and causes that crash, you know, the afternoon crash, the sugar crash where you need some more sugar to boost you back up. I feel like I’m starting to sound like I’m. 

01:21:43 Andy 

Let’s make Stanton. 

01:21:45 Louise 

Like I’m about to sell everybody on a, uh, uh, raw paleo diet or something like that like I’m about, I’m about to push some kind of course on somebody and I swear I’m. 

01:21:55 Louise 

Not yes, like I’m about to advocate for a detox tea or some **** like that. But no, I I’m not I but OK. 

01:21:55 Andy 

Some kind of crushed diet? 

01:22:04 Louise 

Sugar is in almost every processed food that we eat. It is super hard to kick an addiction to sugar because it’s not just about. 

01:22:13 Louise 

I won’t just have a chocolate bar, it’s also about I’ve gotta rearrange my lifestyle so that I don’t even have that loaf of bread because that particular loaf of. 

01:22:20 Louise 

Bread has sugar in it. 

01:22:22 Andy 

Remember that time when that large hamburger chain was told they couldn’t actually call their buns bread rolls because they had too much sugar and were there for confectionery? 

01:22:32 Louise 

Yes, things like. 

01:22:33 Louise 

That we end up in this position as people as a society because. 

01:22:37 Louise 

We’re time poor and we’re out of energy, and so it’s easy to go to the supermarket and pick up something that’s prepared and ready to go. 

01:22:43 Louise 

Completely valid because we don’t have the time or the energy, but then the thing that’s in that food, you know it might have a lot of sugar in it, which makes it taste great. 

01:22:51 Louise 

But then that spikes the blood sugar and then it crashes later and then we don’t have the energy because we’ve experienced. 

01:22:57 Louise 

A crash, you know, GI in our blood sugar and then we have something else to compensate for the crash. 

01:23:03 Louise 

And then we go up for a bit and then we crash you. It’s like it’s like the coffee effect. I think you know you start off your morning with that coffee and you get the caffeine rush. 

01:23:12 Louise 

And then once it’s done, boom. 

01:23:14 Louise 

You feel like a zombie. 

01:23:15 Louise 

Walking and you need another one. 

01:23:17 Andy 

Yeah, I mean I, I guess you know what you’re saying. There really is that like any of these things, even with sugar, it’s not just a simple case of saying cut it out, don’t do it because there’s a lot of things you need to keep your eye on to help you, not do it. 

01:23:32 Louise 

Yeah, there’s all the kind of the infrastructure like we don’t exist in a vacuum and do. 

01:23:38 Andy 

We don’t know as much as we would like to. Sometimes we don’t. 

01:23:42 Louise 

And we say this about mental health all the time, but. 

01:23:44 Louise 

’cause you know the world around us effects our mental health and we need to acknowledge, you know, we don’t exist in a vacuum and work the best way we can in the world that we live in. 

01:23:54 Louise 

And the same thing goes for things like physical health or physical addiction. I’m sure that if we were Gwyneth Paltrow and we could afford our own personal chefs. 

01:24:03 Louise 

To follow us around. 

01:24:04 Louise 

And make our organic free range vegan salads. Then we would all probably be a lot healthier. 

01:24:13 Speaker 2 

Yeah, but you. 

01:24:13 Andy 

Know I look at some of those diets and they have treats in there based on the ingredients that are inverted, commas safe, and they’re just replicating those old things like. 

01:24:25 Andy 

Keto friendly Bounty, sure I will, thank you. 

01:24:28 Andy 

I don’t know. I think that there’s a whole lot of reprogramming and retraining with the pallet that needs to go on there as well, because I don’t want to be one of those people that. 

01:24:36 Andy 

Say should never have a. 

01:24:37 Andy 

Bounty bar because I love counties. 

01:24:39 Andy 

Ours, but I think. 

01:24:39 Louise 

Are you becoming a nutritionist like I was? Yeah. 

01:24:42 Andy 

I think so, but I think you know, like if we’re going to look at changing our eating habits, I think those sorts of replacement ones or substitutes. If you want to go down that vegan pathway with the Gwyneth Paltrow type chef. 

01:24:57 Andy 

I think those replacements are a good stepping stone to finding your way to that new way of eating, but to me when I reach for sugar, there’s something else behind it. 

01:25:06 Andy 

Similarly with the cigarettes, when I want. 

01:25:09 Andy 

A chocolate bar. 

01:25:10 Andy 

It’s because I’m feeling stressed about something or it’s really because I really feel like a good bit of chocolate because I can. 

01:25:16 Andy 

It compounds chocolate and get that same feeling of satisfaction. You know I’ve been known to raid the pantry here for cooking chocolate because we haven’t had any other chocolate. 

01:25:27 Andy 

Hours so it’s something else. It’s not the chocolate, it’s something else. So, by replacing sweet for a different type of sweet I suppose. 

01:25:36 Andy 

Yeah, from a mental health point of view if we’re ’cause that’s what we’re talking about here. In this podcast, we’re talking about the things we do because of how we’re feeling. 

01:25:44 Andy 

So, for me, like I went out and bought a bunch of chocolate. 

01:25:47 Andy 

Nice chocolate last night ’cause you know, it’s nice to have some nice chocolate. I had exactly the short-term benefit that is amazing ’cause it tastes so now. 

01:25:50 Louise 

Always good to treat yourself. 

01:25:56 Andy 

The longer-term benefit of that last night was that I was awake for three or four hours with the worst heartburn because that particular chocolate does give me heartburn, and I love it so much. 

01:26:06 Andy 

So, you know when really talks about trading off the short-term benefits to the long-term impacts, then when it comes to chocolate, I’m really, really bad at that. 

01:26:15 Andy 

I used to be bad at it. 

01:26:16 Andy 

With cigarettes, but I’m bad at it with sugar still. 

01:26:19 Louise 

Yeah, well, I mean if we’re lacking something in our mental. 

01:26:22 Louise 

Health, I think. 

01:26:23 Louise 

Whether it’s, I suppose, an emotional thing like that whole idea where we eat our feelings. 

01:26:29 Louise 

And I, I think there’s something to be said for that, because I would certainly and still do. 

01:26:34 Louise 

To reach for a big old plate of potatoes with butter, if I’m feeling empty inside, emotionally, that’s my eating of feelings. 

01:26:44 Louise 

You know it’s a whole other conversation to talk about potatoes and carbohydrates, converting to sugar, which again not a nutritionist, but it’s similar. It’s a similar process and I think, yeah. 

01:26:54 Louise 

So, there’s that part of eating your feelings. A lot of that messaging comes through media and advertising that we’ve grown up with, you know. 

01:27:02 Louise 

Or like think about, it’s not the only example, but what about Bridget Jones’s diary? When we see her at a point where she’s depressed, she’s curing that depression by drinking and smoking and eating sugar. 

01:27:14 Louise 

And you know, all those kinds of things. So, part of it we pick up is that. But I think the other part of it is that physiological thing with those elements. 

01:27:22 Louise 

Of sugar if we’re deficient in dopamine or other, feel-good chemicals. 

01:27:26 Louise 

Then our body does crave it and says you’re lacking in dopamine. Go have a bounty. 

01:27:32 Andy 

Also, I remember like food is another one of those things that we are trained to use for comfort or to make things better. 

01:27:41 Andy 

You know, like alcohol is, I have a drink. Might you be fine? My first day of kindergarten. I vividly. 

01:27:45 Andy 

Remember, I was so upset. 

01:27:47 

Oh my God. 

01:27:48 Andy 

I had separation anxiety from mum, ’cause I hadn’t gone to preschool or anything like that. 

01:27:52 Andy 

So, it was a massive culture shock. The first child I was one of those. 

01:27:55 Andy 

Kids that cried and. 

01:27:56 Andy 

I remember luckily. 

01:27:58 Andy 

Thankfully, you know one of my very good friends was in. 

01:28:01 Andy 

My kind of car. 

01:28:02 Andy 

In class and I remember was sitting on the mat. 

01:28:05 Andy 

And I was. 

01:28:05 Andy 

Crying I was trying hard not to cry because boys don’t cry but I was upset, and she reached over. 

01:28:11 Andy 

He said Andrew and he look have these biscuits that your mom made for little lunch. They’ll make you feel better. 

01:28:19 Andy 

And so, through my tears I eat the biscuits and I didn’t feel better. But now I want to feel better write something. 

01:28:25 Louise 

Did I tell you? Did I tell you about my doc, my doc daffy that went to go live on a farm? 

01:28:29 Andy 

Yeah, I have heard the daffy story, but for the benefit of our listeners. 

01:28:33 Louise 

I was must have been. 

01:28:36 Louise 

I remember moving house in between year and three and four and it was at the 1st House we lived in, so I was under year 3 whatever those ages and I had a duck called Daffy and it’s this beautiful big white duck. 

01:28:48 Louise 

Might have been a gander. Uh, uh Drake, that’s the one because it got a little bit aggressive sometimes and would nip my ankles. 

01:28:50 Andy 

Maybe a drink? 

01:28:56 Louise 

Might have to like to jump up on top of the swing set to get away from it. 

01:29:00 Louise 

And so, I had a love hate relationship with Daffy the duck. I did love the duck. I didn’t love my ankles being bitten. I’m wondering I came home from school mum. 

01:29:08 Louise 

Said look, we’ve had to you know, we’ve taken Daffy, definite it somewhere else to live that he had more space. 

01:29:17 Louise 

He nips and he bites and things like that. So, we’ve we’ve taken him to go live on a farm. 

01:29:23 Louise 

And I was inconsolable. Sad because I didn’t want Daffy to go away, just ’cause. 

01:29:28 Louise 

He nipped me I. 

01:29:28 Louise 

Love Duffy. 

01:29:29 Louise 

No, and so to ease my pain they gave me a can of coke which I’m not calling up bad parenting, but like back then coke was. I’m in we. We weren’t a coke drinking family. We were an AC Kohler drinking family. 

01:29:38 Speaker 7 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:29:43 Louise 

We couldn’t afford. 

01:29:44 Andy 

So, folkways, the premium. 

01:29:44 Louise 

Coke we were Coke was the premium and I. 

01:29:48 Louise 

I remember, you know, getting a couple of cans of coke then and you know here you go. Have this to feel better and it did. 

01:29:54 Louise 

It made me feel better ’cause I got a thing that I hardly ever was allowed to have. Like the premium thing and so it’s not that it took the grief about Daffy. 

01:30:01 Louise 

Going to live on the farm away, but much like you, your story with the cookies how? 

01:30:07 Louise 

One of those. 

01:30:08 Louise 

Formative experiences of here you go, we eat sweets to feel better. Yeah, contribute to things. 

01:30:14 Louise 

Yeah, and yes. I was about 26 at the Royal Easter Show when mom called while I was there. 

01:30:20 Louise 

She said, what are you doing? I said I’m at the Easter show just looking at the Ducks and she said, oh you mean like Daffy? I said yeah, my duck who went to go live on a farm and she went. 

01:30:28 Louise 

Daffy died, we just told you that. 

01:30:31 Louise 

Oh, I didn’t know. 

01:30:34 Andy 

Daddy bought the farm. 

01:30:36 Louise 

It was 26 I. 

01:30:38 Louise 

Didn’t realise. 

01:30:44 Speaker 7 

Oh well, at least you didn’t. 

01:30:48 Andy 

Say we ate daddy for dinner that. 

01:30:50 Andy 

Night that would have. 

01:30:51 Andy 

Been a whole another story. 

01:30:53 Louise 

Oh, that guilt. I carried that DEFI had to leave because he nipped my ankles and he died, and he never went to go live on a farm. 

01:31:03 Andy 

Hello sugar addiction. 

01:31:05 Louise 

Another unexpectedly sad story to come out of today’s episode. 

01:31:10 Louise 

But yeah, OK, so we do food as comfort. We are trying to fix our mental health with things that aren’t actually looking at our mental health. It’s like we’re doing the best that we can as people to compensate for how we feel. 

01:31:24 Louise 

Deal, but often we’re not being self-aware enough to recognize that how we feel has more going on than what we think. 

01:31:33 Andy 

Yeah, and so you know, like when I’m coming back to a mental health context, you know we try to change things you know, like earlier we said about Nathan Parker looking for one small thing that can make a difference. 

01:31:43 Andy 

We we try to make small changes that we could sustain. So, we’ve talked. I don’t know whether in a previous episode and we’ve certainly talked between you and I about. 

01:31:53 Andy 

How I approached the laundry in how OK? Well, yes. 

01:31:55 Louise 

Yes, we have a Kimberly Norris episode for reference. If anyone wants to go. 

01:31:59 Speaker 5 

Back, yeah? 

01:31:59 Andy 

There we go, so you know, like there’s a massive pile there, but it’s just going to keep growing if I don’t at least do one. 

01:32:06 Andy 

So, I put in a small load and then I walk away and do something else that I want to do. 

01:32:10 Andy 

But having taken that small step to do that, one small load of washing and that sustainable change for me, because I can think of that as a small task then. 

01:32:19 Andy 

Not as this big mountain of laundry, so that then you know, it helps me to reprogram the way all good things and to make those kinds of small adjustments to help you get off my own back about things in other ways. 

01:32:30 Louise 

Yeah, I think that to reprogram a behaviour that we’re doing to use that word. 

01:32:35 Louise 

The goal or the payoff has to be better than what we’re getting, so we have to find a way to for you. 

01:32:41 Louise 

I suppose the if you can keep it in your mind that that feeling of being on top of your laundry is better than that feeling of always being overwhelmed by it. It can help you make that change because. 

01:32:55 Louise 

That pay off in that feeling is better. 

01:32:57 Andy 

Yeah, the payoff for me is that I haven’t got people complaining to me. They haven’t got something fresh to where I would much rather people have. 

01:33:04 Louise 

You haven’t got people. 

01:33:06 Louise 

How many people do you live with Andy? 

01:33:06 Andy 

I’ve got person that’s just myself and my partner and the two cats. The Cats admittedly don’t have much to say about it, but that where pets recently with the pants in the family. 

01:33:13 Louise 

They don’t wear pants. 

01:33:17 Andy 

So, it’s all those things about not having to have those conversations about where’s this? Or where’s that like? It’s done, it’s. It’s not even an issue because I work from home. 

01:33:27 Andy 

As well, you know. So, for me to be able to incorporate. 

01:33:29 Andy 

Pieces of the housework into my day as well is really useful because it means that before we log on and do things over morning, I can put a load of washing through and it’s fine. 

01:33:39 Andy 

It’s such a small part of my day overall, but it is a massive contribution to, you know what could potentially be an argument down the track because the shirts. 

01:33:49 Andy 

Unavailable, or me having to contend with a massive pile of laundry and spend a day doing it or attending to it rather than. 

01:33:57 Andy 

Just half outta here or there. 

01:34:00 Louise 

And that sugar thing for me in terms of kicking sugar is an addiction because there is that physiological sign of it. 

01:34:06 Louise 

When I first said no, I’m going to stop having refined sugar. It was about four weeks before I stopped having the overwhelming cravings to have it. I couldn’t go near a supermarket and walk anywhere near a confectionery aisle because my body. 

01:34:19 Louise 

Was just screaming at me. 

01:34:21 Louise 

Hate the shock. 

01:34:23 Louise 

Eat the sugar just one bit of sugar. It’s not going to hurt just one bit of sugar because. 

01:34:26 Andy 

You just get a small chocolate bar. 

01:34:27 Louise 

Exactly, it’s just a little bit, just have. 

01:34:29 Louise 

A little bit. 

01:34:30 Louise 

Just one more, just one more piece. 

01:34:32 Louise 

Its physiological, like your body gets addicted to it. 

01:34:35 Louise 

It gets addicted to getting those hits of dopamine, et cetera, et cetera through it, and then it’s going. Why have you stopped giving me this thing that I need? And it’s like the thought about having sugar was clouding. 

01:34:48 Louise 

It was clouding my mind, it was like. 

01:34:50 Louise 

I’d just be sitting there. 

01:34:51 Louise 

Thinking I want something sweet, want something sweet? Need sugar? Need sugar? Need sugar? The only thing I think that made it sustainable for me is that even though my body was craving sugar, the inflammation in my joints was feeling better and so the goal there was the fact that I felt better is worth more. 

01:35:11 Louise 

Then that dopamine hit from the sugar. It’s worth ignoring those cravings. That voice in me that’s screaming out for a chocolate bar. 

01:35:18 Louise 

Because my wrists don’t hurt as more my ankles don’t hurt as much you. 

01:35:22 Louise 

Know I’m not waking up with headaches anymore because, you know, sugar dehydrates you, so I think that that reward to overcome to overcome an addiction, I think that that long term reward must be worth it. 

01:35:22 Andy 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:35:35 Andy 

Ah, it has to outweigh the short-term goal here. The short-term payoff. 

01:35:39 Louise 

For a change to be sustainable that long term impact that long term goal it has. 

01:35:45 Louise 

To be big, it is hard. 

01:35:47 Louise 

God and I don’t think we can do it alone if it wasn’t for you know friends. I have a friend who’s been helping me out in the last year by doing some cooking for me and sticking stuff in the freezer so that if I and constantly do run out of energy, I’ve got something there to go to. 

01:36:07 Louise 

To eat that is nutritious and easy. Instead of me getting Uber eats because I can’t control if there’s sugar in there. 

01:36:15 Louise 

So, I don’t think we can do it alone either. 

01:36:18 Andy 

Yeah, we need to make sure you put the right supports in place. Whatever they are. Definitely so you know that’s an example of making a sustainable change with the support of somebody in this case, which is also, you know. 

01:36:29 Andy 

And it’s not just about changing your mind. 

01:36:30 Andy 

About something because there. 

01:36:32 Andy 

Are other things inside that vacuum that we live in? Because we aren’t, even if they. 

01:36:36 Andy 

Kim Spoiler alert. 

01:36:39 Louise 

And even though we called the podcast re frame of mind definitely takes more than just changing your mind to make changes happen. 

01:36:45 Andy 

Yeah, these changes. They do require our ongoing attention and adaptation. 

01:36:51 Louise 

And sometimes that support can come in form of people around you, and sometimes the place to get support is online, like the Matilda Centre where Murray is from has a heap of really good resources available. 

01:37:03 Andy 

And we’ve popped those onto our website as well at reframeofmy.com dot AU. If you look under the episode memory featured in last time, which is episode 14. 

01:37:12 Andy 

You’d be able to access the heap of resources that Marie has kindly pointed us in the direction of. 

01:37:13 Speaker 2 

Right? 

01:37:18 Louise 

I’ll tell you what, we’ll also stick him in episode 15 two. 

01:37:20 Andy 

Hey, what up? Yeah, get the I teamwork. 

01:37:20 

All right? 

01:37:23 Louise 

At the ITC. 

01:37:25 Louise 

Hang on, let me go fetch the I team. 

01:37:29 Louise 

Hi hey hi. 

01:37:29 Andy 

Hey there, Louise. 

01:37:35 Louise 

Do you want you want me to go fetch the marketing team? 

01:37:39 Andy 

Hey. 

01:37:40 Speaker 2 

Hey Shuar, Louise. 

01:37:44 Andy 

Hang on isn’t Andy part of the marketing team as well? 

01:37:46 Louise 

Oh yeah, hang on. I think you should go and fetch our head of writing. 

01:37:51 Andy 

01:37:53 Andy 

Hey how you doing? 

01:37:59 Louise 

Anyway, so someone in our team will pop those resources or re frame of mind.com dot AU next time. On re frame of mind we’re going to bring you that interview with Tisha Rose that we promised you. 

01:38:00 Andy 

There are two person show. 

01:38:11 Louise 

At the end of last episode, because we actually had a development in her story that she let us know of last week. So, we. 

01:38:18 Louise 

Paused the promised interview. Dropped in this as sort of a bonus episode and we’ve recorded another segment to add into that to update her story for next episode. 

01:38:27 Andy 

What we do know about teacher roses that she’s been living with chronic illness in the form of multiple sclerosis for over 20 years and we had a chat tour about how she’s managed to mental health in the face of chronic illness. 

01:38:38 Speaker 8 

I’m no longer defined by Ms. It’s not on my mind all the time. I read a story about someone then yes, and I’m like Oh my God. 

01:38:46 Speaker 8 

That’s awful now thinking I’ve got that disease. That’s me. And then so it’s not there. You know, I’m not thinking about it all the time. If you were concerned about yourself or someone you know. 

01:38:57 Louise 

Please seek professional advice and support. You can contact beyond blue on one 300 double 24. 

01:39:03 Louise 

636 

01:39:04 Louise 

Or it beyondblue.org dot AU. 

01:39:06 Andy 

Or you can contact lifeline on 131114 or at lifeline.org dot AU. 

01:39:14 Andy 

We’d like to thank today’s guests for sharing their personal stories and insights and for more information on any of the subjects, guests or references used in this episode, please see our show notes or re frame of mind.com dot AU. 

01:39:26 Louise 

Re frame of mind is a welcome change media production. 

01:39:35 Andy 

And then I had an Ant. 

01:39:36 Andy 

Farm when I was a kid. 

01:39:37 Louise 

I find ants very interesting like. 

01:39:39 

They’re very busy. 

01:39:40 Andy 

Aren’t they? 

01:39:40 Louise 

Fascinating like. 

01:39:42 Speaker 2 

The way. 

01:39:42 Andy 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:39:43 Louise 

That they’re so smart, like the way they work as a. 

01:39:46 Louise 

Team, but have you seen them when they’ve gotten caught in a death spiral? 

01:39:46 Andy 

Yeah, yeah. 

01:39:50 Louise 

Because they follow the pheromones of the Ant in front. So, if the AT and front gets lost and they all end up following each other into a spiral until they all die of starvation. 

01:39:58 Andy 

That’s sad, sad for the air. 

01:39:59 Louise 

You know they come back next day that I’m sure ads get reincarnated the next day. 

01:40:03 Andy 

Yeah, probably a quick turnaround for an ant. 

01:40:07 Andy 

Number of times they get squashed. 

01:40:09 Andy 

OK, so like you just got swatted so back u go have another try. 

01:40:13 Louise 

And this is the kind of bonus content you can get on our Patreon.