I'll get Hey, folks, it's new project Harps, Mikekel, Tiffany and Cook Monday Morning, Bushy Tail at eleven oh seven in the thriving of Tropolis. Right now it's sunny. I don't know why I give you a weather report every time I do a fucking podcast. I think old habits die hard, back to se N radio and GOLDFM radio and light FM radio, where we used to have to do weather checks and time checks and station IDs and intros and outros and all that shit. It still hangs around a bit high, tiff.
I don't minder whether check when it's a sunny outside at this time a year.
Well, it's not too bad. It was meant to be shite this week, but I think today it's going to be sunny till around lunch and then a little bit of precipitation. As James Bunn says, it's nearly lunchtime it is. I know. That's okay. We'll enjoy it while it's here. Yeah, well we'll have a nice time. I'll have a nice time looking at the sun out the window. Then I'll get off the podcast and i'll start raining. That's all right. First worldies, tip, did you have a good weekend.
I had a wonderful weekend. It'spen birthday week at a big weekend. It was sunny on my birthday. It never is, so you know, cheers to me.
Wow, cheers to you. Did you get weighted on hand and foot by your bloke?
Did I?
Ever? What did he? Of course, there's a few things you can't share that he did, but of the things that you can share, although we're pretty open minded, so you know, whatever door you want to open. And remember that seventy eighty percent of our listeners of women don't ask me why, but they love a good story. They love a good story. So feel free. I'm not pushing you in any direction, but feel free to go wherever you want. So what did he do for you? Oh?
Look? Just Birthday week started a week ago and I just had little just a drip feed of little presents every day, and you know, just the usual, really getting cooked for every day and loved every day.
We went for a.
Little trip down to the Dandy Kong's.
If somebody had just said to me two years ago, it's going to fall head over heels in love with a man, or even that would have just a man that would have been a start, but a man, and she's going to be all google. He's going to stay at her joint, she's going to stay at his. And when I talked to her, she's only saying nice things. She's not neurotic and paranoid and worried about where it's going or he's fucking motives or you are. Do not let her go because I reckon right now, this is
it for you like this, This is the time. Mikeldo's security. I'm doing the actual wedding. Mickle makes sure there's no riff raff other than him and I there and what could go wrong? Could go wrong?
Love the hell.
Now, last time we spoke, which was a long time ago, about a week, have you narrowed down? Have we got any kind of date? Are we looking? No? I mean I've got just because I've got a busy schedule, so I need to kind of lock it in. I don't want you to miss out.
Just going to give a shout out to Lisa Cahney. Please don't feed Harper any more ideas about this topic. Don't encourage it doesn't need any more encouragement.
That's the closest I get, you know, I love a good wedding as long as I'm involved in the official part. Otherwise, you know, I'm not interested.
There's no need for any wedding talk at this point in time. It's been three and a half minutes. It's been three and a half minute taps. I've still got my l plates on.
It's definitely not three and a half minutes. McK hall, welcome back. How are you?
Hello, tobably the morning to you all.
Where are you? Are you over in the thriving metropolis of Bloody? Where is it glenn Waverley?
Yeah, yeah, kind of glen Wavery area, Craig. We'll call it Wheelers.
Hill, we'll call it that, We'll call it over there, yeah, not near the beach. Have you been well mate? What's happening? What's new? Were you? Are you happy?
Boy?
Have you got a girl on the go? Are you? Are you still punching people in the face in the ring?
Yeah, let's talk about that. That's the most.
That's the most. The happiest thing is that. Yeah, punching people in the face. That's awesome. So I'm fighting again in six weeks, fight number twenty seven.
Yeah, and I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah. Yeah.
In the middle of preparation, which is always, as Tiff would know, it's a you know, it's a bit of a tumultuous time, you know, running a business, you know, doing podcasts and in the middle of preparation and trying to keep myself focused on what's coming up and concentrating on my training and my eating and everything else.
It's always, you know, I enjoy that process, but it's it doesn't mean it's easy.
What are the I'll ask this to both of you pugilists. What will start with you, Tiv, What are the main emotions around Like you're coming up to a fight, it's a week or two away, like your visions kind of narrowing on that. Everything else is a bit of external noise. You've still got to do life, but you also need to be highly focused and prepped and ready. What are the emotions? Is it fear? Anxiety? Is it excitement? What is it?
I think it's the recognition that it's all of those things, and you manage your mind as to what you call it, and that gets very very important that close to the fight. So you've got you've got that a buzz of emotion constantly, and for me it is the only thing you think about, So everything else comes secondary to that, which can be problematic in business. Can't it make yeah yeah, just a little bit yeah yeah, And then it's going, Okay, these are the emotions and this is what my mind might
tell me this is all about. But this is what we need to frame it as so that we have a positive relationship with the chaos that is pulsing through my body.
Wow. I've worked with lots of athletes, lots of teams and professional and amateur athletes, but interesting, I used to really pay attention to all the high level athletes and their rituals and rules and their practices about their prep and especially at an AFL level where you've got like kind of you know, twenty to twenty four guys getting ready and they all have their own little things that
they do. And at the National Netball League, same Do you have any rituals that you're a bit superstitious about or things that you will do all the time or won't do at all or not really?
Tiff, I used to I used to have red and black jelly beans before the fight. That was my like I had because I had those on the first fight night. It was a thing that I had to do every time. That was really the only funny weird ritualed it. Yeah, and I remember doing that on the last fight, so it was like, I don't think you need more sugar, mate. I think if plenty amped up this time around.
So your logic was I had these jelly beans this color, and I won, so I got to stick with that. Oh yeah, yep, makes all lot of sense. But you know what the funny thing is. Obviously it's not about the jelly beans, but it's about the belief in the jelly beans. So if that ritual or that idea actually gives you more confidence or a little bit less fear and anxiety because you know that in your mind you
did the thing that helped you win last time. Now you're doing that thing again, So you're improving the odds, you know, even though you're not actually but in your mind you are, which means in the world you actually are.
I think it for me, maybe it comes down to familiarity. If I can create something that gives me familiarity with the last time I remember doing this and having a good outcome, then I have some sense of control. I've done it. I've done it with speaking before where I go, oh, this this is how I felt, this is how I remember it. So I need to find a way to put myself in that state so that I can perform and have that outcome.
Yeah, I have little rituels we're speaking too. If I've got a big, big group, like five hundred to one thousand, I really don't want to talk to anyone much before. Like I'll talk to the organizers or the whatever, but then I'll go and find somewhere where you know, if I'm speaking at nine point thirty, I literally stay in that room until nine twenty eight. Ok. Yeah, I just want to be focused and I don't want to be meeting people, shaking hands, answering questions, you know, all that stuff.
I'll do all of that later, but beforehand. What about you, Michael, with boxing, have you got any quirky little idiosyncrasies.
Yeah, I've got plenty of them. I've actually got quite a few.
But there's certainly I love the whole process of fighting and the whole build up, you know, but that's said through I've got to be a really particular in the way that I go about it. As Tiff was saying, she had the jelly beans. Well, I eat about a packet a full packet of fun sized Mars bars, so the old fun sized Mars bars pot. And I also don't mind a good packet of fun sized Snickers either. They seem to tickle my fancy quite well.
They get me.
How do you not go into the and this is after you've eaten four lettuce leaves over the last month, And how do you not go into the fight with a guts sake?
Well, I mean for us, the wighing is the night before, not before the fight. So by the time and I always say to people, to other fighters, that you only have to hit your fight weight for about thirty seconds and then as soon as you step off the scale that it then becomes.
The other part of the fight game or the weight.
Game, is how you rehydrate and how you renourish yourself and the system that you put in place to do that so that you can be at your best when it comes by time. And so I just love all that process, and I've got lots of rituals and stuff around that certainly before I think for me, the most dangerous part psychologically before a fight is about more about twenty seconds before it's time to walk out to the ring.
Walking music starts, and then it's very important to have the psychological stuff in check, you know, Like I mean, I can my head can go on me and knee in different directions in three seconds. So that's where you rely on all of your processes and your rituals leading up to that point. It's in those moments that I can lean on them. I can just laid back in them. Go now, I've ticked every box, I've done everything. All the demons can't get me.
Wow. Wow. I won't say who it was, but when I was killed to one of the one of the players every week would about five to ten minutes before the game be sick as in literally every week he would go and vomit. Yeah. Yeah, I get sorry everybody, but he and it was was something he wanted to do, but I'm sure eventually it just became hard wired to his brain. And he's yeah, because he would get so
nervous before the game. Yeah, because you're he was something of an introvert and you're about to run on a bad day, twenty thousand people on a big day at the MCG seventy or eighty or sixty thousand people. Yeah yeah, and blokes wearing the same jocks till they would obliterate, they'd just come apart. Yeah yeah, not that hygienic, all right. So I thought we might have a chat today about we'll open the addiction door again, but we want to
go slightly different angle. We've spoken quite a bit, not to other I mean you mostly about addiction, but also which I never really thought I would, but with David Gillespie, who's I don't know if you know who he is, but he's on regularly and he works in the space of kind of a lot of brain stuff and addiction stuff around lately, a lot of addiction stuff around, you know, technology and AI and more specifically Instagram, Facebook or the
social platforms, and what's actually happening within the brain, So not so much the mind the thinking, but more about the literal neurological and physiological changes that happen in the brain, the impact on focus and attention and cognitive ability and even IQ. When people start to get addicted to this thing in front of them and they're kind of their brain goes offline. Literally, their ability to think and reason and problem solve and focus diminishes because of this thing,
not unlike with other addictions. But so I want to talk about a few of your stories, and one or two have got a little bit of their time on here before everyone. Some of you may have, I think most of you probably haven't, but think of that as a little bit of a rewind or a vision. But then I want to unpack was happening. So I remember you telling a story about when you were in jail. I don't want to preempt it too much or you you've just gotten into, you know, a new facility and
you met a young bloke who wanted a cigarette. So set this story up and give us that kind of.
Yeah, yeah, okay, Well, I mean I've got into a bit of trouble in my addition. Funnily enough, I got into a little bit of trouble and I was sent to prison, and I was in a different states to Victoria, and I was to hit the prison system. I was hit to hit a maximum security prison. On my first day, when I walked into this prison, it was it was
a pretty frightening experience. Actually I'd done prison down in Melbourne, but I hadn't been in this other state before, and so I didn't know anyone up there, and it was a very high tension, maximum security prison, so you could just kind of feel the danger in the air, you know.
It was just was a yucky feeling. It was awful.
And when you first go into prison, you go into what's called like an induction unit, as a separate unit to the rest of the prison.
And you go in there and you're kind of locked in this place.
With all these guys that are not happy about being there, and it just so happens.
On my first day, there was.
A young young guy in there who's pretty tough, young guy, pretty big, pretty tough, and he approached me and asked me for a cigarette. And that sounds like a pretty sort of, you know, easy thing to deal with in an easy situation, but it's really not, because what this guy was doing he was trying to play me, and if I gave him a cigarett, than he was going to then stand over me and try and control me through my prison sentence. So I had to I had
to tell him no, and that wasn't easy. I just basically said no, how big was this guy.
Well compared to me my size?
Where we're talking about a young you know, a young twenty three year old, you know, samoan kind of angry, violent young man who could put him up no worries and was actually considered the toughest.
Guy in the unit.
And so when this guy comes and asks you for a smoke and you say no, he's not liking it too much. So in that situation, what happened is is that he started to well, he started to call me a few names, which is, you know, on the outside, well doesn't mean anything. You know, sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me. Well, in prison, names are pretty dangerous, and when you call
people certain things, you're obliged to retaliate. And look, I wasn't feeling too good about retaliating, I can tell you not too good at all. But anyway, through the process of this guy sort of really getting sort of stuck into me verbally, the prison guards yelled out, muster up, which means that it was lockdown time.
Thank goodness. Now, lock muster up means is you've got to go and stand in front of your cell door.
The prison officers come through, they count, they do a head count, and then I lock you in your cell for the night.
And this guy that had kind of been hastling me and.
Threatening me just so happened to be in the cell right next door to mine, and yeah, that was great. And then as the prison officer was about to lock me in myself for the night, I glanced over at this young fella and he looked at me and he ran his index finger across his neck as if to say, tomorrow, I'm going to cut your head off. And that was a lovely good night kiss for me. And I was locked in my soul for the night, left with me and the thought of what's going to happen to me
tomorrow and what predicament I'm in. And it was a terrifying, terrifying experience. I was left in my cell. I was in a one out self, so there was no other prisoners in there was just me in there.
And this particular cell had a shower, which was very rare.
But thank goodness, I say thank goodness because I spent most of the nights standing under the shower, crying and absolutely thinking what am I going to do? Like I'm actually dead. I'm dead. I was on remand at the times I hadn't been sentenced yet, but I've been told by my solicitors that I was going to get five years, and so I thought, here, i am day one of possibly five years prison, and I'm already being stood over
and I'm in grave danger of being controlled. So say, look, I had to sort of wrestle with that all night, and it was a horrendous night. And you know what, It's funny what happens when you know, like, I'm not a religious person.
Okay, I'm really not.
I've never read a Bible, and I don't go to church or anything like that, and I'm not a religious person, not an atheist, but I'm not a religious person.
It's funny what you do when your life in danger.
Because as I was crying under the shower, I'm praying to God, Please God help me, Please help me. And I prayed like you wouldn't believe. Now, there wasn't any little birdies come flying in through the bars and whistling little secrets in my ear. But I did feel a lump in my chest drop, and just a level of acceptance happened, and I just realized that, you know what, no matter what happens, I'm not going to lay down.
I'm going to go out and front this head on and even if I'm hurt, if I'm killed, I don't care. I'm going to stand up for me. I'm not going to live my life in this place in fear and being controlled. And I made that decision. And when I did it, kind of it didn't take all the fear away, obviously, but it certainly settled me down. And I just knew that I kind of turned a corner. I can't really explain it any better than that, but I just sort of turned a corner internally, you know.
I just became willing to do whatever it takes.
Was part of that, almost like surrendering and going, not as in giving up. Yes, It's like whatever's going to happen is going to happen. Yes, And I can overthink the shit out of this all night. That won't fix or change the outcome.
Yep, just go, Or I can submit and then become completely nutterly controlled and abused. Yeah, you know, so I had to just and you're right, that's exactly what it is. I call it surrender to win. In order to win this, I had to surrender and that just meant just to go, you know what, nothing, I have to front this. And look, I can tell you that it was a horrendous, one of the most horrific nights of my life that night in that cell, and I remember, I think it was about.
Seven o'clock or seven thirty the next morning.
The prison guards, sorry, any prison guards are out there, but we used to call them screws, So the screw would come.
You know what, I don't think the screws are offended.
I think, well, you never know.
But anyway, so the screws come to unlock the door at seven or seven thirty in the morning, whatever it is. And by the way, real prison is not when you locked in your cell. By the way, real prison is when they unlocked the door and you've got to go walk out into the yard into the jungle with the rest of the beasts.
That's a prison being locked in yourselves.
Easy bit.
So when he came and unlocked the door and the door swung open, of course, my heart was raising about four million and a half thousand miles an hour, and I.
Just thought, right, I'm got to go out and front this.
And the guy, the young guy that had that was threatening me, he'd already been released out of his cell, so he was already out through the unit and out into the yard. The yard's like this big outdoor area that's got that's inclosed in a raised of wide cage.
He was already out in the yard.
So when the screw opened my door, thought, right, I'm just going to go straight out there.
I'm going to go straight up to him, and I'm going to go front him. And so.
What did you think, I'm trying to get inside into what's happening in your head? Were you just going to go talk to him, put hands on him? Are you gonna threat? I don't know what was your plan other than stepping in front of him.
Ah.
Look, I'm not one hundred percent sure, to be honest, I have a couple of ideas. I did have a couple of ideas, but I don't really want to go go into.
That very much.
But all right, it doesn't matter. It didn't happen, so it doesn't matter. But I did have a couple.
Of other ideas, and and I just had to be prepared to accept whatever was going to happen, you know, and just make a stand.
You know, you knew that doing nothing was definitely not the.
Go Doing nothing was my was the end of me. Yeah, it was my demise and who knows where that could go.
All right, so you go out, you walk up to him, you're in the yard.
No, I didn't get to him. I started.
I stormed out of my cell. I stormed. There's a hallway from where the cells are. Then there's some stairs going up until like a we'll call it a living room if you can call it that, like a big open era where before you actually head outside. And as I was walking through that open area, there was a young guy in there that recogniz I don't know how he recognized me. I don't know how he knew who I was, but he recognized me, and he stood in front of me and stopped me from walking out to
the yard. And he said, you're me and I said yeah, and he said I've been looking out for you.
He said, you know my dad from an AA meeting in Melbourne. Melbourne.
Wow.
And I know who he's talking.
I know who it is. I couldn't believe. I don't even know how he knew who I was. Right, And he stopped me and he said, don't go out there. He said, I'll fix it.
Wow.
Now I stayed in that open area. He went outside to the ard and he fixed it. For me, and this young guy that was going to attack me and that was going to kill me ended up befriending me and became my best resent, best friend in prison.
And protected me from my whole sentence.
Wow, that's a turnaround. Now, Why didn't that make it? Why didn't that make you believe in God?
Well? It did, it did. It did start to well, not God as a religious god, but it started.
To open my mind to the fact that there is more a play here than what I can think, and that whatever I'm thinking is so limited and in some cases so wrong.
Yeah, that I can't trust it very much at the moment. Anyway, at that moment, I couldn't trust it very much.
So how much of prison? How much of prison is one about like managing your mind and all the product ducts, the thoughts to fear, the anxiety, the overthinking, the calculation, the miscalculation. How much is about that and then knowing what to do with it all?
Well, I think I think the easiest way to say this is that you know, well, for.
Me anyway, I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, it's prisoners a game of chess. How well you can think plan strategize, you know, adapt, adapt, you know, all of these things. Is that determines how how you're going to be in there and how well are you going to be able to do it and how you're going to come out and how well.
You can survive it, you know.
And you know, I want to whatever environment I go in, I want to thrive, not.
Survive, because survive is torture, it really is. So I want to be able to thrive.
Now there's only a certain amount you can thrive in prison, but there are ways, yeah, you know. And and what I you know, some of the lessons or some of the not the lessons, but some of the things that sort of really awoke within me in that instance is the fact that you know, my thinking is limited and I need to be open to other possibilities and I need to be open to being helped.
Yeah, you know. And also is maybe sorry to interrupt, are being able to think clearly under pressure?
Yeah, that's so important, you know. And look, I've this was a great training ground for me. Yeah really, you know, like it's I never ever want anyone to go through what I went through. I really don't and I don't ever want.
To go through it. Again either, never again. Do I ever want to go through that again.
I don't know if it's could, but I can look back at it and go, you know what, what a wonderful, unbelievable training ground that has been.
For me.
Yeah, you and what I've taken from there is in my life today.
I carry it with me, Harry, that the understanding of.
What happened to me and what happened despite of me back then, and I can still refer to it now and know that somehow, some way in any situation that's happening in my life now, I know that, you know, there are things that can happen that are beyond my.
Brain being able to logically figure out.
Yeah, And also, I guess if you go, I'm in one of the worst environments anyone could be, literally with killers and all kinds of people who have a few issues, and I'm perpetually, potentially perpetually in danger every time I'm not in my cell for the duration of my visit. And you've got to constantly live with that threat and
that knowledge and that hyper awareness and vigilance. And then when you get out of prison, I imagine not that it's a cake walk and everything's easy because there's lots of other hard stuff to adapt to. But is there a like, well, if I can get through that, I can get through the next five years out on the street or out in suburbia or doing life or getting a job or building a business.
No, not when I was still an active at it right, not until I was.
Well into the years of recovery.
But when I got out, it was here, you know, it was a bittersweet, you know, like I still remember being released from that particular prison sentence, and they released me at.
Five o'clock on a Friday.
And at five o'clock on a Friday, you can't go to the dole office and get a doll check because you've got no money, right And they give you a doll check, but you can't catch it until the Monday. So it's five o'clock on a Friday, but no money, nowhere to go. It's dusk.
I walk out the front gate to the prison.
I look over my shoulder and I can see the raizor wire fence with the gold lights kind of you know, shimmering over the top of it, and I just remember getting a shudder down my spine.
I got down on my knees out the front and at the front of the.
Prison and kissed the ground, right because I couldn't believe that I've gotten out.
Alive, right wow.
And but then you get to your feet and you go. But I can't deal with life. I don't know what to do. I don't know where I'm going to go. I don't know how I'm going to eat. I don't I need to get a substance in my body because I can't handle the way I feel.
It's a road to nowhere.
Were you still using? Inside? Obviously you must have been. No, then surely you were clean then then and surely, but straight away you get outside the prison and part of you thinks the answer is to use.
All of me thinks that not part the whole lot thinks that.
So.
And I've said this a few times. I'm going to say it again. Addiction right comes in people. It doesn't come in substances, right, Okay, on the ad If I don't get, if I don't treat the addiction, if I don't treat me, just just remaining abstinent of drugs and alcohol does nothing, does nothing?
Yeah, Because you're a you're always going to if you don't treat the problem, the problem being you, which of course involves whatever substances. But you'll always go.
Back correct and there won't be any change.
Like it's kind of like you can, you can, you can take the alcohol out of the fruitcake.
And then you left with the fruitcake.
All right, So you left, You left there at five, You kissed the ground. You've got dough, but you don't really have dough? Did you not have people organized? Because you're in another state? So I guess you had no friends outside of the walls of the prison in that state.
No friends, no family. There was just nothing. There was just no one. Yeah, it was not good, but I didn't find a way. I didn't know one person that I had done rehab with before that prison sentence, and and he he was relapsing again, right, So I got hold of him with a reverse charge fungal wow, and I went to his house and within probably an hour I had a bottle of beer gone down my neck, and within about three hours I had a needle of
heroin back in my arm. And then within about two or three weeks I ended up in Melbourne, which took me to the to the new to the new hell. So there's what you know, whoever long of abstinence, Yeah, got me.
So, I mean you were abstinent not because you didn't want to use, but just because you had no access.
Well, I mean there is access if you really want to, right, you know, there is access nick and drinking there if you want to. There's there's ways to do it. You know, we ferment all sorts of stuff and there's all types of ways to do things. Yeah, there's no problem there. But look, you know, when I was in there, I knew what had put me. I knew why I was in prison. I knew what had got me there, and it was drugs and alcohol.
So I did you know, I did.
Make a decision in there that I wanted to stay clean and sober, yea. But just making that decision and still not being able to treat the addiction inside of me, only remaining absent.
It didn't fix the problem.
So it's the second that that it was, it was easy again. It all came back, and it's it's they call it the subtle insanity, the proceeds picking up a drink or a drug again, and it's that it's it's very it's insidious, you know, it's really insidious and despite.
All all.
Evidence that says, mate, if you touch this, your life is absolutely gone. For all money and anything that you know or love is going to be taken from you. It's it's it fades off into the background, and we still go and we still run with that insanity.
It's horrendous, sad.
So can I ask correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not an addiction specialist, But like I think I've heard you say it, and many people say it in part at least, using is a way to get out of pain, right, but an emotional psychological pain. No, well, candidate, because it makes you feel good in them, like you feel shit and then you use and then for a period of time you feel awesome. Right.
No, you can quite of people, a lot of quite often a lot of people will use when they feel I mean, we use when we're feeling awesome because I can feel more awesome. We use when we're feeling shit or it's not about how I feel this mood now so now I want to use. It's kind of it's more than that, and it's not that, and it is that.
I know that sounds weird, But so.
Why did you use when you got out when you could have used inside, but you chose not to.
Will inside it was easier because it was a lot harder to get There was a lot of there was a lot of roadblocks getting it, and a lot of danger and getting it. Yeah, a lot of people are stabbed and and you know, and worse in prison over you know, drug deals, even over cigarettes and stuff like that.
You know.
So so it's kind of it's a different scenario. And it was a little with that threat, it was a little bit easier to to not do it. But it's easier to not do it when you know you're going to do it again someday, right, you know.
And it's kind of like with addiction.
You know, we can threaten an addict to stop using, and it's true, they can stop using. If we put a gun in front of someone's head and said, if you pick up that syringe of heroin, if you take that drink of alcohol, you're dead. I'm going to shoot you.
That person in that moment can choose not to do it. Well, what they can't choose, they can't choose that internal, deep down, primal desire that says, man, I want to touch that thing, even though and the mind starts going even though you're pointing that gun at my head, I wonder if I can get it before you pull the trigger, or I wonder if I can push the gun away, or you know, it's deeper than that, you know, and it's it's kind of yeah, that's very basic sort of description, but that's hope.
That's painting a bit of a picture, you know. That's that's what's involved in You know, what I say to people when I'm helping them deal with with addiction, it the only person that cares about what substance you're using is you, because I couldn't give a shit because the substance you're using is just a trigger.
The trigger. What it triggers is a dopamine response in the brain. And what I'm really.
Addicted to is that neurochemical, that very very powerful euphoric neurochemical, dopamine, because what it does is it medicates my thinking.
It helps me cover up all of the.
Emotional stuff that I don't want to look at or I don't want to deal with or it's too difficult, and it helps block out all of the absolute deep down self hate and non belief in myself. And it just clears it. It's amazing. It's it's like a magic especially in the beginning stages of it. It's like a magic formula. But we all think, oh, it's the substance
that's doing it, it's the drink. Well know, it's just that that's the drug of choice that for you triggers the massimum amount of dopamine response in the brain.
Yea.
And then when that stops working, because often it does for.
People, they start they're getting you know, they're drinking copious amounts. They go, well, this crap doesn't work anymore. Well, it actually does. You still are putting alcohol in your body and you are getting the physical effects of alcohol. But what's happening is is your brain is not producing the right amount of dopamine anymore, and it's not medicating your thinking, your feelings, right, your emotions, all that sort of stuff in you, and you're acting really badly. So you're just
making it worse. And so what happens as a person goes, oh, well I need to drink harder stuff, or or they swapped to something else all right, and those swats it's called cross addictions. So then we start to swap to something else because that initiates the dopamine response that we're looking for.
That works something new, so a different response.
Yeah, and that's why when addicts and whatever put down drugs, alcohol and that sort of stuff, it can be really sort of if we don't have help, it can be kind of dangerous because we start to not consciously, it's sort of subconscious, but we start going down different directions
to get seeking that dopamine. Like you get dopamine, you get massive dopamine responses from falling in love, being obsessed with people, from food, eating shit, eating chocolate and lollies and right all, So there's lots of different things that we can get these huge So as an addict, when you put the drug of choice down can end up in trouble in other areas because all of a sudden, I'm married, but now I'm obsessed with this girl at work and.
I can't let it go.
And the addiction is the addiction to that dopmain and that feeling did I get when I'm with that person is so severe that even though other consequences are happening, I stopped doing it.
Yeah, you and I have spoken about David Schwartz, the ox who you work with yep, and he's said this publicly so, but when I was working at SCN, when he was there, and when he got because his drug of choice was gambling and who won't said too much, but anyway, he got clean from gambling, yep. But then then he just went through this succession of like where he never smoked. Then all of a sudden he was having like fifty darts a day in a short period of time, and he didn't drink and he got off those.
I don't know what the order is. He got off those. And then he started drinking coffee, which he'd never really drunk, and he had like thirty coffees a day, and.
Then he had sugar shots.
Yeah, then he got on sugar and he's having like a bag, like a kilogram bag of lollies in the studio on the desk. He's just inhaling sugar like Tiff cook,
you know. So yeah, it's like that you get clean and sober from one thing, but you almost need something that's going to create a similar, possibly watered down version, but something that helps you revisit that that neurochemical pathway to nirvana, you know, just to go cold turkey and not not smoke, or not eat junk, or not get lost in porn or multiple partners or all of those things.
Well, if you remain absent from all that stuff and you do in healthy ways work where you connect with people, other people that are in recovery or other people that are whatever it is you're doing in life. Some of us is boxing, you know, like, but we find that connection. What happens is that over time is that we can live in normal life and have normal dopamine responses and
be completely satisfied with that. Because in the middle of addiction, when we're getting these massive dopamine spikes, our brain and its wisdom tries to It realizes that there's an imbalance, and it tries to move the hedonic set point, you know, the point of where we feel pleasure, and it tries to rebalance the brain, but also can't raise the bar that high to meet the top of the dopamine spike. But it does get it up as far as it
can go. But then the attict goes and gets clean and sober and remains abstinent from all mood and mind altering substances and tries to change their behavior and they're only getting normal spikes of dopamine.
But there's a problem.
The attic can't feel pleasure because the hedonic set point is still set up high, so normal, normal pleasures don't register. But what happens over time, we say early recovery for the addict is about twelve months is early recovery. And the beautiful thing that happens in that twelve months is that the hedonic set point resets to its normal level and you can live a normal life, living, doing normal stuff, functioning as a normal person, and feel beautiful pleasures that we've missed out on.
For so long.
Yes, yeah, so you know, if.
You really break it all down, the real addiction is the dopamine response, because the dopamine is medicating our mind.
It's medicating our emotions, right.
And it's helping us suppress and deny what we don't want to and don't feel like we can look at.
I love it. We've got to believe it or not. We're nearly an hour. Can you believe that?
What?
No? Yeah, So we're going to skip one of ours because we can't do an hour and a half. So in about five to ten, I want you to tell the story because I'm pretty sure this is brand new about when you are sitting in a car at some traffic lights with your you're then missus as you would say, you're then lady, lady friend. Yes, So when was this You were you clean and sober at this point or not?
Or yeah, I was?
So this this is this is a real sort of you know, idea of of you can put all the stuff down and remain abstinate, but unless you do something about you know, your internal processing, the way you think and who you are, then.
You're still in trouble.
So this particular time, this particular time, I was about six months clean and sober, and I got myself.
A girlfriend, and of course she had a license. I didn't.
So we're sitting in a car. We're sitting in her car. She's driving, I'm in the passenger seat. We get driving down the road. Can we pull up at a set of traffic lights and lights red. We're sitting there and I'm sitting there in the passenger seat, and there was a guy. Can you imagine on my sides from the left hand side, there was a guy walking down the street, down the footpath, and can you believe that this guy had the audacity to look at me? How dare he
he's looking at me? So I've turned and I've locked eyes with him. And as soon as I've locked eyes with him, my mind starts racing and says, right, I can't look away because if I look.
Away, he's going to think I'm weak. So I need to keep looking at him.
So I'm looking at this guy, and as I'm looking at him, my mind starts going, what's he fucking looking at? What's he looking at? And I'm starting to get angry. This guy walking down the street can see me getting angry, and his eyes open up like, you know, wide, like dinner plates, and he's I can tell he's starting to freak out.
By this stage, I'm starting to shake. My hands are starting to shake down the street.
I just want to So, here's what's happened. All this is going on in you, But the real world reality is you're sitting in a car and there's a guy walking on the street who looked at you. That's the totality of the event.
That's the totality of it. Whatever's going on my head is fake.
Yeah, all right, So you're going you're in the car, you're shaking because.
I'm shaking you don't want to be I don't want to be weak. It.
My girlfriend's sitting next to me, and she can see that I'm about to do something stupid, and she goes me and she goes to grab my arm. I jumping on my arm, said me, please don't, and I shoot her arm off me. I took my seat belt off. I've kicked open the passenger's side door. The guy walking down the street for seeing me do this and has absolutely shit himself and started sprinting down the footpath.
I've jumped out of the car and gone chasing this guy down the street.
Yeah, of course, I mean probably he deserved it.
Oh it's really shouldn't have looked at me. He turned right down the driveway. I've stopped in my tracks at the top of the driveway and looked up and there was a big blue police sign.
Okay.
I walked back to the car, got in the car, sland the door shut, and said let's go.
Let's get out of here.
You know, I realized in that moment that I can be clean and sober all I like. But unless I do something about the way I think and the way I process my world, I'm going to end up in the same place that drugs and alcohol took me. Just I'll just be sober when I get there. That's even worse. He wants to go to prison for no reason.
Is it?
Like?
So in your mind, did you feel like he was trying to, like, what was your rationale? He was trying to intimidate you or threaten you, or you know, whatever he was doing, you needed to respond to this imaginary threat because yeah, otherwise he'd walk all over you and you're a week and your girlfriend would disrespect you or I don't know, is that what was going on?
Absolutely?
And it's you know, if you refer back to the story before the smoke situation, it's it's almost the same sort of scenario of what happened with the guy in the nit that asked me for the smoke. That this guy was an innocent guy walking down the street who had the misfortune to look at me.
Yes, but I was still replaying the old stuff.
Except this time this guy and the old stuff, and this time you were the bully.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, that's you're right. I didn't think of that, but you're right.
Yeah, now you've become the toxic bully who's threatening someone Wow, that's weird, dude, that's weird.
It's really you just freak me out, man, Yeah, because you know I hate bullies. You know I want to bully bullies. Yeah, but I bully yourself for a while from everything.
And how long did it take you to get out of that fight or flight? Everyone's a threat? Fucking don't look at how long did it take you to really get out of that? Or is that still a work in progress? Right?
Still working progress?
But but but really to make to make significant progress on it and to really sort of well I call it some some might not call it this, but I call it mental stability. Right before I achieved started to achieve it, I'm just yeah, started to achieve some mental stability.
Well, just put asterisk asterisk next to that.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
It was about it was about four three, about three years Clinton cyber is when I first started to achieve little bits of mental stability.
Until our first three years, I was largely.
Psychologically and emotionally, completely and arstly out of control.
Wow wow, And I was not a good person to be around.
It's I think this is not rationalizing, it's trying to understand, but it's like I've got a few friends who serve, you know, in the military and have served and stuff, and as you would know whenues, not all of them, but most of them. If you go and have a meal, they'll only certain sit in certain places in the room because they want to be able to surveil the whole joint. They want to be able to do a wreki. They don't want to sit in any position where they can't
see any threat coming. And so they're they're not trying to be hyper vigilant. They are like they're hardwire to detect threats right now. And I guess when you're in prison. Not that I'm trying to compare inmates with soldiers, but there is similarity in terms of the context that you need to be hyper aware and hyper vigilant and yeah, to keep yourself safe. So yeah, so that doesn't leave you straight away when you step out of jail.
No, it only leaves you if you want to.
Change, and if you have the courage and the desire to change, you know, because because those protective systems and that state of being for most people doesn't work in the real world. It doesn't work for long, and it just causes more more psychological and emotional.
Carnage along the way.
We can we can have a look at a couple of little videosyncrasism, and I has to look at you know, I used to sit there with my hands around my plate, you know, when I would eat, and I'd go kind of eat like that, you know. And and that's because you're just protecting your meal. And no one's going to take your meal or someone get bashed and they fall on your plate, or and that's the on the mealia you've got, so you want to protect it.
You know.
But so there's there's funny little things like that. It's probably not hurting anyone or it's not going to impact too much, but but there's other stuff that, you know, ways of thinking and being that unless you're willing to really change and and have a good look at yourself, you know, to use the old wall scenario. Wipe this title,
as you know, but go behind enemy lines. Unless unless you're willing to go behind enemy lines, which is basically saying going behind our own thinking and having a look deep inside ourselves, and let's be willing to do that. We're going to keep doing the same shit in some shape some form, and people are going to continue to get hurt, including us. Yeah, you know, And I don't know about anybody else, but I don't want to do that anymore.
I just want to help people, and I just want to like myself. I just want to like me.
Yeah, yeah, that's all.
And it.
Must be like not like I've had obviously haven't been anywhere like you've been, done anything like you've done. But one of the bits of feedback that I've got over the years is that some people are intimidated and like that's as a bloke, a tiny bit of you is like, oh that's cool. I'm a bit scary. But the truth is I don't want it at all to be intimidating, you know. I want people to be comfortable around me.
I want people to enjoy my energy. I want people to go I hung out with Harps for an hour and it's great, not for my ego, but just so that I'm a person that people actually want to be around. You know. It's yeah, where you think, oh I don't yes, yes.
Yes, And there's a time and a place where. There's a time and a place where And that's what's one of the things I like about sort of well, I loved about you, and I also like about my background and where I've been is because you know, I know that I'm a good part. I know how much I love people, and I love people a lot. I'm not you know, I really do, you know? And and I seriously I don't really ever want to fucking hurt anyone.
I really don't, but I know that if I if I need to, I know that I can pull the jungle back out. And there is there is a there is something in me that's yes, yeah, it can be, it can be quite.
People know without words.
That wells control. There's control. You know, if somebody's if somebody's hurting someone you love, well, your job is not to stand by passively and try to talk them out of it. Yes, hey, could you stop hitting my mum? It's really not nice. Well, that's not happening, that's not emotional. Yeah, yeah, you're upsetting me and you're you know, my mum's bleeding.
Can you stop. That's a terrible analogy, Craig, But do you know what I'm saying, there's there are very few times in your life but the appropriate thing sometimes in some situations with some people is I'm going to say I was going to say violence, I'll say aggression, you know, because there are times, there are times when if you don't intervene physically, something bad is going to happen to
And hopefully that never happens to most of us. Yeah, you know, and a few times in my life I've had to be very physically forceful with people, but only in response to what they were doing. You know, Yeah, and you don't. I don't love it. I don't enjoy it. I do the minim that a minimum that I can
do to stop whatever's happening from happening. I don't then, you know, but yeah, but that that thing to be able to I think also the hyper vigilance where you're sitting in a restaurant, I think the difference is one is you can be quite aware, you know, environmentally, situationally aware, but not paranoid. I think that's a line where you're paranoid that everyone's a fucking threat. Well that's not a good way to.
Live, no, but you know, there's.
Reminds me of that movie Chopper, you know, in one of those lines where Choppers said, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to kill me.
That's interesting.
Yeah, also wrong, mate, It's always good to catch up with you. Do you want to promote anything or you are you good to go? Do you want to share anything with anyone whether they can follow you or connect or.
Well, I don't know whether you can follow me, but you can certainly if anybody is having any trouble with addiction or anywhere along those lines, feel free to have a look at my facility.
My have just jump.
Online, might have dot com dot au and there we'd be happy to have a chat with you, and no obligation, no confidential, all that sort of stuff. So I'm into helping people and want to help people turn their lives around, and yeah, work pretty hard at that. And also just one other thing I just wanted to mention Master's Boxing Victoria.
That's who I'm involved with.
And you know, boxing and exercise and movement is a great thing for people, whether it be addiction, whether it be mental health, whether it just be physical well being, whether it be whatever.
It's a it's a great thing.
You know, to do for yourself, to to be able to move, to exercise, to do all that sort of stuff. So Master's Boxing Victoria, I'm heavily involved with them. That's who I box. They're one of the main promotions I boxed for. We've got a great fight.
Coming up.
On be good.
If I remember the day on June thirteen.
There we're going so many times.
I have been in the.
Head a few times. If you're interested in coming and have a look where. We're at the Pavilion in Melbourne. And you know there's a lot of great flights, all Masters fighters, so they're all over thirty four now we need to walking around puffing their chests there.
Just good people, good environment.
Yeah, good work. A nice primo by you will say goodbye here, but Michael, Cedric Hall and Tiffany and Cook, thank you for your time.
Thank you, Craig Anthony