Living Free

Trigger Warning - mention of sexual assault and course language.  Young walks us through his introduction to Drug and Alcohol culture in Nigeria, and how it differs from Australia

This episode was first aired in June 2024.Dr Patrick Pheasant is an addiction and trauma therapist who incorporates drama and role play into his practice, working with clients to recover from trauma via its manifestation in the mind and body. As well as his private practice, Patrick engages with addiction through his facilitation of two SMART Recovery groups focusing on the additional challenges f...

Lisa felt that she was different from the start and grew up in a dysfunctional family affected by the family disease of alcoholism. She found out at an early age that alcohol made her feel better and she gravitated towards people that enjoyed alcohol so that she could enjoy it too.  Lisa was a wild child, left school early and became a single parent in her early twenties.  As life became increasin...

Gary grew up with parents who had been affected by a drinker in their family. He went on to marry three alcoholics and was fortunate when a marriage counsellor suggested that he try Al-Anon Family Groups. Now, over twenty-four years later, he discusses the impact of Al-Anon in transforming his life and relationships. If someone else's drinking is causing you a problem, then you can phone the Al-An...

As the youngest child of a family of 9 children, Del grow up feeling invisible and often bewildered about the actions of others in the family. Del's parents drank and partied, distracted from the emotional needs of their children. As the result of this, Del found herself in early adulthood ill-equipped to recognise healthy from unhealthy relationships, leaving her vulnerable to mistaking any show...

The child of migrant parents who worked long hours, Amanda remembers feeling isolated as a child. She remembers bingeing on food at the age of 8 and has spent many years struggling with compulsive over-eating, using food to calm herself whever she feel restless, irritable, discontented or otherwise uncomfortable. Overeaters Anonymous has shown Amanda that she is not alone and that it is possible ...

Derek grew up in a conservative religious family and didn’t drink alcohol till he was in his early twenties. He liked the effect of alcohol and continued drinking socially during his twenties and then quite heavily during his thirties. Derek was 42 when he decided to control his drinking but it took him 5 years before he had to admit that all he could really manage was a maximum of 2 days sober at...

Tom was reasonably academic, enjoyed music and was quite competitive in his youth but always felt a bit different, like a square peg in a round hole.  He had depressive episodes early on which were evidence of sub-clinical mental illness that would affect him later in his teenage years. Tom was curious about drugs in his early teens and joined in with a drug culture at his school, using mainly mar...

Anne grew up in a family affected by intergenerational alcoholism, in which her father resorted to anger and violence. She had undiagnosed ADHD as a child, inevitably got into trouble at school, and continued to take risks in her early adult life. It was the drinking of her husband that led Anne to seek the support of Al-Anon. When she made the difficult to choice to leave her husband, taking her...

Janine grew up in a family where sharing good food was an expression of bonding and love, but when she began to experience issues with her sense of identity and belonging at school, she became concerned about her weight. She began dieting but found that after each diet she gained more weight. The pattern continued until Janine's weight gain was beyond her control and so was her preoccupation with...

Michael has come back on the show, now with another 6 years of sobriety, and talks about the impact of his drinking on himself and his family, and what eventually brought him into Alcoholics Anonymous. Michael discusses the profound transformation that he went through because of understanding that his problem was his thinking and not his drinking, which was merely a symptom. AA fundamentally chang...

John grew up in a normal family but got into alcohol and dope in his early teens, hating the taste of alcohol but loving the effect it had in helping to fit in.  He was in youth detention early, but it wasn’t till he was in and out of the adult justice system that he got a taste for heroin, then speed and amphetamines.  John went through rehab many times and found out about Narcotics Anonymous but...

Erin grew up with her three siblings in a family where alcoholism had affected several generations. She describes her family as 'fractured' as each member coped as best they could with the discomfort they felt. Erin herself sought solace in alcohol, sugar and unhealthy relationships, until she found, through Al-Anon and other 12 Step Fellowships, better ways to manage her life and overcome the tra...

Trigger Warning - mention of sexual assault and course language.  Young walks us through his introduction to Drug and Alcohol culture in Nigeria, and how it differs from Australia. 

This is a replay of an interview with El and Summer about recovery from compulsive addiction through Narcotics Anonymous recorded on 29 November 2019El didn’t have an idyllic childhood as her parents separated when she was 12 years old, and her mum was unwell. She suffered physical and emotional abuse and turned to drinking and smoking marijuana in her early teens to cope with the anxiety, fear an...

Laura has come back on the show, now with 9 years of sobriety, and talks about the impact of her drinking on herself and her family, and what brought her into Alcoholics Anonymous. Laura discusses the transformation that she went through and how it fundamentally changed the way she thinks about herself and others. She also discusses the spiritual concept of AA and her podcast “That’s Not in the Bo...

This is a replay of an early interview recorded remotely in the Covid-19 era in April 2020, as we struggled with new technology to keep the show on-air. Drew started gambling in his mid-teens, starting out with a small bet on a horse, graduated to other sporting events and eventually it snowballed into gambling on virtually anything. He started gambling to fill a void in his life and it seeped int...

Join Mitch as he finds out what ten years of sobriety from compulsive gambling looks like.   For help with compulsive gambling -  https://gaaustralia.org.au/meetings/?tsml-day=any&tsml-region=vic  

Emma grew up in a dysfunctional home and progressed from alcohol to pot at 13 years old and drugs at 15.  A friend gave her heroin at 17 to lose weight and she was hooked from the start and eventually she moved on to methamphetamine. She loved the way drugs made her feel, fitting in for the first time in her life. Emma had three young children that were taken away from her in her depths of drug ad...

Sanjay has come back on the show after another 7 years of sobriety and talks about his original journey out of uncontrolled drinking, how he found Alcoholics Anonymous and how AA has changed his life. Sanjay discusses the transformation that he went through and how it fundamentally changed the way he thinks about himself and others. Gone is his low self-esteem, ego and fear that drove his existenc...

Karl spent his childhood looking forward to growing up so that he could enjoy the social life his parents enjoyed with lots of drinking and gambling. Neither Karl nor his parents considered drinking and gambling to be dangerous, but for Karl, who won a substantial amount of money at his first poker game as a young teenager, gambling, drinking and drug use soon became problematic. He entered re-hab...

Sheridan and her husband were friends as children, went out together as teenagers and got married when Sheridan was 20 and her husband 21. Her husband had taken a pledge not to drink until he was 21 and kept it. But when he did begin to drink socially, it was problematic almost immediately and Sheridan soon became anxious, covering for him by taking on too much responsibility for the children and...

This is a repeat of a conversation with sober bartender, musician and producer Ben. It also includes details of an upcoming Harm Reduction Victoria event - To commemorate International Overdose Awareness Day this year, we are having a big Community Feed, a Screening of the movie "Love, in a time of Fentanyl" and Naloxone training session with A naloxone kit for everyone at the end of it- ALL FOR F...

Alan began eating addictively in mid-childhood. Soon he found himself stealing, sneaking and bingeing food. As an overweight teenager Alan would eat in isolation and in his adult life spent years trying to manage his weight through diets and exercise. But he continued to eat addictively even as it resulted in obesity and ill-health. At one stage he was given some Food Addict in Recovery literature...

Paul talks about how he drank normally for most of his life and didn’t really start serious drinking until he was in his forties, when he began using alcohol to stem a sudden bout of severe anxiety. It felt so good that it became a necessity to start the day with a drink and end the day with quite a few drinks. Drinking alone, Paul was able to hide his drinking from family, friends and co-workers...