Sippin' On Gin & Juice

Quintessentially Mental: The Podcast

This week's Quintessentially Mental: The Podcast explores addiction as a mental illness. SureEyes chats to DavidP AKA David Astronomy (because he likes to get high).

Transcript

SureEyes: [00:00:00] you're listening to quintessentially mental a podcast hosted by SureEyes. Please note that this host is not a mental health practitioner or professional, and this podcast is not made for treatment of any mental illness. Hey, y'all, you're listening to quintessentially mental: the podcast and I'm your host. Today's episode is what a tricky one, you know, it's it's about addiction.

[00:00:39] Um, and how addiction is actually a mental health disorder. I don't think people realise this. Um, the title of this podcast is called sippin on gin and juice. an ode or an adage to the old rap song Snoop song. So, but I think, think, you know, it's, it's act given the culture we live in where so many things have been normalised, you know, where things like overeating or over-drinking or, um, , or, you know, all these different things where, you know, As long as it's legal, we're almost okay with it.

[00:01:30] You know, and it's almost like we view addiction as only something that pertains to illegal substances. So today my guest who will be joining, meaning me, um, is a very good friend of mine. He goes by David P. Um, we've been friends probably since about. 2017, I think, um, not realising that we actually have mutual friends, um, in our past lives.

[00:02:06] Yeah. We just didn't realise it. When I was living in Cape town, I was actually friends with people who are quite close to him. Um, you know, Dave and I have partied together. We've done a lot of, you know, drinking together, a lot of champagne. And I don't think that we. Or I ever realised he had, you know, addiction problems until

[00:02:32] he opened up to me about it later on in our friendship. And, you know, I he's been in and out of rehab. He's been in and out of in a, which is narcotics anonymous. He's being in an out of AA. Um, And, you know, it's not something that I've judged him for. It's not something that has determined the course of our friendship.

[00:02:55] I think, you know, obviously I I've been impacted by the, the choices he's made, where either I hadn’t, you know, maybe the only time I got to see him was when he was in rehab or. Otherwise, he, you know, he wouldn't speak to me because he didn't want to lie to me. So hopefully we'll be able to, you know, have a bit of a in-depth conversation about addiction and how it's actually a mental illness.

[00:03:28] Um, something I didn't realise. So stay tuned and we'll be, we'll be chatting to David soon.

[00:03:37] Spudcaster: [00:03:37] Baobulb.org is a podcasting platform and a medium for storytelling. This podcast is also available on all the major podcasting apps, including apple and Google podcasts, podcasts your life with baobulb.org.

[00:03:55] SureEyes: [00:03:55] Welcome back to quintessentially mental.

[00:03:57] I'm joined by one of my very good friends, David P or David astronomy.

[00:04:06] He, before we started recording, he, he, uh, made it very clear that, you know, we it's part of, you know, just an AA. Protocols that we never refer to people part of that community as they full name and surname, just to protect obviously the anonymity. Um, yeah. Hey David, how you doing?

[00:04:41] DavidP: [00:04:41] Yeah, I'm good. Cherize how are you?

[00:04:47] SureEyes: [00:04:47] Yeah, I’m tired. Like we've been saying just default settings of mom of a three month old. DavidP: Yeah, for sure. That and having mental illness, SureEyes: mental wellness challenges. DavidP: Am I allowed to swear?

[00:04:57] SureEyes: Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a free country. I'm sure you can.

[00:05:02] DavidP: [00:05:02] Yeah, fuck this like mental wellness. Like I get it that we're trying to turn the, you know, the frame, it different in terms of mental wellness and stuff, but like there's not enough fucking. Meditation in the world. That's going to rescue you from clinical depression.

[00:05:19] In my humble opinion

[00:05:22] SureEyes: [00:05:22] I think, I think it's, it's, it's day dependent right. So the days when I'm just like, oh my gosh, I totally have a handle on this. This is amazing. I'm making so much progress. And then the other days when I'm just like, why am I even in therapy? Like, what is the point.

[00:05:42] DavidP: [00:05:42] True, true. I mean, it is a daily thing.

[00:05:46] So my, my sponsor, um, in the fellowship, um, he, uh, he's, he's got me doing a daily gratitude list. And I remember when I was younger, my grandmother always used to give us for Christmas, these, these little notepads, and these were meant to be gratitude. Um, I would, I just come see the, I was like, this is bullshit.

[00:06:14] This doesn't help at all. Now I do a daily gratitude list and 10 things. I'm grateful. To, to be able to have, or to feel, and then five things I'm grateful. I'm grateful not to be using drugs today. I'm grateful not to be stealing and grateful not to be lying to my friends and family now. And it does actually set the day up there.

[00:06:37] So yeah, I think I agree with you. It is day dependence.

[00:06:42] SureEyes: [00:06:42] Okay. So can we maybe say that maybe not fuck meditation in totality?

[00:06:48] DavidP: [00:06:48] Quite right. Quite right. It's a, it's a, it's a package deal.

[00:06:58] SureEyes: [00:06:58] So I think just to, you know, re you know, catch up on what the intro to this episode is, we we're, we're kind of looking at addiction and mental health. Like I was saying to David, you know, I don't have, as I do at these episodes, you know, I don't have a set of interview questions or, you know, I don't have a plan in my head, um, on paper it's really just about having quite a natural, organic kind of real conversation.

[00:07:26] Um, so I guess one of the things that. People don't seem to understand or people without addiction or people who do let me not speak for other people. One thing I had to come to understand was addiction is a mental health illness. I didn't know that.

[00:07:45] DavidP: [00:07:45] Yeah. So it's actually recognised both by the WHO and in the, uh, the DSM five, um, as a, as a mental illness, it's called a substance abuse disorder.

[00:07:59] Um, they are interesting the interrelationships, right? So between the, according to the DSM right. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar two, which, which is what I am, um, unless you've been free of substances for, um, 12 months because the, the drugs do so much to the brain and that, that it can, um, Give you the symptoms that looked like it.

[00:08:37] Yeah. That looked like depression that looked like, which I found quite quite interesting, but yeah, as you say, it is a, it's a recognised, um, mental illness, according to the WHO and the DSM five.

[00:08:50] SureEyes: [00:08:50] So, I mean, that's quite interesting or that, you know, you say that. You can only really be diagnosed with an official kind of mental health disorder that isn't a substance related once you've been clean for 12 months.

[00:09:06] Have you so currently. You know, how, how you dealing with being clean. You know, you mentioned earlier that one of the things you're grateful not to be doing is you're, you're grateful not to be using drugs today. So like, how are you finding the day-to-day of staying clean that eventually builds up to a week, a month, you know, six months, a year, et cetera, you know, how are you finding that?

[00:09:34] DavidP: [00:09:34] Yeah. No. Well, that's tough. And I want to take a, I want to take a little step back though, and just, just talk about personally, why I think I started using then abusing and then becoming dependent on drugs.

[00:09:51] SureEyes: [00:09:51] It's great that you start there because well, one of the things I'm meaning to ask you before we move on this tangent was how did you even, I mean, drugs in our culture now is such a casual thing, right?

[00:10:03] Like you go to a party and people are taking lines of cocaine, or they're popping ecstasy. You're taking MBMA, it's almost normalised, normalize quite a recreational thing, you know? And like at what point do you go, oh, this is actually a problem.

[00:10:19] DavidP: [00:10:19] Yeah. Um, so look, it's interesting that you said that it's it's recreational and normalised.

[00:10:27] I think drugs have always been used recreationally and for 80% of the population, they can. Smoking joints they can, and they can smoke a joint every day for a couple of years, um, and call himself stoners or whatever they can take. Uh, MBMA on the weekends, they can do lines of cocaine. Um, they probably won't go near hardest stuff.

[00:10:51] But that's because they are able to use it recreationally. And in the big book of alcoholics, alcoholics anonymous, they talk about what the moderate drinkers and the people that are heavy drinkers. And those are people who can stop. They can stop after one drink. Or 10 drinks, or if there's a health scare or the partner is not happy or work is suffering or whatever, they're able to just say, you know what, I'm not having another drink.

[00:11:18] I'm not having another joint. I'm not having another line. And they're able to stop in my case. And with the case of addicts, I'm completely powerless over that. I have no, I know that I should stop. I know that my life is fucking up. Um, my friends and family who had deserted me, I'm pretty much bankrupt.

[00:11:39] I mean, I've slept in the park a couple of nights. Right. And I still don't stop using drugs because I'm now dependent. And I think that's the difference between addicts and non-addicts. Um, so yeah, drugs are normal. I like your recreational use of drugs is, is normalized and it's fun. And I think that's fine for most people.

[00:12:05] There's some of us though. You will figure it out. Um, you'll come to that place where you know that you can no longer stop. And then that's when you’re an addict

[00:12:20] SureEyes: [00:12:20] as people you don't know what's going to happen to your body. Right. When you do take one drink or 10 or one line or a gram, you know, like you don't know what the reaction is going to be with your body and your brain. And so it's interesting that you say, okay, cool. Once I realised that I can no longer stop.

[00:12:46] And so it's almost. You know, you can't preempt these things. You can't say. I mean, I guess in my case, I don't know about you and maybe this will be an interesting question. In my case, I come from a family of like I would say alcoholics, right where my grandfather, maternal grandfather was an alcoholic. Um, my mom's siblings have these problems, my cousins, I think I have an alcohol abuse problem.

[00:13:11] So, you know, since I fell pregnant and stopped drinking, I can definitely see the change in my mental health, seeing it, you know, now that I'm not drinking anymore. Um, Contributing, are there things that make you more predisposed, um, that you could almost preempt and say, okay, you know, given this context, given the situation, whatever it might be, I am more at risk.

[00:13:44] Like, do you think that, do you think there are markers, or is it just like a lucky package? You don't know what you're going to get.

[00:13:52] DavidP: [00:13:52] There certainly is an influencing factor from a family history. Um, but that can go back apparently seven generations. So if seven generations ago you had an addict in the family, and then there was nothing, you could be the next one.

[00:14:12] Um, so that, that lucky package has a long, long expiry date. Um, but. That's not the only, the only factor. Right? So the, the, the theory around addiction is that there's a couple of causes for it. One of them is, um, is the family history. Um, one of them is trauma. Um, another one is which I find quite interesting is like falsely hold held beliefs about things.

[00:14:45] SureEyes: [00:14:45] So if you kind of have a skewed version of like, you don't have a handle on reality, right so you kind of have. No, let me not assume. Maybe you can explain that one a bit more.

[00:14:55] DavidP: [00:14:55] Sure. So it's like, I should be the boss of this company. Um, or I'm always being persecuted. Um, or I need something I'm not good enough.

[00:15:11] I, I feel like if I don't take a line of cocaine, then I am not able to talk to people at parties or I'm not able to work long hours if I don't do a non-prescribed Ritalin. Um, and then the fourth factor and this, I think really ties in nicely here is mental health, mental illness. So in my case, I think I've got all four, I've got a family, I've got a family history.

[00:15:47] Um, of, and remember it doesn't have to be like drugs. And I want to come back to this about it being drugs or not. Does it have to be alcohol or drugs or whatever? There's things like food, these major food issues and like, uh, anorexia in my family. Um, as well as alcoholism. So that's, that's on the family history side on the, the, uh, trauma's style is, uh, we've got some of that, um, on the falsely whole beliefs side, certainly, um, you know, being a cisgender, heteronormative, white, south African, like there's certain things that I

[00:16:31] hold that are not true. And that I blame myself for that. I carry guilt about and that I have certain expectations about and things like having drugs, helped me manage that, and then finally, and for me, it's the biggest one is the mental health side. So I didn't start drinking early. I didn't start using drugs early, actually started quite late.

[00:16:54] Um, but once I'd found drugs, then I use them to manage. What eventually was diagnosed as major depressive disorder, bipolar two, um, and obsessive compulsive disorder. And I'd done that for like 14 years before I even went to see a psychiatrist for the first time.

[00:17:16] SureEyes: [00:17:16] Um, yeah, but the thing is. Going back to what you were saying around when you actually realise it's a problem.

[00:17:28] So maybe for those, this is kind of a question for those 14 years. Did you not know, you had a problem.

[00:17:40] Um, I'm just asking, like,

[00:17:47] when it comes to that, like self awareness, where you say, okay, I can no longer stop, which is, you know, the line between the addiction versus the non addiction, you know, what did it, did it, is that the amount of time it took you before you realise I have a problem?

[00:18:06] DavidP: [00:18:06] Yeah, that's wild and it is well, but I want to, yeah, let me talk a little bit about this and then I want to come back to the, the, the drugs themselves.

[00:18:19] It took me that long because I was what was called the high functioning addict. Right. So I was able to maintain a job, maintain relationships and so on until it got to the stage where I wasn't anymore. And I was about to lose my job or was being asked to leave my job. And none of my friends were around and people would cross to the other side of the road.

[00:18:41] And in fact, the people that really cared about me. And I remember, um, a friend of mine, Sarah, we were doing a line in a bathroom at a wedding in like the middle of the day, you know, like an inappropriate place and time. And she said to me, David, I think you have a drug problem. And it took me from that point. It probably took me a year.

[00:19:02] Denial denial, denial. Cause that is the first thing to get through. Is that denial, because I didn't want to believe that I couldn't drink and use drugs like normal people.

[00:19:15] SureEyes: [00:19:15] Yeah. And I think that's also something that I had to realise, right. Is that when my, when my psychiatrist suggested that perhaps some of my mental health issues are exacerbated by my abuse of alcohol, I was like

[00:19:31] No man, but I have a job

[00:19:38] but I I still had money, but I, you know, and, and eventually realising, oh, but this is how things are deteriorating, you know? And I think it takes a lot of, you know, I think there's a reason they say that, you know, the biggest step towards recovery is, you know, dealing with denial or getting over denial because it's such a strong barrier to recovery.

[00:20:06] Like denial you'll once you, once you, once you actually acknowledge, once you have that awareness, it's almost like you can't go back. You can't go back to being ignorant. You can't go back to. You know, because then when you start, when you, when you continue the behaviour with the self-awareness, it's like, then it's really choice, right?

[00:20:27] Like then you're really choosing. A certain action over another, or at least you're a lot more conscious of the decisions that you're making. It's no longer, I know I have a problem, but I'm still weak to it while I still don't have coping mechanisms to it, or I just don't know what to do about it. And I think that's, that's one of the, one of the biggest struggles that I don't know how you feel about it, but it's like, You know, people think that once they have self-awareness, all of a sudden their behaviours are just going to change.

[00:21:02] DavidP: [00:21:02] No,

[00:21:07] the basic, the basic texts like the Bible, I don’t want to use a religious word. But

[00:21:13] the book that we use in the fellowship is called the big book. And this book was written in 1936. Laying out the 12 steps and it talks there about saying self knowledge is not going to save you just because, you know, you're an alcoholic or whatever. It's not going to save you. And it's true. Like you need to get help outside of that.

[00:21:33] So, no, I agree with you completely. Um, and it's, it's an interesting thing, you know, you, you saying to your therapist nah but I've still got a car, still got a job and that like, I don't drink in the morning. Or I only drink wine or I'm not mainlining heroin, so then I'm not an addict. No, it doesn't matter.

[00:21:51] And that's what I want to. I do want to talk about this because it's an a, for me it's a huge, it was a huge realisation. It's that the drugs and alcohol are not the problem, the drugs and the alcohol were solution. No longer works, but I also exhibit that addict behaviour in so many other ways...