#54 - Shev: Teenage Motherhood, Pub Industry Drinking, Generational Patterns, Recovery Journey & Sober Festivals

Transcript

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This is a Renew Original Record.

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Hello and welcome to Believe in People, a British podcast, award-winning series about all things addiction, recovery and stigma.

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My name is Matthew Butler and I'm your host, or, as I like to say, your facilitator.

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Today, I'm with Shev, who shares her journey through family upheaval, addiction and recovery, offering deeply personal reflections on the generational patterns that shaped her life.

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Shev also discusses how her relationship with alcohol shifted from casual drinking to dependency, influenced by her time working in the pub industry.

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Through honesty and resilience, shev's story highlights the power of community recovery and embracing a fulfilling and sober life.

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Shev Hiya, welcome to the Believing People podcast.

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Thank you.

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How are you doing?

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I'm alright.

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Good, I'm glad.

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A little bit nervous, I'm sure as we get into it We'll get into it.

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You'll be absolutely fine.

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I'm going to jump straight into it as well.

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Let's talk a little bit about why you're here and a little bit about your story.

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Where do you want to begin I?

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think I was thrust into of four I'm the oldest of four and I became probably their primary caregiver in a way, probably about nine or ten years old.

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Mum was working a lot yeah, stepdad was working a lot, you know.

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So there was really only me around to look after him.

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That always saddens me, that because I think about how important childhood is really and like, and I'm still very much connected to my childhood and you can see in the studio I've got some little toys and stuff like that around me I'm still a big kid at heart, sort of thing and it always upsets me when I hear about people who have these sort of situations where they are thrust into adulthood because it's a lot of responsibility to take on, and even now, at 33, sometimes I think I'm too young to be a grown-up.

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Do you know what I'm dealing with like grown-up?

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Things honestly I'm a grandparent and I feel exactly the same.

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You don't change, do you?

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that's that's the one thing that I've learned is, as you get a little bit older, you don't change.

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There was a song recently on this thing.

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I was watching my daughter and it's a and the the guy saying old people don't feel like old people.

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I'm'm not saying that you're old by the way.

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It's one of the things where, when you do see old people out there, they probably still feel how they did.

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I don't feel any different to when.

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I was about 18, 19.

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I just kind of stay the same.

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I'm sure there is change in my maturity.

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Yeah, I think there's a lot of sadness there in a little way, because I think because I was sort of forced into maturing at an early age and having to take care of my siblings, summer holidays were spent looking after the kids.

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So even if I went out with friends, they tagged along.

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All my friends helped to look after him in the summer holidays.

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And then my mum moved to Cornwall when I was 15, going on 16, and I didn't want to go, and so I found somewhere to live with an older friend and they went.

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Mum didn't say you're coming, and you know, it wasn't until later that I kind of looked back and felt a bit abandoned by that you know, was you kind of hoping that she would have forced you to come?

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Yeah, I think I was in a little way, in a little bit, although, I was being defiant, but I don't, you know, I don't want to leave all my friends here and stuff.

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I think there was probably a part of me that was like no, you're coming please come.

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Yeah, you wanted to fight for it a little bit, yeah, yeah, I'd have felt the same way yeah, and then that kind of I was then thrust into this freedom that you wouldn't normally get at the sort of 16, and by the time I was 16 and a bit, I was pregnant so wow yeah, yeah, I had my first at 17 so I've never really had that

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yeah, that teenage years and they are, they are the sort of, as I call them, the informative years are they there, your chance to really sort of go out there and experiment and not just in terms of substance misuse, but just pushing those boundaries of society a little bit, aren't you?

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And finding out where you kind of fit in there, and I think to not have that.

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That is going to have a big impact on yourself.

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And so being a, being a mother at 17, then what was, what was that like?

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well, I mean, you know what it's like at 17.

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You think you can take on the world you can be good at anything.

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It's only when you look back that you go God, I was a child having a child.

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You have a flat of your own, You've got all these responsibilities.

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Your friends are going out without you.

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As soon as you turn 18, get a job.

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I got a job at the pub across the road.

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It's kind of gone from there really.

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I ended up as a pub manager.

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Further down, further on, it was just being my oldest for a while and, uh, it's a lot of responsibility.

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My dad would take him every other weekend.

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Give me a bit of freedom, he was understanding.

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He never judged me, that's good, yeah, he was great, kind of go that way, yeah, yeah and he realized that I was still a child and I did need to experience some sort of life, yeah, so that was good, yeah.

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What's your relationship like with your parents?

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Obviously, you said that your mother was working a lot.

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Yeah, I think once they moved away, it became very distant.

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I even moved down to Cornwall at one point and felt like we were further apart.

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Oh really, yeah.

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Yeah, I didn't see her very often.

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Why was that?

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I don't know.

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Well, looking back now, I can see a lot of things differently At the time.

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I just thought she didn't really care.

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As a child, that's what you do.

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And I was still a child.

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I was sort of 18 to 20, needing my mum because now I'm a mum and trying to see things from a different perspective and have a relationship with her.

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I missed my siblings, you know.

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I missed my stepdad.

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Was your mum making any effort to be with your eldest at the time?

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No, I thought that might have been something being a grandparent.

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I did, yeah, I did.

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I saw something not so long ago which was quite interesting.

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It was talking about grandparents' involvement in our children's lives.

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If your child has a grandparent that's not involved in your child's life, it's probably because they never wanted to be a parent to begin with, and the grandparents that are heavily involved in their grandchildren's lives is because they're trying to relive those days they had with yourself when you was younger.

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See, I'm very conscious of that with my granddaughters.

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Yeah, yeah, are you real hands-on with them?

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I try to be, I try to be.

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But I've learned over the years, particularly through recovery, that I do need to balance.

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You know the fact that you know I used to sort of help everybody.

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I want to help everybody because then I didn't have to look at my own issues.

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That's it, yeah, you know so I never wanted to be the mum that my mum was, and I've been very, very lucky that my relationship with my children is infinitely better than my relationship with my mum.

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But my mum was a drinker.

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Okay.

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You know so and I know now that there were lots of things that she experienced during her sort of early adulthood and as she got older, with relationships and stuff like that that weren't great and that she you know there's a, there's a history of.

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It was manic depression back then, but it's bipolar now, isn't it?

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yeah?

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there is a history of that on that side of the family and so being able to look back now and be like, oh okay, I kind of get where this distance comes from I, I found that quite funny, really, and not like funny.

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But I think, um, there's a few things that I've come up with within my family that I had no idea about as a kid and I'm learning things now and I'm like why didn't I know that?

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Why didn't I hear about that?

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How come this wasn't said to me?

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You know how come?

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You, you went through that and you know we didn't know about it.

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And the reality is I was trying to protect you is what was said to me and I was like well, I get that, but I think it's kind of weird when looking back at my own childhood, when I think of it in a particular way, and then this part of me that looks it with a bit of sadness and actually none of that is kind of what I thought it was yeah it was just this version of it that I saw.

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Yeah, and I guess that's life in a way, isn't it?

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Everyone has this.

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Everyone has a different version of events, and how different everybody's day-to-day lives are.

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I mean, even with your siblings, you know, your childhood may be viewed completely different to how your siblings viewed their childhood, and I don't know what the age gap is between you and your siblings.

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I know they're younger than you, obviously but there's four years between me and my assistant.

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I think she probably experienced things a lot different to what I did, or she had a knowledge of things that I didn't know, and vice versa.

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Maybe it's funny.

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I mean, you know, I sort of look, I look at my siblings now and you know they're I kind of.

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I know it might sound a little bit big-headed, but I kind of attribute some of their personalities and attitudes and the way they are in life and things like that and successes and things into.

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Maybe I had an input in that, because they were around me so much as children, and then there was this huge amount of time where we weren't together at all.

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So some of it I put down to the time we spent together, and others I'm kind of glad that they got away from manchester and moved to cornwall into this village and, you know, lived this slower pace of life and they're all just incredible people now.

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So so so being being a mum at 17, then it's going to come with its challenges.

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It's going to come with its stresses.

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You said you got the job at the pub across the road, and stuff like that did alcohol become a bit of a coping mechanism in the early days to to deal with that stress?

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No, not at first.

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No, I think I'd always had this idea that I never wanted to be like mum.

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Mum was the drinker.

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Yeah.

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So I think even from an early age it was conscious that that might be a thing one day.

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So I'd have a night out?

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Yeah, of course, of course I would, but it was never a weekly thing.

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I'd really enjoy myself when I went out once a fortnight, but there would be nothing in between.

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It was probably after I had the younger three and split up with their dad and I got a job in a pub again.

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I think I was very proud of the fact that I wasn't a statistic.

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You know, the statistical single mum on the council, on benefits and all that sort of stuff it was yeah, it was that kind of era where, oh, you had a baby and got a council house.

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I was like not, me.

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I'm gonna do it myself always been quite stubborn.

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So then you start socializing.

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You know, now you're single, so when the kids are at dad, you've got a free weekend and it kind of just went from there really slowly but steadily, you know, over a few years.

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And then it would be a case of then I got promoted.

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I was pub manager, so then you'd have a drink with your customers or you'd have a drink after shift and that would turn into two.

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But I wouldn't drink on my days off, you know.

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You don't see that that much these days when people work in bars.

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I think there's rules against it now.

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They're not really allowed to.

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I remember when I was a bit younger, you know, 10, 12 years ago.

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You sometimes see bar made behind having a drink and I never seem to see it these days when I'm in there, yeah, they still do it.

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So how, when it, when it, when did you realize it became a problem?

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Because I often found the interesting.

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Well, the interesting thing with alcoholism is how, as the story goes, no one wakes up and is suddenly addicted to alcohol it's a slow process.

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But I think the thing that I find interesting is surely at some point you realize, hang on, this is taking hold of me.

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It's kind of like.

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It's kind of like obesity in some way, like I think.

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At what point did you not realize, okay, you have to do something about this.

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You know, when you see people that have got really, really big yeah, like it's the same with alcoholism, I often think surely there was a point when you realized, hang on, this is starting to take over my life, or I'm drinking at times when I wouldn't normally drink in.

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Did you when I realized or when I admitted well, tell me when you realize it's the first one, the two different things.

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Tell me when you realized first the first one.

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There are two different things out there.

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Tell me when you realised first.

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When I realised it was probably I'd been through some issues at work and I think I'd realised that I just didn't want to work in pubs anymore.

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And it wasn't because of the drinking, it was just issues that were going on at the time with other management and things like that.

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And I went to work at um, a wholesale fruit and veg.

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It's night shifts, six nights a week, so I was basically using alcohol to get to sleep during the day, and then the kids were still young enough that I would still need to be up for when they came home from school, cooked dinner, that kind of thing weren't young kids, but you know yeah, old enough, still need a tea cooking.

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And yeah, yeah, how was your day did you do your homework, you know yeah old enough, still need a tea cooking and yeah, yeah, how was your day?

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did you do your homework, you know?

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And I realized that that was becoming a a six day a week thing.

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That's interesting yeah, using it as a as a thing to get to sleep on night shifts, that's.

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That's a new one where I worked they had, and it don't get me wrong in this in this place it's rife you know, everybody's a night worker.

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If they're not doing cocaine to stay awake through their night shift, they're having a drink so they can sleep when they get home and there's cafes dotted all around the market and they all sell alcohol.

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So everybody's drinking at 6, 7, 8 in the morning.

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Then they're going to the pub for breakfast.

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They're having a drink.

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Then they're going home, we're having a drink, yeah, and they're going home, we're having a drink, and then we're sleeping.

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London, it just doesn't sleep does it Never sleeps.

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That sort of area Never sleeps.

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It was in London at this time.

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Yeah, I'm assuming, yeah.

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Yeah, that's it.

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It's like here Nope Shops are shut now Everything's open.

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You can?

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they have been it's yeah, I just think I remember finishing quite late not so long ago and was thinking I'll be shut now take a way up until like six in the morning.

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I was like jesus christ, that's insane.

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Yeah, I was doing that for probably four or five years and then I brought my ankle and I was laid up for two months and I I found Uber Eats and Deliveroo and I was like, oh, they deliver alcohol, because at that point the only times I wouldn't drink is if I didn't leave the house.

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So Sundays, basically I wouldn't drink because I wasn't going near a shop.

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But now I'm stuck in the house.

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So just get it delivered.

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I've never thought Uber Eats would contribute to alcoholism.

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But yeah, no.

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Just made it so easy it's an interesting point isn't it?

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So that was after five years.

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I mean, obviously I'd order other stuff, Of course.

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Yeah, so you don't want it to look too suspicious.

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Oh, I need a loaf of bread and a bottle of vodka.

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Here's a loaf of bread and four bottles of vodka.

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Yeah yeah.

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That's interesting isn't it how that works out.

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So when did you admit it was a problem?

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Then I'd returned to work.

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I'd probably been back at work a couple of years and then I remember getting home one day and thinking I don't remember buying that.

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Oh okay, I'd been in the shop and I'd kind I don't.

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You know, I can't even remember what I'd bought, but by the time I got home I thought I don't remember buying this vodka.

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It becomes such a part of my routine.

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I didn't even register buying it anymore and then it was a real quick downward slope, because now I'm like oh my god, I'm a mum.

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Oh my god, I know it's been a problem.

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I'm a mum.

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Oh my God, I know it's been a problem, but I thought I was handling it Clearly not.

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And now it's gone from half a bottle a day to a bottle a day.

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You know, full bottle of vodka every single day.

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But at this point I realised I was saving enough for the morning and waking up earlier for my shift in the morning to have a straightener, because I was shaking so much every morning and that's when and I was starting to have some health issues and seeing my gp- did you was the health issues related to alcoholism predominantly.

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Yeah, now I know that yeah I was having lots of sort of blood pressure issues and palpitations, anxiety attacks, stuff that I'd never experienced before, Did you so?

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did you not link them to the drinking at the time?

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Did you think these were separate issues?

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I mean yeah, yeah.

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Yeah, of course I did.

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Were you open with your GP about the alcoholism.

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Not at first.

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Not at first I was embarrassment more than anything.

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Yeah, I knew the kids were old enough by that point.

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How old was your eldest at this?

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point.

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Oh, my eldest, my youngest, would have been.

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She's 23 now, so it's been two and a half years.

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She would have been about 18, 19.

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Okay, yeah.

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So my eldest would have been around 25.

00:15:58.315 --> 00:15:59.635
Had they not noticed anything?

00:15:59.655 --> 00:16:00.397
Oh God yeah.

00:16:00.437 --> 00:16:00.897
Did they?

00:16:00.917 --> 00:16:03.182
Yeah, did they ever talk to you about it.

00:16:03.182 --> 00:16:03.543
Do you know what?

00:16:03.543 --> 00:16:04.004
They never.

00:16:04.004 --> 00:16:11.025
They'd make comments here and there, yeah, but I think it started out that I was cool mum and I would party with Because I'm younger.

00:16:11.066 --> 00:16:11.748
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:12.048 --> 00:16:14.178
You know, there's only a 17-year-old age gap, isn't there?

00:16:14.340 --> 00:16:15.927
Between my oldest and his mates.

00:16:16.581 --> 00:16:19.384
He was 34 by the time you were 17.

00:16:19.424 --> 00:16:25.154
Yeah, everybody around, it's not a problem, clear up after yourselves, you know they'd make the odd comment.

00:16:25.154 --> 00:16:35.451
But then I turned into a bedroom drinker and then the bedroom just started piling up and I stopped hiding it, I stopped caring, I became.

00:16:35.451 --> 00:16:37.275
I was there.

00:16:37.275 --> 00:16:43.831
They could come to me about anything, but I was looking back now I know I was very absent Physically.

00:16:43.831 --> 00:16:44.231
I was there.

00:16:44.231 --> 00:16:45.254
I meant to say absolutely not.

00:16:45.254 --> 00:16:48.048
And then I can't remember.

00:16:48.048 --> 00:16:53.125
My GP had slowly he's fantastic, honestly this man saved my life.

00:16:53.125 --> 00:16:54.087
He really did.

00:16:54.087 --> 00:17:02.547
He slowly, gently, coaxed out of me just how serious it was over the course of about three or four appointments and put me in touch with CGL.

00:17:02.908 --> 00:17:04.211
Okay, really yeah.

00:17:04.211 --> 00:17:05.724
So how long ago was that then?

00:17:06.981 --> 00:17:09.567
uh, so we're going just about two minutes.

00:17:09.567 --> 00:17:12.011
It was november 21.

00:17:12.011 --> 00:17:18.602
Okay, it's quite early days and I suppose it's only been a few years well, it's actually a month or two before that, yeah that he put me in touch.

00:17:18.602 --> 00:17:24.883
I had an assessment and then I was waiting to be allocated and then I had some blood tests.

00:17:26.166 --> 00:17:38.287
I guess the interesting thing here is one of the things that we often talk about here is how addiction to substances is often related to some form of trauma, whether that be childhood or adult.

00:17:38.287 --> 00:17:44.068
But to hear that you experienced an alcohol dependency because you was working night shifts.

00:17:44.068 --> 00:17:47.689
That in itself is is kind of like to me.

00:17:47.709 --> 00:17:49.416
I don't know whether I can blame it on that.

00:17:49.416 --> 00:17:49.778
No, I mean.

00:17:49.778 --> 00:17:53.413
No, I'm not my family history probably actually that was.

00:17:53.433 --> 00:18:05.910
They'll go for that way, then, because some people often say that um addiction, the disease of addiction, is inherited for our parents not not always, of course.

00:18:05.910 --> 00:18:06.089
You know.

00:18:06.089 --> 00:18:10.311
Some people can have some problems with substances and their parents don't have any problems at all.

00:18:10.311 --> 00:18:12.952
Do you think that's the case for yourself?

00:18:12.952 --> 00:18:14.240
Do you think there was something inherited?

00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:21.681
Possibly I was so determined to not that's the interesting part of this which, to this day blows my mind.

00:18:21.740 --> 00:18:31.731
when I woke up one morning, looked in the the mirror and thought that's your mum, you know, looking back at you, and I'd said every morning for such a long time I can't do this anymore.

00:18:31.952 --> 00:18:32.153
Yeah.

00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:34.644
And it was only my GP that.

00:18:34.644 --> 00:18:36.289
I didn't know what was available to me.

00:18:36.289 --> 00:18:40.420
I didn't know that I could just walk through the door of a recovery service without a referral.

00:18:40.740 --> 00:18:43.625
I think some people don't even know what recovery services are and how they work.

00:18:43.625 --> 00:18:47.891
I had no idea even people that know them don't necessarily know how they work.

00:18:47.891 --> 00:18:55.347
It's one of the things that we sometimes see people coming through the door expecting us to wave a magic wand and be like, right, you're fixed.

00:18:55.347 --> 00:18:58.446
Alcohol dependency is gone, go live your life, sort of thing.

00:18:58.446 --> 00:19:02.467
In terms of abstinence, did you?

00:19:02.467 --> 00:19:04.531
What was it like to realise that?

00:19:04.531 --> 00:19:09.904
Actually, I'll say this could you drink now if you wanted to, or would that trigger a full?

00:19:09.924 --> 00:19:10.607
on, I don't trust myself.

00:19:10.660 --> 00:19:11.704
You don't even trust yourself to do that.

00:19:11.744 --> 00:19:12.125
Not yet.

00:19:12.125 --> 00:19:13.825
No, I may never trust myself.

00:19:13.825 --> 00:19:14.046
Good.

00:19:14.780 --> 00:19:15.905
That's not a bad thing, is it?

00:19:15.905 --> 00:19:17.787
No, I stay very aware of that all the time.

00:19:17.787 --> 00:19:26.364
I'm quite proud of the fact that I know I don't trust myself.

00:19:26.364 --> 00:19:31.095
Yeah, yeah, that's good, because some people will go through this process of alcohol dependency and they will have the detox to um help with the physical dependency.

00:19:31.175 --> 00:20:00.711
But once you're no longer physically dependent, they think oh well, now I can go back to social drinking on occasion without realizing actually there's the mental thing, that's going to send it into a full-on relapse and you're going to be back to square one oh, I think for me, because I'd had some blood tests done and then, while I was waiting for a key worker and then a few weeks later I had some more done and my gp called me and said I need to go to the hospital today and I spent, I think, a week in hospital, most of which I don't remember.

00:20:00.730 --> 00:20:04.386
I was hallucinating and was that from the alcohol withdrawal?

00:20:04.386 --> 00:20:07.047
Yeah, talk to me about the hallucinations.

00:20:07.047 --> 00:20:08.104
Can you remember what you hallucinated?

00:20:08.104 --> 00:20:08.705
I can remember.

00:20:08.746 --> 00:20:10.402
It's funny now when I think about it.

00:20:10.402 --> 00:20:12.489
Now, it's not, it's really not funny.

00:20:15.122 --> 00:20:24.984
I can remember I was lying in the hospital bed and it kept feeling like somebody was cuddling up behind me and I just assumed it was one of the children.

00:20:24.984 --> 00:20:25.748
But there was nobody there.

00:20:25.748 --> 00:20:35.944
But the funniest bit that I remember is there was kind of like a yoghurt on my bedside and I thought I'm hungry and I would bring the spoon to my mouth and it would disintegrate as it got to my mouth.

00:20:35.944 --> 00:20:37.824
So that was the first sign.

00:20:37.824 --> 00:20:39.529
But I just put that down to tiredness.

00:20:39.529 --> 00:20:46.153
And then I had had a chat with my dad and my son and my dad said oh, I need to go.

00:20:46.153 --> 00:20:47.503
I need to go back to the hotel.

00:20:47.503 --> 00:20:48.508
Your stepmum's there.

00:20:48.508 --> 00:20:50.646
I said okay, I'll just get my coat and I'll meet you down there.

00:20:50.646 --> 00:20:52.083
I go outside.

00:20:52.083 --> 00:20:52.846
There's nobody there.

00:20:53.019 --> 00:20:55.847
So I called my son and I said where have you gone?

00:20:55.847 --> 00:20:57.092
I said I'll be straight down.

00:20:57.092 --> 00:20:58.265
He said talking about.

00:20:58.265 --> 00:21:08.980
I said you and granddad were just here.

00:21:08.980 --> 00:21:10.602
Granddad's at home in Manchester, mum, he's not come down.

00:21:10.602 --> 00:21:12.603
I had a full-blown conversation with both of them and then it was again I'm putting it down.

00:21:12.603 --> 00:21:12.962
I blamed my son.

00:21:12.962 --> 00:21:13.563
I said you're gaslighting me.

00:21:13.583 --> 00:21:14.624
I can't believe you're lying to me?

00:21:14.644 --> 00:21:17.045
Why would you make me feel like I'm going crazy?

00:21:17.045 --> 00:21:28.710
And then, later on in the day, I went to go out again for a cigarette and they stopped me and said no, and I couldn't understand why I'd been out three or four times.

00:21:28.710 --> 00:21:29.590
Why are you not letting me now?

00:21:29.590 --> 00:21:37.115
And then, three days later, I woke up in a side ward, the security guard at the end of my bed, the door open.

00:21:37.115 --> 00:21:38.815
I was mortified.

00:21:38.815 --> 00:21:41.297
I was terrified that I'd hurt somebody.

00:21:41.576 --> 00:21:41.757
Yeah.

00:21:42.497 --> 00:21:44.758
And that's all I could say was please tell me I didn't hurt anyone.

00:21:46.519 --> 00:21:46.961
So what had happened.

00:21:46.980 --> 00:21:49.769
The nurse said you just, you got scared because we wouldn't let you leave.

00:21:49.769 --> 00:21:53.443
Okay so you just kind of you felt a bit penned in, you got verbal.

00:21:53.443 --> 00:21:56.768
But you didn't get physical she said you've got a colourful tongue, I'll give you that.

00:21:56.768 --> 00:22:00.202
I was just like, okay, please don't so sorry.

00:22:00.202 --> 00:22:14.721
Yeah, we made light of it and then but it was weeks later I was talking to the kids about it and they were like mom, you were calling everybody, you were texting them, they've kidnapped me.

00:22:15.742 --> 00:22:16.845
We've got to get a van.

00:22:16.845 --> 00:22:18.188
They've kidnapped your sister.

00:22:18.188 --> 00:22:19.589
We've got to go after this gang.

00:22:19.589 --> 00:22:20.592
And I'm like what?

00:22:20.592 --> 00:22:23.534
Yeah, Apparently I was just calling everybody to come and get me.

00:22:23.854 --> 00:22:24.474
What was that like?

00:22:24.474 --> 00:22:26.676
Obviously, you spoke to your children about it.

00:22:26.676 --> 00:22:27.978
What was it like for them, do you know?

00:22:27.978 --> 00:22:29.346
They said much about it.

00:22:29.579 --> 00:22:51.567
Well, my eldest had come to see me in the hospital and he said at one point Mum, you looked at me like you not despised me, but you didn't know who I was and you were so sort of like defensive You'd so sort of like defensive, you'd be talking to me normally and then you'd blank and then talk to me normally again.

00:22:51.586 --> 00:22:52.068
He said I had to call.

00:22:52.088 --> 00:22:53.933
He had to call his sisters and his brother and said I'll come to the hospital.

00:22:53.953 --> 00:22:54.717
I don't want you to see her like this.

00:22:54.717 --> 00:22:55.317
Yeah, you know it's scary.

00:22:55.317 --> 00:23:06.573
The hallucinations I mean I that was the one thing that I wasn't aware of you when I first kind of started doing this was um hallucinations from alcohol withdrawal.

00:23:06.573 --> 00:23:17.741
I'd heard them from drug withdrawal and I thought, because you know, because the way drugs are sort of, I guess, displayed in media, you know, and how is it?

00:23:17.741 --> 00:23:25.019
Train spotting is a good example where the guy's you know having his withdrawal and he sees the baby crawling on the roof and things like that.

00:23:25.019 --> 00:23:31.647
But speaking to people about alcohol withdrawals and some of the hallucinations that they had, I didn't think that would be a thing from alcohol.

00:23:33.503 --> 00:23:38.888
But of course, technically it's probably a really powerful drug for your receptors to experience, isn't it?

00:23:39.422 --> 00:23:42.039
And I'm one of the luckier ones, I just had hallucinations.

00:23:42.039 --> 00:23:43.682
It could have been so much worse.

00:23:43.682 --> 00:23:44.583
I was in aier ones, I just had hallucinations.

00:23:44.583 --> 00:23:45.344
Yeah, it could have been so much worse.

00:23:45.344 --> 00:23:46.566
Yeah, I was in a safe environment.

00:23:46.566 --> 00:23:47.547
I was in the hospital.

00:23:47.547 --> 00:23:50.852
You know it was a controlled withdrawal.

00:23:50.852 --> 00:24:04.862
So I was one of the lucky ones, okay, but I think, talking to the kids after when I got home and just seeing how worried they were, that that spared me to.

00:24:04.862 --> 00:24:05.383
I was like it, I'm done.

00:24:05.403 --> 00:24:11.490
I can't waste this opportunity that I've got yeah I just couldn't and have they said much about it since.

00:24:11.490 --> 00:24:13.122
How do they feel about where you are now?

00:24:13.162 --> 00:24:18.782
I guess, I mean, I I think, oh, they're so proud of me good, so proud and they make it known that they're very proud of me.

00:24:18.782 --> 00:24:25.349
Yeah, and I know that while I was in the hospital there were lots of discussions it was the end of november, christmas was coming up.

00:24:25.349 --> 00:24:27.776
They'd all agreed to have a dry Christmas.

00:24:27.776 --> 00:24:31.806
You know all these little conversations and research and all sorts of stuff that they'd done.

00:24:32.105 --> 00:24:44.069
That's so nice yeah, and I think, looking back now, the fact that they never asked me to stop drinking makes me and I've never asked them, but it makes me think that they were doing research way before that happened.

00:24:44.069 --> 00:24:45.522
How do we support her?

00:24:45.522 --> 00:24:46.065
Yeah?

00:24:46.445 --> 00:24:49.698
yeah, that's nice because I I've shared this story before.

00:24:49.698 --> 00:24:55.541
But doing a, an outreach with someone alcohol dependence and and the daughter saying why are you telling her to keep drinking?

00:24:55.541 --> 00:24:56.483
You know she needs to stop?

00:24:56.483 --> 00:25:09.945
I have no idea about the physical impact and and the risk that can happen if someone did just go cold take from alcohol you know, correlated seizures, all these things that can happen when someone comes and just suddenly stops drinking.

00:25:09.945 --> 00:25:19.161
So for them to do that research, because they must have, otherwise they would have asked you yeah to stop drinking yeah had they not known, had they not done the research?

00:25:19.181 --> 00:25:20.746
that'd have been the first thing they probably would have asked you?

00:25:20.786 --> 00:25:22.821
yeah, they said little things like you know.

00:25:22.821 --> 00:25:23.684
Are you okay?

00:25:23.684 --> 00:25:25.810
Do you need to talk to anyone?

00:25:25.810 --> 00:25:26.712
I'm fine.

00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:29.008
I like the fact that they haven't just disowned you as well.

00:25:29.008 --> 00:25:30.865
That's something you hear quite a lot.

00:25:30.865 --> 00:25:38.849
It's oh, my dad's using drugs, my mum's drinking, just that's it, their only concern was when I said that I wanted to go back to festivals.

00:25:39.531 --> 00:25:42.003
Okay, you could see the little uh-oh.

00:25:42.003 --> 00:25:45.271
I thought I'm going to be good, I'll do my research, I'll be fine.

00:25:45.271 --> 00:25:52.248
I've got no intentions of drinking and I've got an incredibly supportive friend group, so they're like my biggest cheerleaders.

00:25:52.901 --> 00:26:03.145
So what was the moment in particular where you decided to go to your GP and talk about, I guess, what was the thing that made you open up to your gp to begin with?

00:26:03.145 --> 00:26:04.829
You said you, there was a lot of embarrassment there.

00:26:04.849 --> 00:26:12.084
What was the part where you thought right, I need to tell him about this he'd asked me a couple of times how much I drink, and then I realized that I was going to work at night.

00:26:12.084 --> 00:26:14.691
I was drinking on my way home from work and I would not.

00:26:14.691 --> 00:26:18.625
I could go to an appointment any time of the day with my gp because I work nights.

00:26:18.625 --> 00:26:22.811
I was stinking of alcohol all the time.

00:26:22.811 --> 00:26:24.795
It was a smell that never went away.

00:26:24.795 --> 00:26:26.303
You know you think you drink vodka.

00:26:26.303 --> 00:26:27.065
Nobody can smell it.

00:26:27.065 --> 00:26:28.769
Who are we fooling?

00:26:28.769 --> 00:26:31.644
You know it's like it's one of the strongest smelling ones.

00:26:31.663 --> 00:26:33.048
Actually vodka, yeah, I know it's the only one.

00:26:33.048 --> 00:26:34.832
You will smell it's very distinctive, yeah.

00:26:35.460 --> 00:26:40.352
And he would just ask me say you know, is there anything you want to talk about?

00:26:45.079 --> 00:26:46.125
Is there you want to tell me about your drinking?

00:26:46.125 --> 00:26:46.727
I'm like, no, no, I'm good.

00:26:46.727 --> 00:26:47.590
How come like work didn't flag it?

00:26:47.590 --> 00:26:49.096
I guess you said it's quite common for people to get a drink to.

00:26:49.096 --> 00:26:49.598
You talked about cocaine.

00:26:49.618 --> 00:26:52.070
Used to stay away drinking to get sleep that's what I mean.

00:26:52.090 --> 00:26:52.914
They're all doing it.

00:26:53.056 --> 00:26:59.019
I found out one of the guys that I worked with actually used to work for me in the pub, so we knew each other really well.

00:26:59.019 --> 00:27:01.884
You know we would be parted together over the years.

00:27:01.884 --> 00:27:03.126
He he knew my children.

00:27:03.126 --> 00:27:13.250
So he was quite a heavy drug user himself at particular situations Not daily, but he knew how to party.

00:27:13.250 --> 00:27:21.734
And eventually at some point he messaged me outside work and said Listen, as your friend, people are noticing.

00:27:21.734 --> 00:27:31.011
Okay, yeah, you know, I just want to know you're okay again, really supportive why is everybody, why is everyone being nice to me, you know?

00:27:33.002 --> 00:27:34.265
why does everybody care?

00:27:34.265 --> 00:27:38.473
Yeah, I just found it funny from an employer perspective not to flag it.

00:27:38.473 --> 00:27:42.169
I mean, here it's different, we're working a drug and alcohol treatment service.

00:27:42.169 --> 00:27:42.871
There's reasons why.

00:27:42.871 --> 00:27:45.589
Do you know if someone come in moving a slate with alcohol?

00:27:45.650 --> 00:27:47.015
it'd be instantly investigated.

00:27:47.015 --> 00:27:55.746

#54 - Shev: Teenage Motherhood, Pub Industry Drinking, Generational Patterns, Recovery Journey & Sober Festivals

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