The Crucible:Conversations for the Curious

Hamish Niven (00:01)
Welcome to The Crucible, Conversations for the Curious. I am Hamish, your host. This podcast is for anyone going through awakenings, trying to make sense of life. Whether dark nights are the soul, needing to make life -changing decisions, struggling with addiction or critical illness, or simply realizing that their life as they know it is not aligned to values and purpose. You are not alone. You can get through this, promise you. Life is far more beautiful on the other side.

Hamish (00:29)
Good morning everybody and welcome to another episode of the Crucible Conversations for the Curious. Today we've got Nick with us and Nick's got a wonderful story. Like me, he had a dance with the alcohol and things like that. And then he turned his life around and he's now doing amazing things, helping people with all sorts of addictions, whether it's drugs or alcohol or all sorts of things. So Nick, thank you so much for turning up here today.

Nick Shepley (00:58)
Thank you. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure.

Hamish (01:00)
Can you tell me a little bit about your start with your dance with drugs and alcohol and what really tipped you down that path of tumbling, tumbling, tumbling down?

Nick Shepley (01:12)
Yeah, well, I guess, I mean, when I work with people, I always ask the question, what makes sense about this situation? You know, have people who doing things that objectively don't make sense, but there's always a sense there. And when I discovered alcohol when I was about 14 or 15, it made sense, you know? It made sense to me. It made too much sense.

I remember a kind of a real lightning moment of, know, you have that moment that all children do in the experiment with alcohol. And it's normally down in the woods or somebody's house. were, there's a patch of woods near where myself and my friends lived. And somebody brought with them a bottle of cider. And everybody had a drink and I drank. And after everybody else had had a bit of a drink, somebody said, well, let's stop this now.

and let's go to somebody else and listen to some music. To which it seemed like an absolute madness that anybody would choose to do that. Anyone would choose to stop going further into this moment, this thing where this huge sense of kind of wholeness came from. It's obviously the illusion of wholeness.

but this powerful sense of almost liberation, liberation from this kind of rather frustrating world I existed in where nothing really worked out and nothing really was any good, to this other space. was walking through a magic door for me. And I think everyone I know, all the people I know in recovery, all the people I've worked with in recovery have a similar magic door story.

And some people have had, you know, horrendous experiences and, you know, escape from that makes makes perfect sense. And other people, they are just kind of like me. And maybe this is true of everybody, I'm trying not to do special and different here, but kind of kind of square pegs in round holes, you know, that life

when I was 15, I haven't been without its little traumas, you know, and certainly there would be more to come. But the main issue was that I found myself in a world that didn't seem to have any kind of accommodation for me at all. you're someone like me whose mind wanders all over the place and who...

spends a great deal of their formative years off in some kind of strange dream world, then the world is pretty merciless. And my experience of my teenage years was a kind of a this weird, slightly obscured, but ever-present sort of brutalisation, you know.

schools and things around you and the way families work and things like that. The whole of life seemed to be some kind of bat whacking you in one direction or another and then alcohol. And alcohol in that moment I the moment I discovered it weaved a certain kind of magic which was with me for the next 15 years.

Hamish (05:04)
Yep. I love the way you phrase that and completely resonate with that. did something. It made sense. It helped me confidently. You know, I could dance, I could chat to girls, could actually avoid stuff that I didn't understand. You know, it was a really successful coping mechanism.

Nick Shepley (05:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Hamish (05:28)
Yeah, I mean, that's why people do it, isn't it? Because for a while, or a long while, it really works. What was it helping you avoid?

Nick Shepley (05:34)
Yeah.

I think it was that kind of shortcut to social functioning. think, you know, the awkwardness of being 15. I think when you're 50, it's hard to remember what that was like. My son is nine now and I kind of look at...

on the next few years with a sense of wonder and joy, but also, God.

But it's, you know, and you can edit this out, it's fucking embarrassing, it? It really is. That period of, you know, think Eric Erickson called it this, called it the psychosocial moratorium, where we, in theory, give teenagers that time and space to become themselves. But I don't think that that actually exists. I think we, think it's hard.

to go from that transition in that period between childhood and adulthood, things that really difficult to navigate. And yet we create all these means to kind of evade that and perhaps the discomfort of growing up and finding out who you are and becoming an adult, at least physically an adult, and maybe people aren't.

actually adults now until they're about 45, I don't know, being able to have your first sexual thoughts, for example, and navigate that complicated process to be able to continue with that, that the kind of...

Because where you're at when you become a teenager depends awful lot on how socially you developed as a child and, you know, were you good at making friends, good at playing with others, were you securing yourself? An awful lot of people when they hit a teenager is the answer is to no to all of those things. So they have to figure it out and maybe they do and maybe they don't. And then they're spewed into the adult world and...

No wonder addiction exists. I mean, honestly, why wouldn't it?

I think that sort of answers, but yeah, it was a useful tool. And what did it help me escape? I think it helped me escape...

kind of a world of not sort of expectations, because I didn't come from a family where there were these kind of hard expectations, but a family where there was a kind of a suspicion of and a discouragement of the kind of the imaginary world.

I spent my life as a writer, as a journalist, as a teacher and as a counselor. So I've lived in different ways in that world completely and utterly ever since I got my first job. But for some reason within my family there was this great scepticism towards that, that kind of whatever you want to call it.

And found that really, really hard. Yeah, really, really, really, really hard. And alcohol was a place where you can sort of create that really. You can, you can sit in a pub and be in a dream world for hours and ends.

Hamish (09:31)
Yeah. Yep. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? It's that, it is that expectation. It is, you know, our, our parents are our caregivers. They are, they are our frame of reference. and as you said, you, you had that, creativity, that, that will to write and to dream and think. And, know, when, when we're not allowed to be ourselves, we have to fit in, we have to, we have to fit in because they are

our caregivers, they feed us, nourish us, keep us alive. So we have to stop being authentic to ourselves and start attaching to what they require. I need love, I need support. And you know, who Nick was, who Hamish was, sort of gets marginalized. And I think that is, it's tragic. It's not no one's fault. It's just tragic.

Nick Shepley (10:21)
Yes.

And I think that's the process of almost all childhoods. I think that everybody graduates from childhood into adulthood with the love their parents could give for them. And nobody graduates from childhood into adulthood with all the love or all the nurture or all or whatever it was that they needed.

don't think it's possible for anyone to parent like that, you know. And I would, you know, I won't even say that of my own parenting. But I think that, I think that when we journey through adult life, everyone is journeying with some sort of wound that they acquired in childhood. For some people, it's a horror story. There's, you know, obviously childhood sexual abuse or...

Sometimes, you know, bereavement or some sort of major trauma. And I think, thankfully, that's not the majority of people's stories. If it was, you know, then we'd be in a different kind of world. And I think for everybody else, there is something, some kind of minor, either crisis or a minor kind of cram.

between the parent-child relationship. I think if parents try to be too much, then you get this other kind of narcissistic, smothering parent where, know, mum won't actually go away. And so parents can never, they can kind of get it right, but they can never be absolutely everything that a child requires. And part of the journey through life, I think, is in adult life.

the child reflecting on this and taking that responsibility we all got to take to go, right, well, where, do I address that? How do I address that lack, that thing and fill the hole myself? And the first thing that lots of people do and they do it instinctually and they do it unwittingly is that they find alcohol or sex or food or drugs or gambling or pornography or whatever the thing is.

And that's how they start off by self-nurturing. You know, this, this will make me feel better and start comforting. And I think all, all people sort of do that to some extent anyway. You know, you, you would, if somebody says, well, I've had a horrible day, it's a rainy day, was a rubbish day at work. Tonight, I'm to go home. I'm going to watch a movie and I'm going to get a piece of chocolate cake and a glass of wine. and I'm just going to, you know, comfort myself.

You're not going to say to that person, my you terrible addicts, you we need to rush you to rehab, you know, because they're not really. They're just somebody that's reaching for things outside of themselves to do the nurture. And I think so widespread, you can probably call that being as part of human nature.

Hamish (13:37)
I think you have nailed the most important thing to help people make sense of addiction. I think that is so profoundly important because when, I mean, I think everyone who's an addict and is still alive is a flipping superhero. You know, I found a way to cope. You found a way to cope. She did by that eating. He did by the pornography. Doesn't mean that behavior is okay, but we found a way to survive rather than

Nick Shepley (13:54)
Hmm?

Hamish (14:05)
shoot ourselves, hang ourselves, crash a car, go mad, whatever. So I love the fact that you've beautifully explained that we find ways to cope with life. And I think just that allows people to take that shame away to go, I am a hero. I'm not an insert expletive of choice when it comes to what people perceive. And I think that is probably

Nick Shepley (14:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hamish (14:35)
an incredibly important step in that journey of being able to, let's just say, sober up to actually look at what we're really facing.

Nick Shepley (14:45)
Yeah, and there was a story I heard recently and this came from a piece of science. it's, and it's, you know, if you break down the walls between addiction and other mental health phenomena, this story kind of makes a lot of sense. But there was some, some young lads in, a study was done of the mental health of some young lads in quite a rough part of London. I think it was probably the East End because

from where they were living, they could look down the river and see Canary Wharf and all these big shining towers of banking and stuff like that. And these, you know, rich guys would drive past their neighborhood on the way to work in Porsches and Ferraris and stuff like that. And they found that amongst this demographic, the incidence of psychosis were much higher than in neighboring areas. So they looked at these young men and they thought,

Actually, they're not smoking lots of cannabis, is a big indicator of psychosis. There's not high incidences of others' childhood experiences, know, child violence, physical or sexual abuse or anything like that. On paper, these guys should have reasonably good mental health, but they don't. And the reason why they don't is because all day long these are working class young men.

often black and minority ethnic, so likely to be poor and likely to face more challenges to access wealth. And all day long, they're being bombarded with images of wealth. If it's not on Instagram, as they walk or TikTok or YouTube, it's all around them. They're seeing, know, Ferraris and Porsches zip past their neighborhoods. And they're being told all day long, if you don't have...

some supermodel girlfriend. If you don't have some jacked body, if you don't have access to champagnes and private jets and ferraris and things like that, you don't deserve to exist. You know, you are the scum of the earth and you should go and just cease existing. This is the message that they get. There's this huge society, has this huge paywall and if you want to have any of the things that give you

not just fun, but value and self-esteem and purpose and worth. And you have to be able to cross through the paywall. And if you can't, then, you know, fuck off, go away, stop existing. And so the psychoses amongst these young men were them essentially creating alternative realities to exist in. Not particularly pleasant or logical ones, because the mind doesn't do that. It doesn't create narnia for us when we have psychosis.

And it's, but if you really trace that back to the question of addiction.

What the mind will do if it's in unbearable circumstances, it will try to solve the problem. It will try to solve the problem of trying to make things bearable. Well, what else can we do? And often that is disorganized and chaotic because I'm not suggesting for a moment that, you know, if you're depressed, going and drinking a bottle of vodka is going to help. But on the mind's kind of...

illogical logic, that evasion, that escape is sometimes the only thing it can think to do. It's tried to solve the problem of whatever the problem is, umpteen different ways. And sometimes people are just boxed in. Sometimes there aren't alternatives to them. And so flight is the one that makes sense.

Hamish (18:33)
know what the answer is to that because we've got social media, as you said, we've got the TikTok, Instagram, Glamour, this, that and the other, all the lies and nonsense that we actually forget that we see all of that. It's taken me till my late 40s to realize that comparison really is the thief of joy. Now, early 50s, I still battle with it from time to time to time time time to time. But

Nick Shepley (18:57)
Yes.

Hamish (19:02)
You know, it's, it's, I've had to work through that. And I guess if you're in your twenties or thirties and life is tough and things like that, it's, it's, it's less important to actually appreciate and realize.

Nick Shepley (19:07)
Yeah, I mean I would say, and this is not to go down any sort of political route, because that's not what we're really here for, but a less radically unequal society would help, but also

Hamish (19:20)
No.

Nick Shepley (19:26)
You know, the pedagogies, the way in which we educate people and the purposes for which we educate people, you know, arguably a century or so out of date. And you would find, I think, if, if sort of a regular part of the school curriculum from, and it is there, but sort of in piecemeal fashion, from primary school.

through to school leaver at 18 is about just developing that robust self-worth and acknowledging that bloody hell, the kids, there are huge challenges against them to kind of hold on to and maintain that self-worth. We supposedly educate people in English and maths so they can become...

economic agents within society and be good workers and all this this this kind of stuff but think of the value of Because this is a very unwell society we live in a very very emotionally unwell society a very distressed society You know if you were a politician and you wanted to add sort of X percentage to the GDP deal with distress Yeah, deal with human distress won't make any good newspaper headlines. I'm pretty sure but

That would be, in the long term, a real game changer, I think, and would make us all happier. Happier and generally better off, I think. But there you go.

Hamish (21:01)
So how do we help people who realize they're in this situation? Because, you know, they realize that this is not healthy. They realize that I am not where I want to be. I don't necessarily know where I want to go, but, you know, this isn't working for me. How do people get out of that trap?

Nick Shepley (21:22)
Well, when I hear those words from a service user or client, you know, I'm Jump for Joy because

you've laid, you've set out there a huge part of the answer. So imagine, and for legal purposes I'm not talking about any particular person, alive or dead, because I have obviously done counselling with many, many people, but imagine somebody comes into my counselling room and they're feeling they've got a problem with alcohol and they say things like that to me. They say, you know,

My marriage is on the rocks. I think I'm in big trouble at work. I was arrested last week for drink driving. I've got my court appearance next week. And they say, you know, I can see this isn't working for me. Great. Brilliant. That's get, because actually sometimes somebody comes into the counseling room and they can't even see that. They're like, you know, well, my wife has told me I have to come. Well, I can't do anything for you if...

you don't feel you have to come. Or, yeah, you know, maybe I've got a bit of a problem, I still like to the odd drink or, you know, I don't really want to stop drinking. I just want to be able to control it more. And it's like, you were arrested yesterday for drink driving. Perhaps that ship has sailed, possibly. But in the first instance, with what I'm hearing is what they refer to as change talk.

Hamish (22:53)
you

Nick Shepley (22:59)
So somebody's already in this contemplative stage, they're thinking, I've got to do something, but I don't know what. And so then you're in a position to be the collaborative person in that relationship. And you're in the position to go, cool, all right, you'd like to do something. And I hear that and I can sense the motivation there. What if you and I, as a kind of partnership, figured out what you could do and what's feasible?

what's feasible, even now. And you start to ignite, hopefully, in that person, the sense that the first big hurdle is change is possible. Because you might have had somebody who come in to you and they've seen three different counsellors, they've been to do hypnotherapy, they've been to AA, they've run the Samaritans, they've reached out to their friends in desperation, and they've tried all those things and it hasn't worked.

And they might be at the point where they just think, I don't know what it is you can do for me, nothing else works, maybe I'm just doomed. And supporting the person to hold onto a little glimmer of hope, you've got to have hope. It's hugely important. And then I think the first thing that normally happens when somebody is working, wants to do something about the drinking, is that they have the, I call the...

Snowdonia Everest problem. So if you and I were going for a walk up Snowdonia, that's manageable, know, not necessarily easy, but manageable. And if I said, cool, let's have a go at Everest now, shall we? You know, I don't know anything about mountaineering and unless you are an expert mountaineer, you're probably going to go, you'll probably give up before you started. So in terms of, you know,

If you said at the end of the first counselling session with somebody, right, you must never drink again now. They're almost certain to drink because you've just presented them with something that's in their mind, their way of seeing the world is now completely impossible. But if you say, let's just focus on today, okay? Let's give ourselves one job, making it tonight without a drink. And if that's hard, let's break it down. It's now 10 in the morning, so let's...

see if we can get, we'll get to lunchtime. When we get to lunchtime, we're just gonna worry about getting to tea time. When we get to tea time, we're gonna worry about getting to bedtime. And that's it. And then want you to call me tomorrow and let me know how you're doing. And they would almost always ring the centre I was working at in the morning saying, yeah, I did it, I did my first day. Brilliant. And then give them so, support and reward and show to that person that they have actually just climbed Mount Everest.

they've actually done something that they're like Neo in the Matrix with the bullets, they've stopped the bullets and they've done it and they've found their superpower. But I think that it's about, it's about the relationship. And I was thinking about this the other day when I was watching the Lord of the Rings show on Amazon. And if you think about, I'm often to some movie analogies now, but.

Hamish (26:11)
Yeah.

Nick Shepley (26:22)
You think about in Lords of the Rings, you should always try to be a Gandalf and not anybody else because Gandalf doesn't do anything for Frodo, really. He accompanies him. He says, well, it's probably that way. And he also he also says, we realize he realizes that the burden of the ring is for Frodo to carry. He won't abandon Frodo, but he won't do things when it's Frodo's turn to do them.

And that is in counselling is I think how you should be. Obviously you should try not to think of yourself as the wise old wizard either because the person is actually the expert on their own problems and you know, but if you place yourself as the powerful person in the therapeutic relationship then it will all turn to absolute horror and all sorts of terrible things will happen. So I...

Hamish (27:01)
I'm

Nick Shepley (27:22)
always avoid that.

It's about, I think, it's about when you're with somebody and you're firstly, as they start to divulge their story, which might just be about their drinking, but it might be about a whole bunch of other stuff, things that they've never told anybody. They're trusting you with something that is beyond any kind of numerical value. You know, if somebody trusted you with the crown jewels, it's not as anywhere near

level of trust that this person is placing with you for the first time in your life and it's a privilege you know it's the privilege of my life really to be that person there and also they're inviting you to come on the journey with them and so not only I said earlier on hope

Hamish (28:13)
Hmm.

Nick Shepley (28:19)
is the thing that you have to inculcate in the person, that you think that can be achieved. But you yourself, as the therapist, have to believe in that person.

believe in them.

There's been the odd occasion in a therapeutic relationship where the person has, they find it so hard to be honest with me that I had to kind of eventually bring that and call that out and say, look, you we're not, you and I aren't telling the truth to one another. I haven't been telling the truth to you in a way because I haven't raised this until now. And because if you lose...

Hamish (28:51)
Hmm.

Nick Shepley (28:56)
If you lose that, if you find a situation where you and the other person can't believe in one another, then you're kind of done really. So that in itself, little, there's two little flames of hope and belief you have to kind of nurture.

Hamish (29:12)
Yep. I love that. love the... you're holding their hand or you're shining a torch where their feet go next. And it's not up to top of the mountain. It is literally, you know, just in front where the next foot goes if you're playing in the dark.

Nick Shepley (29:21)
Yeah!

That's right. And it's about asking those useful questions that gives the person autonomy and power in the relationship to go, what do you reckon? Is it that way? What do you reckon? Or what about there? Do you want to go and look over there? Because we can if you want. Maybe we should. Sometimes there are things that are too painful for people to, or they don't feel safe to explore. And that's cool.

You know? The best thing that was ever said to me about therapy is it should feel like a dance, not like a struggle.

Hamish (30:09)
It is, isn't it? It's, you're being led by the other person, but you're just guiding them. I think that is, I love everything that you've explained there. But we've started with somebody who has said, hey, I think I've got a problem. What about the people who are unaware that, as you said, right at the beginning of this little bit, they've had the car crash, they've got the DUI, and they still think...

Nick Shepley (30:33)
Hmm.

Hamish (30:38)
They still think it's okay. What?

How do we bring awareness to these people or is it just case of just sitting and watching?

Nick Shepley (30:46)
Well, I think also, I mean, it's you believe what you believe. You know, there are certain things in the world I don't believe to be true and certain things I do believe to be true. And some people believe in the things that I don't believe and disbelieve the things I do believe in, know, each to the right in a way. And you have to say, well, why is the conversation between you and I?

happening. Okay, you came here for a reason. You've said that, you know, being arrested for drink driving, that that's not related to alcohol somehow. That's an interesting kind of... Perhaps we can explore that argument. But also it's about saying, well, okay, well, how can I be helpful to you?

How can I help? And often the person says, well, I don't know. And the point and what they're articulating is, I mean, I've got a problem now. Drinking has caught up with me and I'm really in trouble. I've been arrested. I'm going to leave my job. My wife's probably going to leave me. And if you follow the chain of thought forward, it is probably, and they very rarely articulate this,

I was kind of coming here today to hope that you would get me out of trouble somehow. And it's like, well, when I thought of myself as Gandalf, I didn't actually mean wizard, you know, I don't actually do magic. cause that, but it's like, well, actually you have to experience the trouble. You have to be in the discomfort. You have to experience that life will bring consequences to you and you know,

Hamish (32:18)
you

Nick Shepley (32:36)
for doing driving with very good reason, fortunately. And it's not the therapist's role. And here's why you have to really check your boundaries and look at how are you starting to collaborate with this person actually against themselves. Because if you did something miraculously to help get this person off the hook, what then?

what happens then, what are the consequences of that, are you you helping or harming? And it can be very easy to become kind of collaborative in a negative way with somebody when they're coming to you to ask you for things which are actually ultimately harmful to them. And so you have to really watch that one.

I think it's easiest to say, well look, there is a finite amount without your buy-in, because this only works if there's a partnership here, without your buy-in. There's a finite amount I can do. And if they are not at that stage where they recognise that alcohol's a problem, because you do, you know, you, as the person can see, is placing the obvious.

But what I can see is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what I can see. It's about what they can see. So bring it down. Say, you know, life's hard for you. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Tell me about yourself and get to know them. And gradually, as they tell their story, you'll find where alcohol or drugs or whatever else it is exists within the story.

Hamish (34:26)
Hmm.

Nick Shepley (34:26)
And you'll find out, you know, just as if you were reading a novel and you find out there's an interesting character on page two, by the time you get to page 200, you know a heck of a lot about this character. And alcohol is like a character, know, addiction is a character in the story. It's played all sorts of roles and has sometimes been a good guy and sometimes been a villain. And at the end of the conversation, often the person can reflect a little.

and see the character in the story perhaps a bit of the way that you see the character in the story. And I think that's a helpful, empowering place, but you can't want for people things they don't want for themselves. She sounds like an obvious thing to say. And sometimes people I've talked to have been exactly as the case study I describe. And, you know, unfortunately bad things do happen.

As a result, further crises occur until eventually that individual says, do you know what? I think you're right and maybe I do need some help. I was, sometimes I believe this idea of the 11th person.

And if you imagine that there's somebody and they have from the ages of like me, so 15 to 30, say, in that year, in that 15 year period, let's say there are 10 help points that I reached. A telephone helpline, a school counselor, a particularly enlightened friend. And each of those help points, go, I think you need to do something to make you drink.

And it's not the 10th, but it's the 11th person that says, right, you do need to do something about your drinking. And finally the penny drops and I do something about my drinking. Well, the people from one to 10 are all just as useful as the 11th person. Because what they do is they're handing on in helping ways the problem to the, you know, from the fifth to the sixth, to the seventh, to the eighth person.

And so they were really, important in the chain. And you as a therapist might be the fifth person and it depends how that person leaves you. Whether or not they'll find the sixth, whether or not they'll find the seventh. Because if they're supported and helped bit by bit, the chance of them getting there in the end are pretty good. And a bad therapist or somebody that says, shall we say,

things that are really, really counterproductive, they might end the chain.

Hamish (37:13)
That's harrowing. I'm sorry, I've got goosebumps and I'm not sure whether they're good or bad. I haven't quite worked that one out. But I like that. It's not denial. It's nothing as harsh as that. It's just curious, curious, curious. Actually, it's that, isn't it? It's curious, curious, because normally they're going downhill and then I've actually got to take some accountability for my life.

Nick Shepley (37:34)
Yeah.

Hamish (37:37)
I've actually got to take some responsibility for my life. Those around me, my peers, my friends, my partner, partners, work, whatever. If I don't show up, the consequences are. Yeah. And it's, it's, that, it's that simple, isn't it? It's, there's no, it's just your journey. It's just your journey, one's journey of life and then deciding whether you want to change or not. Right back to the beginning, change.

Nick Shepley (37:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And it's about, I mean, you know, the basic principles of somebody feeling accepted and valued and judged and not judged, obviously, sorry, when they're in the space and seen for the hurting human being that they are and not the

the problem that probably lots of other people think that they are.

Hamish (38:38)
Yeah. Yeah. I yeah, that's it. Isn't it? It's not. It's not seeing the behavior. It's seeing the person behind it and understanding that, that, that appalling behavior is based on insecurity, on fear, on regret, on shame. Because when I, when I look back at me, you know, I was

I was obviously drinking, I was lying, I was being generally horrible, but all those things, right back to the beginning, they were coping strategies so I didn't have to feel, so I didn't have to experience what was too overwhelming. However, it was damaging my relationships at work, personal and things like that. was the consequences stacked up. As I went downhill, the consequences went up and it got to that point where I had two choices. Yeah.

Nick Shepley (39:16)
Yeah.

Absolutely, absolutely. unfortunately, you know, I often wish, is there a, often, is there not a kind of a kind of a gentler way to deal with addiction, but often it's the consequences. And I did this radio phone in years ago on, in Wales, on Radio Wales, about, it was some kind of new employment law about

Hamish (39:30)
Yeah.

Nick Shepley (39:57)
mandatory breathalysation at work or something like that. And, you know, I've got, I have mixed views about that. I think in certain jobs, you know, train driving and things like that, you know, you just have to have it. In certain roles, I think it's kind of oppressive and unnecessary. But the conversation went and the presenters that said, well, you know, if you found out that your colleague was

drink driving at work or turning up to work drunk on a job, would you tell on them? I was like, well, I wouldn't put it like that. think firstly, everybody in a situation needs to know the truth for the most part. And I think once you start covering for somebody, then you're collaborating in their self harm.

you're compromised as well and all this kind of stuff and the one of the interviews was like yes but you know you might you might harm them you're not tipping over the edge and it was this this basic lack of and I don't blame anybody because you sort of have to be in this field and have walked this walk to get what I'm talking about but that shielding that colleague who has an alcohol problem or an addiction problem from the consequences of their own behaviors is not helping

it's collaborating in their harm and sometimes the hard stuff needs to happen.

Hamish (41:30)
Yep. It isn't it. It's, it must be brutal for a mom or a dad whose child, teenager has got a drinking problem or a drug problem because you know, you, you love them, you want to support them and giving them 50 quid for food is not the right answer. You're enabling. and then kick it, kicking them out. mean, I'm on one or two forums where this is, this is what's happening, kicking out spouses, kicking out children.

Nick Shepley (41:52)
Yeah.

All right.

Hamish (42:00)
I am so grateful I'm never going to be in that situation. But I mean, yeah, it must just be appalling. But you have you've got that you've got to do something if they're not going to look after themselves, then yeah, I don't know what the answer is.

Nick Shepley (42:01)
Yeah.

Well, I've run a family group for family members, which is obviously different from family therapy, but it's a family support group for many years. And there have been a number of occasions where particularly an adult child has to be forcibly ejected from the home. And it's horrible. is, make no mistake, is a horrible, horrible...

procedure. But if you have an adult child with a drug problem, say a gambling issue, who's stealing from the family and whom red line after red line after red line has been placed down. And the purpose of breaking through those red lines is to go ha ha, know, your boundaries mean nothing and maybe it's been quite a boundaryless childhood you never know.

And sometimes it's just been a case of organising the family, know, mum and dad and the other siblings, to stand as one and say, enough now. If you break this red line, if you steal from the family, if you assault a family member, then you're homeless. And sometimes when you do that, the person for the first time who's got the problem has to confront the problem, When we're going to live.

Well, you're to have to figure that out now. And then they start looking at the consequences that addiction is causing them. sometimes family relations never quite return to something kind of amicable. Sometimes they don't. And it's like, well, that's what addiction does in families. It's not nice.

Hamish (44:12)
Yeah, it's not. It's that simple, isn't it? It's not sanitized. It's not easy. It's not clean. It is just a mess. It is a mess. yeah, the result of not taking accountability, not being able to. I mean, I'm not trying to portion blame here because it's not as simple as that. It's just, yeah, it's just, it's what's happened, isn't it? I suppose you can't really look back and say,

Nick Shepley (44:31)
Yeah.

Hamish (44:39)
If you did this, if you did that doesn't help. It's going forward.

Nick Shepley (44:42)
Yeah, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Hamish (44:47)
This has been a fabulous conversation. I want to dive in very quickly because you've talked about you had a problem with alcohol. How did you realize that it was a problem and how did you get out of it? Because I think where you are now, helping people, supporting people, you've had that experience. what got you to that point? What was that point where you had, let's say, two choices?

Nick Shepley (45:08)
Okay.

Thank

Hamish (45:17)
And how did you make sense going forwards there?

Nick Shepley (45:19)
Well, I would say that probably from the age of about 20, for about 10 years, I had a succession of pretty huge kind of, about every couple of years, a fairly huge alcohol crisis, a mental health crisis. And what alcohol does is, or what addiction does,

is it's very good at sweeping things under the carpet. So you have a period, I had a period say at end of my university days where I'd a complete mental breakdown and I'd admit myself to a psychiatric hospital and was diagnosed with alcohol-induced anxiety. I only got to see those medical notes years later and it would have been...

probably quite helpful to have seen the doctor's write up there. And then I kind of went home and got addicted to this weird thing where you can sort of look at face value and go, that was pretty bad, yeah. What caused it? I don't know. What could it be? Anyway, let's move on.

Addiction works, I think, in the way that collectively we look at climate change. think, pretty bad hurricane. Yeah, I know. But what could have caused it? All sorts of things. Wind. I don't know. Anyway, let's move on. And then addiction is all about trying to return to this kind of illusion of normality. And it's about trying to return to the illusion of the normal drinker or the normal cannabis user or gambler or whatever it is. I can handle this.

And whenever crisis, I think human beings do this in all sorts of different ways, when crises come along, we have to sort of kill ourselves, the things that we do and the systems that we use kind of function and everyone will stop looking at it now. And when I was about 27, I think, I got fired from my first job due to my drinking.

And at that point, it was there for a moment there, I got close to getting well. But when I was confronted, particularly by my parents about my drinking, I worked overtime. worked, you know, if you think of like a moment in your life where you put...

110 % of effort and focus into one thing, whether it's setting up a business or learning how to play purple haze or whatever it is, you you did it and you pulled it off and it meant so much to you. I did that to save my drinking. And I saved it. And if you think about the meaning of alcoholism there, you know, my life had fallen apart for about the third or the fourth time. And yet...

It was important for me to go to any lengths, to tell any lie, any deception, anything at all, to save my drinking. To particularly prevent my family from really understanding. And to kid them, to use them and to kid them into helping me to return to the normalcy of supposed sensible drinking again.

But the reality was I didn't want to be a sensible drinker, no alcoholic does. I mean, I remember one night when I was at university, a friend of mine saying, because you must have known I had a drinking problem, why don't we just go down to the pub down the road and we'll just have one drink and come home? And I thought, because that would be a torture, that would be like gouging out one of my eyes. I mean, why would you do that to me? Anyway, so.

Hamish (49:26)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Shepley (49:30)
About two years after I'd been fired from this job as a newspaper journalist. And what they say about newspaper journalists, I don't know whether it's true now, but certainly then it was, of, you know, an alcoholics career. A friend of mine who was... I won't talk about this person too much because they're not... You know, don't want to talk about them too much.

But they were, an old friend of mine who was also an alcoholic and we'd done a lot of drinking together in my newspaper days. They did something else. They got themselves into way, way more trouble. They were sort of on kind of page three of some national newspapers for some of the things they'd done with their drinking. And they wound up in rehab. And this wonderful friend of mine, who I love to the bottom of my heart, the first thing he did when he got out of rehab...

was he rang me up. And I thought I kind of knew this was a phone call I should avoid. I kind of knew, you know, sometimes alcoholics have a sixth sense about things. I think it's what keeps alcoholics alive, actually. But I knew something was up about his phone call. And so I started to kind of waffle and fill the noise and fill the spaces with noise and

Hamish (50:48)
Hmm.

Nick Shepley (50:59)
plather on and tried to say to him, you know, how are you? And you know, how are you doing? And yes, you need to sort your drink out. And he just went, will you shut up? And he said, shut up. You, you are an alcoholic. And I don't know what it was about that moment. Maybe in a different timeline, I missed that moment in some of the Paradell universe. When I was able just to go, I could just blurt it out. I just said, I know. Yeah, I know.

I know, I know, I know. And the relief then of going, finally I've said it, I've said it. Because that's word you can't put away again, isn't it? Bit of a problem with my drinking, drink a bit too much. That's, can survive that. The A word, you can't. And that was the beginning. And that was in 2004.

and in April 2004 and it took me another couple of months finally finding to embrace recovery. So I sort of had a few weeks here and a drink there and a few weeks there and a drink there and then finally I went to AA. And I don't go to AA, I went there for about five years, I don't go anymore. have some, in some ways, a kind of complex and conflicted relationship with AA, but what I would say...

is kind of don't listen to me. If you're listening to this, you want to go to a meeting and you need to go to a meeting, bloody go. Because the science, if you look at this, they did a study in America in the 1990s and they found of the people that got well into the long term, there were three things that played a part. There were

Two of them were therapies, one being cognitive behavioral therapy, the other being motivational interviewing, and the third was some form of support group, peer group. You shouldn't really equate AA with being group therapy because it's not, it's a support group. Group therapy is slightly different.

All the science shows that your chances of getting well into the long term with other people working together in a collaborative way sharing similar problems, working towards similar goals shoots off the charts when you wind in one of those places and if you try and do it alone you'll fail because no one gets well alone. Nobody. Which is why Hamish you've got this wonderful wonderful community that you have made.

I have immense admiration for it. So it was finally, it was like the theory of the 11th man again. My friend was the 11th man who finally said, you have a problem. And finally I could go, I could let go and embrace that truth. And then that set me free. And it was hard, you know, but it's been 20 years now and the thing that...

empowered me into the long term was giving. If you give, you're not a victim. If you give, you're empowered. If you give, then it will transform your life in the most extraordinary of ways. And I'm not suggesting everyone has to become a drug and alcohol counsellor. You can give by having a chat with a lonely person. You know? You can give by going to see your neighbour.

or whatever, but giving will set you free for your life.

Hamish (54:49)
Wonderful. This has been just a fabulous conversation. It really, really has. I love the way the 11th man that is just sticking in my head so profoundly. And I go to absolutely, it's going to be the title of this podcast is something on the line of Nick is the 11th man. Yeah, no truly.

Nick Shepley (55:02)
You can ask that.

like a spice bit, so it me sound kind of more creepy than I am.

Hamish (55:16)
Yeah, no. Nick, this has been fab, as I said, really, really amazing. Where can people find out more about you? Because I'm sure there's some people who would love to chat with you and shine you shine your torch on their feet.

Nick Shepley (55:30)
Yeah, well there's a link to me, my counselling bio. If anyone is looking for somebody helpful to work with, I'm there. And obviously what I like to do, just to begin with, is just start off with a helpful chat. So if you just want to get in touch for a helpful chat and see if we can...

work together and if I'd be helpful to you then follow the link. You can find me Nick Sheckley on Twitter where I talk about matters therapeutic but also a whole bunch of other things and yeah that's that's kind of me.

Hamish (56:13)
Fab. We'll put all that information in the show notes because it's very important. And lastly, the question I always like to ask people, what is your superpower that you've got from turning your life around?

Nick Shepley (56:24)
Wow. I think it's being there with people, you know. And I'll describe very briefly before we finish what that's like.

So sometimes when you are with somebody, a counselling client, and you've made the space that they're in really, really safe for them, and it feels perhaps safer than anything is felt for a long, time, and they know that you're there to collaborate healthily with them, they know that you're there to be Gandalf you know?

to say is it this way or that way? What do you think?

And sometimes they feel safe to tell you something. Sometimes it's something really very, very, very dark. And when you tell them, it's okay to say that, it's all right. And it's okay to shed the tears when they tell you it. And they feel safe for the first time to be the person that they really are. Then you can go to a very, very deep place with that person.

And you're there not to take a single thing from

And you're there not even to give anything to them other than time and space.

So there you go, it's a two way street sometimes, it really is.

Hamish (57:43)
Isn't it? Well, thank you. Thank you for a really profound conversation. I think this is going to be really interesting and I'm going to enjoy listening back to this and sharing it with people because it's been very different to what I normally do, but that's been really profound and coming from your expertise and your knowledge and just the depth of conversations you've had. You've just put such a gentle light on.

Nick Shepley (58:08)
Mm.

Hamish (58:11)
It's okay, basically, isn't it? And it's your choice. And, you know, it is better on the other side. Yeah, it may be painful stepping across, but it is a bit easier when you're sober.

Nick Shepley (58:14)
Yeah. It's been a real pleasure. I've loved talking to him. sure really have.

Hamish (58:28)
Brilliant, well thank you ever so much Nick, that's grand.

Hamish Niven (58:31)
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Crucible: Conversations for the Curious. If these powerful stories of transformation resonated with you, be sure to like, subscribe and share this show with anyone who you think could do with a dose of inspiration for their own journey. I would really appreciate it if you could make any comments on your favourite podcast platform as well, that helps me reach more people. All the important links and information are in the show notes below. Thank you very much for listening and catch up with you soon.