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 (00:30)
Afternoon, everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Crucible, Conversations for the Curious. Today, we've got Duncan with us, and Duncan is a author, a speaker, and a Morris Dancer. Duncan, thanks so much for turning up today.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:44)
Well, thank you very much. I'm enjoying, I'm looking forward to it. know, I'm thinking it might be exciting to pour myself into the Crucible.

Hamish (00:53)
It's a good place to be. can be a bit hot, can be a bit uncomfortable, but it's definitely a good place to be. Right. Let's start with the... I think let's start with the Morris dancer. Why don't we start there? Tell me about the Morris dancing and why that is important to you.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (01:09)
So initially I just put it on my business cards kind of almost as a joke because like all my friends are speakers and they're coaches and they're facilitators and they're MC's and they've got all these grand titles. And I just thought, I'm going to like just say Speaker, Author, Morris Dancer. Cause I thought it was funny. then it like genuinely does spark conversations and it gets people talking. And one of the things that I really like to talk about is.

Hamish (01:32)
and

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (01:39)
how I very much enjoy Morris dancing, even though I've stopped drinking.

Hamish (01:43)
Do they go hand in hand then by any chance?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (01:46)
Yes, I mean, I have to assume that not everybody in the entire world knows everything there is to know about Morris dancing, but yes, it generally happens in pubs. If it's not in pubs, then usually they find somewhere else to buy alcohol. And yeah, I mean, honestly, you know, part of the reason why I started was because you get to hang around with a bunch of people who don't look at you twice if you're drinking at 10 a So, yeah.

Hamish (02:12)
Glad I missed out on that. There was no Morris dancing in South Africa. Yeah, no, there definitely wasn't anything like that. Right. So let's dive back. you, for some reason, you found yourself Morris dancing at 10 o 'clock in the morning with a beer in the other hand. But why the beer? Why did that appear in your life?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (02:33)
Well, I think when I was younger, you know, I sort of struggled to find a place in life where I could excel, where I could get some positive feedback. There was a lot of negativity at school and, you know, I just didn't feel like I fitted in anywhere. And then when it came to going to parties, when you get to that sort of teenage age and everybody starts going to parties,

Again, I felt nervous, felt uncomfortable. didn't feel like I fitted in until one day one of my friends handed me a can of something and I opened it up. I didn't think too much of it. First one never really did very much, it? But then all of a sudden it started to tingle in the toes. It moved up the legs, hit the stomach, chest, brain. And all of a sudden, I seem to have the confidence.

I seemed to be the kind of person that would walk casually into the party and start talking to that pretty girl from Form F. And, you know, a couple of beers later and yeah, well, the rest is history. In fact, it's so history, I can't even remember the name of the pretty girl from Form F. But for me, it seemed to just fill in all the blanks, you know, it seemed to...

Literally fill in the holes in my personality. What seemed to be missing seemed to be filled in by alcohol. was like all of my Christmases came at once. So I was absolutely all in from the start.

Hamish (04:03)
Yep, it does, doesn't it? When you're young, just loosens that tongue a little bit, takes away the, you you can suddenly dance rather than like a man, like your father, you can dance like a teenager and things like that.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (04:14)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is one of the reasons why it is such a pervasive drug. It does a few different things and therefore it appeals to quite a wide range of people. mean, often people will say, well, what's your sort of like, you know, what's the personality type of somebody who drinks, which is one step away from just saying, well, you've got an addictive personality, haven't you Duncan? And it's like, well, yeah, but

Honestly, you can find people who are very introverted who drink and you can find people who are very extroverted who drink, you know, and they almost drink for exactly the opposite reasons. And I think that is part of the problem with alcohol because it, you know, it has properties that stimulate you and properties that depress you. So it seems to do an awful lot for people, which is why people get caught up in it in the first place. then, you know, honestly, if you drink enough,

volume over enough time then you end up drinking in an unhealthy way and I certainly did.

Hamish (05:19)
So when did you realize it was actually becoming unhealthy? Certainly for me, as you said, it was the fun, the light of the party, the experience, the hanging out with people. But when did it start to be like, hey, Duncan, that kind of thing?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (05:35)
Yeah, do you know what? I almost didn't realize until I stopped. It was one of those weird things. It's like, should have noticed that a lot sooner. Really, shouldn't I? Because, like you say, it started off, it was a lot of fun. It was very social. I wasn't actually drinking that much. I wasn't drinking that regularly. But as time went on, the amount of people I drank with went down and the amount I drank went up. And I took it to its logical conclusions.

which is just sat on my own drinking a couple of bottles of wine. you know, that, is genuinely absolutely no fun. looking back on it now, I can see the, you know, the, I don't want to call it the carnage because that's not necessarily the right word because on one level I was quite successful. You know, I was leading what might be described as a reasonably good adulty kind of life. And

Yeah, so it didn't look like carnage in the traditional sense, but I look back on what it did to my relationships, what it did to my mindset, my outlook, my mental health. And that's the kind of carnage that I'm talking about. yeah, I didn't really see it at the time. I just had this vague kind of feeling that probably something needed to be done. And it reached a head when my wife and I, you know,

As we were very, very good adults, we thought we ought to do the most adult thing possible, which is of course start a family. And that was quite good fun. Well, I mean, the trying bit was quite good fun. And then my wife got pregnant and we were instantly transformed into that really, really stupid couple. You know, they're just the naive wandering around smiling all the time, just no idea what they've let themselves in for. And it was all amazing until very quickly,

Hamish (07:09)
Okay.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (07:28)
It wasn't amazing and my wife had a miscarriage and it all went horribly wrong. And of course, you know, that was incredibly hard on her physically, emotionally, mentally, you know, it took a huge toll, but I look back now and I think, I know what made it worse. That was the fact that I wasn't there for her. You know, my default reaction to stress was just to pour myself into a bottle of wine and

I just wasn't there for her. And that obviously kind of expressed itself in our relationship and it got very rocky for a couple of months. And during that time, I spent a lot of time sort of thinking, know, asking myself, is the point of Duncan? know, genuinely Duncan, what are you here for? What are you supposed to be doing? And, you know, I never had one of those like beautiful moodily lit moments at 4am in the bathroom with the music and everything.

Hamish (08:20)
Thank

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (08:24)
But if I had, I know the question that I would have asked myself. I'd have looked in the mirror with my serious, chiseled, good -look face and said, what do you want from life, Duncan? Do you want another drink or do you want to start a family? And the good news is I took the right decision and almost nine months of the day after I stopped drinking, our daughter was born. And that was wonderful for about 10 minutes. And then I was in a whole other world of problems, but you know, those are good problems, aren't they?

Hamish (08:54)
That is lovely. mean, congratulations, first of all, for having your come to Jesus moment, not in the bathroom at four in the morning. But that's it, isn't it? It always comes to a point where you have two choices. We always have more than one choice. fortunately, like me, you chose the right choice and relationships still going. Obviously, there's kids involved and stuff.

That is fabulous, but why? What did you have to deal with when you stopped the drinking? What was the drinking doing to you, for you, and against you, I suppose?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (09:28)
So what it was doing to me was obviously having quite a bad effect. So when I stopped, I felt better and I felt better very quickly. know, when I stopped pouring poison down my front throat, all of a sudden my mood improved and you know, I felt more energetic. was better. You know, I could focus a bit better. I concentrate a bit harder. All of those kinds of stuff.

Hamish (09:50)
Mm

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (09:57)
So initially it was quite good, but then of course you kind of have to relearn life, don't you? You sort of got to find a way of dealing with stress because up until that point, so much as a broken fingernail would be a good excuse to open a bottle of wine, wouldn't it? You know, so I had to find a new way to deal with stress. I had to find a new way to navigate my relationship. And you know, I had to do that fairly quickly.

Hamish (10:10)
and

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (10:26)
because it was not in the greatest place. So I had to find a new way of relating to my wife. I went on and found a new job reasonably soon after I stopped drinking because I realized the only reason why I'd kept that job for so long was, wow, all right, it was quite close to Greg's, but it was something I could do with a hangover. And that was very necessary at the time. So I had to tackle...

Hamish (10:53)
Thank

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (10:55)
certain sort of procedural issues within my life, like jobs and washing up and all of the DIY that I've been putting off for, well, most of my life. So yeah, it kind of brought a big long shopping list of difficult stuff to do. But looking back on it, you know, I am very, very happy to have, you know, got into that list and started doing those difficult things.

On balance, it turns out to be a lot better to face the difficult stuff than it is to run away from it because you never actually get further away from it. You just do the running bit. You don't run away from it. You just run around it and around it and around it and around it and around it. And that gets tiring. it was, yeah, in one sense, it was amazing. You know, improved my life for the better, but it gave me a load of other problems.

But, nine and a half years down the line, having sorted out many of those problems, although there is still a little bit of DIY I haven't got around to, but no one's perfect. I am so glad that I managed to get myself in a position that I could deal with those issues because I love my wife and I love my daughter and they wouldn't be in my life if I hadn't have changed.

Hamish (12:03)
Thank

think that's that is the key thing, isn't it? You've, you've woken up and you've you've taken responsibility. And yeah, it means you've got a, you've got an adult, which is overrated, but it's better than just, as you said, standing still and running. That, that image horrifies me because I remember doing that. And it is isn't it? It's not easy. You're worrying, you're guessing, you're drinking, you're wondering where to get the next drink from. You're just wasting so much energy on non -s

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (12:37)
No, no.

Yeah, one of the succession of dead end jobs that I had, so that I could support my drinking without actually really working for a living, involved working in a bookmakers, which I used to refer to myself as a turf accountant, of course. yeah, and the thing is, when I worked in that bookmakers, I did watch a lot of dog racing and it is exactly the same thing. You know, it's like bang, out go the dogs. They run around the track. They don't get anywhere.

And the thing is they never even catch the hair, do they? And the thing on top of that, the hair isn't even real. Now there's an allegory for drinking that I haven't quite worked out yet, but yes, you absolutely, you're running around and round and round chasing something you never catch. And even if you did, it wasn't real in the first place.

Hamish (13:29)
Yeah, we must have been stupid, hey. We must have been. But, and as you said, it worked for a while. It helped us make sense of stuff and helped us feel sexy and likable and this, that and the other. it didn't, it doesn't solve anything. You still got to, yeah, you still got to do that work and make sense of it. And then you empower yourself and life becomes fun. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (13:54)
I'm not even sure it really worked for a while to be honest. I think it...

it prevented me from actually doing the stuff that would have made my life work. I still had to do it. just, rather than becoming self -aware at 16, I decided to become self -aware at 36. It just delayed the inevitable, didn't it? It made everything harder, I think. It seemed like it was doing positive things, but that is

the very nature of a maladaptive coping mechanism, isn't it? You know, it makes you think it's working, but actually it's not. It's not helping you. It's not benefiting you. yeah, no, I mean, I'd love to be able to sort of fondly reminisce and say, well, yeah, you know, I had some amazing times due to alcohol. I absolutely did not. I had some amazing times due to the people that I spent it with that was

hampered by alcohol because if I hadn't been drinking so much I might have remembered a bit more of it.

Hamish (15:03)
Yeah, again, another tragedy, isn't it? Yeah.

I think it's interesting about the jobs. We often find that another reason we're drinking is the job is not particularly fulfilling. mean, certainly as you said, watching dogs run around in circles, that's probably not the most stimulating fun you can have in a job. Did that impact your willingness to sober up? Just the fact that the job's what you were doing?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (15:29)
Yes and no. mean, one of the things that I've come across a lot speaking to other people who've gone on a similar journey to me is that for their meaning and purpose is enormously important. And I think I was kind of unlucky in as far as I was very involved in my local community. So not just the Morris dancing, I was involved in local government. was involved in a number of trustee. I was a trustee on a number of charities. You know, I was...

very much involved in my local community. So on one level, I was fulfilling that kind of purpose and meaning sort of piece. So it sort of seemed like I was doing that, but actually, know, a few years down the line, what I realized was I was kind of living the expectations of other people. wasn't really doing what I wanted to do, what me as a...

a true and fully realized human being. I wasn't following my purpose. I wasn't doing my sort of stuff. So it kind of tricked me a little bit by having, you know, ready access to things like meaning and purpose. It sort of kept me in the rut a little bit longer. Whereas if I did, you know, not had that, I think I probably would have realized I was in trouble a lot, a lot quicker. And do you know what?

Well, I don't think that that's true of many people. I know that that's true of many people. So if you look at the statistics, so people who earn more drink more, that's a direct correlation. You can draw a very straight line upward graph on that income versus the amount you drink. So the more you earn, the more you drink. However, many of the health problems and social problems manifest themselves most seriously

in people who are in the poorer end of things. They don't actually drink as much as the people who are rich, but they have more problems because they have less what might be termed as recovery capital, but they just have less stuff that mitigates against that. So their diet's not going to be as good. Their access to healthcare is not going to be as good. They're going to have less things like meaning and purpose. They're going to have less social support. They're going to have less family support.

All of those other factors that people who are affluent have, they offset the harm done by alcohol. So we don't notice the harm as much. We think, well, it's all right because I'm doing okay. I'm coping. Yeah. But that is only because you have all of these massive positives here. If you actually took away the big negative, then you really would see what...

thriving rather than surviving looks like.

Hamish (18:23)
Yeah, very scary, isn't it? The more I think about things like that, the more support you have, the easier it is to be supported while you fall. Yeah, people, situations, money. Yeah, go to rehab, come back again, carry on. That's really scary though, isn't it? I mean, that's coming back to the, I'll start that again.

But coming back to value and purpose, that plays such a huge part. And in many conversations I've had, that seems to be one of the most powerful things. When you've found your purpose, you found what's important to you, that need for self -medicating, whatever you want to call it, sort of disappears.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (19:08)
Yes, I think that is true. However, my experience is that I couldn't really find it until I'd stopped self -medicating. And I know that is always a bit of a debate and I can see it from both sides because I know people who have done an awful lot of work with therapists and, you know, found a much more fulfilled version of themselves.

Hamish (19:20)
Hmm.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (19:37)
and then discovered that they don't really need to drink. So they did the work and then the alcohol fell away. So it is possible to do it that way around. Having said that, I have found many more people who have stopped drinking and then gone on to do the things like, you know, engage with therapy in the broadest sense of the word and go on to find the things like meaning and purpose and go on and create some amazing things, you know.

whether that's art or literature or businesses or music or adventures or just families, you know, I think certainly for my money.

If you'd asked me when I was drinking, I would have told you what my purpose in life was. I would have told you, I would have outlined it nicely and neatly because I talk a good game. And I was doing stuff that I still, you know, I stand by, I still consider what I did when I was drinking. I consider a lot of it to be meaningful and important, but it wasn't really what I was put on this earth to do. you know, so yeah, it is is a tough one, but I personally,

I think it is much easier to do the work after you've stopped drinking, rather than find the purpose and then use that as a springboard to stop drinking.

Hamish (20:51)
Okay.

Okay, yep, that does make a lot of sense, doesn't it? Does that not make it harder to stop drinking?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (21:04)
No, I don't think it's hard to stop drinking. I mean, I know that is pretty flip and pretty quick and I genuinely don't want to do down any of the struggles that anybody has had because I know a lot of people do struggle. I think, unfortunately, many people go about it in the wrong way, which makes it harder rather than easier to stop drinking. But even putting all of that aside, you know, actually getting to the point where, you know, you

Hamish (21:06)
Mm

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (21:33)
You've gone through detox, you've gone through those initial withdrawal stages and you are what might be termed sober. That is relatively straightforward. Most people actually achieve that. You know, they go to rehab and you know, they get sober. The problem most people have is not that bit, it's staying sober. That's the hard bit. And that's the real shame that we talk very heavily about that kind of bit where you stop drinking the immediate bit.

Hamish (21:52)
Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (22:03)
you know, the first few weeks, we don't talk an awful lot about those next two or three years, which are, you know, enormously important. And, you know, so yes, I genuinely think it is easy for anybody to stop drinking. I've certainly never met anybody who drinks heavily, who really enjoys it. And if you don't enjoy doing something, all you need is, you know, a little bit of help and support. need your hand held.

You need a little bit of information. need to, in my opinion, need to get to grips with your beliefs because you believe that you're getting something out of alcohol. And again, the research supports that. Your beliefs about alcohol are very heavily correlated to the amount you drink. So you need to get to grips with your beliefs. You need a little bit in terms of craving management. You need other skills like emotional intelligence and finding a new way to relax, finding a new way to be with people. You need to change your situation.

around other people. Literally, if you spend all your time hanging around in bars, you probably do need to change the way you've structured your life. But in essence, getting sober a bit is really, really easy. do absolutely, I believe we need to offer people much more support in those three months to three years where it goes wrong for so many people.

Hamish (23:27)
Yeah. I agree. And it's not a perverse thing to say the getting sober is the easy bit because it is tough, but it's just the first step, isn't it? It's like buying a house. You just buy a house, then you've got to pay for it, the upkeep, the support, living in it, everything else. Yeah. So I guess that leads on to relapse, doesn't it? Because that's kind of the next stage.

One has sobered up. One has got all that determination, got that grit, and then something happens. Because you've got to change that structure underneath, haven't you, to not just bounce back as soon as something goes wrong to those old habits. How would you start changing your structure, your underlying structure, so you become more resistant to relapse and more resilient?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (24:21)
Well, I mean, partly I'm tempted to just say, think we kind of need to redefine relapse because I think there are three different things. If you look classically what a relapse would be, that is when you start drinking and you continue to drink, then some people would define a lapse as just having a drink, but not then going back to drinking the way you were. And then I would say there is another thing which you might call new facts because it sort of rhymes with relapse.

doesn't it? And that would be when you have a drink and you actually learn something from it. Because that's not a bad thing. That's actually a really good thing. You made a mistake, maybe, but you learned something from it. Well, congratulations. Welcome to the human race, my friend. That is exactly how we learn stuff. I think starting off, we need to do that. I mean, in the broader sense,

we've identified four main areas that people focus on. So from the research that we've done around asking people what they're struggling with in early sobriety and interviewing the sober superstars who are making a big success of sobriety, the things that we found are, could call it recovery capital. That's your kind of physical, your nuts and bolts, your job, your house, money, the access to healthcare.

and also a little bit of your physical health. Do you have any illnesses? I gave myself gout drinking. So those kinds of things would bracket into recovery capital, which is often the stuff people take for granted. Everybody says, yeah, well, I found it really easy to get sober. Well, of course I did. I had a house and I had a job and I had money and I had access to healthcare and I had so much going for me. Then you can look at,

Trigger management, in the short term, a month, maybe two or three months is what you really need to focus on trigger management. In my humble, some methods are very focused on that. So if you use cognitive realignment, then it will be totally and utterly focused on trigger management. But if you use a lot of other methods, they are focused much more on willpower. that is, willpower is not a very good trigger management strategy. There are many better out there.

So that's an enormously important piece of work. And then once you've got your recovery capital, industry management under control, then you need to start thinking about two things. One is emotional intelligence. They say that you don't grow when you're drinking, which I use as an excuse to claim I'm still in my twenties. Well, I started drinking when I was 14 and I've only been sober nine and a half years. That makes me 24 and a half, doesn't it?

Hamish (27:05)
the

Congratulations. I love that.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (27:16)
Anyway, I think they probably mean emotionally. yeah, mean, that like genuinely, most people believe that alcohol numbs your emotions and that's part of the reason why they drink it. I don't think it does. I think it sort of pushes them around a little bit and ends up making you uncomfortable in different places. But yeah, learning to engage with your own emotions and how that relates to other people's emotions, which you might call emotional intelligence.

is a massive piece. And then finally, connection. You everybody knows that famous phrase from Johann Hari, the opposite of addiction is connection. And yeah, that's something that's massively borne out in our research. You know, connection to other people first and foremost. Yes, that's absolutely massive. Finding, you know, meaningful connection, whether that's relationships of an intimate nature or just friendships or just socializing.

or even just networking, finding a way through the work environment, the connection part of that work environment. That is such a huge thing. So those are the four things that I help people work on and the things that we really tend to talk about a lot, recovery capital, trigger management, emotional intelligence and connections.

Hamish (28:38)
It's a really nice collection of tools and resources. I've not met them in that context, but it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (28:47)
Well, I'm glad you've not met them in that context because I thought I'd made it up.

Hamish (28:50)
Then, well then you've made it up and it's working. So that's brilliant. No, that's really interesting, isn't it? But I can honestly relate to that. If you've got that support, everything is easier. If you haven't, but that's the problem, isn't it? When you slip through the gaps and you don't have the support, you don't have the house, you don't have the money, you don't have that emotional support you need, that's when it's dangerous, isn't it? That's when there is problems.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (28:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I've seen it. I've seen people who, I kind of like, I look at them and I think, you know what? I really wish we were doing this two years ago because two years ago you had a stable job. You had enough money to take care of your bills. You were still living with your partner. I know he's an idiot, but you were still living with him.

and you know, you still had regular contact with your children and, I know they're annoying, but you know, there's something in that. and you know, you had a house to live in and all of those kinds of things would make what we were doing so much easier. And that's one of the reasons why these days I want to talk more to people who aren't drinking heavily. I want to talk to the people who are drinking.

moderately. love the word moderation. What does that actually mean? But the people who are drinking in that kind of medium to severe risk zone, you know, they haven't got, they might not be drinking every day. You know, they might not even really be drinking that heavily, but they're on that road. They are going down that path and either it's just a matter of time or it's a matter of something happening. That's one of the things that we see all of the time. Those

Hamish (30:09)
Thank

Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (30:36)
kind of adult traumas taking people from drinking at that kind of mid to severe risk range. get a divorce, losing your job, losing your business, crashing your car, any of those kinds of things. And it just pushes you over the edge. And that's what spirals you down into that kind of like very severe, very heavy drinking, real problem drinking area. What most people would consider to be problem drinking. I think if we can talk to those people,

in that mid to severe range and help them rebalance their relationship with alcohol, get back into the low risk drinking area. Or maybe, I don't know, here's a crazy idea. Maybe you could just stop drinking. But that is a decision for them, not a decision for me. But helping them to rebalance their relationship, think that is the way to stop people getting to that point where it just becomes...

so much harder because they've lost all of the support. it's not, honestly, you don't even have to be altruistic about it. If you don't care about people, just care about the money, because those people that have gone all the way around the other side, they are an incredible drain on society. You know, they are the ones that make up the bulk of the money that gets spent on policing, on social care and on healthcare, around alcohol. And they all started out as

moderate drinkers. And there we go. That's another point. Do want me to rant about the alcohol industry and money and how much it costs the economy? Because that I think is where I'm going.

Hamish (32:06)
Yep.

Yeah, it's, it's quite incredible, isn't it? You know, if somebody brought a new street drug out, let's call it alcohol, you can buy it in a can, you know, it just wouldn't be. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (32:28)
Do want to know the really funny thing? If you bought out a food supplement, like a food additive, like if alcohol was an E number, right? If alcohol, you wanted to put it in food now, you'd have to put it through the European Union Food Standard tests. I know we have left the august European Union, but I believe we still live by those standards. Any who's.

Some scientists actually put it through that just for a laugh and they discovered that the maximum safe dose of alcohol is two units. And when I explained to people that, they go, yeah, well two units a day. That's basically what the government tells you to drink, isn't it? It's like, no, it's not two units a day, two units a week. It's not two units a week, two units a month. Nope, two units a year. That is the amount of alcohol you could put into food and the European Union would consider it to be safe.

So what's that work out as if you want to stick it in your trifle, you're putting like a couple of drops of alcohol in your tiramisu.

Hamish (33:30)
you

That is scary, isn't it? So you'd end up just buying bananas, overripe bananas and eating them.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (33:39)
yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that's the old discussion about, no, you can't drink 0 .5 % alcohol because you're sober. And if you do, you won't remain sober. It's like, you've to check out your fruit bowl, my friend, because...

Hamish (33:54)
Yeah. Now, I'm gonna say, we'll try and keep away from the food and the government and the tax on it. Is it which way is that going? Because it's, it's a minefield and I don't know what the answer is.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (34:08)
I do. I mean, I'd like you very happy to tell you. And the thing is, there is so much research on what the answer is, which is incredibly well understood in alcohol policy research circles, but largely ignored by most governments. So increased tax, that will make a huge difference. And people go, but alcohol is really expensive. It's genuinely not. Over the last 10 years in the UK, alcohol has not had a tax increase

for nine of them. everything else has gone up apart from alcohol. So alcohol duty is also taxed in a very weird way. So there is a levy on a barrel of beer and that levy on the barrel of beer doesn't really change very much, even if the government do put it up. But of course, as everything else gets more expensive, that bit of tax as a percentage of the price goes down and down and down. So actually the percentage tax keeps going down, which is why

Over the last 30 years, alcohol has become like 87 % cheaper in terms of the cost of living. So it's just ridiculous. yes, increased tax, reduced availability. is ridiculous that you can get Uber Eats to deliver you some wine at four in the morning. That's immoral in my opinion. That is feeding people with problems.

Yeah, so massively reduce availability. The countries that have off -license monopolies like Scandinavia, they have far less problems because you can't buy beer after six o 'clock. yeah, of course they have a lot less problems. Increased education in schools, that would make a big difference, wouldn't it? So there's no real evidence that suggests that putting health warnings on alcohol

actually reduces the amount that people drink. Certainly there's no evidence that it reduces the amount that people smoke, but there is some interesting evidence about how it reduces the way it influences the way people think about the product. So at the moment you go into the supermarket and you buy a bottle of beer and you think bottle of beer, cabbage, some pasta, tins of beans. You just think of it as a normal kind of piece of your shopping and

20 years ago, that was the way people thought about cigarettes. They thought, I'll go into the shops, I'll get a few groceries and a packet of cigarettes. And they thought about them all in the same way. But now because of the way cigarettes are packaged, people think of them as something very different because they are. know, much as I dislike crisps and Haribo and junk food in general, know, cigarettes and alcohol are very different from them.

So they should be sold in a very different way. And I think that would help to change the way people perceive them. And it certainly has changed the way young people perceive smoking, which probably leads me into ranting about vaping, but that's an entirely different podcast, isn't it?

Hamish (37:12)
That is really, really interesting. mean, the whole thing about the small amount of tax on your alcohol, people still buy it. They really do, don't they? Yeah.

So this research, obviously this is a thing that it fascinates you. This is part of your, I guess it's part of your writing and your speaking is just bringing the awareness to the darker sides of it, if you want to call it. Tell me a bit about that and why it's so important to you.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (37:39)
So I'm not saying that if somebody had pointed out to me that alcohol causes cancer or that as a white British man, if I start drinking, I have around a 30 % chance of developing a problem with drinking. And I'm not saying if somebody had told me that before I started drinking, I wouldn't have got a problem. But I would have thought about it differently. Even just a little bit, I would have thought about it differently. Because...

When I started smoking, I knew that smoking was bad for me. And therefore, I never really thought I was going to smoke for the whole of my life. I thought at some point, and usually sooner rather than later, I was going to stop smoking. However, nobody told me that alcohol was bad for me. Nobody told me that there was a high likelihood of me developing a problem with it.

So I never thought that I would ever stop drinking. I just thought, that's it, I'm going to drink for life. I thought it was great. I thought it was perfectly safe. I thought it was completely normal. I didn't think that way about smoking. And that's one of the things that I really would like people to know and understand and to start, you know, the conversation and to start talking about alcohol in a different way. Cause we do talk about alcohol. We talk about it all the time. I mean, all you have to do is go into a birthday card shop.

You will see all of those cards which basically says, know, what the amounts are saying is, I hope you get drunk and fall over for your birthday. Which is actually quite a weird thing to wish somebody as a birthday wish, isn't it? But, you know, that's the way we talk about alcohol. yeah, of course you can have a gin and tonic on Tuesday at half past three. Nothing wrong with that. It's wine o 'clock. Yeah, I deserve this bottle of wine. All of that kind of stuff we talk about all of the time, but we don't actually talk about.

the real problem that is alcohol. We just kind of ignore it and sweep it under the carpet. And that's all I want to do. I want to start the conversation. I want to get people thinking about it. I want people to understand what low risk drinking actually is. And the, you know, like I am not an advocate for alcohol. I don't think anybody should drink alcohol, but you know, people want to drink alcohol. That's fine. If you're going to drink alcohol, I would love you to understand what low risk drinking looks like.

And I would love you to understand that actually, if you drink in a low risk way, it's far more enjoyable.

Hamish (40:05)
Yeah, it is. I think that that conversation would be so powerful, wouldn't it? Right down at kid level, at school level, just about that time that we're finding that it's making us feel sexy and stronger about ourselves. All that wisdom just goes out the way because I feel good. So it's complete re -education, isn't it? It can't be anything more simple than that. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (40:29)
Yeah. Yeah. And look, mean, number one, thank you very much for letting me have this conversation on your podcast. That's like, you are clearly part of the solution and not part of the problem. great. And on that note, everybody who's listening, go and give him five stars on Apple to help him get the message out there because he's clearly doing the good work, isn't he? But yeah, absolutely. We, we need to change the conversation that happens in schools, you know, help young people to understand, but ultimately,

My daughter is always asking me for a unicorn, right? And I can't give her a unicorn because I don't have a unicorn. And that is one of the central problems with being a parent. You cannot give your children something that you do not have. So if you do not have a good relationship with alcohol, then it is very hard for you to give your children a good relationship with alcohol. So yes, we absolutely need to do more education, but what the evidence shows

is that education just for young people is not enormously effective. Actually, it's much more effective if it's holistic and it's at more of a community level and it engages both parents and children. So yes, I do work in schools. I'm always happy to come and share my bad jokes, obscure 90s references that they all just like look at you funny when you start talking about pulp.

Common people, how can you not know that song? It's great. I mean, seriously, anyway. But mostly, you know, all of my knowledge and expertise and take on alcohol, you know, I'm always happy to share that with young people. But yeah, I think, you know, it's something that we've all got to do together.

Hamish (42:15)
The bit that gave me chills is if you don't have a good relationship with alcohol, you're not going to be able to pass that good relationship on to children. You'd have thought that was page one, but again, I guess the parents aren't aware of that. I suppose it's a bit like these oil companies pillaging from their children and what are their grandchildren going to have left? They don't care. So how would you inform

somebody in their thirties, twenties, thirties, who's about to have kids and doesn't have a very healthy attitude with alcohol. How would you encourage them to change their mindset before they have the children and need a drink because of the children?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (42:51)
I mean, honestly, it's just a matter of talking it through. I've had many conversations with many people and starting a family or raising a family is often a huge motivator. And that is one of the reasons why the sort of peak time to stop drinking and indeed to stop taking drugs is sort of about 30, between about 30 and 40. I mean, it's not like if you're older than that, it's not like give up, but

that is one of the peak times and it's often around either you're going to have kids and you've got this vague nagging doubt that, hold on a minute, how am going to do midnight bottles if I'm drunk? It's just like, how is that going to work out? So that is a big motivator, but also I can give you so many stories around children and how that's motivated parents to stop. I one guy,

You know, he said, it was the point when I realized I was actually scaring my children. When I did that, I had to stop. Another guy said to me, you know, I decided to come and see Duncan because my son said to me, daddy, when I grow up, do I have to drink? And it was just like, brr, that's like a, that's a spear through the heart, isn't it? Or these days they just phone you, they video you, don't They video you on your phone.

on their phone and then they show you what an idiot you are when you were drunk and you just go, yeah, maybe it's time to knock it on there.

Hamish (44:29)
Yeah. And I guess that leads us onto shame, doesn't it? Because that is a big problem with alcohol as well, isn't it? We hide because of that. And I guess if, know, Johnny turns up with, hey, daddy, this is what you looked last night, you know, you are... There's a lot of shame there. I mean, it's a powerful motivator to stop, isn't it?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (44:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, it's, it is one of those things that I expect is going to go one of two ways. Shame is not necessarily a good tool, but if you can go beyond the shame and actually have that realization and see yourself as other people see you, I think that's enormously powerful. think one of the mistakes that successive governments have made with

health campaigns is they have actually tried to shame people into changing and it doesn't really work. I mean, they did it with smoking for years and years and years. Smoking is killing you. In fact, they still written on the packet in big letters, smoking kills you, right? If somebody tells you that you're going to die, what does that make you feel?

Makes you feel afraid, doesn't it? Yeah? What do most smokers do when they're afraid? They smoke! Which is why the tobacco industry actually loves those health warnings. Because they just scare smokers into smoking more. So I think, you know, if I got to write the things on the packet, I would write, you are enough. You are a complete human being and you do not need these cigarettes.

Hamish (45:42)
Yep.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (46:05)
Quitting is easy and you will feel a lot better and I don't mean in 20 years time. I mean like tomorrow. You will wake up tomorrow feeling so much better.

Hamish (46:15)
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Tell me about your writing because you've talked about the speaking and obviously that's what you do. But tell me about the books that you've written as well because that's another message that you another way you get your message across.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (46:29)
Yeah, I I've always been a writer. I've always loved writing. It's always been really, really important to me. When I was drinking, I wrote an awful lot and all of that is still in some dusty drawer, in some dusty desk, in some long forgotten warehouse somewhere. I never ever did anything with my writing until I stopped drinking. And since I've stopped drinking, I've published three books. So the most recent of them is called Real Men Quit. That is...

Because what I've noticed is that there are lot of amazing women doing a lot of amazing work around sobriety and stopping drinking and all of that sort of stuff. I think they're fantastic. I love them. Their work really, really resonates with me. Unfortunately, it resonates with me now. It wouldn't so much have resonated with me when I was drinking. If your stories revolve around Chardonnay and the school run, it wasn't really going to kind of like...

vibe with me as such. So what I wanted to do was write something that was specifically aimed at men because actually we do outperform women quite significantly when it comes to drinking. The World Health Organization found that around 75 % of the alcohol consumed worldwide was consumed by men. So man and a woman go into a bar, you've got to drink three of them as a guy, the girl's only got to drink one. So unsurprisingly, men end up with two to three times more.

rates of alcohol issues than women do. But of course we're not talking about it. It's the women that are talking about it. I, you know, as my attempt to be part of the solution, I wrote a book called Real Men Quit, which is, well, it's for men. So it's got a lot of sports references in it. It's got a lot of James Bond. It's got a lot of Star Wars. It's got a of really bad jokes. Some of which are slightly rude.

Yeah, it's a book for men about alcohol and maybe rethinking what you're doing with it.

Hamish (48:33)
Brilliant.

Yeah, I will I will have to look at that. mean, I think it's, it's really important, is it because, you know, and men aren't the first people to talk about any problems and things like that. So yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (48:43)
of the first. think I'm sure sometimes I don't think we're even the last.

Hamish (48:49)
We've just forgotten, yeah. No.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (48:50)
again, mean, that's, I think, I think that's part of the problem with alcohol is it makes everything very much on a surface level. You know, we'll talk about, we'll talk about football because we can safely express our emotions and get angry and all of that sort of stuff. But we won't talk about anything really deep and meaningful and serious. And I'm sorry to the football fans out there, you know.

It isn't actually a matter of life and death and it's not more important than that either. know, we don't talk very often about, you know, being parents or being husbands or, you know, how we feel like our mental health. We just don't talk about all of that sort of stuff. And I think one of the reasons is because we don't listen. You know, we just want to have a beer and watch the football. We don't actually want to...

putting the time to listen to each other. that's another thing I'd change about the world. Guys, you've got to listen to each other. You've got to ask the questions, shut up and let them answer it. Rather than just like, how are you? I'm fine. You've got to dig a bit deeper.

Hamish (50:03)
Yep. Sad but true. Yeah. It took me to, I know I've got a problem and a moment of clarity before I actually said, hey, I think I'm struggling. Because again, it goes back to that shame, doesn't it? You know, it's a man I should provide. I should do this. I should do that. And I'm actually dying here because of alcohol and everything else. And I don't know what to do. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (50:30)
Yeah, it's almost like we've been told from the moment that we were born that boys don't cry. You've just got to suck it up. You've got a man up. You've just got to push through your problems. Stop complaining. Stop whinging. Stop being a bit girls blouse and just get on with it. Almost like we've been told that our whole lives, isn't it?

Hamish (50:46)
Yeah. many narratives to change. So many stories to change. Duncan, this has been fabulous. I've enjoyed this. We will do this again. I was about to say we should do this with a glass of no alcohol beer somewhere.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (51:03)
Yes, we definitely should and we will definitely do this again, both online and offline, I'm sure.

Hamish (51:08)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah. Where can people find out about you, about what you do, why you do it, listen to your slightly dirty jokes and find out about your books and things? Because I think you've got a

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (51:20)
So if you want to find a copy of Real Men Quit, just fire up Amazon and put Real Men and Quit into it. I mean, it's so simple, even men can do it. you know, so I wrote it for guys. So if you're a guy and you think you might have a bit of an issue with drinking, then go and grab a copy. You know, what's the worst that can happen? You might read a few jokes. likewise, if you happen to know a man who drinks a bit too much, like...

we all do, then go and grab them a copy. Make a kind of interesting Christmas present, but you know, you'll see. Anyway, so that's Real Men Queer. If you'd like to read my second book, Get Over Indulgence, you know, I'd love to offer your listeners a copy. If they just put getover .uk into their search engine of choice, that's getover .uk. That'll take you to a bit of my website where you can download a PDF or Kindle version and you can have a look at that. That one's shorter.

and the jokes are all incredibly family friendly. I'm not saying they're any good, but they are at least family friendly. So that's getover .uk, which will take you to a bit of my website, but you can have a look around. You can see more about all of the stuff that we do. We're pretty busy on the socials, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. And honestly, if you've got a question.

I hope it comes across, but I do like talking about this sort of stuff. So if you've got a question, please get in touch. Please ask me. If I can't help you, I guarantee you I will know someone who can.

Hamish (52:54)
Brilliant. Well, we'll make sure all of that information is in the show notes for people. And I guess most importantly, what is your superpower? What have you realised about life that becoming sober has allowed you to understand?

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (52:58)
Thank you.

I think one of the things that I realized when I was writing recently was that it has taken me a lot of time and a lot of effort to get back to where I was when I was first in school. I wrote in a particular style when I first wrote in school and they didn't like it. It did not go down well with the teachers.

To be fair to them, what I have realized is that you actually need to really understand the mechanics of grammar and punctuation and sentence construction before you can write in that style. It sounds very easy and jovial, but it is actually quite complicated to get there. And I think that is a roundabout way of saying, think what I do really well is make difficult

hard stuff sound casual and easier and maybe a little bit more accessible because you you can joke about it. You can have a bit of a laugh with it. that, I think that comes across as sounding really, easy, but honestly, it's a superpower. It's quite hard work. It's taken me lot of time and effort to get to the point where I can be casual.

Hamish (54:38)
Brilliant. love that. It's getting, Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Finding your, finding who you were before it all got tainted, before things like that and just getting back to being creative, getting back to being peaceful and having fun. Yeah.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (54:55)
Yeah, I I spent a lot of my 20s sort of worrying about my artistic voice and trying to find my artistic voice. And what I realized was if you just stop doing personality surveys and actually write something, then you'll find it.

Hamish (55:14)
Brilliant. Well, Duncan, thank you ever so much for today. This has been entertaining and really full of information, all sorts of things. So I really appreciate your time today. Thank you.

Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (55:25)
It's been an absolute pleasure. I have loved it and I feel tempered now I've come out the other side of the crucible.

Hamish Niven (55:33)
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.