Summary
Lyle Fulton and co-host Jacki Vause founded The Rest is Alcohol Podcast to shine a light on our relationship with alcohol. It was a priviledge to be interviewed by Lyle and Jacki, as we covered these subjects:
- My journey of becoming an entrepreneur.
- How I knew in Grade 8 that I was going to combine business and computers.
- Looking back, how I know at what point I had become an alcoholic.
- My journey into recovery.
- Why coaching starts with great listening skills.
- The ways my Task Master Spirit works for me and when it doesn’t.
- Reducing the stigma of alcohol.
Give the episode a listen.
Audio
You can listen to the episode on this popular platforms:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2mdakysatzADW5s7qeaTH5?si=abc0f31e46fa48e4
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-alcohol/id1724015691?i=1000653452507
Transcript
Lyle (00:00:02):
The rest is alcohol with Lyle Fulton and Jacki Vause
(00:00:08):
Hello everyone and welcome once again to the latest episode of The Rest is Alcohol. My name is Lyle Fulton. I’m joined as I know I always will be by the absolutely fantastic Jacki Vause And this week listeners, we are joined by an absolutely phenomenal guest as well who I will introduce to you right away, in fact because his name listeners is David J. Greer. David, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on this. The latest episode of the Rest is Alcohol. Before we ask you how you’re getting on and get straight into the episode, I’ll do my quintessential introduction listeners. So David, David is a 40 year entrepreneur, 40 plus year entrepreneur. He’s been an entrepreneur for his entire career, just 22. David joined a young software startup, he stayed there 20 years, became the co-owner of that startup and built it into a global powerhouse. After selling out of that business, David took a break, commissioned a sailboat in the south, wait for this listeners commissioned a sailboat in the south of France, home schooled his three children for two years while sailing 5,000 miles across the Mediterranean.
(00:01:18):
I mean we could chat about that I think for 15, 20 minutes and then end the episode there, but we won’t be doing that. We’ll be getting into the sort of more nitty gritty stuff as well. David is now a successful author and entrepreneurial coach specializing in creating high performing and high growth mid-market businesses. He’s also crucially for what we’re going to be discussing today listeners, he also helps entrepreneurs challenged with alcoholism or addiction. First things first, David, before we get into the boat, your coaching, your career so far, how are you This fine. I was going to say Thursday evening. It’s Thursday evening where Jacki and myself currently are, but it’s currently Thursday morning. You’re all the way over in Vancouver, is that right?
David (00:01:56):
I am in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where it’s a pretty nice spring day and who knows what time of day it is for your listeners when they’re actually listening to the podcast. But I hope it’s a nice day wherever you are. And yeah, I’m really thrilled to be here today with both of you. Thanks for having me.
Lyle (00:02:17):
Thanks for joining. You are so welcome. You’re so welcome. I mean, first things first before we get into anything, I mean I’m also acutely aware and there’ll be listeners sort of wincing now going Lyle hasn’t asked Jacki how she is. I trust that Jacki’s fine. Jacki’s been very, very busy and I just sort of thought we’d launch straight in to chat to David, but I mean Jacki, you good, how are you doing? You all? Okay?
Jacki (00:02:38):
I am good and I’m going to be on Terra firmer and specifically English terra firmer for a few weeks now, so I’m very happy feeling almost settled. And I’ve got Ludo by my side. He’s sort of snoozing at the moment, but it’s coming up for his dinner time, so you never know.
Lyle (00:02:54):
There you go. And David, just for your information, Ludo is Jacki’s loyal who sits there whenever we record these podcast episodes. I think he just enjoys getting the first listen. I think he just enjoys being the exclusive first listener of the podcast. But brilliant Jacki, I’m so glad to hear that you’re doing well. David, first things first, your career. We’re going to get onto sort your experiences in coaching professionals, business professionals, coaching people through particularly, I mean, what we’re particularly interested in is obviously at times quite a difficult topic to discuss, but that’s one of the great things about the podcast is we’re very open about it, people recovering from alcoholism and addiction. But I suppose the first thing I’d like to touch on just before we get into that is in my introduction I said that you’ve been an entrepreneur for over 40 years. I mean, was that always something, did you always have that kind of entrepreneurial, the word is spirit, isn’t it? Entrepreneurial spirit, entrepreneurial drive. Was that always something you were very keen to do in your career?
David (00:03:51):
I’m not a hundred percent about the entrepreneurial piece, but I come from an entrepreneurial family. My grandfather started a hardware store in downtown Edmonton in 1923 and my father took that over after the second World War when it was now a wholesale sanitary supply business. And my brother actually runs it now and last year was the hundredth anniversary. I come from that, what I can tell you is in grade eight or nine I got taken for a tour. Edmonton is the provincial capital of the province of Alberta. And we got taken for a tour of the government buildings. And I remember walking by a computer center that we got to see and it had spinning tape drives and I was just entranced. And then in the same grade I was taught octal arithmetic. We have 10 digits, which is why we have numbers that are all what we call base 10, but you can turn out, you can do it in any base you want.
(00:04:49):
And that was a super eye opening experience. And at that point I knew I wanted to take business and computers and put them together somehow. I dunno why. I just remember I just had that vision from grade eight or grade nine, so it wasn’t necessarily to be an entrepreneur, but I definitely wanted to go down this path where I was going to really learn about computers and apply it to business. And then in the high school I went to was one of the few at that time in the mid seventies where they had a data processing teacher, data processing courses. I was writing computer programs like in grade 11 and had a student account at the University of Alberta, which turned out was running one of the most advanced operating systems in the world. And so again, just had all this exposure a bit almost. I’m within a year of the age of Bill Gates and same Bill Gates has the same experience.
(00:05:48):
He had this PDP 11 computer in his school and he got to interact with it and play with it in almost exactly the same time in that mid seventies, which again is just today everyone, people have computers in their hands called phones. And so the idea of programming is almost entrenched from birth. But in the mid seventies to be exposed to that was really unusual. And then through a job I got in university, so I was in university getting my computer science degree, I got introduced to this consultant. This consultant had invented a couple products and we worked together on a really hard project before I graduated from University of British Columbia, I was hired as the first employee after the founders. The business was about two years old at that point.
Jacki (00:06:40):
Wow. And you stayed there for 20 years?
David (00:06:42):
For 20 years. So yeah, we had a variety of corporate organizations. So it was founded by Robert and Annabelle and then was named Robelle, like the concatenation of their two names. Awesome. Love, love. And because it’s a made up name. I know you’re in pr, Lyle and Robelle Googles. Well because it’s a made up name.
(00:07:08):
So even today, yeah. And after 10 years Annabelle wanted to retire and I ended up buying her out. And although I will say that was a really super stressful time because we’d had an R&D company that I owned half of with Bob and Annabelle and had made quite money in that and I had to take everything I had in that as a down payment to Annabelle and then I had to make three years of quarterly payments and if I missed one, she could demand the shares back. And I’m like 34, I’ve got a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. I left a meeting with the accountants and tears were streaming down my face just from the stress from everything. And I’m sure I went home and drank to cope.
Jacki (00:08:01):
Do you think it was the stress that built your, was the foundation of your first relationship with alcohol?
David (00:08:12):
My story is really the progressive nature of the disease. When I started out, I don’t think I was an alcoholic. I know by the time my wife got pregnant with our first child, I agreed to stop. She was going to stop drinking, she’s pregnant, and I agreed to support her and that lasted for 24 hours.
(00:08:35):
And I still don’t know how I squared it with Karalee, but I went back to daily and by then I was daily drinking. Sure. So now where between my early twenties and so I was about 32 when Jocelyn was born, somewhere in their early thirties. Those of us, 12 step recovery talk about becoming a pickle because when a cucumber becomes a pickle, it can’t go back to being a cucumber. It’s pickled. And so I know by the time Karalee got pregnant with Jocelyn, I was a pickle and I’m sure I was before that. I just can’t tell you exactly when. That’s a line in the sand. And so that would’ve been 1989 or so and I didn’t get sober until 2009. I still had a lot of drinking in front of me.
Jacki (00:09:28):
To run a very successful company, to have two children, to hold a family together, do all of those things. You’re still with Karalee?
David (00:09:37):
Yes. We’re next week will be our 42nd anniversary.
Jacki (00:09:41):
So you’ve managed to have all of that and yet still battle a really tough disease?
David (00:09:50):
Completely. And my kind of style of drinking is to get to a certain level of inebriation and then kind of hold it there through the whole evening. Some people drink, they just go get almost blackout drunk. The way I drank was slightly different and losing control drinking would’ve been, I would’ve seen as a failure. Again, it’s this whole notion of being able to hold your drink and why I drank. I am sure to cope for stressful situations to make the highs higher, to make the lows not so low. And at the end of the day, I drank because an alcoholic, it’s really simple for me.
Jacki (00:10:39):
Or is it, I mean that’s the thing because we use that label, but I think everyone is an individual within that.
David (00:10:49):
So let me just, for everything I share, I’m just going to be talking about me and my experience, strength and hope. This is what I believe about myself. It just makes me easier. It’s like I’m six foot two. I have size 12 feet an alcoholic is just a fact about me when I go sailing and on a sailboat. Sometimes getting my six two frame into some parts of a sailboat is really challenging and staying sober is really challenging, but it’s just, it’s a fact. I don’t judge anyone else whether they want to use that label, what their journey or relationship to alcohol is. That’s for them. I just have my journey and my relationship and how I talk about it.
Jacki (00:11:39):
I love that. That’s really, that’s exactly what the podcast that actually this podcast is all about because we didn’t want to make it just about being an alcoholic or just about the negative side of alcohol. We wanted to talk about relationships with alcohol because some people like Lyle can sort of reign it back and go, actually I can see that I’m going down the danger route here and I’m going to just pull it back in again and just make it a much more enjoyable thing for me to do rather than a habitual thing for me to do. Me, I’m an absolutely greedy guts person about anything. So it could be a really nice wonton soup through to a big packet of biscuits through to anything I like to drink. And I liked alcohol a lot and so I drank a lot of it and that was okay until it got to a stage. A bit like you said, that was my large cucumber, possibly marrow turning into a very large pickle when I got into a particularly stressful stage in my life where it really became sink or swim. And so I swam in alcohol for a while and then realized thankfully that that was not the thing I wanted anymore and stopped. And just like you, I think if I start to drink again, that would be it. And I think lockdown would’ve killed me if I had been drinking when lockdown.
David (00:13:25):
Well, yeah, and the stats are, I don’t know the UK stats, but the US stats is the level of drinking increased dramatically during COVID.
Jacki (00:13:34):
Yeah, it did the stats here too because nobody had anything to do and nobody was literally stunned by the time they had on their hands. And luckily I’d sort of gone through that kind of like what do I do with my hands? What do I do with my head? What do I do with everything that’s usually numbed by imbibing on lots of gin in my case, but I’m really fascinated by this idea. I love the fact that you coach executives. Of course I run a business too, and just like you, I manage to have a son, run a business, do all these things still on this level of being pickled. How do you talk to executives who, do they have to come to a realization or have they reached a crisis point or how does your coaching relationship come about with people when you start working with them?
David (00:14:32):
I’m just open to it. It’s on my website. I do a lot of these podcasts. So in some cases people have heard me on recovery podcasts and they’re in recovery and run a business and they’ve reached out to me because they relate and they want help in their business, but I think they like the fact that we can relate to each other in our recovery. I have that.
Jacki (00:14:59):
Is it business coaching you do?
David (00:15:02):
Yeah, I do exclusively business coaching and then I facilitate strategic planning with entrepreneurs and their senior leadership team. So it’s Go ahead,
Jacki (00:15:13):
Sorry. While you are doing this, has it suddenly come out through the process of coaching that you’ve got somebody who’s almost like a kindred spirit going through the same things that you’ve been through?
David (00:15:26):
Yeah, I’ve had some clients where as we work together, they would start telling me stories that sound a lot like mine. And again, it’s not for me to judge them, but they sure sound like they have alcoholic behaviors and some are working on their sobriety, but not completely sober yet. But I think their intention is to be abstinent. I have others are in recovery for three or four years, and again, I only work with super high performing individuals. That’s the people who I want to work with and who I’m attracted to and we match each other’s. I can match anyone’s energy. I’ve got a lot, which is important because I match them where they’re at. If they’re at low energy, I’m obviously not going to come in and be steamrolling them. But when we get excited and we’re doing things, so one of the things I’ve discovered is especially those of my clients who are in 12 step recovery is that when we want to relate or talk about certain business challenges can go back to the whole body of work that’s 12 step recovery. And say if you were going to a meeting and you told about this problem, which step do you think would apply? And they usually go, aha.
(00:16:56):
Oh yeah, okay. I don’t have control. I have to turn it over to something bigger than me because I don’t have any control of this part of my business. Because the reality I believe in life is we have control over our response to the event that’s happening to us right now and we have the next right step. That’s what we have control over and everything else that we think we have control over is really an illusion. That doesn’t mean you don’t set goals and you don’t have direction and you’re not trying to motivate people to go in a certain direction. You have a lot less control over that than you think you do. And so people who are in 12 step recovery and have really worked the steps and done the actual work, they can relate to that more or it gives us another path to go relate and talk about it. And if you’re not in recovery, then I have other ways to talk to you.
Lyle (00:17:52):
I mean, this is so brilliant. This is fantastic. And actually this is one of my favorite phrases, by the way, David, so forgive me. There’s lots to unpack there, which I absolutely love. And actually I didn’t anticipate going down this route, but something if you’re comfortable, I might ask you about is actually your recovery. I think that’s actually a really interesting thing. I’m not sure I’ve spoken to someone who has actually done a 12 step program before, and we won’t go into the ins and outs too heavily, but we’ll talk about that. But actually it’s less a question and more a statement that I think we could probably all agree on, which is actually you talk about relating to your clients and relating to the people you work with and how effective and how great that can be when it comes to sort of a business relationship.
(00:18:34):
And you go into these meetings and these situations and you go, oh, well this is something I’ve been through before in my own business career, so I can sort of give you direction in that particular context. Empathy is massive though. The word we can talk about relating, but how you’re able to empathize as well, because if you then remove the kind of business umbrella and you start talking to your clients about their own experiences with recovery, the fact that you are able to so strongly and clearly empathize with them because of your own experiences must then really build that whole relationship. It’s as if you’ve got a shared language that you can then translate across to. And I think that’s a really extraordinary thing. And also having that real strong empathetic response to people who have gone through similar situations to yourself means that there is just instinctively that lack of judgment. Judgment is not even on the table because people know that they can walk into a room with you and go, oh, well, David’s been there, done that, seen it.
David (00:19:35):
I think being a good coach, whether you’re a business coach or not, is suspending judgment. You work way harder on building 360 degree listening skills. If Jacki’s dog barked, I might actually refer to that as part of our experience. What do you think that means? That’s actually being fully present to everything that’s going on, right? Complaining and because her dog, I can tell is very important to her, it may or may not, and if it doesn’t have any meaning, that’s okay too. Early in my coaching I would like, no, no, it has to have meaning, and now it’s like I just, let’s bring just an interesting little thing. Let’s bring it in, and if it doesn’t have any resonance, great, let’s go to the next question. We’ll just move on.
Jacki (00:20:29):
I’m fascinated to know what is a high performing individual look like? What is a super high performing individual apart from Lyle, obviously?
David (00:20:42):
Well, generally they’re people with a lot of energy. In my case, I would say all my clients are really smart. All my clients have very big ambitions for themselves and their lives and their business.
Jacki (00:20:58):
Right?
David (00:20:59):
So it’s not just being busy, but also they want to create things. They want to make change. They want to make things happen. I have a client who’s currently over in Europe trying to qualify Canada for the woman’s IQ foil so she can go to her sixth Olympics.
Jacki (00:21:20):
Wow,
David (00:21:21):
Six. There’s only 260 women in the world that have been to five more Olympics.
Lyle (00:21:27):
Extraordinary
David (00:21:28):
Over all time. To me, a definition of a high performer,
Lyle (00:21:35):
I mean now I feel bad about pointing at myself,
Jacki (00:21:41):
Not one of those.
Lyle (00:21:43):
There’s so much of that that I’m like, okay, that’s not going to be me. I mean, that’s not in my story. Something, this is an odd question, but go with me. Is that something that you are, were still, do you see what I mean? Is it sort of you as a high performer, someone who went into this career that you’d kind of pretty much built for yourself as a university student? Then this job comes up and you go, I’m a real part of this business. I’m sort of symbiotic with this business. You in your mind go, well, that’s something that I’ve driven towards for so long. And then obviously situations happen with the alcohol thing.
David (00:22:25):
I’d say for me, I didn’t for decades. It’s only fairly recently I’ve come to understand how driven I am.
Lyle (00:22:32):
That’s interesting though,
David (00:22:33):
Isn’t it? That’s really interesting. I can look back and see that.
(00:22:38):
But I wasn’t necessarily, I would say aware of it and the whole joining the software business, it was more just fun and we cut the cusp of a particular piece of a market that lasted for a very long time, and we were one of the top people in it, and we did a lot to kind of stay that way. My former partner and I, we published a new paper every year, and then we traveled the planet giving presentations to both technical and managerial audiences to create belief in this obscure Vancouver based software company. You’re going to trust your whole business too, but it works. It’s back to how do I, coaching relationship is all about trust. If you can only go as far as the client trusts you and that trust just develops over time. But you talked about obviously if someone’s in recovery and I can have more empathy and I can relate to them more, then trust builds faster.
Jacki (00:23:40):
What about working with somebody whose attitude to alcohol, they might be performing super high performing individual, but they’ve got all the wrong relationship with alcohol. How do you feel about that? Is that,
David (00:23:56):
Again, it’s not my place to judge that relationship,
Jacki (00:24:02):
But would you work with them?
David (00:24:05):
It depends. Yeah. I always have a one hour coaching call with a prospective client. I don’t always offer to work with that person after that call.
Jacki (00:24:17):
Sure, okay,
David (00:24:19):
Cool. It has to be mutual.
Jacki (00:24:21):
Yeah, yeah, it has to be.
David (00:24:25):
So if they don’t listen and if they don’t take any suggestion, then it’s no point working together because they’re just going to do their thing, which is, okay, go do your thing. I don’t think I can really help you.
Jacki (00:24:41):
When did, sorry.
David (00:24:43):
Yeah, so again, it’s like if it was clear the alcohol was completely destroying their life and their business and I made some suggestions around it and they weren’t open to anything, I don’t know if I would work with them.
(00:24:58):
I would make some suggestions about what they might do if they were ever ready to look at their relationship to alcohol, go to a meeting, but I might not be prepared to work with them. That’s why I’m in a, it depends. I only have capacity for a limited number of people. And in fact, back to the driven high performing piece, so in my mid fifties, I did a three year gig as a VP of marketing for a 35 million a year publicly traded company helping an entrepreneurial friend of mine who is the CEO. I came out of that gig and it was like I do not need to prove to another person that I can work hard. And I probably worked as hard in those three years as I had any time in my career, even when I had my own business. Part of starting my coaching practice is to not work so hard. What I didn’t realize is that for me, not working hard is really hard work.
David (00:25:57):
True. It’s just my default. The default is the on switch. The default is yes, the default is do more. And I’ve had to do a lot of personal growth work of where this comes from. I have this what I call my task master spirit, which is really, really active in me still today. And I’ve just done a lot of personal work where I’m like, Hey, TMS, I don’t need you right now. It’s okay. We’re under control.
Jacki (00:26:28):
So
David (00:26:29):
It’s all good.
Jacki (00:26:31):
I love the fact you call it a task master spirit.
Lyle (00:26:35):
I was going to say you have a kindred spirit here in Jacki. You actually have a kindred spirit in Jacki.
David (00:26:38):
Yeah, my work, so this came up and worked with a therapist and my kind of default was more fuck off TMS, and she pointed out to me, well, this is actually a part of you, so you’re just badmouthing yourself. And I also called it something else like task master demon or something. I also ended up being careful about, it’s just a really important aspect of myself and that’s why I call it a spirit. And it does not, and of course if you’re going to go sail a sailboat in the Mediterranean for two years and homeschool three kids, it’s really good to have a strong TMS that really helps. I acknowledge when it’s really helping me. I think that I get more stuff done in a day than most people do in a week, sometimes a month. It’s just, it’s crazy. I’ll talk to my coach and I’m like, oh, I didn’t get anything done today. And she says, yeah, well what have you done? And then I’ll rattle off 25 things.
Lyle (00:27:44):
I mean, right.
David (00:27:45):
That’s how deeply embedded into my psyche it is.
Lyle (00:27:53):
But I love that, and it’s that in and of itself. I mean, I often find just such a deep admiration for people who can do that. I mean, I work with someone every Thursday afternoon from about two till four. She’s on this call right now who is absolutely a very similar person and quite often the way Jacki’s able to stay so present with me and everyone else who she speaks to, and yet I can just tell that she’s doing about three or four different things elsewhere, and yet she’s still engaging. I mean, it’s a skill I would dearly love to learn. I think my TMS is driving towards having ATM S, do you know what I mean? Right now I’m sort of TMS liked and just needs to evolve as I grow. And actually I find it really interesting you said, I didn’t necessarily realize how driven I was until a bit later on in my life and my career, and I’d love to ask you about that, but perhaps a sort of a later juncture in another podcast.
David (00:28:52):
Well, I think again, that realization when I came out of this last executive gig, it probably took so really to my mid fifties until I really realized it. And then it was therapy work probably around that time or maybe a little bit after that. And that self-examination and some meditation work and Right, you find …
Lyle (00:29:16):
Yes, meditation. Yes, meditation. I did meditation. I’m a trained actor, so we did a lot of meditation at drama school. That’s the kind of thing we did. That’s the kind of thing we spent all that money on, as I’m sure there’s the same in drama schools across the United States and encounter as well. It is 70% meditation and then you occasionally act a bit. That’s brilliant. I mean, one thing that I just wanted to quickly go back to because I mean you’ve been absolutely brilliant the way you articulate things. I think it’s not only brilliant and so informative, but also just a really inspiring way of looking at a life in the world. And I’ll be honest, you can kind of see why you’d be such a brilliant coach to executives and professionals because you have such a really illuminating way of looking at this whole space and looking at this situation you pointed to when you go into a client meeting, the initial hour meeting you have with prospective clients, sometimes you won’t then engage on a full-time basis with them because, and I picked up on it, if they don’t necessarily want to listen to what I’m putting out there and I’m pretty happy with where they are and they just don’t know it yet, then maybe that’s not a relationship I’d sort of pursue.
(00:30:24):
That I find is also the case with a alcoholism and addiction and issues of that description insofar as I’ve often spoken to people who start going into treatment and start going into recovery for these things, and there has to be an impetus that comes from them. People talk.
David (00:30:45):
You can’t do it for your wife or your husband, you can’t do it for your children. Those are all great reasons, but no one will get and stay sober and especially it’s the stay sober unless they really want it. You have to really want it for yourself.
Lyle (00:31:02):
Yeah. If you don’t mind me asking, what was your kind of, and again, this is as comfortable as you feel disclosing.
David (00:31:08):
Yeah, no, I about it. All this, my impetus was I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Just the internal hauled outness, the lack of self-respect, just being beholden to it. If we look on the outside, when I first entered recovery, I had a house and two cars and a wife and three kids, and now 15 years later, I’ve got a house and two cars and a wife and three kids and two grandchildren. But if you look on the outside, it doesn’t look any different. But the person here sitting with you today on the inside, I’m here to tell you, is a completely different human being and I’ll share, we were circling around it a little bit earlier in the conversation, but what happened was I came back from the Mediterranean and I did a lot of angel investing and working as a board of director and it was completely unfulfilling and I didn’t realize how unfulfilling it went until I went to a training event and at the back of the room were two coaches and I talked to two of them and one of them made me more uncomfortable than I’d being in 10 years.
(00:32:32):
And I had tears in the corner of my eyes and really he just said, there’s a hundred in this room and they probably all need your help. And I’d been working for three years to find entrepreneurs who would hire me or that I could work up with and had not found a single one, really not at my level. And so he gave me his business card and his business card sat next to my phone and for probably about three weeks. Once a week, I looked at the business card and thought about calling Coach Kevin, and the phone weighed 10,000 pounds. I think I was just too afraid of what it would mean. But then he called me and on my 50th birthday, I hired coach Kevin, and we worked together for nine years, but we worked together for 18 months and we kind of cleared away all the clutter and got me into another executive gig and got my career going a little bit until the elephant in the room was my drinking.
(00:33:35):
And my deal with Kevin was the day before we had a coaching call, I’d send him an email with the wins, the things that were going well and what the topic would be for our coaching call. So on January 26th, 2009, I took my last drink about 10 o’clock at night and I made sure it was my last beer and I made sure there was no more in the house. That’s one thing about having a taskmaster spirit, it could be very organized. And I sent him an email and I said, the topic of our call is my drinking. And the next day we had a coaching call and I just said that I had a drinking problem. It was the first time I was not in denial. In the first time, I think I admitted to myself and certainly to another human being that I had a problem. Now I’d built such a strong back to trust and coaches and relationship. I knew when I told Kevin he would never let me off the hook, I just knew he would hold me accountable for whatever the next steps were. I didn’t know what they were, but it was like that admission was the defeat.
(00:34:50):
And then he coached me to go to a 12 step recovery meeting, and that was a Tuesday, and I committed to go to a meeting by that Friday and then back to being the overachiever that I am. That afternoon, I went online and looked and I had a networking event downtown and a technical presentation that I was going to, and I knew it wrapped up a little before eight. And lo and behold, I looked online and that night, that Tuesday night, there would be a meeting one quarter, a hundred feet off the road. I would drive home on to my house at 8:30. And so I wrote down the address and I was there just a little after eight and that was my first meeting. And a couple weeks later I made up what we call a home group, which is a group you commit to always going to and to taking service positions with. And that’s still my home group. Fifteen years later, when I took my 15 year cake last month, there was three people in the room that were there the night that I walked in.
Jacki (00:36:00):
Amazing.
Lyle (00:36:01):
I mean, that’s incredible, isn’t it? And that’s what a great story. And 15, by the way as well, if that was last month, may I just say on behalf of Jacki and myself, congratulations on 15 years as well. That is an extraordinary achievement, a fantastic, I mean that must have felt, I mean it is difficult. I imagine this is a strange question for you. It’s difficult to call something like that, an achievement because it felt these are facts. I mean, you’ve spoken about this earlier.
David (00:36:25):
I am very open that getting sober is the single biggest achievement of my life.
Lyle (00:36:31):
Brilliant. I can agree more with that.
David (00:36:33):
And every single day I wake up and I have to achieve my single biggest achievement. Again, I don’t get to rest on yesterday’s sobriety. It’s like when I go to meeting and someone’s talking about length of sobriety, I like, well, who got up here? Who got up the earliest today? Because who got up the earliest, who has the most sobriety in the room?
Jacki (00:36:59):
And when it’s anything, it’s eminently achievable. I think when I was certainly grappling with, and I call this the middle earth stage, but you come to the conclusion that this is not good for you, you don’t want it, it makes you feel bad about yourself. But the thing about alcohol, and I dunno if you felt this was the more down you get, the more alcohol talks to you and says, well, you’re down anyway, so you might as well just keep on digging down. It’s kind of like this self-defeating like, oh my god. And the alcohol’s going, look, Jacki, one more drink and you feel great for a day anyway, so what the hell? There’s all that stuff going on. It’s like the bad angel. The good angel. So you make the decision and then you get into middle earth, and I call that middle earth phase of when your mind’s spinning, when you’re thinking, how am I going to go to parties without it, how I’m going to get through Christmas? How am I get through birthdays? What’s going to happen when we are all on holiday together and I’m the boring one and I’m not funny jokes.
David (00:38:08):
How am I going to have dinner without wine?
Jacki (00:38:12):
My life is going to be horrible without it. That’s middle earth for me. And then once you get through and you’ve got through middle earth and you’re over the other side, it is still a daily decision I think. But I think it becomes easier and easier as you get used to your new way of being.
David (00:38:39):
There’s a yes and yes, and I went to a great sobriety conference in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in January called Sobriety Under the Sun. And then I stayed there for another four weeks and I don’t know, once a week walking down the Malecon or walking down the main drag, I’d see people drinking and I’m like, oh, I should go have a seat and drink a beer out of the blue. And so I guess what I’m trying to say is that still happens to me and I have to be on guard because my alcoholic brain still wants to kill me.
Jacki (00:39:20):
Yes.
David (00:39:22):
And so yes, it’s easier. It’s way easier. And I don’t get up in the morning thinking about what I’m going to drink today obviously, but yet I still have these crazy thoughts that just come out of nowhere and
Jacki (00:39:38):
Then you have somebody else going, Hey, it’s just one beer.
David (00:39:43):
Yeah. So for me, to me, my definition of alcoholic for me is I have these two traits, which is the first is that if I put a drink in my body, I do not know how many more I’m going to put in. I don’t know if it’s going to be 5, 10, 15, 20, and towards the end I was probably drinking 15 to 20 drinks a day. I’m a big guy, but that’s still a hell of a lot of alcohol. That’s kind of part one. Part two is it isn’t mental health disease. I mean it’s officially alcohol use disorder is the recognized disease. It’s not a moral failing. It’s actually a mental health’s. And the mental health issue is tomorrow, even as I’m hungover as I am by middle of the afternoon, my brain is going to be going, you know what? I think we should have a drink like forgetting what happened yesterday and the yesterday before that and the yesterday before that, and I’ll just have drink.
(00:40:48):
So it’s this mental obsession that somehow today will be different than all the other days matched with a physical allergy where my body, once it starts getting that alcohol, it’s got to keep having more. And so for me, that’s the fundamental definition of being an alcoholic is if you demonstrate those two traits, mental health professionals have a different definition that they use in the assessing alcohol use disorder. But these two traits, certainly for the people who I’m with in 12 step recovery, those would be the two traits that we relate to the most as being common to all of us.
Jacki (00:41:35):
Certainly I was drinking a similar amount to you every day when I decided to stop and I had my own coach, Kevin, that was my doctor, my Dr. Martin and I went and told him how much I was drinking and I’d made the decision to stop. And he said, how much are you drinking? And I told him how many units? And he started laughing and I said, why are you laughing? And he said, well, normally when I speak to somebody I have to add on a few units because they never tell me the truth. But you, I’m trying hard not to take a few away. And he was genuinely concerned and said, here’s my personal number, call me because I don’t think you should go cold Turkey, but I’m an all or nothing person. And I decided to and I did, and I actually didn’t find it that hard.
(00:42:26):
Subsequently, we found out a lot of reasons for my alcoholism and that’s why I was, and I dunno whether it is alcoholism or not, I hadn’t ever put a label on it. All I know is it was bad for me and I’m not going to do it anymore. But one of the reasons was I have fibromyalgia and a lot of it was pain management. Then I had to deal with the pain side of things. I think everybody has their own individual journey and that was what led me and Lyle to start thinking about, let’s do this podcast now that we talk about it much more openly. And I love the idea of de-stigmatizing it and that’s why I like to talk about it in this podcast. But how do you find it when you come across people who you love and care for who have the same problem and yet will not do anything about it?
David (00:43:16):
Patience and understanding. Again, it’s just we have to remember alcohol is the most powerful drug in the planet.
(00:43:25):
It’s legal and it’s totally socialized in the west, but it also is the most powerful drug in the planet. And so getting, overcoming it and wanting to do something about it is, is a radical act. And all I can do is offer my experience, strength, and hope to those that I love and hope that one day they may come to a point where they decide that it would be better to not drink than to drink. And I mean, I have one person in my family life who quite possibly, again, it’s not my place to take their inventory and to judge them, but I’ve definitely seen repeated alcoholic behaviors is what I call it. And by the way, I want to say Jacki, you are the first person I’ve ever met who told their doctor the truth. I tell her this time, all the rest of us lied through our teeth.
Lyle (00:44:31):
Yeah.
David (00:44:34):
The doctor asked me how many drinks I have, and it’s like, okay, what does the medical profession say? Okay. They say like three a day max. Two a day times seven, oh, I have 14 drinks a week. And that’s like what I would drink some days.
Lyle (00:44:48):
There are forms you get sometimes there are forms you get if you’re in a waiting room, sometimes they do these servers. You’ve got to go in. And I remember very clearly I was maybe what I mean, this was before I, I’m going to say before I had a problem or before I knew I had a problem with it and before I knew my relationship was problematic with alcohol. And I was at university my final year and I mean obviously university is a bit of a hotbed for students who were just obviously going to lie to their doctor. But there was this extraordinary moment, I’m not exaggerating, where we all had the form and we all had our various doctors rooms that we were due to go into and the form just landed on our laps like here. And we all just sort of looked at each other as if to be like, right, we are not going to say to each other and we’re not going to ask the question, but by osmosis almost, we are all going to come up with a number, we’re all going to say, and then that’s going to be the one that’s not going to mean we’re going to have to come back and talk to them again about this specific thing.
(00:45:39):
So yeah. Right.
David (00:45:41):
So in my late thirties, my doctor’s office had a pamphlet at the front desk about alcohol and that kind of questionnaire, and it had 20 questions and it wasn’t something like I had to fill out and give to the doctor. It was more like awareness. I was sitting there waiting for my doctor and I filled it out and at the end it said, if you answered yes to four or more questions, you should talk to your doctor. You likely have a problem with alcohol. And I think I answered 16 of 20. Yes. And I’m like, rip it up and go. They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
Lyle (00:46:19):
Yeah.
David (00:46:20):
Again, the insidious part of this disease is the self-denial that lasts for so long. Yeah. Do I wish I got sober sooner? Yeah. There’s a part of me that wishes I did, but the reality was I wasn’t ready until I was ready to get out of my denial. And that was January 27th, 2009. Then that’s what it took. Right. That’s just my journey.
Jacki (00:46:50):
I talked to you then just then about people who you know that you worry about and you can’t yet help. Have you found yourself to be an inspiration for other people? Have they seen your journey now and thought, whoa?
David (00:47:06):
Yes, for sure. I have one close friend who I also coach, and he was super shocked to learn that I was an alcoholic and went in recovery. But eventually he got to a point where he realized that he was like me, which was three and a half years ago.
Jacki (00:47:30):
Wow. Yeah. Great.
David (00:47:31):
Yeah. I mean, part of why I do all this podcasting is because I hope if I can just inspire one person to look at their relationship to alcohol and maybe reevaluate it, then I think I’ve been massively successful. I mean, this is why I do this work is to carry the message and to help other alcoholics that are still suffering.
Jacki (00:47:56):
And de-stigmatize it. When you were talking to Lyle before we actually started this podcast, I sort of zoomed in later as is my want. Sorry, Lyle. But you were talking about, was it one in five or something? People in?
David (00:48:14):
Well, I was talking about your earlier interview with Ben Williams, he mentioned 5%. My research actually says it’s closer to the eight to 10% of the population are alcoholic, which is incredible. But let’s say Ben’s right, 5%. So if you know 20 people, one person is likely an alcoholic. So again, you walk down the street and you look at the number of people, and most of them are like me. They’re moms, they’re blue collar workers, they’re executives, they’re just people going about their lives, but they are coping with their lives with alcohol, but they’re still mostly showing up on time and mostly doing life things. But they are like me, when I was active, beholden to the drink.
(00:49:12):
And again, you don’t have to drink every day, it’s really your relationship. It’s like non alcoholics don’t spend a significant amount of their time thinking about when they’re going to have their next drink. It just doesn’t happen. Whereas for alcoholics, we don’t think about much else. So anyways, and again, I can’t emphasize enough, this is a mental health disease. This is not, it’s still too many. I hear people, if you pulled yourself up by the bootstraps, if you only made the right choice, I’m sorry, you’re addicted to a drug and whether that’s alcohol or whether you use other drugs like the drug or the alcohol is in charge. And again, you have this mental thing that is happening to you where it’s very hard for you to see it. That’s where we sit in that denial piece. And so there’s no shame. I mean unfortunately in our society there is a lot of shame, which I think is sad because I think it prevents people from getting the help that they need. I think.
Jacki (00:50:30):
The stream is becoming less though. I really do. And that is actually reflected in this wonderful world of capitalism because people are starting to have investments in spirit, companies that have no alcohol in them and in new beers and decolonized wines. And of course the money doesn’t go to where there isn’t a market and the market won’t be there if they’re all hiding and not shy. I think that that stigma is gradually, gradually going. And I think there is hope out there the more people that come out from the shadows or from their normal life and just say, “Hey, I’m a normal person, but I’ve got a problem too.” And I think that’s helps with podcasts, as you saying, social media, the advent of technology that allows us to talk from London to Vancouver, the world becomes a smaller place in
David (00:51:31):
And you can listen anywhere in the world. Yeah, exactly. And the other part though is still our socialization of drinking. I do coaching with entrepreneurs if they go to social events or networking events to always have a drink in their hand because people almost judge you if you don’t. I think the non-alcoholic movement and the fact this development of non-alcoholic drinks and making them available is a great, great improvement. But early on I’d be at networking events and it’s like, oh, I’ll get you a beer. What do you want to drink? And if you say something, they look at you. There’s something wrong with you. We just have this huge social expectation around that you will drink. And I’m glad it’s getting more normalized that even if you’re not an alcoholic, that it’s normal to not drink alcohol.
Jacki (00:52:34):
And you know what? I’m starting to get a little bit more lippy about things. I was really lucky to be nominated for an award. I have no idea why I got nominated for it, but I was. And so I was in there, one of these terrible outsiders on this table of amazing women, and it was this modern woman inspiration awards thing. There were literally people who had escaped sex trafficking, standing up and getting awards. I mean, these were really remarkable people. And there I sat there like this interloper, but it was at this beautiful huge five star hotel, the Landmark Hotel in London. And there was wine and beer flowing and that was all included in the price of a ticket. And I asked for a bottle of sparkling water and got charged at the princely sum of eight pounds 50, which was ridiculous. Why can’t I just have water? I was asking for non-alcoholic wine or non-alcoholic beer. I just wanted water. I paid 200 pounds for a ticket to go to this thing. And they were like, no, no, no, no. You can’t have anything that isn’t in the ticket price. That’s disgusting. That’s actually disgusting. I called them out on social media and I continue to call out these big events organizers for not offering.
David (00:53:58):
I challenged the event organizers because the event organizers made the choice of what was on the list and they didn’t give a non-alcoholic choice, which to me is bad. This is 2024. That’s just not acceptable anymore. Right,
Jacki (00:54:19):
Exactly. And then of course, I mean I’m not embarrassed. My son always says, I don’t have an embarrassment gene, and that fills him with horror. But I’m not embarrassed to ask for these things and then kick up a stink about it. But I think about other people who don’t want attention placed upon them for not having a drink. They’d rather just continue on and it is still shocking. While I do hold great hope for us moving forward, I do find that’s a shocking thing and that everybody’s sort of got to a battle a bit more to make it easier.
David (00:54:57):
And if we go back to your feelings, so as a coach, we have a label for the way you felt, which is imposter syndrome.
Jacki (00:55:04):
That’s it,
David (00:55:05):
Right? Yeah. But the reality is those people chose you and I assumed they knew what they were doing.
Lyle (00:55:13):
And by the way, I want to say that she absolutely deserved to be nominated for what she’s talking about. There you go.
David (00:55:18):
I’m going to say not even knowing you and not even knowing what the award is, you deserve it because the fact that they have a process and they picked these other people and they picked you, it’s because you do deserve it.
Jacki (00:55:31):
You are very kind to say that. I do feel like I did feel like and do feel like the imposter, but I’m just a bit like you in the sense that if I could just help one person, then job done, job well done.
Lyle (00:55:45):
And I think I speak for you, the listeners when I say that, David, I think anyone listening to this episode of the podcast, but certainly at least one person, but I think you will have helped so many people. Certainly I know you’ve certainly helped me and given me a great perspective on things. Thank you so, so much for joining us on the podcast on this latest episode of The Rest is Alcohol. The one thing I’m absolutely guided about, but actually it’s not that I’m upset, it’s that, and I’m going to use Monica that you’ve been using throughout this episode, experience, strength and Hope. My hope is is that you’ll get to come back on, not just this podcast, but we’d love to have you on our sister podcast as well. The rest is prs. Talk about your coaching actually just occurred to me that we don’t have experience as someone who’s been a life coach, someone who’s a professional coaching coach of your experience and in your particular sort of niche within the industry. So it aptly love to have you on either of those podcasts, if nothing else, so that I can actually finally ask you about sailing and about this of break you took. But I’m delighted in a way that we didn’t get onto that because I actually think that we’ve spoken about far more pertinent things. My one question before we do end this episode listeners and episode David is favorite place you went on your break. Favorite sort of location you went to just as we bring this one to a close.
David (00:57:05):
Yeah, sorry, I can’t do one. I have like 10, right? I can probably boil it away to 10, but just too many really special experiences and we have this lifetime legacy. People have reminded me we spent more time with our kids in those two years than most parents spend with their children in their entire lifetime. There’s also just that whole having that experience together as a family and then each of those places, there’s usually some aspect of why it’s on the top 10 list.
Lyle (00:57:44):
I just think it’s brilliant. So yeah, we will to get on, we’ll need to do another edition of this and I would love to be on the rest as PR because I do a lot of work around marketing brilliant and strategic marketing and strategy around marketing and strategy around your sales. I mean that’s something that I also have a certain amount of expertise in. We can leave that for the rest is PR podcast at some future date.
Lyle (00:58:14):
David, you’re in. I can already say unequivocally, you’re absolutely 100%. This has been an absolutely fantastic one, honestly. Thank you so, so much. And listeners, David has an absolutely fantastic website which has details about his coaching, but also some of this outreach he does as well when it comes to people who are going through recovery, alcoholism, addiction as well, sort of the insights that he’s able to share, which you’ve heard so brilliantly on this episode. We will link David’s website on the episode description and all of the other resources that David is involved with as well. We’ll certainly link those in the episode description. And David, we look forward to having you on not just a future episode of this podcast, but also on The Rest is PR as well. A few quick T’s and C’S listeners before we finish this episode off, if you would like to get in touch with us as David’s brilliant and a word for David’s brilliant assistant, ie as well, who got in touch on behalf of David.
(00:59:02):
He was fantastic. So yeah, if you would like to get in touch with us, as David’s certainly did with us, you can do so. Email info@therestisalcohol.com or info@dismiso.com. We’ll respond to both of those email addresses. You can visit both of those websites, dimoso.com for all the brilliant work Dimoso are getting up to at the moment, including Modern Woman nominated Jacki’s brilliant work cross nationally, which she’s been up to, thankfully. She’s going to be on our shores for a little while now. Take a bit of a break from all that trans-Atlantic travel and you can also head to therestisalcohol.com, which we’ll have as well. We’re going to put David’s website on therestisalcohol.com as well because we’ve got a brilliant page there dedicated to all sorts of resources, helpful websites and other organizations that you can get in touch with. You can also get in touch with Jacki or myself via LinkedIn, Jacki Vause, Lyle Fulton. We will respond to both of those profiles as well. David, thank you so, so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure. And Jacki, same time next time, what do you reckon? Absolutely brilliant stuff. Thank you so much once again listeners. It’s been an absolute pleasure. In the meantime, from David, from Jacki, and from myself, take care of yourselves. It’s bye for now.
