The Recovered Life Show

[Announcer]
You're listening to The Recovered Life Show, the show that helps people in recovery live their best recovered lives. And here is your host, Damon Frank.

[Matthew Todd]
And welcome back to The Recovered Life Show. Today we're speaking with Matthew Todd. He's the author of an insightful new article that was just released on The Guardian entitled I spent 22 years as a problem drinker.

Here are the 10 things I've learned since I quit. In his really candid narrative, Matthew shares a profound life lessons gained from his decades of using alcohol and also battling alcohol dependency. His story isn't just really about quitting alcohol.

It's about confronting all the underlying issues, trauma, anxiety, social pressures, all that stuff that fuel addiction. Welcome to the show, Matthew. Hello.

Thanks for having me. I am so glad to have you here today with us. So let's dive into this.

This was such a interesting, this was such a really interesting article that was in The Guardian and I just absolutely loved it. You know, you chronicle all of this time that you have spent, you know, looking at your behaviors of problem drinking, you know, what was actually going on with you, what encouraged you to write this article and tell us a little bit about your journey.

[Damon Frank]
Well, I think it was because I'm 10 years sober yesterday, in fact, May the first. So I kind of thought I wanted to market and I've written, you know, a journalist I've written for The Guardian before. I've written a little bit about addiction and, you know, gay issues, because that's how I came into recovery, that journey of growing up gay and feeling traumatized and stuff.

So I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to to market in some way. And I had and I think I was reminded when it came out why I had written it, which is the fact that it's very easy to forget once you're in recovery or you don't drink or whatever, how many people are struggling.

[Matthew Todd]
And there are a lot of people that are struggling, you know, with this. And I like how you use the word problem drinker. Instead of alcoholic, because I think the word alcoholic scares so many people.

You know, I define myself as an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic in recovery. Right.

But I think alcoholism scares people. And I think the use of the word problem drinker was really smart in the article, because I think it allows people an entry point to look at their own drinking.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, for sure. Because I think it takes a long time, doesn't it, to come to that realization that one may have a problem. And I think lots of people are aware that maybe their drinking is problematic and it's much easier than going, am I an alcoholic?

So I think it's a it's a good way into people when you're a bit more gentler, maybe.

[Matthew Todd]
So tell us a little bit about your journey. How did it start for you? How did you start waking up to the fact that you might have an issue with alcohol?

[Damon Frank]
Oh, it's very complicated. I live in London and I grew up in South London, a place called Croydon, which if you are American and you have been here, you may have flown over Croydon or if you'd landed in Gatwick Airport, come through Croydon on the train. And I grew up in the 80s, a time when HIV and AIDS was exploding.

I realized I was gay when I was about 10. And that was a very traumatic, difficult time. There weren't kind of, you know, openly gay politicians and celebrities and things.

And I, you know, it was really, really hard. I was suicidal and depressed, didn't think I had a future. And then I came out when I was 16 and exploded into gay life and which a lot of that seemed very positive, made lots of friends, gay pride marches, all the rest of it, ended up working for the big gay charity in the UK Stonewall, then going to the big gay magazine Attitude in the UK.

So it was kind of part of that culture, part of gay culture. And I realized that a lot of people around me were struggling and that I was struggling, low self-esteem. Notice that was a common thread amongst other people that I knew.

People had drug problems, people had alcohol problems. Not everybody, by any means, you know, this was over a long time, but I did notice this thread. And certainly I had gone to therapists a lot of the time, said, oh, I don't feel very good about myself.

I never went thinking I had a drinking problem, just about low self-esteem and anxiety. And so various therapists, therapists through the NHS, through the GP, the doctors here who were really well-meaning but didn't really help. Then I saw gay therapists through sexual health centers and things like that and nothing.

No one had any answers. No one had any help. And to cut a long story short, a friend of mine, a really good friend of mine, went into recovery, introduced me to a gay therapist who said, of course, you're screwed up, you're gay, and went on to say not because you were gay, but because you've grown up in a society which is shaming and invalidates you.

And all those kind of things kind of fell into place for me. And then I wrote a big article in Attitude, at which point I was the editor in 2010. And we got this huge reaction from it.

So I went into recovery about 2008, just as I became editor of Attitude, actually. And, you know, realized so many complicated interacting issues, but I think went into proper recovery for drinking in 2009. Was sober for a year or so, went back out, drank for a couple of years, and then got sober again 10 years ago.

So it's been a very long journey in talking to other people. And I wrote a book about it called Straightjacket, which has been quite a big hit here in the UK. And now I feel like I feel grateful for that article because it wasn't just kind of an LGBT theme or a gay theme.

It was talking to everybody and also to acknowledge.

[Matthew Todd]
When did you start? Did you have a realization in your life where you started to see? I know I did with alcohol and I got sober in my 20s and I started to see people leave partying, not do it as much, get jobs, have relationships, move on with their life.

Right. And I seem to be stuck in this drinking mode and couldn't get out of it. And I think that was one of my first realizations that I was seeing other people being able to kind of move on with their life.

But my obsession to alcohol and my addiction to it kept me where I was at and didn't really allow me to grow at the pace of other people. When was that realization that you said, you know, hey, you know what? This isn't just a phase.

This isn't just a lifestyle because you're talking about the lifestyle you had and the things that this is something more. This is something a little bit more serious. What was that realization for you?

[Damon Frank]
That's funny you say that because I didn't really have that realization because I guess in mainstream culture, you have your kind of like teenage years, then your student years. After that, there can be a lot of partying and then people start getting jobs. But being a gay guy, a lot of gay culture is based around clubs and pubs.

And so I didn't see many people around me getting jobs. Not that gay people don't, but the people that I was surrounded by were clubbing, were kind of going off the rails, were clubbing all the time. And actually, there was a group of friends that I worked with and half of them got jobs and half of them carried on clubbing.

And, you know, some of my friends had drug issues. So I didn't really, it's so common in kind of metropolitan gay culture that I never really thought I had a problem. It was only when my friend said to me, I knew I had a problem with self-esteem and kind of maybe seen a reckless behavior and not feeling great about myself and so on.

But it wasn't until my friend said, you've got a drink issue and you need to sort it out that I went into recovery for it. And I really resisted that for a long time. I remember saying to my mum, he says I've got a drink problem just because he has.

I really kicked off about it. It took me a long time to really face the fact that, yeah. To be honest with you, I definitely need to not drink.

But I think, yeah, the bigger problems were the anxiety, actually, and the self-esteem, which, you know, obviously those are things that are often underneath problematic drinking, aren't they? So funny enough, a therapist I saw once said work addiction was, she thought was my biggest thing, this idea that I had to have a good job and, you know, have this perfect life. So it was taking this lid off this huge mixture of complicated issues that were underneath my drinking.

[Matthew Todd]
It is very complicated because, you know, I had a hard time with the label. Like, well, I can't be an alcoholic because of this and this and this. I don't have those things, right?

All those yets. Like, well, I don't have all these DUIs. I don't have, like, there's all these things that you see around you that that is alcoholism.

But, you know, really kind of dealing with those inner things that you're talking about, the thinking. Like, one of the things that I have learned in alcoholism in my journey is that my thinking, I think differently about things than other people, right? And alcohol is just the first part of that, you know, Matthew, that I think differently about.

I think differently about a whole lot of different things. So you're talking about work-aholism and anxiety disorders and all that. You know, I've had all of that.

I've struggled with all of that on my journey. How has it been for you in this last decade? And congratulations.

It's a huge accomplishment is having 10 years sober. What's the biggest lesson that you've learned over this period of time, Matthew, that your journey has taught you to this recovery that you have now?

[Damon Frank]
I guess that maybe the world is quite dysfunctional. We don't get told the truth about things. Like, I wish I had known earlier on, you know, the narrative, the cultural narrative, certainly in the UK.

And I do think we drink an incredibly high amount in the UK. I think we have a massive problem with alcohol here. And everyone says it.

Even my American friends, when they come here, they say, my God, you guys really drink a lot. I think that cultural thing where, you know, you're encouraged to drink and it's pushed on you and it's at every social event. And I don't think there's been a culture, although that is changing now, but certainly when I was growing up, there's not a culture of being kind to yourself and looking at your inner demons and your inner issues.

And, you know, I have family members who just say, you know, put yourself together. And I understand where they're coming from because sometimes you do have to just pull yourself together. Or certainly in the past, people didn't have the luxury, you know, working a job or whatever.

So just being able to focus on myself and realizing that it's okay to, you know, to look at what's going on for you. And that's really important.

[Matthew Todd]
Let's talk about your book, Straightjacket. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I find this just really interesting.

You know, you've been able to accomplish a lot in your sobriety and obviously the book is one of it. So tell us a little bit about that.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, it's a book. The therapist that helped me realize what was going on for me, that basically the stress and the trauma of growing up gay when I did in the 80s, in particular when HIV and AIDS was exploding and the press was very, very homophobic. That really damaged me.

It really damaged my self-esteem, my sense of who I was. And he helped me see that. He gave me an American book called The Velvet Rage by a famous Californian author called Alan Downs, which is a great book.

And so I wrote a big feature in Attitude, the magazine where I was the editor. We had a huge post bag about that article, more than we'd ever had before or since. And so I wrote my take on the damage that is done to LGBT people, gay men in particular, growing up by our culture.

There is definitely a disproportionately high problem with drug misuse, alcohol misuse, self-esteem, suicide ideation, all of these horrible things. And in the LGBT community, not to say that there aren't many, many happy LGBT people. Of course there are.

But there's a disproportionate number of us struggling with some of those issues. And I think until really I wrote about it in 2010 and pushed The Velvet Rage forward, which then became a big hit in the UK, there wasn't really a big discussion about that happening. And I think we need to.

I don't need to tell you. Of course we need to talk about these things. But it feels like it's common sense now.

10, 12, 13, 14 years ago, it didn't feel like it was something we could talk about. So that's what the book's about, basically.

[Matthew Todd]
Do you feel in the UK, I know here, Matthew, I've seen a lot of discussion about trauma, which is, I know you write about that a lot, anxiety. I've seen recovery really turn into a bigger mental health discussion. I will tell you, in 93, when I came in, and I just did a, we have a new show that we're launching, A Recovered Life.

It's about this conversation with this guy that I've known for 30 years in recovery. He was my first 12-step sponsor. And we have this little show that we're doing where we just talk about things, what's going on in our lives.

And we were saying the other day about how shocking it is about for us to see just this change of discussion to mental health. No one cared about mental health when you first got sober. They cared about physical sobriety and are you going to be able to physically stay sober.

Happiness, mental health recovery, all that stuff was kind of, that was kind of something like, oh, great. That's great. If you could make that happen, that's great.

But now I really see this being really a mental health discussion that really alcoholism addiction in general is turning into a bigger mental health discussion. Do you find that there in the UK as well? I know it's happening here in Los Angeles.

[Damon Frank]
Yeah, for sure. There is definitely a change. There's definitely a lot of talk about well-being and mental health.

I think there's a campaign here called Time to Talk. And certainly on TV, on ITV, which is one of the main channels here, they're doing this campaign about everybody stopping and having a conversation about mental health, which is great. But I've always been slightly frustrated by that because it's not just talking about it.

It's about action, isn't it? It's about access to healthcare and therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists and stuff. And also I think maybe the actual discussion of addiction hasn't happened as much as it could do here because sometimes addiction is messy.

It's not just like the adverts on the TV you see here about mental health talking. It's like wearing a sweater and having a cup of cocoa and having a nice cozy talk. Well, we know that addiction can become dangerous.

People die. It can become very messy. There can be violence.

There can be relationship breakups. It's a very painful, gritty thing to talk about. I don't think we're quite at that point to be able to discuss that properly yet.

But hopefully we're moving in the right direction. Yeah.

[Matthew Todd]
Friends that I have in recovery that are from the UK say there's a lot more drinking there. It's just much more woven into the culture. I know here, not as much.

I would say definitely in the 90s and early 2000s it was kind of phasing out here more. And now you have people that are having conversations that are just choosing not to drink. They've never really had any ramifications from alcohol.

It's never stopped them from doing anything. But they're just choosing not to do it as a lifestyle because they don't think it adds anything to them. And I think that's a great...

It's great that people are becoming aware of this. That, hey, why start it if I could possibly go into alcoholism? If it's not working for me, why do it?

[Damon Frank]
Yes. You know what? Since the pandemic, actually, I think there is more of a conversation here about younger people drinking.

I keep hearing that in the media, that people are saying lots of younger people are not drinking at all. And partly because we have the cost of living crisis. I know I've seen in America that there's a lot of talk of Biden and inflation where it's across the world.

We have it here. We have a massive inflation problem here. And people can't afford to go out.

Drinks are so expensive. So I saw someone the other day saying, no, I'm taking a pottery course instead. So I think there's a narrative of younger people not drinking.

But what you said about the UK, we definitely... The drink problem here is crazy. If you go out across cities and towns, large towns across the UK, Friday, Saturday nights, it's like carnage.

It's people kind of falling over the street and vomiting. And it was a joke when I was growing up. People would just, you know, how many pints can you have?

I'll drink you under the table. That culture was just completely prominent. And it's still there.

So I definitely think the entirety of the UK needs to stop and actually have the conversation about why is it that we drink so much? What is really going on for us underneath that?

[Matthew Todd]
I love that. I love that. Because that is really the bigger conversation, what's really going on, right?

Not just the stuff on the outside, but what's happening on the inside. And that's why your article and book, I think, is so important. You know, in conclusion here, Matthew, if somebody's listening to this and is like, you know what, wow, like what Matthew's talking about here, I could really relate to this.

But I just don't know. Getting sober is scary. I feel like I'm losing my best friend, you know, with alcohol.

What would be your advice to them?

[Damon Frank]
Well, I had all those thoughts. I was worried, you know, what would I do with the time? You know, I'd have all this time and I've managed to fill the time.

I guess I can relate to the idea of alcohol being your best friend. But life is just so much easier on the other side. You know, my life is still complicated.

I'm still dealing with some of those anxiety issues. And I think that's a really interesting next step. What is it about our thinking?

What is it about our personalities that drive us to have this high anxiety and then medicate with drink? So that's an interesting place to go next. But I would just say reach out, take that step.

And it's not, you know, it's one day at a time, isn't it? You don't have to commit to anything. Just start exploring, you know, what's going on for you.

And know that if you ask for help, you will get help.

[Matthew Todd]
Such an encouraging story. Thank you so much for coming on today. Guys, we're going to put a link to the article that we were speaking about in The Guardian.

I think it's just a really great read. As well as a link to Matthew's book. So you can pick that up there.

Matthew, where can people buy your book?

[Damon Frank]
From all good retailers like, you know, Amazon and stuff like that. It's available, yeah.

[Matthew Todd]
Love it. We're going to put links there, guys, so everybody can pick that up. Matthew, thank you so much for coming on The Recovered Life Show today.

[Damon Frank]
Thanks for having me. Nice to talk to you.

[Matthew Todd]
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