Transforming Lives Through Alcohol Use Awareness w/Duncan Bhaskaran Brown

0:00 My guest today is Duncan Baskeron Brown, author, speaker and Morris Dancer. Welcome Duncan. Well, thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to having a lovely conversation. Yes, of course. Okay. So before we get to what you do, could you tell us who is Duncan? Oh, that's a very good question, isn't it? So Duncan is the husband to a beautiful wife, the father to a beautiful daughter, the keeper of two average looking bonsai trees. In his spare time, he likes inline skating and he collects silver coins.

0:41 He also does quite enjoy referring to himself in the third person, apparently. So, yeah. I mean, what I do all day, well, I think people kind of misunderstand what I do. I think a lot of people think that what I do is I help people to stop drinking, but that's not really it. What I do is I help people to start living. Okay. Another side of the coin. Okay. Great. Okay, thanks for sharing that with us. And before I even get into anything else, I did a little bit of research, but I also want you to tell us, what is Morris dancing? So Morris dancing is a kind of English folk dancing.

1:23 If you picture just about the most English scene you can think of, kind of like a village green somewhere on a sunny day, and then stick a load of people in white trousers, white shirts, bells, ribbons, hats with flowers on, some traditional English folk music and a bit of dancing involving waving henkies, you have pretty much now imagined Morris dancing. Okay. All right. Thank you. I thought I'd mess with you with that. Okay. Okay. So you mentioned drinking and I know this, we met a pod match and I know this on your profile, that's something you talk a lot about.

2:06 I have some familiarity with, with people in my family. And, and so I wanted to ask you why this focus is Well, funny you should mention having some familiarity with it. I get that an awful lot. And I think that's part of the reason. Like almost every time I tell somebody what I do, they tell me their experience, whether that's their own experiences or their experiences with a loved one or somebody close to them. And That really motivates me to do what I do because I can see the scale of the problem, like literally confronted with it on a daily basis.

2:53 So, yeah, I'm very passionate about it because I see it's work that needs doing. Of course, you know, I mean, I got into this line of work because I had a bit of a problem with alcohol myself and I got out the other side. And I don't tell my wife and daughter, but it's the best thing I've ever done. And, you know, the difference between me when I was drinking and now it's just it's so huge. The amount of energy and focus and peace and joy that it brought into my life. I kind of I almost feel like I'd be a bit mean if I didn't try and share that with people. All right. So, yeah, I can appreciate that.

3:35 But, I mean, people always tell you that, you know, what's wrong with it? I mean, I can stop when I want to. And, you know, I'm an adult, I can drink. What is the problem with that state of mind? So I think that kind of speaks to a broader problem that we have in society, that we don't really... fully appreciate what moderate drinking actually looks like if you look at the research uh you'll find that what a lot of people define as moderate drinking is actually kind of quite serious problem drinking there are some people who who genuinely would define moderate drinking as anything short of drinking first thing in the morning and that's not the case you know you You don't even have to drink every day to have a problem with drinking.

4:27 So I think, you know, the problem is that we just don't talk about it. Sure, we talk about drinking. We talk about, you know, well, of course, you should have a gin and Sonic. It's half past four on a Tuesday afternoon. You know, we talk about wine o'clock. We talk about beers with the Super Bowl. But we don't really talk about what actual low-risk people Drinking looks like so we have this kind of fairly distorted view and therefore we come up with all of these kind of like illusions of truth like well yeah I obviously don't have a problem because I can control it I can stop whenever I want to and I you know I see that every year I see people they stop they do dry January they don't drink for a month they think haha I've got this beaten they start drinking again in February they're probably a bit better in February uh you know March they're still fairly good but come April May time it's started to get a bit damp hasn't it as soon as the summer hits They're drinking just as much as they were before dry January.

5:27 By the time they get around to December the next year, they're thoroughly bored, fed up with drinking. You know, they're really not enjoying it. So they think, oh, I'll do dry January again. And it just puts this kind of like temporary plaster onto it. But it lulls them into this false sense of security, this belief that just because you can stop for a little while, that doesn't mean you've got a problem. I think in general, you know, we need to have more conversations about what genuine, actual low risk drinking looks like. So thank you for allowing me the opportunity to do that. Yes, of course. And I mean, it is a complicated matter, isn't it? Because... it's a generally accepted principle in society.

6:12 Whatever society you're in, yeah, it's okay to have a drink, right? But is the drinking the problem when Nobody knows you're drinking. Is that, is that what you think it is? Because yeah, I could come on and have a drink with you and you know, okay, she drinks, but I could go home and I have several bottles hidden somewhere. See, I'm familiar with it. So is that the problem? I mean, you have just accurately described me 10 years ago. You know, we would have gone out for a nice drink and you'd think, Duncan, he's a lovely fella. He obviously doesn't have a problem with drinking because, you know, he only had a glass, maybe a glass and a half.

6:53 He was very, very controlled. And I absolutely was very, very controlled when I was in front of other people. It was when I got home and I started drinking on my own. You know, of course, people don't realise that. And You know, I think it's interesting when you say it is generally accepted within society. It certainly is within Western societies. You know, in the Western world, around 80% of people drink. I mean, it varies from country to country, but it hovers around there. Of course, in North Africa and the Middle East, you know, 95% of people never drink.

7:33 In Africa, the averages are about 60% of people never drink. Even in Asia, particularly if you exclude China and Japan, you know, there is a very high proportion of people don't drink, largely Large numbers of people in India never, ever drink. Not simply the Muslims, many of the Hindus don't drink. A lot of the Sikhs don't drink as well. In fact, they have national days where it's illegal to sell alcohol in India. So, you know, we certainly could imagine a society where alcohol wasn't quite as pervasive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As I said, it is a complicated topic.

8:16 I want to discuss it in the format of the connection between work and this drinking or this place where you find yourself where the alcohol controls you more than normal life. So tell us how you overcame the challenge, how it affected you, you know, and how you overcame the challenge. I think that idea of it controlling you and taking over your life That is very much to the point.

8:59 I genuinely used to plan pretty much everything around having a drink. You know, I wouldn't mind going out. I wouldn't mind going to a meeting in the evening. I'd happily sit through a very dull meeting. So long as it finished round about nine o'clock, maybe quarter past nine, because that would give me enough time to... pop into the shop that closed at 10 o'clock on the way home. I was quite happy about that. But it was always, you know, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, where is my next drink coming from? I wasn't drinking all day. I would only drink in the evening, but it was always on my mind. And it's that idea of it controlling you that I find people dislike the most about it.

9:43 So what did I do? Well, I mean, for me, the first thing... was I kind of got to a point where I realized that it was not serving me. It wasn't helping me. So my wife had a miscarriage and, you know, that was incredibly hard on her. The thing that made it a lot worse, of course, was my way of coping with difficult emotions and hard times was to just, you know, pour myself into a bottle of wine. And that obviously didn't help her. I mean, that was pretty much the worst thing I could do. And that created a lot of tension in our relationship. And it forced me to think about it.

10:24 And it forced me to ask myself, what was it that I wanted from life? You know, do I want another drink? Or do I want to start a family? And I think that It's really important to kind of recognize and acknowledge the fact that that's the first step. Just simply realizing that, you know, there might be another way that you might have a problem, that you might want to do something different. That is such a huge step. And anybody listening who's sort of taken that step or in the process of taking that step, great. You know, it is really, really important. It is only the first step. Once you've decided that you've got a problem, though, you can actually at least solve it.

11:05 Because if you aren't aware that you've got a problem, it's quite hard to solve it. So once you've got the awareness, there are lots of different approaches. So you do group programs. I'm sure all of your listeners have heard of Alcoholics Anonymous or AA. You know, that's about the most famous group program. But there's lots of others. There's Smart Recovery. There's Life Ring. There's Recovery Dharma. Lots of different programs that suit different people. Some people will work with a therapist. Some people will work with a recovery coach. The kind of work that I do is called cognitive realignment, if you want a fancy title. So it's a bit like cognitive behavioural therapy, which I'm sure your listeners have heard of.

11:47 Basically, what I do is I take the beliefs that you have around alcohol and I ask you some questions about them. I get you to actually think about them because most people... I don't think they quite realise just how much your beliefs dictate your actions. Voting is a great example. Why do you go all the way off to the polling station, often in bad weather, often to vote for somebody who you're not even that keen on? Why do you do it? It's because you believe democracy is important and your beliefs drive your behavior. So we start by getting to grips with your beliefs. Once you've changed your beliefs about alcohol, if you don't believe that it's providing you with anything, if you don't believe it's giving you anything, it's not helping you in any way, then actually not drinking it is the easy bit, isn't it?

12:35 Because, you know, why would you do something if you don't believe it's serving you? We also do a little bit around thought management, you know, getting between that kind of the event and the response sort of thing but that's uh that's fairly straightforward once you've once you've got your beliefs under control the actions tend to follow yeah yeah definitely it is the mindset isn't it absolutely yeah all right and i should point out that the the the lack of control with alcohol isn't the only thing that you could lose control with, like food, you know, and there are other things. Because sometimes we look at, you know, he's an alcoholic, but then you go home and eat too much food.

13:17 So, you know, we should point out that it's just one of those things that somebody can cling to. Yeah, it's not even the only thing that I've lost control with, you know? Yeah. I mean... So I talk a lot about alcohol because I think it was the biggest problem that I had in my life. But I was also smoking and eating junk food, which are two other classic things that people tend not to have any control over. But then again, the world is rich with things to remove your control these days. It's very easy to fall into traps with social media, with online games, with... shopping with work with even going to the gym so yeah if you really want to you can find a way of numbing yourself and distracting yourself almost with anything yes that's true full confession mine is reading Well, at least you do get something out of reading.

14:19 I do read an awful lot and I don't think it's quite become unhealthy yet. I don't quite ignore my wife to read books, but it's close. All right. Okay. So you tell us a little about what you do for your clients and tell us how we can get in touch with you. If you have a podcast or a book, you just talk about those things. Yeah, so if you do like reading, I would love to offer your listeners a little gift. My first book, Get Over Indulgence. If you put getover.uk, that's getover.uk, put that into your search engine of choice. It'll take you to a little bit of my website and then you can download a copy of the book, either a PDF or Kindle version.

15:02 And yeah, that's totally free. So please have a look at that. You might even learn something. But I don't want to ruin it. I mean, mostly it is just an entertaining little story about how I got into the problems that I had and how I got out of it. Like I say, I don't want to dwell on the fact that there might be some education in there. It's mostly just fun. And the jokes aren't that bad. So, yeah, that's getover.uk. That'll take you to my website. I also run a podcast called Flat Pack Sober, which is tips, tricks and tactics to design your alcohol-free life. So that is for people who have already stopped drinking and helping them to do the kind of things that are protective and that keep you sober and stop you going back.

15:45 Oh, awesome. All right. We'll put those links in the show now to the podcast and your website. Um, so great. Thank you. What is Duncan grateful for today? Oh, I, you know what? I have had such a really, really good day. I've been writing a book proposal, uh, recently and the the one bit that I never like doing with book proposals is the overview it's always the hardest bit you've got to like cram everything into it you've got to get that and I finally plucked up the courage this week to do it and I I kind of finished it today or at least like a workable first draft and I was quite pleased with it so that was simply the highlight of quite a good day Okay.

16:28 Well, congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, sure. And we'll look out for the book when it's published. Yeah. All right. So can you give us a couple of tips, especially to podcasters? You know, I've had a couple of podcasters come on who talk about their battle of with addiction and how they've overcome and they're now this successful person. So give a couple of tips to someone who may be in the throes of addiction and really do want to get out of it. So one of the things that I think is really helpful is the examples of people who have got out of it.

17:12 So if you can see people who found a way through, I think that's enormously useful. That shows you that, A, you're not alone, that you're not the only person with this problem. You know, you're not some sort of like... deadbeat terrible person who's just you're just actually like a human being and it's cool because you quite like human beings and everything um so yeah examples of people who've got the other side it makes you feel less alone shows you that there is another way and that's one of the greatest things that i've discovered doing podcasts i've done um over 100 podcast interviews and Those are for other people rather than for my own podcast.

17:52 And one of the things that keeps coming up is the amount of podcast hosts that don't drink. Either they've had their own kind of fairly extreme experiences, or actually they just got to the point where they realized that it was getting in the way of what they wanted to do. And so the podcast sphere is literally full of successful people who have decided to turn their back on alcohol. So if you're looking for some examples, then I think, you know, the world of podcasting is a great one. When you get under the surface, so many of the most successful podcasters don't drink. And, you know, it's not all of their success.

18:33 It's not like a magic cure. If you stop drinking, you will suddenly be top 0.05% or whatever the current gold standard is these days. But it helps. So find some examples. And there's plenty out there. The other thing that I, you know, I can't repeat too often. Unless you are aware that you have a problem, you cannot deal with your problem. One of my favorite people, Dr. Dean Ornish, said awareness is the first step. It's always the first step. So if you have. If you're starting to question your drinking. Great. Well done. You are really taking some positive steps.

19:16 you're doing the right thing but don't stop there you know go and find some help there are a lot of people out there that want to help you uh you know i mentioned a lot of group programs group programs are full of people who are insanely glad that they stopped drinking and started to build a much better life and they want to share that with you every single sober coach i've ever met is exactly the same you know the Pretty much everybody I've ever met who stopped drinking wants to help because we know how bad it was and how good it can be. So that is why we are here doing what we do. We genuinely want to help. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate you, Duncan Baskaran-Brown, for coming and talking to us on Tools of the Podcast Trade.

19:59 Any parting shots? Yeah, you know, I think podcasting is the greatest medium I've come across. I mean, I do love writing. I genuinely love writing. I've been doing it for years and years and years. But it's very solitary. And I tend to sit in a coffee shop on my own, occasionally talking to the people that work there. But it's pretty solitary and it's kind of on your own. But podcasting, you get to meet people from all over the world. You get to have some amazing, wonderful conversations. So if you're thinking about it, do it. If you're already doing it, do it more. If you're doing it as much as you possibly can, just keep at it, my friend.

20:40 Amen. Thank you. I appreciate it, Duncan. My pleasure. Sure.