The Powerlessness of a Promising Young Boxer – John K.

Hello my name is John Keegan and I'm an alcoholic and this is another in my series of DVDs that I made purely to help people especially in the early days in detox, rehab, prison, bolster, When you don't know where to go your head is all over the place and this is the youngest man I've ever had sit for me to do a talk. Abraham or Ebby as most of us call him, he's only 20 years old. It's scary they're getting younger and younger but in the start younger and younger, so the whole thing's gone haywire. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with 20 year olds having a drink, or 18 year olds or even 16 year olds. But Abraham is one of us. He's an alcoholic. He can't drink safely. He is powerless over alcohol. He cannot not go out for an evening and predict what's going to happen because the booze gets in and it takes over and it decides where you go. It's not usually good, it usually brings out the beast and the bad stuff in you. I've been there myself, I've had all kinds of trouble And it's no coincidence since I stopped drinking, I don't get in any trouble at all. None. And that goes for most of the people I know in recovery. So I think that does tell you it's not an excuse. It's not a cop out, it's a fact. And you're not really responsible until you realise it. I think when you realise, like me now, if I was to go out and have a drink, God forbid, and did something terrible, I'd be responsible. Because I know my power is over alcohol. I know. And I think Ibby does now. He's been listening to the right people, he's been around the right people. He was a promising young boxer and he got stopped, you know, he got sort of grounded in the early days when he was feeling good and wanted to go all the way, wanted to go places. And he took the easy option, he went with his mates like young people do and he drank like young people do, and he smoked dope like young people do. And I'm not condoning any of it but that's a fact as well, that's what young people do. I think it's better to acknowledge it than try and make out it doesn't happen. It does happen that starting younger and younger is becoming more and more of a problem. But as I said, if he's one of us and he will never drink safely never he will never be able to predict the outcome after one drink it's like we're allergic you know it's just not for us there's loads of things we can do we can't take alcohol or drugs we can take mood altering chemicals total abstinence as the only way and he's got back in training now and it really has made a difference to his life. It's what he was missing, it's what he needed and with the counseling and the groups and the training his head is cleared and his body is clearing he's getting fit again and as he would tell tell you himself, there's no contest, absolutely no contest between feeling clear and sober and drunk. And he hasn't got the shame of... He's a proud young man and quite rightly so but he went down and he has the shame from falling around the street and getting in trouble him and the guilt for his mom and his family. It's not good stuff for a young man, guilt and shame, but that's what it does, that's alcohol does to you. It brings you to the depths. I hit the depths myself and they say everyone has the rock button, well I had mine and I don't ever want another one. And that's why I do these DVDs and that's why I've been involved in this now for nearly 20 years. If you see someone walk towards the edge of a cliff, it's a natural reaction to try and stop. And that's what I do. I know I can't stop anyone drinking. I can stop anyone taking drugs. But I can plant the seeds and hope that one day they'll come back. And that's what happened with AB. That's exactly what happened. I think in the early days of seeing him he thought, have I told a very boring old bastard for words to that effect? All the stuff that I would have said and did say, told him to the face. I couldn't handle being told I had a drink problem or a drug problem. I couldn't handle being preached to and I try not to preach. I try every trick that I can think of to get through to people without using any of the stuff that put me off but there again what put me off might not put other people off so I'm just playing it all by ear and I treat each individual how I feel they should be treated. And I'm waffling on, this is about Ibby and I'm really glad he did his talk because we need young people because there's so much young people now in detoxes and rehabs that couldn't identify with me, they might learn something from me but they can't identify with me. But a fit great looking young man like Ibi, they can. And he's got a good story to tell and a good message to pass on. And we've got him immortalised now, and he'll be helping people forever. And I hope to God that... I hope he makes it because it would be very nice, it would be really nice if he made it as a boxer and went all the way. I don't know, I wish him, I really do wish him all the best and I'd be there to cheer him on. But I think you'll find in the next year or so, he will find the best boxing club he's ever been in is mine. Alcohol is synonymous. When I say mine, it's everybody's. It's everybody who wants it. And it really rocks, it's magic it took me a long time to get into it it's medic it really does the business and I love see young people grow when I see them here every Sunday six months four months 18 months 22 months I love watching them grow young people with a future without alcohol or drugs leading good lives not in any trouble. They don't get in any trouble. Put them back on the booze and they're a menace to society. Anyway, I'll hand you over to everyone. Ibby has come to tell his story and share his experience, friends and hope. He's a real nice fellow. He is a real gentleman. I hope you get something for me to talk. Thank you very much. My name is Ibrahim and I'm an alcoholic, I'm 20 years old and I live in Hounslow. The youngest of three, I've got two older brothers, I am 20 years I've got a brother who's 22 and an elder brother who is 26, and I live with my mum. I grew up all my life in Hounslow, I haven't lived anywhere else and I went to school in either for design for boys school and had a alright decent upbringing there was no problems financially my mom was fine we didn't live with my dad but everything was fine at school i was average people wasn't really in the top classes or anything like that just average. Never was keen on studying but I enjoyed to be at school, I enjoyed to be around my friends, surrounded by my friends. I wasn't really super super fit I wasn' t into the sports but I used to play rugby as well for my school and that that was about it really on my social time i never really used to do much i just used to chill out with my friends never really had no hobbies or nothing never smoked or drank just used to go out with my friends. I used to do social things with my friends really, never done much. When I was about 15 years old a friend of mine from school told me that his eldest brother was getting getting married and he went with his parents to look for a hall, to hire out, to help their wedding ceremony. And where he went to, he sees that there was a boxing gym next to where where they were looking to get higher up the hall and he came to school and he mentioned to me that there was a boxing club and it was exciting and everything like he'd seen people exercising, he wanted me to come with him to train so I'd gone with him and I went there for a few sessions and I enjoyed it. I wasn't really majorly fit but I just enjoyed the training and everything. Plus I used to like watching boxing on TV as well so it was a bonus for me to participate in the training. When I did start boxing, it started off as just a keep fit thing. I wasn't looking to pursue anything, it was just to go do my training That was it. My friend also was coming with me as well, so it was a social thing as well. A few of my friends were going up there and was training. When I got to 16 years old, I started increasing the training. I was training almost on a daily basis. The boxing training, I was going running and I was really, really into my fitness. At school I wasn't, there was nothing that had drawn me into any type of sport or anything. The rugby, I stopped playing rugby and I never used to play football or anything like that but the boxing really, really, I got hooked on it. I was just training every day, I loved it and things were going alright. I think when I got to about 16, just coming up to 17, I told my boxing trainer that I wanted to start fighting for real in amateur champs fights. and he said to me that the club that I was fighting at wasn't an amateur boxing club so he suggested a boxing gym that was well known, a well established boxing gym in Hanwell and he told me they had a lot of fighters there and it was a good club So he told me where it was and I started going to that gym. At the same time, I was going to college as well. I went to West Thames College and I was doing a course in web designing. I felt like I just went to college, to be honest with you, just to keep my mum happy because when I left my GCSEs I didn't get good grades and she wanted me to continue with my education So I just decided to do that. But at college things wasn't really going well. My coursework, I wasn't doing no coursework. I wasn�t really attending lessons and I was more keen on just the training, just dedicating my time to exercising. My mum was happy that I was boxing. She didn't at once say, oh you shouldn't box or anything like that. She was actually happy that I was training because both of my older brothers they smoke and they drink and she didn't really like to see them drink or smoke and she was trying to influence them to stop as well. But my eldest brother used to play cricket but he stopped playing cricket years ago and she was happy that i was boxing training but she did want me to continue in education. education. But a few months after starting college I dropped out just before December for the new years, I couldn't keep up with the coursework and I wasn't really keen on education. I also was working at that time as well at Waitrose on a weekend job, I was working there in Twickenham. It was okay, I didn't really enjoy it, it was just something for extra money. At the time I had to pay for my boxing training and everything like that and just going out and I didn' t really like to take money off my mum so I decided to work there. Apart from that I was just doing my training. I never drank or smoked I was actually put off by smoke and alcohol, I didn't like the taste of it. When I was 17 I had my first amateur fight, it was in Hays and I'd been training really hard for it, I was really nervous but I won the fight, a unanimous decision and it felt felt really good and from there I really did want to pursue my boxing career as a profession. I wanted to do my training and take it really seriously. After that, my second fight I had won again on a unanimous decision. My third fight I'd won, my fourth fight and my fifth So I had 5 straight wins and things were going really well for me. I was just really hyped up, I was quite popular amongst my friends and everything because they knew me as a boxer, I never drank, I'm always into training, I've never really went out much. There was occasions where my friends would go out to parties or anything like that and I would give it a miss because I had to go training the next day. I was just really focused on my boxing training and I thought to myself that apart from, if I wasn't boxing I wouldn't be doing nothing really because education, I wasn' t really intelligent, I was'nt studying, I wa'n't qualified in anything and my job at Waitrose was just a part time thing just for extra money but my boxing was something that I really had a passion for and I loved it. Also I had a lot of friends from my boxing gym, I met I met new friends from there and they were people that were really into their fitness and keeping fit. We used to go out with each other and things like that. On my sixth fight, I entered the U-19 UK Championship and I boxed in that and I came in the semifinals. The person that I lost to was the last year's champion and I had lost the fight just on points. It was a really close fight and I was actually happy with my effort that I put into that fight. I felt like if I had just trained a little bit more, I could have probably won that fight and Iwas 18 at the time and this tournament was for under 19s and I had another chance to enter it next year because I would still be 19. and my aim was really just to enter that tournament and just win the championships because I've told the people that win that they can box for England, the England squad so that was my goal. Apart from that there was nothing really going on in my life I never had a girlfriend or nothing like that at home things were alright. My brothers, the relationship with my brothers was okay. We never really fought or nothing like that. They were quite happy that I used to box. In fact they used to be happy and proud to tell their friends that my brother doesn't smoke or nothing like that and my mum was really happy. My dad knew that I use to box as well. My Dad used to play cricket so he knows about fitness and everything and in fact teachers from our old school soon to come found out i started boxing as well and i bumped into a few of them where i work at waitrose and they came up to me and said oh we heard you're boxing now and they were they were in fact they were quite impressed as well especially because at school i never really participated in any sports activities or anything like that um i'll say as a whole my whole my life was uh it was good i was happy with the way things were going I felt like I had a goal to achieve and my aim was just to continue with my boxing training. In May of, I can't remember, I think it was about three years ago when I was 17 or 18, My club had a fallout with the management of where they were holding the community centre. In the community center there was a dispute over something and we had to leave the club. We had to left the club and we wasn't even given a notice, we had leave quite immediately. It was a dispute over, I can't even remember what it was over, something stupid and I really wish they had just discussed it or come to an agreement or something like that instead of falling out on bad terms because what it meant was that the club was closed down and there was nowhere to train or nothing like that but I was told that my boxing trainer had told me that the council had found my club a new place to train and they were given a grant of £100,000 or something like that to get new equipment and everything and he was telling me not to worry, things would be alright. The new gym would have running machines and then new boxing rings and everything, and he was telling it would be much better than the last one and so I thought to myself okay for the summer time I can go on a little break or whatever and come September my clubs would be opened and um I would be able to enter the tournament that I was eager to enter and hopefully win it but things didn't go according to plan in June I was running, I went running with my friends I had twisted my ankle really, really badly, sprained it and it swelled up. It was in a really bad state and I got an x-ray and I was told that there was no bone broken but a torn muscle and the doctors advised me to rest it. In amateur boxing the season starts in September and ends in May and I had injured my leg in in June or July and I thought to myself that it would only be a month at the most that it would take for my leg to get better. I wasn't really too concerned because I thought I still had enough time to train for September and my club would be ready by then. Apart from that there was nothing really happening, I just rested my leg hoping for it to get better and I was just looking to get back into training. But my leg, I didn't rest it as I should have. I rested it maybe two to three weeks and then I continued walking, going out with my friends. I was putting a lot of weight on it and then it wasn't, it was actually making the leg worse. When I started, I couldn't even walk maybe 100 metres and I would have to sit down because my leg would be too painful, I'd have to seat down was too much strain and I really regret it. I really wish I'd just rested it for it to be fully recovered. In that time, I was waiting for my club to reopen. I was keeping in contact with my boxing trainer. I would ring him up every so often asking him just generally how things are going, what's happening with the council and he had told me that the council had the place that they had been given it was a health and safety something about the building had to be redone. It wasn't safe for people to go in there and train so he told me it could be a few more months for the club to reopen which got me annoyed because I was quite eager to train but at the same time I was patient because I thought to myself my leg isn't fully healed so that hopefully when my leg is healed up I can start training again. But time was running out because this tournament would have started in September and I should have been training around August time and it was coming up to August and my leg hadn't gotten better. It took maybe in total nine months for my leg to heal up. I didn't rest it at first and by putting the weight on it, it could have delayed the healing process. I've been really, really annoyed and angry and upset that because of my leg injury I wasn't able to enter this tournament, something that I had been looking forward to. I was really really confident that I would have won this, I was positive, I had the ability to win this tournament and I was very confident. I rang up my trainer and told him how annoyed I was with how things had been going, that I've injured my leg, I've missed out on this tournament I wasn't allowed to enter it next year because I would have been over the age limit and the fact that my club hasn't opened up yet. I was also speaking to people from my other boxing gym, just finding out how they've been, what they've doing with themselves, have they found a new gym? And a lot of them had just moved on. They said that one of them got a job as a fitness trainer, another one had just stopped stop training completely and just doing nothing. A few of them had found new clubs and a few of the others were just waiting for the new gym to open up. I ran October-November time with so much time on my hands doing nothing, I don't know if if it was out of boredom or if I had nothing to do or whatever but I started drinking more often. I would drink maybe, I'd start off drinking once every few weeks as just one night I thought to myself I can drink even though I was put off by drinking at first because I had enough to do and I had gained a little bit of weight as well from me not not being able to walk or just do any type of exercise I put on weight and my interest apart from boxing though I had no other interest I wasn't really doing nothing with myself and my friends from school and local neighborhood friends they were living the lifestyle of every working or doing whatever studying and when it comes to having social plans would be drinking. That was all that was going on, drinking and smoking, that's all that they were looking forward to on weekends or any time when they were free. I started spending more time with my friends from my neighbourhood locally and at first there was nothing really to do like with them. They wasn't into exercising or keeping fit and I think their bad habits slowly, I got caught into their bad habits basically that's all that happened. They were drinking, I didn't feel like I could stand in a circle with them and just have a conversation or just chill out with them on a sober head. I felt like I had to drink just to entertain myself. I started off drinking in fact Diamond White which is a cider I was recommended, my friends were telling me one can will get you drunk and I started drinking that really. When I first did start drinking it was exciting because I'd never felt like that before, drunk. I loved it to be honest, I started drinking more and more more often. I just started drinking from once every few weeks to once a week, then maybe once every two days, then coming up to every day just getting drunk. I was waking up, drinking. I even started to smoke cannabis as well, just doing nothing for myself. My mum didn't really clock on that I started drinking until later on when she realised I was coming home drunk on a regular basis and she was asking me what's happening with your training, how come you're not training? I used to make excuses, I'm just waiting for my club to reopen. I'd put on like a stone and a half, I'd putting on a lot of weight because I was limited to to the amount of exercise I could do, I couldn't walk that much or my leg would give in. So what I found myself doing was just whenever my friends would come pick me up in their car they'd suggest, I always suggest let's drink, let's get drunk, let keep ourselves occupied and it actually became a bad habit I'm not going to lie when I was drinking I felt good, I've never felt like this before. I didn't realise the effect that it would have on me later on in my life but at first it was just all fun, there was nothing, I I felt like I had no problems ahead of me. I didn't feel stressed out no more. When I used to think of my boxing club and my training, I would decide to start drinking just to get my mind off it. I'd start smoking cannabis because I enjoyed the way it made me feel still and it just becomes a bad, bad habit. Around December time I rang up my trainer I hadn't spoken to him in months and I said to him what's going on with my gym, what's happening with the training, my leg was getting better, I could walk now, I wasn't training training but I could walk and I said to him, when's the club opening up? I just told him how I felt. I told him that I started drinking now and he suggested to me just go running in the mornings and just keep yourself fit but there was no progress with the boxing gym. He didn't tell me a date when it would be opened or nothing like that and it was was really, really difficult for me to just get out of the routine that I had got myself into. I started drinking more and more often and I stopped exercising completely. I wasn't doing any type of exercise, I was just, every day I would wake up, ring up my friends who would link up and just get drunk and smoke. I ended up losing my driving licence for drink driving and I got one year banned and at the same time from that itself I should have learnt that the alcohol would slowly, slowly start affecting me in my lifestyle and how things things would go on. Also people that knew me as a boxer, they started to see me on more occasions drunk. I'd be on the street, they'd see me drinking with whatever, they'll see me drunk, pissed and they'll... People how they used to think of me, how they used to respect me as boxer and they used look up to me and ask me or how's training things going, they started seeing me drunk and they started talking about me and a lot of people were telling me you're not really a proper boxer, you're just getting drunk every day. They see me smoking and I felt ashamed, I felt embarrassed, I didn't want wanted to see people see me the way I was. I stopped drinking beer and I started drinking stronger spirits, whiskey and vodka. Also at the same time I started going out a lot more. I never ever used to be the type of person to go to parties and clubs. I wasn't into night clubbing at all to be honest with you, I didn't like the whole atmosphere But what I found myself doing was every weekend going out to parties, clubs. I lost my job at Waitrose because I wasn't attending work. I used to call in sick and I got a lot of warnings and then eventually they asked me to not come in no more. I was fired from my job. I found myself quite lost in my head. I felt like my life was going downhill, but at the same time I didn't want to admit that it was the drink that was causing this problem. I still continued drinking and started smoking more and more often. I think I was just trying to cover the fact that things were going bad for me and I didn't want to admit it and I think that was my scapegoat, to just drink. I started also getting into trouble with the law as well. I started going, I couldn't have a drink and just leave it as that one or two beers. I would end up drinking and getting completely hammered and not knowing what I was doing by the end of the night. I couldn�t handle my drinks to be honest with you. When I would drink I would let all my emotions come out. I couldn �t act civilised or behave properly. I started getting into fights in the streets with people. When I used to drink, I used to get aggressive and I'd lose my temper easily. I got arrested a few times for public disorders and drunken disorderly. I was also arrested for possession of cannabis. I've got caught with cannabis on me and I never really never ever used to get into trouble with the police before but then from this drinking I started seeing the police I started getting in trouble. The police officer started to recognise me as a troublemaker, just a person that used to cause a lot of trouble on the weekends and in fact I was barred from my local town centre in Hounslow from a few of the pubs because I was known to cause a lot of trouble there. But at the same time it didn't stop me, I was just going out to different areas, I was going to London, just getting drunk. I would find any excuse to drink if it was a a friend's birthday or if other friends from university had come down, I would look for any excuse to drink and I wasn't really focused at all. I just let myself slip. Everything had gone downhill. I'd put on a lot of weight by then. Physically and mentally I wasn�t My head didn't feel right. I started getting into a really, really bad habit of my sleeping timetable went wrong. It ends up staying up during the night and going to sleep during the day. My sleeping routine went really bad. My relationship at home went bad with my brothers. I started getting into fights with my brothers over stupid things, arguments over petty little things. Before I never really used to... I used to socially... I could stand to be around my mum. I could speak to her and things like that. When I started drinking and smoking I didn't like to be round my house that much. I didn t want to speak to my mum that much I didn't want to hear what she had to say because every time that I would see her, I felt like she was nagging at me to either get a job or do something. She was always going on about getting a job and sorting myself out and I didn' t want to here none of it. I was not interested at all. And things were just getting worse and worse. Two years ago, the day after Christmas I had gone to a pub with my friends and I drank a lot and I got into a fight with the dancers at the door. They asked me to leave and I refused to leave so they dragged me out. When they took me out, I got into a fist fight with one of them and the other dancer had came out and he had a metal object in his hand and he hit me in the back of my head and I had to get my head stitched up. I was in a real, real bad shape. The doors that they had closed locked me out. I started to kick the door, continuously kicking it, kicking it and my leg went through the glass and it was the same leg that I had injured months ago. I had to get stitches done on my leg, I was in hospital till six in the morning the next day and from there I had to wake up to where I felt like that was it. I said I'm not drinking again, I'm alcohol wasn't for me no more. I thought to myself, that's it, I've had enough. But a week later, I found myself drinking again. I didn't stop. I told everyone, all my friends not to call me no longer and I think I said, I don't want to be drinking no more but I I felt like I had nothing to do, my club still hadn't opened up. I felt lost at the time, I didn't know what to do. I went back to the drink and started drinking again. Knowing that alcohol was my downfall and I couldn't handle my drink, I still decided I decided to drink and I didn't learn my lesson and had got into a lot more trouble from drinking. A lot of incidents with the law, a lot of fallouts with my friends, a lot of bad things have happened to me from the drink. And if I wasn't drinking I would smoke. I didn't want to be normal headed. I couldn't stand to be sober. Things were just getting worse and worse for me. About a year ago, a friend of mine introduced me to John. He told me that this man used to box himself and he had told me he was a counsellor and he could help me with my drink problem. And in fact, he gave John my number and he asked John to get in contact with me. When John rang me, he spoke to me over the phone and he had asked me to come to see him at the Ealing Hospital. If I can remember the first appointment that we had I didn't even turn up. I wasn't really at the time interested to know what he had had to say to me. I was more keen on just him himself as how he used to box. I asked him over the phone or was he a trainer or anything like that and if he could help me in my boxing and I was just more interested to speak to him about the boxing training but he wanted to help me with my drink problem but I was putting it off. I think a few weeks after I spoke to him I had met him and we had a conversation and sat down and he had told me ways to address my problem. He had actually asked me to come for a few group meetings to discuss how my life from boxing training had started, drinking drinking and everything. I wasn't at all interested, I didn't want to speak to no one or even hear about anyone else's problems. I was not interested at all. He still kept on ringing me and insisting to come up here and see, he really wanted me to have this group meet because he wanted me to speak about my problem and how things were going well and how it went bad. He wanted me to also speak to people about my boxing training as well and at the time it was keeping me out of the drinks but I wasn't interested at all. In last August I got into trouble at a pub, I was extremely drunk and I got in to a fight with someone and it got me into a lot of trouble because at the time there was a police officer there that was trying to break up the fight and he got attacked, he got hit by someone that was there and we got pulled down to the ground and I was getting kicked on and the police officer was getting kicked on and when the whole incident had finished and I'd been taken back to the police station, they put me in the police stations and the very next day they didn't speak to me enough but they just put me there. They let me sober up and the next day they said to me that I had assaulted a police officer and I had caused a big, big fire. They said to be that the police officer was injured, he injured his arm and they said it was because of me that the whole fight started. They say I approached someone and cause a big fight. At the time I couldn't believe what had happened, I didn't even realise what had happen, I was denying that I had involvement in it. I was telling the police officers that I was the one that was getting attacked and it was just, I was arrested and I was let out of jail. That was the most serious offence I've had with the law and that made made me think about my future. I was really scared of the outcome of what's going to happen and what would happen and the future of my life, well, what was going to go on. In October as well, in August in fact, I got my licence back. So I was on a one year driving ban and I got my license back. I was really, really excited that I had got my license back, I was driving my mom's car, I had insurance underneath my mom car, and I really felt independent that I'd got my licence back, it cheered me up basically, it made me happy, it just made me feel like things were were getting a little bit better. But the drinking was still, I was still drinking, I didn't stop drinking and six weeks later after having my driving licence back I lost it again for drink driving. I was drink driving often, I never, every time I would get drunk once, I would never be smart enough or intelligent or whatever. I was just stupid to drive and I was excited to have my license back. I think I was trying to show off to my friends as well that I could drive under the influence of alcohol and we'd go out drinking and just after getting my license I lost it again for drink driving. I called a speeding police police officer pulled me over and they had breathalysed me and I lost my licence. This time I was given a three year ban which I was devastated, I could not, I was just, I said to myself when I got my licence back that I would not lose it again. I was happy to have it back and I left it straight after six weeks later and I felt really gutted especially that all my friends had still got their driving licenses and they had never never drink-drived, they were sensible and also that they had never been in trouble with the police. They could drink and just handle their drink and everything for them was okay. They can drink and not have a bad time and they could have fun but for me whenever I would get drunk even though I I loved it. I would end up making myself look like a fool. By the end of May, it would be me. I'd be the entertainment of the night. I'll be entertaining my friends. I've been doing stupidness. I decided to get back in contact with John just to speak to him about my problems and I wanted to address some issues about how things had been going on and I started seeing him more and more often. At first it was just one-on-one sessions, it was just him and me talking but he... I finally started going through counselling group group meetings discussing about the issues of alcohol, how the effects this caused me and also hearing other people's experiences and I can relate to them exactly the way they feel and the things that have happened to them. A lot of people that were in the meetings have got a lot more sadder stories to tell than me. I thought I had it bad after hearing what people had gone through from alcohol, how they've lost everything, the whole livelihood, their family just from the alcohol and it was just from alcohol because the people themselves were good people but the drink has just ruined them their whole life. It's decided to... I benefited from it a lot. From hearing what people had to say and their experiences, I decided to sort my act out. It was hard at first. I didn't really want to admit that I had a drinking problem. I would just come to the meetings and just say, oh, I drink I didn't drink on weekends. I don't drink that much. I wasn't being open, I wasn' t telling the truth, I was'nt telling them why I was drinking and how much I was drinking and the reason for drinking and everything. I was...I wasn't been open, I wasn''t being honest with myself and I was at the same time trying to quit drinking but I was still drinking. drinking. I cut down but it hadn't been a lot. Also, for my drink driving I was going to probation. They put me on an alcohol awareness course at probation and I'm having meetings with another person in probation about the alcohol awareness and the things that can can happen and it's just been a, the whole experience even though it hasn't been, I haven't had maybe 10-15 years of severe, severe drinking I thought like I could, I myself can talk to people about my experiences because a lot of things that they were saying I knew what they were talking about. From the build up to getting tempted to drink, to being under the influence of alcohol, till the come down on alcohol when you're sobering up and then you have regrets but at the same time you still want to drink more. Everything that people were discussing I could relate to so I decided to be honest with myself and I started to go to more of these meetings and I started telling, I told John about my boxing career and how much it meant to me and he actually suggested start coming training with him. He was keen as well to see if I was really just talking or talking the talk or if I could walk the walk. I wanted to show him as well that I could actually, I had potential to box and I did have an ability there and he wanted to see what I was really made of as well. He asked me to come down to his boxing gym in Houghton. He told me that it was a well established gym and they had good fighters there and He wanted to see if I was good enough to train there and how I really was boxing. So, I started going up there with him on a Tuesday and Thursday just twice a week. I couldn't go back into training the way I used to on a daily basis because I was overweight. weight I hadn't trained in two years and I just wanted to take it slow, I just wanted to see what it was about. The training, I think the relationship between me and John got stronger. I showed him a side of me and he showed the side of him. It wasn't just oh come to the hospital, have your meeting and go home, say what you've got to say for an hour and go home. It was more like he wanted me to get into a lifestyle of training and he believed that I had the passion for this boxing and he wanted to see me get back into it so I started going training with him The clubs that I was training at were really good gyms the training, the fitness was really intense. They got me started to go running and things like that. I started going swimming, doing light exercises and all different types of things. My main concern was just to get my weight down. I'd put on a lot of weight and I'd got myself a beer belly and everything and I just wanted to lose it and that's it. I started training, I was cutting down on the drink. I'm not drinking at all now, I've been sober for a while but it was really hard at first to cut down because every time I would come back from the gym, I wouldn't drink on that day. But the day that I wasn't exercising or doing nothing, I really was getting tempted to drink. I didn't tell my friends that I had been going to Alcohol Anonymous because to be honest, I was actually embarrassed. I don't want them to think... My perception and their perception of Alpha Anonymous is just a bunch of old people, alcoholics, sitting in a circle talking. They are so embarrassed that someone of my age would have to come to a group meeting and talk about the way things were going. So I kept it a secret. My mum knew I was going for group meetings but she didn't know fully how it was. I kept kept it a secret from my friends and my family and I just wanted to keep it between me and John but by me keeping it a a secret it was making it harder because my friends did not know that I was trying to put myself out and get back on track. To them they did not know what I was going through like how I tried to get myself back into exercise, keep sober bar and be normal headed so every time I was with them they were still tempting me to drink and I'm still drinking at the time and it was hard to do both, to train and drink at the same time. But spending more and more time with John, he was getting me motivated to train more and I was telling him that my favourite boxer was Sugar Ray Leonard and I told him that watching him used to get me motivated and I used to get adrenaline to train. So one day he asked me when I came for one of the meetings, he gave me a bunch of Sugar Ray Leonard boxing tapes for me to watch and he told me to look at them all and study the training and there was one tape of him training how his training regime and diet and the food he eats and after watching that that showed me that John is a good person he helped me out a lot he's not one of them people that just does his job when it comes from 9 to 5 or he'll just go home he showed me he was he And he was keen, he was eager to see me get back on track. He knew how much my boxing meant to me and he wanted me to get back on track and just get focused again. So anyway I started training more and more now. I mean before the training with alcohol it would definitely be training but I still find myself contemplating like not sure oh there will be times where I'll get tempted and I'll give give in and I'll drink and there'd be times where I would come back from the gym and feel really hyped up and really happy with my training and I wouldn't drink but still I wasn't fully fully focused, fully fully focused and basically I had spoken to my boxing trainer a few months ago and I was asking him to progress in my gym. I haven't spoken to him in a long time and he told me that the club nearly 90% was done. He said they just had to bring the equipment in, the boxing bag and the ring. And he told the new gym was up and running. He said it would be up and runing real soon and he was telling me stories about some other boxers that were boxing at my club before how they had entered the championships and one of them he had won the ABA's which is a big amateur boxing tournament that happens once a year and he had he'd won the whole tournament and I was really happy but at the same time I was sad that I couldn't box and I wasn't, I missed out in two and a half years of boxing training. Everything went downhill. I couldn t continue with my training but after speaking to him and he was telling me the club was up and running, I told him that I was back front, my back and I was ready to be training. I haven't drank now for coming up two months. I've smoked nothing and I'm feeling a lot more normal headed now. My sleeping routine has gone back to normal. I'm going to bed normal now. I am waking up at early hours. because things are getting better for me now. John has told me that he's willing to come with me to any of my boxing matches and I feel like I have to prove to him that I'm I'm a real boxer for real. I'm not the fake, I'm the real deal and I'm excited for him to see me in action back in the ring. But now that alcohol is out of my system physically and mentally, I am more focused now. I've realised that alcohol has caused me a lot of problems. My whole life from two years ago until just recently was surrounded by alcohol and smoking, the drugs and the alcohol. the whole lifestyle was just, that was my life. Everything was revolved around that. Now that I'm normal headed and things are going normal for me, I feel good, I feel happy. I feel like I've got fights to look forward to now. I've got my weight down now, I've a few more kg to lose and I'll be back at my fighting weight which is 80 kg and hopefully for September when the season starts again I'll be fit and ready to start boxing. I'm positive that I'm not going to go back on drinking now. now. I'm nearly 99.9% positive that alcohol is not going to be back in my life because I've realised the hard way how alcohol can affect you and how it can bring your downfall but I've got something to look forward to now and I know now, I know that if my boxing training from two and a half years ago continued and I didn't see the bad side of what could happen to me then things could have maybe got worse. I wouldn't have realised what I I had going for me. But from this experience, from what I've gone through for the last two and a half years, and now getting out of this lifestyle, getting back on track with my life, I realise that I've got too much to lose if I go back to drinking. I have to remain sober sober and I feel so much more happy now with the way my life is going now. I'm training every day now, I feel really good with myself. Alcohol is something that is not for me which is true if I can't handle my drink, which is fine because I'm not bothered because I I'm not going to drink no more and that's how it is. When John, when he realised that I had been sober and he knows that my training is back on, he asked me to do this, which at first I didn't want to do it. I felt like he's helped me out a lot. I've gone through what I've gone through and I've come out of it and that's it. I don't need to go back to it, I don t need to discuss it, i can continue with my life now. And also at the same time just by me talking about what I have gone through, about my life, this is quite personal, personal, it's very personal in fact and I don't want people to know about what I've gone through and things like that. People could say you're a sissy or whatever, you're doing this or you're an alcoholic but if I can talk to someone the same way I was in that group meeting and people were telling me about their stories and I could relate relate to them and I felt like I was actually lucky that I wasn't in their position, how many years of drinking they've gone through and everything that's happened and how lucky I am to have these people around me to help me out. If I can do this and someone else can watch this and relate to me in some way maybe not even the drinking or maybe just the boxing or something, they can relate to me and they can understand how things have happened and how I've got myself sorted out. I think it's a positive thing to do and I don't mind man, I'm happy to let someone see this and for them to know the outcome of what can happen if... It's not easy, you can't click your finger and something will happen overnight. You need to put, you need to be, you have to be willing to sort yourself out. You can't have people around you asking you to stop drinking or if you don't want to help yourself. You have to help yourself and then when you help yourself then you can help others. I've sorted myself out now and I feel like I can talk about my experiences and tell people that what I've gone through, they can learn from my mistakes and it won't happen to them. That's it. I'm also going to be working soon now. Hopefully I'll be starting an apprenticeship real soon for Body Works. I'll a panel beater. I'd be doing that and I'm I'm also into cars, so I did not mention that I've... I wouldn't call it a hobby, but I'm into cars. High-performance cars, I'm in to sports cars. I've liked cars for a long, long time, and for me just to work on the... do this course is... I don't know if it's gonna be a career or whatever, But I feel like I've been lucky to get this job and I'm going to be working real soon. My goal now for the future is just to work and dedicate all my time into my boxing training hopefully and I'll get good results that's it, that's all I can say. Thank you. Thank you for watching.