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I have had enough of this TV work in Sydney. It is getting in the way of my Drug taking.

My last job each evening was doing audio for a talk show host who was a total misogynist. He would nightly have the autocue women in tears through his commercial break tirades. He had had a bad divorce, but I suspect he was prick before that.

So I plot my revenge on behalf of our female staff.

Last commercial break of the evening. He has a live cross to some sycophant on the other end. I lie and claim the foldback is broken, and he will have to use earphones. He complains, but does as instructed.

As we start the live interview, I dial a 1300…. number offering phone sex, and divert it down to his earphones during the live interview. It was like watching someone having small fits whilst trying to remain authoritative. Up there as a highlight of my life.

He was not happy.

21 and full of balls. I apply for a senior position at a major Television station in Sydney. Way out of my league of capability, but never underestimate how far bullshit can get you.

Audio Engineer for all live content. 2500 staff, and I have a senior position. I am killing it. Sharing a house I rented with a mate in the heart of the city with about 6-8 other people on average. Time to try drugs seriously.

In 18 months my addiction to anything that could be squeezed into a needle….and I mean anything. LSD is always interesting in this format. I am fucked up. Functioning, but fucked up. I have my TV job, a motorcycle courier job, (12 on the CBD team. 1 a month in hospital, 1 a year in the morgue) a bar job, and I am on the dole. I did not sleep. I also did not have sex. The needle was my lover.

Time to get out.

We advertised a room, and one of the applicants arrived at the door. I am fairly sure my jaw dislocated it dropped so far. She was Spanish. A Flamenco dancer, and did not speak much English. The house voted her out. I invited her out. Here goes the next three years.

We lived together, travelled together and saved together. We got on a plane full of drugs in our system, and I never touched a needle again in my life. She saved me.

Footnote: I saw her 10 years later in Sydney again. We spent the day together with a mutual friend. As I am driving her to my house with my partner and baby, she says she never got over me and wanted me back. Made for an interesting dinner. I never saw or heard from her again.

I was 16 years old, coming home from school on a Friday afternoon. My mother was home from work to meet me. She explained she had met a man and was going to leave with him to travel Australia on Monday, so I needed to find a place to live. My father would not have me, as he was married to a woman that wanted me erased from his life to start a new family. So my sister took me.

My sister. God lover her – Larger than life. Locked up overnight in Darwin for fighting six aboriginal men in a bar. And winning. She was now working as a cook with her Husband, a contract cattle musterer, going between huge (and I mean huge – the size of England huge) cattle stations in the west, with large teams of cattleman to bring in the cattle each year to the yards.

I arrived by coach at the local township, and was taken the several hours by dirt road to the main station. The next morning, the old station owner decided to test my metal. He took me aside and said “can you ride a horse” I said yes. He then proceeded to show me how to use a fencing tool. A gruesome steel contraption to stretch steel wire. He threw me a swag (rolled up bed) and some rations, and pointed to a fence line. “Ride that way until you reach a fence to the right. Fix every fence on your way. When it gets dark camp. Keep going in the morning. Should take a few days” An adventure!

“Careful of snakes”

Fuck that!. Do you have any idea how many noises are in the Australian outback at night? Dingo’s, snakes, and spiders, are seconded only to getting lost and never found. Let’s just say I was back the following evening having fixed every fence on route….well most of them maybe. Hard to tell at a gallop.

I spent the next few moths as an apprentice Jackaroo (Cattleman), rising at 4AM to eat lamb chops/sausages/bacon/steak and eggs. Corned meet for lunch, and Ribs for dinner. I didn’t shit for two weeks.

I flew on the skids of an open cockpit helicopter riding shotgun. Salt pellets in a 12 gauge to shoot any cattle in the ass that didn’t move. The Pilot was ex-Vietnam, and so was the chopper by the looks of it. He thought it would be funny to do a loop whilst I was outside the helicopter over a 1000ft cliff. When I say loop – yes I mean somersault. Fucker! He crashed on his way home the next day. Apparently it was an old Helicopter after all.

I finally went back to my hometown in boots with a big belt buckle with matching hat. My girlfriend had hooked up with one of my best mates. I didn’t care – I was a man now!

(The girlfriend stayed with the mate and they had kids and a mortgage and all the trappings – dodged another bullet)

I am an alcoholic. Very functional one. I have been drinking since I was 15, often heavily. Somehow I managed to live a huge life despite this.

So anyway, I was with my last wife in Bali about a year ago. We had been in a three-way relationship with a much younger beautiful woman…., I will tell that story later. The relationship with the young woman had reached it’s end, so my wife and I decided on a holiday without her. First time in over two years just the two of us. We where going to rebuild our marriage.

5 Star rooftop Penthouse. Entire day of fun and drinking. It did not end well. She is an alcoholic too, so as there was only the two of us, it’s hard to say whose story is the correct version. Let’s just say, the next day I checked myself into rehab in Bali. Well that was an expereince to say the least.

For the uninitiated, rehab is where you pay $20 000 to have somebody watch you do a piss everyday. Total loss of ALL freedoms. Now to put this in perspective, I lived in a Penthouse, owned a large boat, ran a global company, spent 3 months a year snow boarding around the world, and had access to as much cocaine as my nostrils could devour. To be told when to go to bed, have no communication devices with the outside world, and be locked up with sex addicts, Heroin addicts and actual alcoholics (I was still not convinced I was one) was a bit hard to take.

Anyway, the reason I chose to start with this story is quite simple. After 5 days of detox (120mg of valium per day so you don’t have a fit and die – Did you know that Alcohol deprivation is the only drug that can kill you during rehab? News to me too) So on day 10, you have had to prepare your life story and present it to the other ‘inmates’. I had never come close to doing that before, so it was quite fun, if not a little difficult to recall. But I got the broad story down on the sticky taped A4 paper sheets – rolled them into a scroll – and presented them like a Greek Scholar.

The results was quite educational for me, and the others it seems. The senior councillor (An older soul who had been around the block quite a few times) told me in all his years he had never heard a story quite as….colourful? (If I am sounding a little gloating here, that’s because I am)

Rehab didn’t work for me as far as giving up alcohol goes. As it doesn’t globally for 85% of people. But it did give me a chance to stop and look at myself. I had turned into a real dickhead. Self absorbed, reward driven hedonist, with no brakes whatsoever. Not a proud moment.

So this blog is for me to document the journey, see how it all went pear-shaped, and try not to keep re-living the same fuck-ups.

I’m 52. Three kids, two ex-wives, white-male, tall, english speaking middle class. (Whatever that means?)

I am right now experiencing the hangover that comes after a 10 year party. It’s epic. And I should know, I have had some stunners in the past.

The crash came fast, but unlike most accidents, I saw this one coming. It wasn’t an accident, it was over consumption of life’s treats. Sheer indulgence! Decadence! Gluttony! And I would do it all again.

When you start life with very little, and through sheer fear and determination, you reach those heights you looked up at – it’s hard not to indulge. Well it was for me.

If anybody reads this, you may get a little confused with time-lines, as I do not intend to have any. This blog is a random recollection of the good times. Maybe a few bad ones to give context.