Читать книгу Move Your Mind - Nick Bracks - Страница 13

After high school, I deferred from university and took a gap year. I had no idea what I wanted to do but had been accepted into a double degree of Commerce and Health Promotion at Deakin University. The gap year was a good experience in leaving Australia and experiencing something different, but it was also problematic.

I was incredibly insecure and shy and found it very difficult to interact with others. I would spend a lot of time alone, hiding away trying not to be seen. I was able to travel around a lot of Europe with Huw (who was later in the car crash I talked about in the introduction to the book) and spent a lot of time drinking and using it to mask my discomfort with not knowing how to cope on my own. For the most part, I struggled. Towards the end of the year, my dad had his third election approaching, and due to my struggles, I decided to come home and be there for it.

I started my course at Deakin only to pull out after just six weeks. I was too depressed and couldn't bring myself to try to fit in and meet people. This only led to further alcohol abuse, where I would build my whole week around it. I wasn't working or doing anything else, just counting down the time until I could drink again.

I would be out every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, and often many other nights, drinking myself into the ground. For me, that same compulsion that I had when it came to competing in sport would kick in. I loved the feeling of escape; I loved the complete freedom my mind gave me to fully express myself, say what I thought and show my personality. I would push myself for no reason other than to outdrink whoever was around me, fuelled by a compulsion that felt illogical but, again, that I couldn't help.

The short-term high of this behaviour would lead to incredible lows. I'd spend the week in bed, locked under the covers, afraid to face the outside world. It also led to life-threatening incidents on a weekly basis. I would wind up passing out in random places, vomiting all over myself, walking down freeways against traffic and making dangerous decisions.

Around that time, I began seeing a psychologist, and also told one of my close friends about what I had been going through. At this point I hadn't told anyone else. I was even too embarrassed to tell my parents how I felt, despite them seeing me fall apart and facilitating the psychologist. I was literally trembling, thinking that my friend would never look at me in the same way again.

But to my surprise it was the complete opposite — she understood, offered emotional support and was there for me. It was a major weight off my shoulders and was the beginning of me eventually talking to more people about it. Importantly, reaching out for the first time instilled in me a key point I regularly speak about now: the importance of having unconditional relationships.

Meanwhile, I was still dealing with issues around drinking and abusing alcohol and had major insecurities and hang-ups from growing up. One of those was around girls. I hadn't been with many girls until the age of 19, when I had my first sexual experience with someone 10 years older than me. It was a relief to have finally had the experience, but due to the social isolation and shame that I felt through my adolescence about not fitting in, I had enormous insecurity about being vulnerable or intimate with girls. I relied on alcohol to interact and turned down opportunity after opportunity to date girls who showed interest in me. I had an irrational fear that I couldn't explain and allowed it to hinder me from having the experience I wanted most: to be in a relationship.