Controlling The World's Social Media, Building a 400 Million Person Network and Overcoming Addiction - Dominic McGregor - #005

Dominic McGregor is the COO and Co-Founder of Social Chain, the UK's largest Social Media Agency. I visited him in his Manchester office to talk about how he started Social Chain and grew it to have a 400 million person online reach, his thoughts on the ethical impacts of social media on individuals and society as a whole, and how he dealt with alcohol dependancy whilst running Social Chain - to now be 20 months sober as he prepares to take on one distance-run every month in 2018. Extra Stuff Follow Dom online - www.teetotalrunner.com Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Chris Williamson?

  Dominic McGregor, welcome to Modewissam, how are you?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Good, thank you, how are you? Good drive?

• 0:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, good drive down from Newcastle to Manchester in the rain, which is typical British weather. So, it's crazy to come into this office, which is several thousand square feet and looks like a labyrinth with sleeping pods and a bar and a fully functioning kitchen with a chef in and all the rest of it. And this is where memes are made that run around the UK, right?

• 0:37Speaker 01

  It's the meme factory, yeah. I didn't like that title.

• 0:41Chris Williamson?

  I saw when that article was on, was it on The Guardian?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  It was The Guardian, yeah. It just called us the meme factory, which we are. You know, we make a lot of content here. But yeah, a little bit about us. So, we started in the room next door with like a white table, which is like the same one that we're on here. The thing is, there was four of them, one for every single person. And I think these are very similar to the white tables we had. We got them as a little bit of memory. And we were working in the room, starting Social Chain, which is a marketing agency. And it took us, you know, three or four months to really find out that we're actually on to something. And what was different between us and any other marketing agency is we own big communities.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  So, we own big social media pages from Student Problems, Spar, Love Food, Beef Motivation. And we went and worked with brands on them communities.

• 1:38Chris Williamson?

  So, I'm right in saying that you guys have got access to about 400 million people, is that right?

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44Chris Williamson?

  The total combined reach?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Across Facebook.

• 1:46Chris Williamson?

  400 million people?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, across the world.

• 1:49Chris Williamson?

  Which is...

• 1:50Speaker 01

  We have followers in like Taiwan.

• 1:52Chris Williamson?

  Fucking stupid.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Everywhere.

• 1:53Chris Williamson?

  Like, who's got 400 million of anything?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:56Chris Williamson?

  Like, it's just crazy.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  When you put it into a graphic, it's like ridiculous.

• 2:00Chris Williamson?

  That's terrifying. But, so, I found out about you guys about two years ago from one of my best mates who actually works for you.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:07Chris Williamson?

  And what he explained to me about Social Chain at the time felt absolutely groundbreaking, that you guys have access to the network, you understand the platform, and then you do the creative?

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:20Chris Williamson?

  And for me, I was like, how has no one... Come up with this before, because influencers have been around for, what, like five, ten years?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:28Chris Williamson?

  Five years kind of really prevalent.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think the reason we, we fell upon it is that um. We, we had influence, I guess, but our influences wasn't our faces.

• 2:38Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  So we had to, we had to fight.

• 2:40Chris Williamson?

  What was the first page that you started off with?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Student problems.

• 2:43Chris Williamson?

  Was it really?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:44Chris Williamson?

  And who started that?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Me.

• 2:45Chris Williamson?

  You started student problems, no way.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  So I was, I was at university in Edinburgh.

• 2:49Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Um, and I went out one night. But I don't know, honestly, it was like a really heavy night, it was like a. It's, it, actually, do you know what? I think it's exactly five years ago today.

• 3:00Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  I think, I'll double check, I think it was the seventh of February.

• 3:04Chris Williamson?

  That's fantastic.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  So I think it is. Um, went out. And woke up the next day. And had no toilet paper in my toilet.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  So instead of, you know, and listen, the, the shop was down the bottom of the, the street, I could have walked and got it. So instead of going and getting it, I decided to start a Twitter page and tweet about my life.

• 3:25Chris Williamson?

  You didn't have any toilet paper?

• 3:26Speaker 01

  The fact I had no toilet paper.

• 3:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  And then for the next couple of weeks, just tweeting everything that I was doing.

• 3:31Chris Williamson?

  Uh huh.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Literally my life through my eyes, so like realising how expensive cheese was, for example. Which is very expensive when you, when you, when you move out. Um, I love cheese. And then just little things like that, and then it got to like twenty thousand followers in the space of two weeks. And then um Steve got in touch with me because he was running a website which was like coming through for students.

• 3:52Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  It was called Wallpark.

• 3:53Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  And um he was kind of just doing the traditional, traditional marketing methods by leaflets and nightclubs and.

• 4:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Everything else people do to try and reach students. And um took a step back of it and actually realised that so, that social is where students have been in their attention.

• 4:09Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Looked on Twitter for students, student problems came up, emailed me, we met in Vodka Revs in York. For about an hour, had a chat and then after that conversation, I dropped out of university, moved to Manchester, started working at Walpark with him and then we just built more and more social media pages to the point where we got about ten million driving traffic to Walpark. Realised that, you know what, one day we're gonna get money from advertisers. We could drive a million people to Walpark, but we've got ten million people on social. Why would advertisers wanna be on the website when they can just be on the social media pages?

• 4:43Chris Williamson?

  You can go direct and cut at them as well.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we started putting brands on social, discovered the website, travelled the world, found more people who ran big social pages, like Hannah who ran Hogwarts Logic, which is the biggest Harry Potter page.

• 4:56Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Got them all together, put them in the warehouse here and just we just tried to see if this was something and it was.

• 5:05Chris Williamson?

  It definitely feels like it is, doesn't it?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 5:07Chris Williamson?

  It's it's cra- it's absolutely mad that you guys are at the forefront of a wave of so- social media. Not in terms of adoption, but more in terms of how it's, how the use from marketing is being delivered to people.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:22Chris Williamson?

  Um, I think that that organic, genuinely creative, adding value kind of content.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I thi- I think it's um meaningful.

• 5:32Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  People, people, we, as a generation, and I'm pretty sure everyone's got ad blockers on their laptop, they're they're sick of telling, being told what to do by brands. Um, you know, our whole thing is now about how brands can actually form a connection

• 5:46Chris Williamson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  and care about their consumers. And we know as people, individuals ourselves, what we purchase now actually depends much more on what the brand says about us, rather than anything, rather than quality, rather than um costs in some instances.

• 6:00Chris Williamson?

  You sell brand with everything. It's interesting coming at it from a club promoter's perspective because everyone goes out to a club event on a night and everyone listening will know, you get tagged in the photos and then the next day the album goes up and then you get tagged in them. And that tag stays on your Facebook profile with the watermark of the event at the bottom.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:17Chris Williamson?

  And that means, oh, I'm a, I'm a voodoo girl, like I go voodoo, I like this kind of music.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:22Chris Williamson?

  And immediately, as soon as someone sees that on your Facebook profile, they can make a whole bunch of assumptions about who you are and about the values that you have.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And they're not normally wrong.

• 6:32Chris Williamson?

  No, they're not, which is, I guess.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  The same way you could probably do it through looking at someone's YouTube history.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I always say that, you know, the YouTube, if you go on someone's YouTube suggested videos.

• 6:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  That is how you find out who they are.

• 6:47Chris Williamson?

  That's a really, really good point.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Honestly, works with girls.

• 6:49Chris Williamson?

  It's just as well, the history isn't public, is it?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Girls, honestly, it's the worst one. Honestly, girls, a lot of them are serial killers. A lot of them, murders and mass murders and serial killers.

• 7:00Chris Williamson?

  Really?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:01Chris Williamson?

  Because they're just in.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  They're really interested in like crime and stuff.

• 7:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, mine, mine is, misses us actually.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because they want to try and find out. They all want to be detectives for some reason.

• 7:10Chris Williamson?

  Fair enough. Um, so you've got yourself into social chain.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 7:15Chris Williamson?

  Is that, where do you, when did you begin the actual, um, brand of social chain? When did that start?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  So we were at Wal Park for about, Steve started it when he was eighteen, so he was doing it for about three years, I was there for about a year. Um, and then when we sold that back to the investors, we had a bit of time out, we went travelling the world. Um, we had, there was this kind of talk of social chain, we came up with a name pretty early on when we started at Wal Park, but it didn't mean anything.

• 7:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Um, we were like, this is like social chain, sort of chain of pages, you know, this, this, this is what it is, it's our social chain, it's what's driving people to Wal Park. And then we went to Thailand, uh, went to Brazil, New York, did a, you know, a bit of living.

• 7:57Chris Williamson?

  Not bad fact finding then.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  No, not bad, no, we were, we were doing a bit of market research. Twenty one, twenty, we'd actually spent some time in Silicon Valley doing some consulting.

• 8:05Chris Williamson?

  Did do some work.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did do some work, yeah. Uh, we went to the World Cup in Brazil, which was cool.

• 8:09Chris Williamson?

  That's sick.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  That was really good, yeah. Um, but I thought it was going to be full of girls, but it was the World Cup and it was just.

• 8:16Chris Williamson?

  Full of blokes.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Full of blokes everywhere, Argentinians everywhere, which is cool, but.

• 8:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, nice for a while.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  When, when you're twenty, when you're twenty one and you go to Brazil for the first time, you're expecting like.

• 8:25Chris Williamson?

  Something different.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, and then we came back from that because one of our clients, who we were doing consultancy for, wanted us to launch their new product.

• 8:34Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  So we launched that new product and they turned around an office investment.

• 8:38Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, did really well. Got to about four million users, they invested and that's when Social Chain became a thing.

• 8:46Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Which was third November two thousand and fourteen.

• 8:51Chris Williamson?

  So that's not long ago at all, you're talking like three and a half years.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, three and a half, not, yeah, three, three years, so three years.

• 8:57Chris Williamson?

  That's crazy and to get from there to now accessing four hundred million people. Um, can you think of a top three favourite campaigns that you guys have done? Anything that springs to mind that people might know?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did, um, the one, the one most people know is we did a campaign. Um, where we hijacked a billboard in Manchester and put welcome to Zlatan when Zlatan Ibrahimovic signed for Man United.

• 9:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  That was pretty well known, uh, but we've done some really cool things in, um, the stuff I like that we've done is a little bit more underground.

• 9:31Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  So we've done some really cool campaigns with Skype Bet, um, where we filmed two grands doing, taking part in Super Six. Which is pretty cool, it was kind of showing the use case of the app. Um, and then I think, you know, go back to the crazy side of things, we blew up a VW Beetle, Superdry on Halloween.

• 9:50Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  It was pretty fun.

• 9:51Chris Williamson?

  Was that on Facebook Live or something?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, Facebook Live, yeah, yeah.

• 9:53Chris Williamson?

  Was that one of the ones where Pressfire to do it?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Pressfire, yeah.

• 9:57Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Did you see it?

• 9:57Chris Williamson?

  Um, I saw, I, did you guys do the one, was it a pretty little thing?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, which was like, was that maybe a balloon?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, did a balloon, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:05Chris Williamson?

  Um, so I've seen, I saw the one for that.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we blew, we blew a couple of things up.

• 10:09Chris Williamson?

  And that's like one of the most highly engaged.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Live streams, yeah.

• 10:12Chris Williamson?

  Ever.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, two point five million views, about a million comments.

• 10:16Chris Williamson?

  In probably a couple of hours.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:20Chris Williamson?

  I mean, as soon as I saw that go out, I then saw ones where ice creams were melting in the sun and people had to comment on which one was gonna melt first.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:28Chris Williamson?

  That kind of was the first foray into.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:31Chris Williamson?

  Seeing that sort of stuff go out live, so.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  We were the first people to do, produce live streams.

• 10:36Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  So you can put a phone up and livestream like the, the Drum and Puddle.

• 10:41Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, Drum, so Drum, Drum and Central is just around the corner.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was funny, that was the first ever used live stream on social.

• 10:48Chris Williamson?

  Was it really?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it was accidental, it was like, but it was really good. Um, but we were the first ones to do a kind of orchestrated.

• 10:55Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Planned. Produce live streams. Um, which then we just blew more things up and did some quizzes. But it's been that kind of like fashion space, super drag, pretty often where we've been successful.

• 11:09Chris Williamson?

  So everyone that's listening will use social media to some extent. And a lot of people will use it, but in one form or another, to either raise their profile, which is, uh, brings them some sort of equity back. Um, or like myself, it becomes kind of a little bit more of a brand and is directly associated with what your company's doing.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:25Chris Williamson?

  Are there any, are there any principles that you think that you've found out that people should be using on social media? Because it's very easy to get caught up and we'll go into this in a second. It's very easy to get caught up and distracted on social media because that's the purpose of it.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:39Chris Williamson?

  But in terms of trying to use it effectively, I mean, I'm going to guess adding a, producing content that adds value, whether it's personally or commercially.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  I think, I think, um, we touched on there, it's like personal branding. Everyone's really got to understand where social fits into their life. And it's like a shop window for who you are as a person. So you really need to, um, if you want to, some people don't want to do this, but if you want to like, use it to your advantage, um, and really like showcase you as an individual or, you know, what you're trying to achieve in your life and your journey. You've got to just think about what you want it to, how you want it to come across. I think, uh, some people are on the other side of the coin, they just want to use it to.

• 12:16Chris Williamson?

  Get in touch with their friends and stuff like that. Well, yeah, my, my, my mum does it. She's got one friend on Facebook and it's me.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 12:22Chris Williamson?

  And she, she like, um, will message backwards and forwards and send videos and the usage of it will be really heavy, but incredibly narrow.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  My gran's the same. She's got thirty, like thirty friends, which is all the family. But every time I post anything, I get like ten likes because I've got my mum, my dad, my gran, my grandad, my aunt. It's like.

• 12:40Chris Williamson?

  All right. So you're straight, you're already boosted.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  I'm boosted. It looks like a really engaged post.

• 12:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, you've nailed it.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the key is like, really understand, like auditing yourself and why, why you should be using it. It's difficult because we say this, we say this from, because I always feel like saying this from someone who like knows the world, like, like we'll go into it more, but like what, what, what we've been through a little bit older. It's very difficult for seventeen, sixteen year olds to really understand.

• 13:07Chris Williamson?

  To have that perspective.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:09Chris Williamson?

  No, I, I, I agree. Um. So I think one of the things I want to talk about today is the ethical use of time on social media. It's as far as I'm concerned, an emerging topic at the moment. I wouldn't say that it's been tremendously widespread yet. But Sam Harris and a guy called Tristan Harris, who is product philosopher at Google, did a really famous podcast about three months ago. You can find it on Sam Harris's podcast, Waking Up, on iTunes if you want to have a listen yourself and timewellspent.com is Tristan Harris's website. And on that, what he discusses is the cognitive biases that are being leveraged by apps and

• 13:50Chris Williamson?

  by developers in order to keep people's time on site. And they say that there's only so many hours in the day and that YouTube is competing with Facebook, is competing with Netflix, is competing with everything to try and maximize the time on site. So I wanted to ask yourself, as someone who is driving engaging content online, which means that people's time on site and time on screen will be increased, do you, have you got any concerns about this?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I've taken a step back also is we are very, as humans or animals, so we are very influenced by like social and you can see it on games like Candy Crush, the way they reward the kind of dopamine levels with their hits and their like, you know, all that is designed towards keeping people addicted. I am under the strong belief that, from two sides of the coin really, as a publisher, people always consume content, it's always been the same. We've had the same issues with TV, to an extent, not more of the addiction side of

• 14:59Speaker 01

  things, but with the kind of, I guess you have got some more pressure in TV, you know, you do find people who are very sedimentary because they're always on, watching TV. But I think with what is the important thing about social is the age of people, again, the younger generation, these people are a lot more highly influenced, they're not as developed, they're not as assured of themselves, let alone their surroundings. So yes, I do feel kind of. Responsible in that instance, and I think more can be done to educate young people. But again, it's very difficult because they're in, they're young. They've got a lot of things on the plate.

• 15:37Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting because you guys have got, you've got the access.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:40Chris Williamson?

  Which is, from knowing what the company is about, I'd definitely say that everybody here, as far as I'm aware, and the company culture is an altruistic one. Now, if that sense of genuinely caring about people's wellbeing is to the contrary of what advertisers want, I guess therein may lie a little bit more of a difficulty. But certainly for me, it doesn't feel like coming into, the guys who make Global Trends and Social Media's office, it doesn't feel like I'm stepping into some underworld cabal of like, people trying to desperately claw at young kids' time and make them feel incredibly self-conscious online and like desperate for likes and things like that.

• 16:23Chris Williamson?

  There's definitely an argument to be made, I think, that, you know, Student Problems was born of a genuine care or a genuine interest in the topic. Could you argue now that that's been monetized and is being used as a commercial vehicle? But the argument is that you're still making content that's even better and is still providing the same, the same end result for users.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely. And I think we've got to have massive responsibilities on the other side for us to be able to educate people. So we've recently done a documentary around mental health on student problems. Well, we've been, gone to Bristol University where last year there was eight suicides. Like a nap year, like that had very high number of suicides.

• 17:08Chris Williamson?

  It's a number one, number one killer of men under forty.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:11Chris Williamson?

  Which is an absolutely terrifying topic.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:15Chris Williamson?

  But, yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  So, and you go to university, it's going to be the best three years of your life. And, you know, a lot of people, a lot of students wanted to commit suicide. So we, we have a responsibility from that side of the fence to, yes, provide content which is entertaining and relevant, but also to act as the voice of that generation where we educate them on life from the topics that they really need to know about as well. So, um, yeah, we feel like we've, I've, I've started to feel that responsibility a lot more.

• 17:46Chris Williamson?

  I think the fact is that it's emerging, right? You don't know, it's like when a new drug comes out onto the market, you don't know the side effects of it until it's been in circulation for a while.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:55Chris Williamson?

  And the same thing with social media, that we only realised what it was, and it's still emerging is what actually social media is and how all the different platforms work. Before you then move on to tech addictions.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And everyone's different though as well, everyone has a different relationship with it.

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  So it's very difficult to diagnose anyone.

• 18:16Chris Williamson?

  For sure.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  So it's like, and I guess if you ask someone what their relationship is, then always going to tell you it's healthy. They're not going to really like, because the thing is, you know, Instagram is a highlight reel. You know, you go on Instagram and you've got all your friends posting about being on holidays, you get the feeling that you're sat there at work, not doing anything. So that, that, yes, it's social media, but it has a bigger impact on your life than just the actual addiction to the phone or to the, you know, that side of things. It has a longer lasting effect, so.

• 18:45Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting because especially with Instagram, I read this quote online, which I thought was really timely, and it basically said that Instagram specifically, you compare the best of everyone else's life with the worst of yours.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Chris Williamson?

  Because you view your own life through a lens of complete understanding of all of your failures. You see, you see the blooper reel and that's what sticks.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:08Chris Williamson?

  Because our minds are Teflon for good thoughts and Velcro for bad thoughts, that's how we evolved.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:12Chris Williamson?

  The person that, the, the, um, Neanderthal, the hu- human that was living in a cave, that decided that they weren't worried is the one that got eaten first because they were the least risk averse.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:24Chris Williamson?

  The ones that are risk averse were the ones, so it means that we're hardwired to think about things negatively. And you're right, when you see the best of other people's lives, but the worst of yours, it does lead to a very, very harsh contrast.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  And it's funny, in this space, I think that influencers need to be more accountable because they're creating unrealistic expectation of life. Which is more detrimental than us posting videos of cheese on our page.

• 19:51Chris Williamson?

  I agree.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  So I think that's, that's where I think a bigger issue lies, which is the responsibility of influencers to, to really like. No, they're the ones that are damaging it because they're showing unrealistic.

• 20:04Chris Williamson?

  Well, theirs is more, if you're an influencer, it's a lot more of a surreptitious delivery of the brand message.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:11Chris Williamson?

  Because it it comes about irrelevant of whether which brand is tagged in your outfits or what supplements at the front of your training session, or who it is that's paid for the video production or the photos that we're taking.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:22Chris Williamson?

  People don't see that. They see, look at the condition of this particular guy, look at the arse on this particular girl, look at how exciting the holiday is, or she's on a boat again, or.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yep, and they always all say, through their experiences and they've had hard times when a lot of them probably haven't, they may, I may be doing injustice, but some of them probably have, but they're having work with influencers, they've got quite an easy life.

• 20:43Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  They don't want stressors, they don't want strainers, and they're painting unrealistic expectations to young people.

• 20:48Chris Williamson?

  So there's maybe, there needs to be a code of ethics that influencers should be thinking about using when they're putting stuff online?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think so. I think it'd be interesting to see the difference between someone who does follow influencers and someone who doesn't follow any influencers.

• 21:06Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  And let them touch things like a meal out, or a holiday, or like an outfit, because if a girl, I know it's a lot more in the female space because they are the ones that,

• 21:20Speaker 01

  not to sound sexist or anything, but they are more avid users of social media for certain types of things.

• 21:25Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna guess you're, you're exactly in a position to know what the stats are on that as well.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't happen to have them, but they're much harder users than them. If you compare the girl who doesn't follow any influencers versus someone who does follow influencers, and you ask them their 10 favourite brands, you'd probably get a very different answer.

• 21:41Chris Williamson?

  I agree. And then probably satisfaction, and like you say, you're going out for a meal.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:47Chris Williamson?

  And if you've previously in the day seen that someone was at Blue Marlin Dubai,

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:51Chris Williamson?

  one of your favourite influencers at Blue Marlin Dubai, having teriyaki salmon and black cardon, surrounded by.

• 21:58Chris Williamson?

  Million pound yachts and then you've gone out on Valentine's Day to somewhere that doesn't fulfil that expectation. You're right, it's um it's not not tremendously positive environment at times, is it?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yep, and these are people you've never, you'll never meet. And that's what they're making you feel. It's ruining relationships, it's ruining friendships, it's ruining. Everything, it's making such, this is what I think anyway.

• 22:24Chris Williamson?

  So if you've got affiliations with influencers and stuff like that, would you be? I'm gonna guess the answer's yes to this, but you'd be maybe pushing them to think about, be a little bit more mindful with their content and and try and.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Um, I I it's difficult because that's their livelihood as well. So you've got, you've got a very balanced, balanced act, I think um. I think it needs to be something that comes organically from the influencer space, they need to realise, someone needs to realise what they're doing.

• 22:51Chris Williamson?

  Um, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? Maybe, maybe, maybe that'll happen over the years.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe.

• 22:56Chris Williamson?

  So moving on to another topic that both of us are really passionate about, um. I want to talk about your problem with substances that you've had over the years. Could you give us a bit of background on that, please?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's always a fun story to remember. Um, yeah, I guess, I guess my life started like, so that anyone else is, you know, you go to university, you spend three hours with drunk, it's life.

• 23:18Chris Williamson?

  I remember it was a good night, man. Why, why not to really, really good club?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  That was my Monday. I used to finish football training at ten and go straight to why not?

• 23:24Chris Williamson?

  Shout out Jay Glass.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  And um, the Mac Twins.

• 23:29Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll, they'll be watching.

• 23:30Chris Williamson?

  They're still, they're still doing it, still killing it, like, why not? If anyone's going to Edinburgh, why not nightclub? Eight years in a row, I think it's one like better than Edinburgh, it kills it.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Monday nights.

• 23:39Chris Williamson?

  It's the one.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  It's got, um, they were telling me it's a complete redesign.

• 23:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's got an LED, the room two's LED ceiling, LED walls, it's fantastic. Anyway, so.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Um, so yeah, I, I live a normal life. Um, I would describe myself, the reason I think Student Problems was successful is because I was just an average student. I was completely straight in the middle of the line, you know, I've not got a privileged background, I'm not, I'm not from, I've got a very middle, middle of the road, you know, I can relate.

• 24:03Chris Williamson?

  Representative.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, very representative, I can relate to everyone. Um, so that's why I thought it was successful because it was, it was just what you'd expect a student to be like. Um, came to, so started Social Chain, um. And you know what, we, we had very, a lot of success very quick, early.

• 24:19Chris Williamson?

  And you are, what age are you running about now?

• 24:21Speaker 01

  I'm twenty one, twenty one at this point. So you're twenty one, and a lot of success and a lot of disposable income. And really, no responsibility to anyone other than yourself. And a lot of spare time, a lot, say a lot of spare time, but you know, you're in some nice art. So you've got a concoction there of four elements which fuel really a lot of partying, because you're twenty one.

• 24:51Chris Williamson?

  The hedonic lifestyle, right? You've got the means and the ends to do what you want.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it starts out like that. It starts out celebrating, you know, we've got some big client wins, we have a lot of success early on. So we all go out as a team, we spend a lot of time together having meals. And it's, genuinely at first, it's celebrating. It's, this is fantastic. You know, flash, flash forward a year, a year into the business, when you started to own first rocky patches, you can't let other people know that there's a issue with cash flow and that, you know, you're looking tight for wages next month. You can't have that on, you've got to put a straight face in here and, you know, business as usual. But behind that kind of good face, I'm, I'm struggling, really struggling.

• 25:32Chris Williamson?

  So we're twenty two now, right?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Twenty two, yeah. And the celebrations continue because there's still success. But every single time of these celebrations and partying, I'm drinking to excess. I'm doing drugs because, you know, we've got spare.

• 25:52Chris Williamson?

  We've got the cash.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Cash is, it's, it's normal. But I'm, I'm doing it to mask how I feel. I'm doing it to escape, I'm getting away from the, the stresses, the anxieties of what the real, real picture is. It's almost this oxymoron of we are celebrating, everyone, all the staff, all the team are celebrating because we've just done something spectacular. But I know deep down that things are not rosy. So I'm yay, happy.

• 26:18Chris Williamson?

  On the outside.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  On the outside.

• 26:20Chris Williamson?

  And they're kind of allowing the, the substances to carry that through and play the role.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And, you know, be that person. And that continues for a bit.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  How were you able to function at work? It's not bad at this point. It's not bad. It's no different than what everyone else would be doing. It's just a nice hour. It's the same. It's the same. But I'm starting to feel that I'm becoming reliant on that lifestyle.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  And that's when I started to feel something. Now, just my whole life would start turning into that kind of thing. I've got a girlfriend who was really bad for me, really bad for me. She created this picture that social change was wrong. And that, you know, me and her were gonna have a happily life and that. It was just a horrible relationship. And the stresses at work get a little, not the stresses, but the situation at work is a little bit tighter, more responsibility, more people join. The numbers we start talking are bigger. You know, we're talking million pound contracts, we're talking, you know, a couple of legal battles come our way as well.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Which is, you know, all adds up to it. And then, you know, I think I, I'm trying to remember how old I am, twenty four, yeah. So there's a kind of a three month period where I break up with this girl because I get rid of her.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  And then the next three months is where it deteriorates for me. I start drinking on weekdays. That's when, and I always drank wine, so red wine. So I'd come home with a glass of wine, you know, it became my reward for a hard day. I'd have a glass of wine. And it got to a point where the minute alcohol passed my lips, it would be a bottle, it would be two bottles. It wouldn't stop. And that would be on a weekday and I'd get up and I'd go. And a couple of things happened that really hit me hard. So it was Thursday night. We went to neighbourhood opening here. It was a good night. And I got absolutely off my head. And it's a Thursday and I go home and I fall down the hill at my house and break my ankle.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  It's a Wednesday, then it's a Friday morning. I'm in the house, sat there in A and E, shit's going on at work. I'm like, what the hell am I doing this? What the fuck am I doing this for?

• 28:38Speaker 01

  That was like strike one, strike, and then like strike two. That was my birthday. Right. So I'm twenty three, my birthday. I go out. Weather was great. It's gonna be a heavy one. Heavy one, obviously. But the day afterwards, which is my actual birthday, that's when I out. I spent my twenty third birthday locked in a dark room. Watching a movie.

• 29:00Chris Williamson?

  Hating life.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Hating life. Everyone was like, let's go for a meal, it's your birthday, come on, let's go. I'm just never gonna stay here. I spent the whole day in a dark room at my birthday.

• 29:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking about everything, thinking about my life. And that's when I gave up, substance, I like, okay, it's drugs. It has to be drugs, you know, I can't, I can't be like this on weekends, this is ruining my, this is, so I think, you know, I'll be fine. So I do, I do six, six weeks without any, any drugs and then.

• 29:29Chris Williamson?

  But still drinking.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Still drinking, yeah, yeah. Then I go to the races. Um, I have a great day, honestly, a really good day, I'm a little bit more happy. Um, but I come back home at like six P M, you know, off my head.

• 29:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  I've been invited there by a friend in a sponsors box, so I've got limited alcohol.

• 29:47Chris Williamson?

  All day.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  All day. And it's a nice day and I've still got a problem where if I touch alcohol, I won't stop drinking, I always, always have one in my hand. And, um, I, my behaviour that day was, um, I got thrown out of Piccolino's in Oldley Edge. For stealing a bottle of wine from someone's table and shouting abuse at people.

• 30:06Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  It was a different person.

• 30:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  And, um, I said some mean things to, some bad, some bad things to a good friend of mine.

• 30:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  And it was the first time I've ever hurt somebody else.

• 30:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  And the minute I hurt somebody else, I knew I needed to stop because that's not me.

• 30:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  I could deal with hurting myself, I was beating myself up.

• 30:25Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Um, no, I enjoyed that a little bit because it was punishing myself.

• 30:29Chris Williamson?

  Like catharsis a little.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I couldn't deal with that hurting somebody else. I would, I would, I only got run over by a car once, you know, a couple of things that really, really jumped when I was drunk. But I could deal with that because it was me.

• 30:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  It was me. But the minute it moved into me doing damage to someone I cared about, um, I knew I had to stop. And then I woke up that day, had a very, very frank conversation with Steve, who wasn't there that day, but heard about it. And I said that I'm gonna stop, I'm not gonna drink again, never gonna drink again.

• 31:03Chris Williamson?

  So how long sober are you now?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Well, twenty months.

• 31:08Chris Williamson?

  Twenty months?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Twenty months, yeah.

• 31:10Chris Williamson?

  From that day?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  From that day, never gone back.

• 31:12Chris Williamson?

  Cold turkey?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Cold turkey.

• 31:14Chris Williamson?

  And what was it like the first couple of weeks?

• 31:17Speaker 01

  It's tough because you change your life. It's not, it's not towards the alcohol. The first, I always think this is funny. The first weekend I woke up hungover. I didn't go out. My body, my, my body would take, needs to recover. It is, so it was, it's the problem with binge drinking. Your body gets used to this shock in its system every five days. You know, it's, it's a functioning organism. It's used to repetitiveness. I woke, I woke up hungover because my body was, it goes dehydrated because it was probably producing more um, things in the liver pancreas to break down the alcohol.

• 31:51Chris Williamson?

  It wasn't that.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  It wasn't that. You all right, Don?

• 31:54Chris Williamson?

  What's going on? Yeah, we need some wine.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we need some wine. Um, so that was weird. So the first weekend I felt hungover. So you don't, I didn't feel the benefits. It wasn't until, this is my problem with dr- dr- genuine. You don't feel the benefits until like week six.

• 32:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  So it's, dr- genuine is great, but the real benefits don't come till afterwards.

• 32:11Chris Williamson?

  Kick in afterwards.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. Um, it felt difficult because I had to change my entire lifestyle. It wasn't the alcohol, it was my lifestyle. I had to remove myself.

• 32:21Chris Williamson?

  We've taken it far beyond social drinking here, haven't you? This is habitual needing drinking.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:26Chris Williamson?

  Jordan Peterson makes a really interesting quote about people that have got substance abuse addiction. And he says that the addiction isn't a problem, a serious problem, until you need to take the substance to deal with the withdrawals from the substance.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:40Chris Williamson?

  And until you take, until you're drinking to cure a hangover, because you're always hungover.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:45Chris Williamson?

  You're kind of in a different realm. And as soon as you cross that line, I think.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  And that's what, um, my weekend was. Cause I, someone broke it down to me. Friday, my body used to get ready. I used to feel getting ready for it to be, this is, it honestly, it used to feel like it was getting ready.

• 33:01Chris Williamson?

  On a seven day cycle.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  It is getting ready for alcohol to be in it. So I'd get this like natural high come Friday, like three o'clock. Where I'd get energy.

• 33:09Chris Williamson?

  Knows that it's got the volume coming, yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was just got everything coming for it.

• 33:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  So three o'clock, I'd be like, yeah, come on, you know, feeling it. Just kind of like. And my mind is, I'm away, I'm on the end of the week, I'm away from the stress, I can, I don't have to reply to e-mails or something for a couple of days.

• 33:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  So I'm probably excited. So that's Friday, yeah. That's Friday at three o'clock, so your mind's out of work, your mind's already somewhere else. You got, you got Friday, Saturday written off, you can't remember who's during the day.

• 33:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Got Saturday. So Sunday you're recovering from, you were recovering from Saturday and.

• 33:41Chris Williamson?

  Friday.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Friday. And then, do you know what? I was seeing this girl, you know what we invented? Tequila Sundays.

• 33:46Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Fantastic. So we had a couple of tequila Sundays.

• 33:49Chris Williamson?

  And that'll fix the hangover and at least taper it off a little bit.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we had a couple of drinks Sunday night together.

• 33:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  And that then, it's Monday. Monday you're recovering.

• 33:59Chris Williamson?

  Monday's tough, so you've got to have a glass of wine at the end of the day, because you've got through a day hungover.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then, you know, maybe, maybe not Tuesday or Wednesday, because you're a little bit fresher. And then.

• 34:11Chris Williamson?

  You're winding, you're winding back up for the weekend.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 34:13Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting, it's really interesting. I think that it'll be very enlightening for people to hear someone who has, from the outside looking in, definitely made up the dominance hierarchy, has got an awful lot going for them. But has struggled with something that most people elect to do and find, uh, find enjoyable. And I think one of the key, one of the key problems when you're talking about sobriety, or when you're talking about trying to control alcohol, is that every drink that you have makes a subsequent drink more difficult to not have.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 34:46Chris Williamson?

  It's like a feedback loop.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:47Chris Williamson?

  You have one and your inhibition's lower. And then you have another and your inhibition's lower.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:52Chris Williamson?

  And then before, before long, you're like, oh, well, like, what's, what's getting a bottle of wine?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:57Chris Williamson?

  And if it's, you, you know, you, you're on a night out, what's getting a bag of drugs in? What's getting this, what's getting that? And do you know what I mean? And then who says no to the after party at your house? Who says no to telling your friends something that's hurtful or doing whatever? The inhibitions just continue to get broken down.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And then you're also going to the, the bad food.

• 35:15Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  And that's a whole nother kettle of fish.

• 35:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Because you just, then you just, you look at what you put, you know, and one of the guys said it here, is that your brain cells are made of every single thing that you put into your mouth.

• 35:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Your brain cells, yeah, it's the first time you've heard that.

• 35:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's really true.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  That's gonna change your mind and things. But I'm like, okay, everything that goes in my mouth makes my brain, okay.

• 35:36Chris Williamson?

  What's my brain built on? Domino, Domino's and tequila.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Domino's and tequila, oh god.

• 35:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. What sort of, what sort of life is that gonna be? I think it's really interesting, man, it's very, very uh insightful to hear from someone. Could you hear these stories of like child prodigies and, you know, Macaulay Culkin-esque characters that have got too much too soon?

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:55Chris Williamson?

  Uh but it's very interesting to hear it firsthand from somebody who definitely did have that.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:00Chris Williamson?

  And I think that alcoholism is usually perceived by people to be, or a problem with alcohol, is usually perceived by people to be a mid fifties guy with a bottle of Scotch whisky laid on his couch.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:16Chris Williamson?

  Sipping it from that, he's unemployed, he's on benefits, he's this, that and the other. But it's not. A problem with alcohol is that you cannot deal with what alcohol does to you in your body.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:26Chris Williamson?

  If you have, I've got a number of friends that range from introvert to extrovert, from depressive to happy. And the guys that are depressed or that have a depressive personality, they need to restrict their thinking. One hundred percent.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Is that just you saying that they need to?

• 36:41Chris Williamson?

  Well, it's me, it's me, that's me speaking from personal, personal experience. I do not deal well with hangovers.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 36:48Chris Williamson?

  And then if you throw into that mix, if one of your personality traits is being industrious and you've got high goals and you have high standards for yourself, they say that um the ultimate pain is when the person you are meets the person you could have been.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:02Chris Williamson?

  And that that's the difference in pain of what you feel.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:05Chris Williamson?

  Like, if you set your goals very, very high and then you start to bring yourself down and your performance suffers. Performance at work, performance in relationships, performance with everything.

• 37:16Chris Williamson?

  If you do that to yourself, you're electing to make yourself slow.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:19Chris Williamson?

  And one of the mad things, I always use this example, especially about people that use like, that use really, really heavy drugs. So if you talk about pills or MDMA, that kind of wash a sequence or a night's experience with the same flavour. So you hear guys will go out and they'll go on a stag do, they go Vegas, they travel halfway around the world to go to Vegas. And they get absolutely blitzed, out of their mind, can't remember half the night. And then they'll take a drug that is so immersive that they literally could have gone down the road to the pub and had the same experience.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:50Chris Williamson?

  The only difference that you choose when you go away on holiday and you decide to fill yourself full of alcohol and drugs is what environment do I want to have my come down and hangover in?

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:00Chris Williamson?

  That's the only thing that you change.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Yep, completely. Completely, and you know what, I had the perfect come down environment. I had a dark room. I, it was like, it was like cinema, cinema room. A dark room, full of snacks.

• 38:13Chris Williamson?

  Blackout blinds.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Black out everything, honestly, and it would be pitch black. So, you know, that's the dream. I, I used to, I used to remember planning my Sundays.

• 38:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  I'd order Domino's, the, this, this, the weekend around, rolled around the come down, you know, this is the, this is the treat for myself and mentally rewarding yourself with a come down. Well, how is that ever gonna get you to, to where you want to be? Um, and you're completely right in the point that when you get to, when you get to like the pain of staying the same, you know, you're sat there looking like, this isn't me. This isn't who I want to be. I don't want to be this person in five years. The person I want to be in five years is doing a duh, duh, duh, duh. I need to do something, I need to make a change.

• 38:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. I mean, there's absolutely some people who don't have a problem with substances. I have a, I'm a club promoter, right? That's what I do for a living. Like, we see this, we see every single strata.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Can you, can you see the people who are suffering?

• 39:11Chris Williamson?

  Not on a night out. Not on a night out, no. Because everyone on a night out, again, you've got alcohol brain. The guys on a night out, even the ones that have got a depressive personality are the ones that are suffering. It needs to be chronic, like really severe for someone to be in the middle of a night out, ten beers deep and still not happy.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:30Chris Williamson?

  Because again, the alcohol and the drugs, they wash the environment with the rose tinted colored glasses. And then everyone's having a good time. And they're the life and soul of the party. But a lot of the time, it's the people, if you want to try and identify the people that are struggling the most with the substances, look at the ones that are the most outgoing on a night out.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Do you know, do you know, my, mine got bad when I started to just drink alone.

• 39:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  That was the one, that's when I knew. And I'm sat there, I, there were a couple of nights where I was just like, I remember, if you remember drinking a couple of bottles of wine at home alone on Saturday, because I wasn't going out, I don't know why.

• 40:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  And I, I lived, I lived forty five minutes away. And I text a friend to ask him if he can bring some coke.

• 40:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  To the house.

• 40:10Chris Williamson?

  An hour away.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  An hour away.

• 40:13Chris Williamson?

  On your own.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  On my own.

• 40:14Chris Williamson?

  So you can just rack up lines and sniff away.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Can you imagine that? And that's, and I was like.

• 40:18Chris Williamson?

  Man, do you know what it is? Like I say, there's absolutely people for whom substances aren't a problem. I have a wide range of friends who party to different, differing degrees.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:30Chris Williamson?

  People who go out and are sober because they choose to, people who go out and sober consciously because they know it's bad for them. People who drink and people who party in excess. And within each of those categories, you have people who are able to recover from it. And for whom it is absolutely fine.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:46Chris Williamson?

  But you know if you're one of those people, you know if you're not. You absolutely know for me, if you are waking up the next day, you might not know it's because of the alcohol. But if you're waking up the next day and you feel worse than a hangover should make you feel, and you know what the cat, I think you, you know how a hangover should be. But if you start becoming self referential.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:07Chris Williamson?

  And if you can't get out of bed for the day, and if you start thinking that I'm not actualising my potential, all the things that you've identified. That's, you know, that's, that's a highlight for it. So talk to me about what sobriety's done.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  God, what hasn't it done? Um, I've lost about three and a half stone. Have you seen the picture? Have you seen the picture? I'll show you.

• 41:27Chris Williamson?

  Open up on the screen.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Open up on the screen, but this is, this is all.

• 41:32Chris Williamson?

  Three and a half stone. So that's like, what, like eighteen kilos, fifteen kilos, something like that.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Twenty one.

• 41:37Chris Williamson?

  Twenty one kilos.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was, uh, so that's, that's me. That's me.

• 41:44Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow. That photo looks like it's been stretched.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:48Chris Williamson?

  That photo looks like it's been stretched in widescreen, but it's not. You're just massive.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Just massive. I'll show you from a side profile.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  So this was me.

• 41:57Chris Williamson?

  You're completely spherical.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  I know, I know. But isn't it?

• 42:01Chris Williamson?

  Which is crazy. Absolutely crazy.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  And that one there.

• 42:09Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow. Yeah, that's um, that's a different guy to the one that I'm looking at at the moment. Yeah. It's a different shaped face.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Different shaped face.

• 42:18Chris Williamson?

  You've got completely round.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's different as well.

• 42:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure. So you take on sobriety and then what are the other changes?

• 42:25Speaker 01

  I get time. I I I acquired myself a lot, spent a lot more time.

• 42:30Chris Williamson?

  Well, you're not, you're not spending a game.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Not spending a game.

• 42:32Chris Williamson?

  Getting smashed or coming down.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:33Chris Williamson?

  It's it's to interject at that point on the time thing. Even if, anyone that's listening, even if you think that maybe you don't have a problem in terms of being self referential with your um own opinions on your own substance use. If you look at your year, time's the only thing we can't get back, right?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:50Chris Williamson?

  If you look at your year as a set of year end accounts for a company.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:53Chris Williamson?

  And you wanted to maximise profitability, which would be available time to do with what you value.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:58Chris Williamson?

  What you would do is you would look at the biggest costs that you could get rid of on that time. And if you look through that and every single week, you go, your accountant looks at you and he says, what's, what's between seven AM and four PM every Saturday, you do fuck all. And then on a Sunday, you're working at fifty percent capacity. And then on a Monday, you're still only eighty percent capacity. What the fuck are you doing? And you think, right, okay, even if I don't have a problem with it, just from a pure time efficiency perspective, if I want to maximise my experience of life in the near eighty years that we've got on this planet, I need to make sure that I'm not spasticating myself on a weekly basis.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  The problem, the thing is, it's the routine, is if you do it every week, that's when it starts to become like question, that's when I think someone should question themselves because there's so much many, so much more things to do out there. You know, we do, we do live busy lives, you know, we do work hard, everyone does work hard. And so having that sense of doing something you want to do.

• 44:00Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  And it's, despite what people think, it's not going out and getting messed up with their friends all the time. There's other things they will find that they enjoy.

• 44:06Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  So I found I. Love running. I love working out.

• 44:11Chris Williamson?

  Who'd have known that the guy in those photos loved running?

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Honestly.

• 44:15Chris Williamson?

  It genuinely doesn't look like you could have ran at Burger King in the back.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  I would have, I would have ran to Burger King. I would have ran to Burger.

• 44:20Chris Williamson?

  Ran to Burger King, you're off licence at the dealers.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. They're the only place I like, honestly.

• 44:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Um, so I found out I love work, I loved running. I got a, um, I guess I replaced one addiction with another. But I love how running made, made me felt.

• 44:33Chris Williamson?

  That runner's high, man.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true. Runner's high is so true. Um, cause you, there's an element that you run away from your problems as well, a little bit, a little bit.

• 44:41Chris Williamson?

  But defeating them as well with every step.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. So you've got the positives as well. Um, so I fell in love with that. Um, fell in love with the outdoors, just in general, being outdoors, being, being around. Um, and then, you know, other things like wr- writing, writing. I've got a blog, um, hashtag ad.

• 45:01Chris Williamson?

  You're in it, isn't it? It's T Total Run It dot com, right?

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I just talk about what I do and then the running, the running side of things is taking me all over the world. I wanted to go see some places with it. So, I'm going to Lisbon next weekend to do.

• 45:13Chris Williamson?

  How many, how many marathons have you got planned?

• 45:15Speaker 01

  I've got, I'm doing 12 runs, one, one a month, building up different sizes.

• 45:21Chris Williamson?

  Like five K, 10 K?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm doing a half marathon next month in, next week in Lisbon.

• 45:26Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Then I'm doing one in Alloa in Scotland, cause I'm going to go up to Edinburgh.

• 45:29Chris Williamson?

  That's going to be cold.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  That's going to be really cold.

• 45:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  And then I'm doing a London marathon in April.

• 45:33Chris Williamson?

  Nice.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  And then I'm doing Ironman.

• 45:36Chris Williamson?

  No way. Where's the Ironman?

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Barcelona.

• 45:39Chris Williamson?

  That's sick.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, just for the weather.

• 45:41Chris Williamson?

  Worst place, yeah, for sure.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  So it's a couple of, bit of a swim, bit of a bike ride, bit of a run.

• 45:45Chris Williamson?

  That's amazing. But I mean, you know, like I say, there will definitely be people listening to this that think that's not me. Like I don't have a problem with, with substances. I like to go out with my friends and that for me is what I want to do in my weekends and that's sweet. But, I said during a podcast that I did with the CrossFit guys, that I think that around about 25, there's like a fitness menopause.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:06Chris Williamson?

  That occurs, where you stop being concerned. If you've been like a gym bro for a while, you stop being concerned with leanness at all costs and you start to realise, you're chronically aware of your own mortality as you, as you approach 30.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:18Chris Williamson?

  And you think, I need to be functional. I have to be able to put my, put my socks on and get up a set of stairs without getting out of breath. So you start to think about more functional stuff with that. And I think that the saying you can go through a party menopause as well. And it's delivered at varying ages. You know, you've, you've maybe had an early indoctrination.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:35Chris Williamson?

  You went straight to pro. You went straight to pro level.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I kind of, yeah, I went from student to professional, yeah.

• 46:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, professional.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Missed out everything in between, I did.

• 46:44Chris Williamson?

  No, there was no club games, you went straight to World Cup.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Straight, yeah.

• 46:49Chris Williamson?

  And, you know, I think with that as well, people realise, and like for some people, it's like being in a relationship, right? Like, that kind of opens people's eyes, because the girlfriend doesn't want you going out and getting wrecked all the time. And the boyfriend feels uncomfortable about you being in clubs with the guys, or just generally you want to spend time together, because you've got someone around.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:05Chris Williamson?

  But even without that, I think that it is really important for people to realise that there's more to life than going out and getting leathered. And, you know, I'm saying this from, I'm the guy that makes his living off the back of this.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, having to go to social media and. Shoveling people into clubs every weekend.

• 47:22Chris Williamson?

  What can I say? It's, you know, my business partner of ten years, I'd had a chat with him the other day, and he was talking about, he's going to go and see one of his friends who was in rehab. Who was forty-four now, and he was thinking to himself at the time, like, what is it that we're doing to people when we get them to go out on a night out? Like, but what you, you hit the nail on the head, that the problem is going out and getting blitzed every weekend.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:46Chris Williamson?

  Some people can go out and they can have, I've got a number of friends that can do it, that are in the, the Division Two and Division Three parties. And they're able to go out, they can do a five pint night, they can wake up the next morning and maybe they shouldn't drive. But after they've had a bacon sandwich, they're sweet to go.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 48:03Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what I mean? And that's fine.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  And I think it's about everyone really needs to ask themselves their relationship with alcohol. Do they think it's healthy? Um, it's a hard question to ask yourself, because you don't, never want to self-analyse negatively.

• 48:16Chris Williamson?

  Hundred percent.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  I, I do think that there is a subculture, this is, this is my, this is my thinking, is that there is a, the vegan trend that's come up in the last couple of years. It's been, it's that really grassroots, it really, um, is run by the youth people.

• 48:31Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Run by the youth who really are, I guess, passionate about animal protection, but also what being a vegan does for you. You know, there's a lot of studies around. No, not yet. I may, I may end up being, are you vegan?

• 48:43Chris Williamson?

  No, I'm not.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  But Sharon?

• 48:44Chris Williamson?

  No, neither. I've tried, I mean, I'm aware that I definitely don't eat anywhere near enough vegetables, so I need to, I need to push that. One of my friends put an interesting Facebook status up the other day talking about, um, it's trendy to be vegan at the moment, right? It is really, really trendy, but the same people that are giving someone grief for wearing a Canada Goose jacket will also be the same one that will spend a hundred quid on two bags of coke that's been done off the back of dead children in Colombia.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:09Chris Williamson?

  You know, gang wars and all the rest of the stuff that get your, get those drugs up your nose.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:14Chris Williamson?

  Uh, just as damaging and to a lot more sentient beings than the coyote that's died to make a jacket or whatever it might be. So, but again, with that, what are people doing? They're being very selective about what they want to be self-referential about.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. And also it works on social media for how they're perceived.

• 49:31Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. The self-branding, if that's fine.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:34Chris Williamson?

  You're never gonna put up a video of you snorting a line, but you can definitely put up a video of you saying that it's bad to.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:39Chris Williamson?

  Uh, share a video of someone trapping a coyote for a jacket.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Yep. I, I, I think, I think, I think the tea title so movement will all come soon.

• 49:49Chris Williamson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  I think there'll be a rise in young people, which I've always seen at universities, there's actually a decrease in amount of time students go out. Mainly because of money.

• 49:58Chris Williamson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  But I think there'll be, um, a little bit more education on the space. I think you'll have generations of young people who choose not to.

• 50:06Chris Williamson?

  I agree. Well, I mean, my master's dissertation was the effectiveness of anti-alcohol advertising on students at Newcastle.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:12Chris Williamson?

  And it basically found that none of it was.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:15Chris Williamson?

  That people wear the crazy stories as a badge of honour. They'll literally say, like, how was your night out? Man, it was crazy. I woke up in hospital.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:24Chris Williamson?

  Hang on, like, uh, that, uh, just reframe the conversation that you're having there.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  They did the same thing with smoking, when the smoking ban came in place.

• 50:32Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  They, they tried for years and years and years to obviously get people to smoke less, saying how, what it's gonna do to your fingertips, what it's gonna do to your hair. But it wasn't until smoking was banned in clubs and you had to go outside to smoke, that it became uncool and smoking stopped.

• 50:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Because suddenly this is Barry's entry, you've got to go outside and leave the pie. So people stopped smoking.

• 50:52Chris Williamson?

  Yep. It's interesting. I think what's specifically interesting about this conversation is that we've got two people coming at sobriety from opposite ends of the spectrum. So for the people that don't know, I did six months sober last year, which began December 2016 and finished in May 2017. And then I did six months of partying again and drinking. But after my six months of sobriety, which I only did to see if I could do it, I I knew that I, based on the time availability, uh, set of accounts that I came up with, I knew that if I wanted to be really successful for a period and I had some plans, things that I wanted to achieve, I needed to get some more time out. I needed to squeeze more time out of my day.

• 51:33Chris Williamson?

  And that sobriety enabled me to do that. But we're coming at it from someone who has used sobriety to stop an addiction or to stop a habitual um problem with substances. And then someone who's coming from it, who I wouldn't have classed myself as having a problem with alcohol. I'd have only drank maybe once every two weeks, but the times that I did, it wasn't good for me.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 51:57Chris Williamson?

  So I guess you've got a fairly wide spectrum of people there that are covered.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:02Chris Williamson?

  That for whom sobriety. So you were talking, really interesting what you touched on about the six week point. So I didn't track it at the time. I should have written a diary and I didn't about what the sobriety was doing to me. Because I think I guess a lot of what sobriety for you would have meant would have been not doing negative things before they start to do positive things.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:22Chris Williamson?

  Whereas for me, I was kind of starting, I guess, from a baseline of okay day to day and then improving from there.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:29Chris Williamson?

  But I've always said to my friends that has talked to me about it, after about two months, my mental agility and my verbal dexterity just went through the roof.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Ridiculous, yeah. And on that, on that point, um, it's, it's, think, uh, people, everyone listening, I think, is think deeply about when was the last time you can picture yourself going a month without alcohol? From being 16 years old.

• 52:55Chris Williamson?

  I use this story all the time.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  You can't. I couldn't. I couldn't. You know, you do, you do a dry. If you do a dry, eh, if you do a dry January, okay, you wake up on the new, new year, I'm over. So you won't have alcohol system to the second or third. And then you know what? You'll give in the last weekend because it's still January. So you only do like three, four weeks.

• 53:13Chris Williamson?

  What a way to humble everyone that's just completed Dry January. It wasn't dry January, it was dry three weeks.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  It's a dry three weeks, you know, it's a bit of a refresh while I get back into the gym. And it's not long enough to really notice the difference.

• 53:24Chris Williamson?

  I agree. I think six months is a really intimidating amount of time. But for me, the the changes that it made for me were were absolutely fantastic. Like verbal dexterity, mental agility, quality of sleep, ability to regulate emotions.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:39Chris Williamson?

  Everything. Absolutely, yeah. And what it does is, I think it it starts to let you deal with some of the things that are more, that are more chronic, that have been around for a little bit longer. The problems that require a deeper look at yourself, things to do with your values and whether you're living with virtue and what what values you want to be cultivating in the long term as a person. Because it's very difficult to think about, I'm gonna I'm gonna live in a virtuous life that is actuating my potential when you're hanging out with your arse, filling your mouth full of donuts on Sunday. Or you're waking up with some girl whose name you don't know.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  It's completely true, because the the questions you ask yourself in them situations are very small. You don't ask yourself big questions. You know, you're, when you're in a state of hungover, your body's telling you, I need food, I need drink, I need sudden short.

• 54:32Chris Williamson?

  Very short term, right?

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Gratification urges. This is what I need to get over the current situation. And then, like you say, when you've got a bit of headspace and a bit of mental bandwidth to ask yourself these difficult questions. Like, I've never ever thought of, what are my values? What what are my values? Someone, I actually did see a therapist for a bit to try and get over it. And one of the things he questioned, he said to me, is you need to write down your values. And all your actions need to be in line with your values of who you want to be as a person. I was like, what the hell are my values?

• 55:03Chris Williamson?

  I haven't got a clue.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  You haven't got a clue?

• 55:05Chris Williamson?

  Because it's all been washed under the rug, man. And you're right, like, if you're if you're from sixteen and spending time recreationally for you is going out and getting blitzed with your mates. You don't you don't actually know what life is outside of that. And then all that you need to do is add in a little bit of vicariously living your life through other people, through social media, through TV and all the rest of the stuff. And before you know it, like.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  You beat yourself up over, over where you are.

• 55:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you, you, you're causing the problem or you're, you're creating, you're building the wall that is so high you can't climb over anymore. And you want to see the other side.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:40Chris Williamson?

  And I think that that, that level of sort of helplessness or, or just dissatisfaction.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:44Chris Williamson?

  It's just dissatisfaction. And I think that it's, it's something that people don't have to deal with. And I think that's the, that's the key takeaway from this is that you don't have to go out and get absolutely blitzed. Because again, like we say, there's differing leagues of party, right?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:02Chris Williamson?

  There's, there's the ones who've gone to the absolute extreme. And there's the ones that have, that are able to manage their alcohol use. And for the ones that do, then, you know, crack on. Sobriety will help. And it will be a really, really good test for you in terms of can you win something? Can you win a battle that most people couldn't?

• 56:20Speaker 01

  That's, that's the big thing there. It's like proving to yourself that you can do something that no, that, that ninety nine percent of the rest of the population can't. And I think that is a, is a, is a big thing because it's a sense of achievement. It's not like, it's like a, it's real, um.

• 56:35Chris Williamson?

  It's a badge, wasn't it?

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I met, it's a badge, yeah, yeah. Not that I woke up in hospital, but I'm, I'm sober.

• 56:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  And, and it, there's an interesting thing. I met a guy who, who I've known for years from York, who's probably like, probably one of like the fittest, like best body guy.

• 56:52Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Um, apart from Chris.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  That I, that I know. Um, he's bodybuilder. And I met him when, when I must have been like month three into being sober. And he was like, I can't, I could never do what you do. And I was like for a minute, like.

• 57:08Chris Williamson?

  That guy was so disciplined with his fitness.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  This guy is so disciplined in his life. He, he, he looks like a god. He lifts, and you can never do what I do. That was like, hang on a minute, I'm doing something here that is so far away from not.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  But I'm just like, I'm, I'm gonna discover new things people, people don't do.

• 57:29Chris Williamson?

  It's really rare for people to take notice of much of what you post online. If it isn't something that's really monumental or about your family.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:36Chris Williamson?

  Like if it's not, I'm having a kid, I'm getting married, I'm moving away. Like for the most part, unless it's something really funny that, that bangs.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:42Chris Williamson?

  Like, and it's like a three hundred liker about someone that's parked on your street.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  You've been following my tweets, haven't you?

• 57:46Chris Williamson?

  Uh, yeah, unless it's one of those ones, like you don't, and you don't, people don't come up and speak to you. But I only posted about it maybe three or four times last year and the number of people that came up to me, you're right. And said, mate, are you still doing that six months sober thing? Yeah, fucking hell, like what's going on?

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:03Chris Williamson?

  Like, it's, it's not that big of a deal. Mate, I, I don't know how you do it, you know, it's just like, it's just one of them things like you've got, you know, how do you not like? And after a while, when people say I'd like a drink and you go, no. And you can say to them, without it being twatty, you can say, no, I'm, I'm doing six months sober or I'm, I'm, I'm doing a period of sobriety. Um, so.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  And, and on that point as well. The biggest reason why people say they could never do it is because they don't think they could have fun without it. And you're, you're there in a situation where you're still out with people, your friends, you're going out, you, you're actually in the night out. You're out later probably than any ever before. And you're actually having more fun.

• 58:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  And that's like the biggest, the biggest thing I hear from people is I can never do it because I feel like I'll be boring. And I don't know what my friends will think of me.

• 58:49Chris Williamson?

  So here we go.

• 58:52Chris Williamson?

  People use alcohol one hundred percent on a night out to mask the fact that they're not as extroverted as their friends think that they are.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:58Chris Williamson?

  Then that they're worried that they're not as good. So that is the equivalent of taking a performance enhancing drug to be able to perform at an adequate level at your sport of choice.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:06Chris Williamson?

  So if you are on a night out and you don't, you've got approach anxiety, as pick-up artists, we call it, for going up and speaking to a girl. Like I remember when I was in uni, I'd be like, I like can't go talk to that girl, knock back five Jägerbombs. And then you wake up with it the next morning.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:20Chris Williamson?

  Cause you're like, oh, I don't know what I said.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Pretty words.

• 59:22Chris Williamson?

  But it got rid of the, the inhibitions got lowered and the approach anxiety went away. And the same thing goes for being with your friends, like there's this funny quote that I know from online that says nothing good ever happens after two in the morning. And you're like, the last hour of a club night, unless you're in somewhere like that, a late night venue. If you're in a typical club that's ten till three or eleven till three, the final, and I watch it, like I sit and I look like. If you want a bit of advice, leave the club at two in the morning, like leave the club at two thirty in the morning. Because nothing good happens in the final half an hour or the final hour. It's people stumbling out, it's issues at the bar, it's people getting in scraps, it's this, that and the other. Like, you can have the lion's share of the night with none of the regret the next morning and none of the problems the next morning.

• 1:00:07Chris Williamson?

  And on top of that, you can remember it.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yep. And you know what, if you drive, it's cheaper.

• 1:00:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Because you drive there, you drive your friends, drop off, you go when you want to. And, you know, I've been out, I go out as much now as I did then and have a better time. And I completely agree with the point of two, because there's this moment, right, when you're with your friends, okay. And it's, it's, um, it's normally about one thirty, two o'clock, where things deteriorate for them. They go from having normal conversation to just being a mess and it's, you sit there and you're completely fine, it's like.

• 1:00:42Chris Williamson?

  That's a time leave, that's a calling bell. So here's the, here's the next point. We did this discussion once I completed the six months sober, um, with a guy called James Bailey, who is from Basel. And he brought up this really, really interesting point. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. He said that curing an addiction doesn't involve going cold turkey. It involves the reintroduction of the substance on your terms. So can you ever see yourself in the either short, medium or long term, reintroducing or attempting to reintroduce alcohol?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  If you can tell me one reason, reason why, if anyone can tell me one reason why I should have it in my body.

• 1:01:23Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so because alcohol and other substances.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:27Chris Williamson?

  Are as much of a part of the experience of life as anything else is.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:32Chris Williamson?

  Now, you could say, as I do to people when they ask about why am I not drinking as much, my main reason is I've served my time.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Chris Williamson?

  Like, the same way you do, you, you, um, military service. I'm like, I've served my time party and I did a decade of partying.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:46Chris Williamson?

  And right now I don't need to. But you could argue that by not reintroducing alcohol or by not using alcohol, that again, you're now living in a limited, limited.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:58Chris Williamson?

  Life on one side, because don't get it wrong, like, I've had some fucking wicked nights, I'll clear the air with my truth. Like, I have had some really, really fun times.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Chris Williamson?

  And that's not to. I absolutely would not have been able to achieve those nights out sober.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Chris Williamson?

  There's an element of the night, like we can sing the praises of sobriety all we want, but there's some nights out that just get going because everyone's blitzed.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely. I think, um,

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  definitely, definitely not for the very foreseeable future. I don't think,

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  I don't think it aligns with me and my values at all. The same, and this is going to sound really stupid, the same way, um, same way some people let's share, it's not them. I, I don't, I honestly feel that. I don't need it. I had to go have fun, um,

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  and I guess on the second part, then maybe I'm not over the addiction.

• 1:02:55Chris Williamson?

  Interesting. I think, I think that there's definitely, it, it shows the fact that you're able to make that admission shows how much time you've spent being self-reflective.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:09Chris Williamson?

  Because a lot of people wouldn't have even been able to identify the addiction in the first place or that the habit was a problem.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:14Chris Williamson?

  Let alone 20 months down the line to be able to say, I've still got more of this journey to go before I can actually consider going back in the other direction.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's a, there's a huge fear. I, I live my life running away from that moment where I knew I had to stop. Like I, I live to not, never feel that ever again.

• 1:03:34Chris Williamson?

  So there's a, an interesting thing. I'm doing Jordan Peterson Day at the moment. Um, there's an experiment that was done with rats. Put rats into a tube.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:42Chris Williamson?

  And they hadn't been fed for a while. They attached a spring around their tail and they cut cheese at the end and they wafted the smell of cheese in so they could smell the food and the rats pulled a particular force on this spring. Then what they did was they wafted the smell of a cat in from behind them. And you'd have thought the rats are starving. They're going to pull as hard as they can already, but they didn't. The amount of force that they exerted increased. And what he says is that in life, you don't just need to run towards something that you want. You need to run away from something that you fear.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Yep. That's why I run so much.

• 1:04:14Chris Williamson?

  Dom, man, I've really, I've really, really enjoyed this. I'd love to do it again. Um, I'm going to put the links to T Total Runner and everything else.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:04:22Chris Williamson?

  Uh, social chain, guys, if you want to check it out or Hogwarts Logic or just look on your Facebook feed or your Instagram feed. There's probably going to be something from you guys that pops up on there. I really appreciate your time, man.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Thank you, Chris.

• 1:04:32Chris Williamson?

  Cheers. Thanks, buddy.

• 1:04:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, oh yeah. Offense.