Show Transcript

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How does a man who'd been drinking his entire life suddenly stop drinking,

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find himself signed up for the Tour de France when he didn't even own a bicycle?

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And did I mention this isn't a young guy? I'm talking about a guy who's 50 years old.

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Obviously, limitations are off the table today, my friend.

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You are about to hear one of the most powerful stories from one of the most

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amazing people you will ever encounter.

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By the end of today's episode, you will discover the power of resilience,

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the beauty of self-discovery, and how one man's courage can inspire you to conquer your own mountains.

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It is my utmost pleasure to welcome you to episode 315, 2018 my interview with

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none other than Andy Smith. Welcome to the podcast.

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Yo, are you ready to flip the script on life? Because those bad days,

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they're just doors to better days.

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And that's exactly what we do here at Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

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Your host, Kevin Lowe, he's been flipping the script on his own life,

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turning over 20 years of being completely blind into straight up inspiration,

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motivation, and encouragement just for you.

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So kick back, relax, and let me introduce you to your host, Kevin Lowe.

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Andy, man, what a pleasure to have you here today. Welcome to the podcast.

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Yay. I'm so glad to be part of this.

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Following your story, what an inspiration.

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And one of the best things about doing what I do now is I get to meet people like you.

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So, yeah, look forward to having a great chat.

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Oh, man. Well, thank you so much, man. That means a lot to me.

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So let's kind of take us back kind of to childhood.

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I always love to kind of get an idea. And I think in your story,

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you know, it's going to be pivotal to just kind of understanding leading up

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to, you know, the events of your life.

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And so take me back, talk to me about where you grew up at, what life was like

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for you as a kid, and we'll work from there.

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Amazing. Yeah. I mean, I was born in the north of England.

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And when I was seven years old, we moved up to the Shetland Islands,

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which for those of you who are not sure where that is, it's a small group of

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about 100 islands that is basically forms the northernmost part of the UK.

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It's sort of on the way to Iceland, sort of adjacent with Norway and very,

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very remote part of the world.

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I grew up on the island of Bresse, which is about seven miles by three, 300 people on it.

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And in the early 70s, when we moved up there, it was like stepping back into a different century.

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There was no car ferry.

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If you wanted a car on the island, you had to befriend somebody with a fishing

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boat who would crane it onto the deck and take it over for you.

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And just an extraordinary place for a young guy to grow up.

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Very free to go and do what you wanted. but not, I guess, by a lot of people's

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standards, maybe people who've grown up in a city and things like that.

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There's not a lot of things to do, so you kind of have to make your own entertainment.

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No cinemas. There was only one TV channel when I was growing up.

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Yeah, so you really were left to your own devices in terms of how you passed

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your time, but a spectacular place,

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loads of wildlife, life, grew up messing about in boats and fishing and going

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and working on the local farm and all this kind of thing.

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And I guess one of the things that had come to define my life,

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a huge drinking culture.

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I actually grew up in a big old house that we moved into that was more or less

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completely completely derelict.

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And there was, I think, about two usable rooms in this big three-story house,

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about eight bedrooms, and the ceilings were hanging down.

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And it was quite an interesting place.

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There was rabbits living in it. There was rats, you name it.

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And so we fixed that up and turned it into a guest house and a pub.

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What could possibly go wrong for a young guy in that sort of situation.

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Very, very happy childhood, but from quite an early age,

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developed quite the taste for what I would call the Shetland diet,

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which was Tennant's lager and McEwan's export beer washed down with copious amounts of whiskey.

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So from probably about 13 years old, I was very much sort of embraced that culture.

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It was good fun, lots of interesting times, but everything sort of revolved around alcohol,

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whether it was a dance at the local hall or whether it was watching people in

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the pub, which was my home,

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where our very livelihood depended on people consuming copious amounts of alcohol in our house.

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So it kind of had quite a big impact on me, I think, culturally to sort of realize

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that in order to prove yourself as a man,

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as it were, that as a young man growing up, that.

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You're the size of your manhood was measured by how far down a bottle of whiskey

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you could get before you either threw up or fell over, basically.

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So it was quite the baptism of fire.

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And very much one of the sort of the phrases was, if you couldn't had your drink,

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as they would say up there, then you were a bit of a failure.

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And that carried with me throughout my whole life of this kind of desire to sort of prove myself.

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And, you know, drinking was a big part of that.

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Yeah. Wow. How old were you when you would finally move away from there?

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So I went away to university when I was 18, went to Edinburgh,

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the capital, and studied physics at uni.

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But again you know quite a

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big part of being a student certainly in

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Scotland is having a good time party

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party party and my folks I'm very grateful

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that I'm 58 now and my folks are still alive and they still live up there so

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we're actually looking at a holiday to go up and it's a place that is very dear

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to me in terms of I think there's something very special about growing Growing up on an island,

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you very much can sort of walk the coastline.

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You feel part of the landscape, as it were.

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I always make a point of when I'm going home of just touching the ground.

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And it feels very special that you have this thing that is quite separate from,

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you know, the islands around it, but actually is also connected underneath the sea.

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So it's a very, very special place. but I live in England now.

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I've spent most of my professional career living in various different parts

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of the UK, but it's where I consider to be home. Yeah.

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Oh my gosh. I mean, it sounds absolutely just beautiful.

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In every sense of the word. What a magical place and so amazing that you still

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get to go back there today and experience it with your parents. I absolutely love that.

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And yeah, and it's a very beautiful landscape.

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It's a sort of place that on a beautiful day, I would really challenge any place

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to be a more beautiful part of this planet.

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But the weather, obviously, given where it is,

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is a little mixed shall we say uh it's

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quite funny when people go to visit they might say

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oh why are there no trees uh around here and you say well come back in september

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and then you'll realize that basically any tree worth its salt is going to get

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blown flat and yes you know very windy very wet so lots of long dark nights

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all the more time for drinking really it's yes wow Wow.

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Now, one thing I was kind of curious about growing up in this type of culture,

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in this environment, did you always intend on going away to college or did you

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ever think about not going to college?

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Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think I was probably steered by my parents.

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I think particularly my dad, who was keen for me to pursue further education.

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I was, I was pretty bright at school, did very well in all my exams,

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but I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

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So physics was my sort of passion.

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It was what I was good at and it made sense to go and study that at university.

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And, and it's interesting as a father now myself and having,

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you know, experienced sort of trying to encourage my kids to go and pursue pursue their passions.

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I think my dad saw what was sort of potentially a, uh, you know,

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a good adventure for me and sort of encouraged, cajoled, kicked me to go and pursue this.

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Yeah. So I kind of drifted, I drifted into it.

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And to be fair, I've probably not really been back living there full-time since

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cause just career and things like that now is, is taking me to other parts of

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the, of the country. Yeah, absolutely.

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I love it. What career path would you end up taking after college?

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So I, I, I went into one of the big sort of blue chip retailers.

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A company called Marks and Spencer in the UK into their sort of management training

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scheme, which was a quite a good grounding.

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But then I went to get a sales job in the pharmaceutical industry.

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And that's probably where I've spent most of my career in healthcare and gradually

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becoming more senior in management roles, running divisions of pharmaceutical companies.

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I've run dental companies, veterinary companies.

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So it's just been kind of interesting how I've always...

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Sort of drifted towards the healthcare side of things.

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And given what I do now, it's just, it's kind of funny how life sometimes gives

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you little clues along the way around where maybe your destiny may lie.

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And I find myself really putting some of the experience in my kind of earlier

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career to good use in terms of what I'm doing now.

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Yeah, I love it. You know what? I, I love that because I often say that I feel

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like lives or each of our lives are like a jigsaw puzzle.

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And, you know, all along the way, pieces, they start getting fit together.

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And many times we don't take an opportunity, though, to ever try and look at

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things from a big picture until much later on.

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And I think a lot of times when we do sit back and look at a big picture,

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we can see exactly like what you said, where there were little clues.

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Lose. There are little things when you look back on life that have led you to this place.

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Well, I love the movie Slumdog Millionaire. You've probably come across it.

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And I just love the kind of the narrative that everything you go through in

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your life, good, bad, and indifferent can have meaning somewhere further down the road.

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And I think it's one of those things that as you you get older,

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you start to see the value in painful experiences.

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You start to see the value of people who come into your life and they're there

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for a reason. They're there to teach you something.

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And sometimes those lessons are uncomfortable and sometimes they're there to

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inspire you to go and do other things.

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And sometimes it requires a passage of time in order to really understand the value of that.

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Yeah, absolutely. Talking more about kind of the alcohol side of your story,

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because I know I know that's really going to kind of lead us through really

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the rest of our of our conversation.

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Will you talk to me a little bit more about that of it's just impact on your

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your daily life, maybe even career wise?

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I would love to kind of hear a little bit more about that. Yeah.

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And, and I think, you know, when I was younger, alcohol was very, it was very exciting.

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It was something that you did with your friends. It was a kind of a social glue

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in absence of things like going to the movies or going to the bowling alley

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and things like that. None of these things existed.

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So we would just sit in a little shed somewhere and sit and drink and do various different things.

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And I kind of carried that narrative through the rest of my life.

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And then when I started working, and I was away, working away from home,

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maybe feeling a little bit isolated, alcohol, again, felt like a bit of an antidote to loneliness.

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I became more and more senior in my roles.

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And I found that I was using alcohol a lot in terms of relaxation.

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I was using it in terms of entertaining and it

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just became quite all-encompassing there

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were very little or very few parts of

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my life where alcohol didn't play a certain

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role and and it was fine

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for a while and then obviously you

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get in a relationship you get married kids come

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along and all of

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a sudden you start to feel that there's a slight shift

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there's a slight evolution where far from being

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the kind of the fun thing alcohol just

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starts to become something that's getting in the way and

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it's interesting how people will twist a narrative on things and i certainly

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did that and i was very successful i broke records i won awards for my coaching

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and influencing and management skills and,

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you know, was perceived as a real high achiever within the industry that I was in.

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When I moved into dental, I completely rewrote the rule book in terms of what

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was possible, took on a poor performing company and transformed it.

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Did the same when I went into veterinary. And all the while,

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I just told myself that to go and drink myself to sleep, basically, let's just call it that,

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on the sofa every night was...

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The actions of a high achiever. I work hard. I play hard.

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I remember when I got my first sort of big job in the retail company after leaving

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university, my manager at the time, and we're going back to the kind of mid 80s, the late 80s here.

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And he was very much, you know, well, you need to work hard and play hard.

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So I just took him at his word and assumed play hard meant just go out and,

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you know, obliterate yourself with alcohol.

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Don't get me wrong. I did lots of other things as well, which were great fun and things like that.

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But there was just this kind of general presence of alcohol in my life.

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I got married, a couple of amazing kids who are now 18 and 21.

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But then that marriage failed and alcohol was a big part of that.

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And I was I was deeply unhappy in the marriage.

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And it became my go to in terms of coping with that.

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That and and obviously I think anybody

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who's listening to this who's been married to somebody who drinks heavily

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would also understand that there is a real sort of difficulty that that goes

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with that so we just we were in this situation and where I was unhappy so I

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drank more then things would happen which made me more unhappy which meant I

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drank more and you end up in this kind of crazy cycle.

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And then that marriage ended and I moved on, met this amazing new woman,

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Louise, and we ended up having a, having a child together.

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Who's now he's 10 as we speak to this.

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And I tried to use that sort of change in my life as an opportunity to to really have a look at myself.

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And I did for a little while. And then I remember once Louise kind of saying

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to me, do you need to really be drinking as much as you are?

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And she came at this from a place of love.

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My ex came at it from a position of judgment. And I think when people are kind

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of really quite critical and things like that.

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Anybody who's struggled with any kind of addiction, even though you are doing

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something that on the face of it seems like a choice and you're kind of enjoying doing it.

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Actually, I think anybody who's really struggled with this would openly acknowledge

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that you feel terrible about yourself.

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Each day you say to yourself, right, today's going to be different.

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I don't want to wake up like this tomorrow morning.

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And you're full of good intentions and you go through the day.

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And then about lunchtime, the excuses start to kind of creep back in as to why

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maybe you could maybe just have a little drink and whatever.

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And then, hey, presto, off you go again. And you wake up again the following morning.

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And it's like the movie Groundhog Day. You just think, I seem to be unable to break the cycle.

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And I think if you've ever been in that situation, it is a deeply uncomfortable

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state of affairs. I used to wake up every morning hating myself.

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So if anybody were to judge me on that, I literally, I was full to capacity of self-loathing.

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And so I would be very defensive about it.

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And, you know, I would almost kind of stick two fingers up. It's like,

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well, you know, if you're going to criticize me for my drinking, then just watch.

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I will go and, you know, really go to town and I'll give you something to criticize me for.

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But Louise was very different. She just came at this from a position of concern.

00:18:59.670 --> 00:19:05.810

Of love. And just, I guess, a general sense of, I want you to be around to be

00:19:05.810 --> 00:19:08.130

a dad for our young son. You're a good dad.

00:19:08.310 --> 00:19:10.910

I see how you are with your older children.

00:19:11.810 --> 00:19:16.970

And, and I'm just really frightened that you're not going to be around for them.

00:19:17.130 --> 00:19:21.030

And, but even then that wasn't enough for me.

00:19:21.270 --> 00:19:26.650

It took me to get to quite a dark place and bearing in mind,

00:19:26.690 --> 00:19:31.070

you know, this is a guy who who was a supposed high achiever.

00:19:31.765 --> 00:19:36.445

I think to look on the outside, looking in, this is a guy who's got the big

00:19:36.445 --> 00:19:41.925

flash company car, the nice house, you know, looks like he's got it all under control.

00:19:42.405 --> 00:19:49.505

And yet on the inside, I was, I was just in a terrible state and I was on antidepressants.

00:19:49.565 --> 00:19:53.645

I mean, there's some irony there, you know, drinking something that is an addictive

00:19:53.645 --> 00:19:56.545

depressant each evening, only to wake

00:19:56.665 --> 00:19:59.485

up to take a tablet, which is an antidepressant in the morning,

00:19:59.585 --> 00:20:04.885

is a special kind of habit reserved for people who are struggling with this.

00:20:04.985 --> 00:20:09.345

But it all kind of came to a head where I was getting a lot of health problems.

00:20:09.785 --> 00:20:16.065

I was struggling with gout, which I think a lot of people kind of smile or smirk

00:20:16.065 --> 00:20:19.385

when you talk about gout because it's seen as kind of self inflicted,

00:20:19.385 --> 00:20:21.025

a bit of a slightly comedy disease.

00:20:21.585 --> 00:20:28.625

If you've ever struggled with gout, it is the most most painful thing that I have ever experienced.

00:20:28.845 --> 00:20:33.605

I got it in both knees and both ankles and gout in your knee is,

00:20:33.665 --> 00:20:39.145

it's a bit like somebody ramming a hot poker into the joint and twisting it

00:20:39.145 --> 00:20:40.345

every time your leg moves.

00:20:40.545 --> 00:20:44.705

And it is, it is very difficult to cope with. I was on painkillers,

00:20:44.705 --> 00:20:46.325

I was on preventative medication.

00:20:46.505 --> 00:20:50.705

And the only thing that would make me feel better if I was in the middle of

00:20:50.705 --> 00:20:53.645

an attack was to get drunk. It was the only kind of painkiller.

00:20:53.985 --> 00:20:59.245

The irony was after I quit drinking three months later, the gout disappeared

00:20:59.245 --> 00:21:01.265

and I was able to come off the medication.

00:21:01.525 --> 00:21:06.365

But at the time when you're in the, in the moment, it was, it was terrible.

00:21:06.425 --> 00:21:11.005

And I'd had a medical, I, uh, my blood pressure was through the roof.

00:21:11.085 --> 00:21:12.685

My cholesterol was through the roof.

00:21:12.785 --> 00:21:19.725

I was pre-diabetic and I just tho