What do I feel like doing now? Having a drink? Going out and getting smashed? Well… No. My head doesn’t really know what to think anymore. It’s a bit of a mind-fuck really. When I started this three months ago I thought I’d be dying to go out and have a drink when it was all over. But now I’m not sure. It’s been three days since my three months has been over and I haven’t been out yet to have a big night. I’m forced now to think about what I might be like now under the influence. I love that I can go have a few drinks with friends and have that social connection again, but I don’t think I’ll ever need that ridiculous amount of alcohol to be guaranteed a good time.

Now that I’ve been out a lot and been able to have a good time sober, having a few drinks or not is no longer an issue anymore. It’s like when everyone plans on what they might be drinking beforehand, subconsciously counting up how many standard drinks they are going to need to have a good time that night. Those thoughts just aren’t in my head anymore. It’s like a big reset button has been pushed in my head and just the thought of drinking again makes me feel anxious. And it’s not like I’ll never ever drink again, I like having the option to do what I feel like now. But because of these three months off, I don’t really feel like drinking to excess anymore anyways. So far all the positive things I’ve gotten out of it have out-weighed the negatives. I’ve managed to lose about 6 kilos just because of the lack of alcohol and my bank account has sky rocketed because I can now fit in more work and I’m no longer spending 150 dollars plus a week on alcohol. So who really knows what will happen next, I know I’ve been forced to do a lot of thinking about who I am and all that stereotypical finding-yourself shit.

But it’s really not over, I’ll be going to Europe in July this year and I seriously doubt I’ll be getting away with not having alcohol in my system while over there. I think that’s probably one of the good and bad things that have come out of these three months as well.  By putting this restriction on myself I’ve kind of tricked myself into being a bit more mature I’ve now realised how important it is to act my age. 19 year olds shouldn’t be stressing about the things I’ve been stressing about, but a big part of Hello Sunday Morning is about discovering things about yourself that you didn’t know were there like improving your confidence or realising potential within yourself. Now that this process is theoretically over I know that there are much more fun times ahead because of everything I’ve learnt about myself.

Callum Spencer

I have no idea.

I honestly can’t remember if the person I was in 2009 is anything like who I am right now. I haven’t written anything in so long simply because I haven’t any clue as to what might inspire some change in someone else reading this. So all I can really do is share with you things that I remember over the last few weeks.

The things I have noticed most. Parents seem to love Hello Sunday Morning and almost all of them read the Sunday mail. At least the parents of my friends do anyways. “Dude, thanks to you, my mum wants me to not drink for 3 months.” Is it that the article about me in the Sunday Mail made me look like a recovering alcoholic? And that parents are worried that their kids are also, “Masking their emotional turmoil through a bottle of spirits 4 times a week.” *roll eyes* As journalistically twisted as these words were, is this a bad thing that parents are encouraging their children to drink less? No I don’t really think so. It means that people are starting to talk about it, starting to weigh up their options and realise that not drinking might not sound so farfetched and not so confronting an idea as originally thought.

So it seems that an article that was meant to be about promoting Hello Sunday Morning that turned into an article all about me and my personal life. Actually did some good despite journalists who where were desperate to hold onto their evil minded stereotype. The headline read “Sober Callum Fights His Pain.” Honestly. This isn’t about me. It’s about us. “Generation Y delivers new way to combat teen binge drinking.” This is what got the HSM team into doing what we’re doing now. It doesn’t matter what people are telling us to do, we’re making our own, self-motivated decisions. If you are reading this, and you feel like some mind set that you have been hanging onto has been inspired to change after reading a few HSM articles, please leave a comment, let us know what we’re doing is helping some people out.

This week has made me realise how important it is to clarify that what HSM hopes to achieve is on a much grander scale than just my story. HSM is about supporting young people in making a drastic change in their lives. People my age have had anti-binge-drinking advertising thrown at us for years. By learning about our experiences, we hope to show you – not tell you – about a new way of thinking. We want to encourage discussion, to challenge the way you think about your life, to let deep conversation thrive through differences in opinion and inspire self-motivated change. Not the kind of change that is forced upon us by rules and regulations. The change that only your closest friends will notice. Change that is inspired by an urge from within, an urge that made me want to try and become the person I want to be  The same urge I started writing about, to hopefully inspire something in someone else. To let them feel the confidence that I have now, that I no longer need alcohol to give me. HSM is not about telling you what to do. It’s about sharing stories on a relatable level so that you can take away from it what you want. This means that every person’s perception of HSM is going to be different to the person next to them. This is a fact that HSM embraces.

Even if that means you still want to drink, realise the message behind HSM is that that surge of self-assurance that people are desperately searching for with alcohol, is still possible without it.

Being able to walk into a room of people you don’t know and being completely comfortable in your own skin, looking someone in the eye and believing every word your saying or just simply being able to let go. These are all things that HSM cherishes. Not just the anti-binging message, but also all the things behind the decision, to allow you to do it all on your own.

Although having only been in HSM for the past month, his growth as an individual has been exponential. What he has achieved, personally, in just 4 weeks, took me over 3 months. His journey makes me realise just how easy it is to change our belief systems around alcohol with the right support around us.

Hope you enjoy the interview.

For me this was the scary part, having to instantly put myself out there, simply because I wasn’t drinking. But honestly, all I really needed to become the person I knew I was, to come out of that shell, was to be surrounded by smiling people having a good time. If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a good mood is infectious. Music, laughter and dancing are quickly becoming my new alcohol. And it was surprisingly easy to make the switch.

On my first weekend out I was with a group of people I’d only just met at a party beforehand. We’d spent the first half of the night talking and eventually the time came when everyone wanted to go dancing. Something I hadn’t thought of until that moment. Dancing was something that only the drunkest versions of me would attempt to do, I was never going to be able to do it sober. We walked downstairs to where the dance floor was and everyone in their drunken states began dancing and having a great time, they didn’t care who was watching or if anyone was judging them.

I wanted to be like that. I want to be able to let go.

This was the challenge I had wanted to face. I wanted to dance. I wanted to be with my friends and have fun without thinking about if I looked stupid or not. But something was stopping me. I wanted to not care about what people thought of me, not to need alcohol to make me believe that. So readers I did just that. I danced and made a complete fool of myself. But had the most fun out I’d had all year. A friend of mine spoke to me as we walked outside, “Dude I thought you said you weren’t drinking.” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t smile.

I had been so sure all day that I was going to drink. I’d told everyone just so they knew it was what I wanted. I held the bottle in my hand and considered what it really meant. Giving up on a challenge I had set myself, letting all the doubters win or most importantly, running. In it’s simplest form, this whole decision was about Fight or Flight. Run from the problem I have, or face it with the people I had sitting around me. For some reason I had never thought about choosing to drink like that. For myself and a lot of people I know, just the thought of running from something annoys me, so why should this be any different? Thankfully, I put my drink back, and continued to enjoy the night uninhibited. I let myself feel what I needed to feel. I knew I would have regretted drinking that night, and I’m glad I didn’t. Getting through that weekend was the hardest thing I could do in these three months of not drinking, so lets hope the future works out just as well. Unfortunately though it took an old friend to make me realise that the past was just as important in being able to make the changes I wanted to.

And so I was handed a different perspective. An old friend read my first post and she sat me down to tell me what was what. “Callum I’ve been waiting a year for you to say these things, let alone post them online.”

This began a two-hour long conversation about how I had changed into a completely different person during most of 2009. Alcohol it seems; hadn’t been as kind to me as I had first thought. I knew I had been disregarding responsibility by drinking and acting the way I was, however I had no idea of the affect my actions had on the people around me. My friend laid out that on more than one occasion, I’d neglected to care, ignored responsibility or just been a dick in general. Naturally, I tried to justify my actions and believe me, I used the phrase, “But I was smashed” more times than I could count. Each repeat was consistently met with a rolling of her eyes followed by a stern, “You can’t hide behind that forever.”

As much as it pains me to say, she was very right. Behind every irresponsible action in the last year, had been alcohol. Alcohol I had consumed for the exact reason I was getting into trouble for. No responsibility, no worries. Or so I thought. It was my choice to drink as much as I did and in a way, it was my choice to hurt the people I had been hurting. Nobody drinks without the knowledge of who they will turn into. But everyone drinks ignorant of the fact that that person will do things they’ll regret. Think about it.

I was in my 10^th grade at school when alcohol started becoming a big part of life, school became the annoying gap between weekends where I wasn’t at a party with friends drinking, meeting people and having fun.

In November of 2008 my mother died in a tragic accident that rocked my family. It happened the day I graduated from school and the day before schoolies. The few days that I did spend at the gold coast were spent in an alcoholic haze, meeting people, seeing the friends I needed to see. Being able to temporarily forget what had happened and distracting myself from reality became something I needed to do and I needed to do it as often as possible.

I turned 18 in January 4^th 2009 and going completely smashed became my new nirvana. Tuesdays out at Alibi Room or Gerties, Wednesdays at Regatta Hotel, Thursdays at music events, Friday nights in the valley and then Saturday nights in the city. Sundays and Mondays were spent sleeping, recovering for the next week of parties. Uni work became an in between thing and I was scraping through not prioritizing my education at all. But not caring was what felt good, not embracing responsibility, ignoring anyone that wanted to ‘talk’ or do anything that didn’t involve distracting me.

My friends are the glue that is holding me together. They are the reason I want change. I’ve enjoyed myself this year don’t get me wrong. The people I’ve met, the things that I’ve done, both drunk and sober.

The realisation now dawns upon me, that I don’t want to rely on alcohol to make me more confident, to jump off that cliff, to meet that girl or to make me forget.

If I’m going to have a meaningful existence I would much rather do it under my own steam. The drunken version of me is just an extra confident version of my personality. I like myself when I drink, I’ll do things that I would usually be too scared to do. But getting past that barrier while sober is my new challenge. Being worried about the consequences but doing it anyways.

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