Transcription
Thank you, Michael. Thanks for having me in Sweden. It's my four... yeah. I've done, I've done many interviews and talked about gambling many times, but I've, I've never been on stage in front of so many people, so I'm a bit nervous. So, excuse me.
I'll tell you a little bit about what brought me here today, and that was my addiction. And that was my gambling addiction and cocaine addiction. And for me, when I go into recovery, it wasn't about the addiction anymore; it was about myself. How do I get comfortable with myself? I believe I had a mental and an emotional illness that I had to look at. Now, to look at myself, I had to bring it all back to me.
I started gambling from a very young age. My father was a compulsive gambler, and he was also an alcoholic, and so I grew up around it. So, from a very, very young age, I really got hooked on it. I loved it. I loved the feeling.
My siblings, we used to go to my Gran's for six weeks every year. We'd save up throughout the year, and we'd gamble it in the evening. But I wanted to gamble during the day as well, and I would get my cousins and my siblings to come and sit with me and gamble because I loved it. I just loved it. Um, we didn't grow up with very much because my father was a compulsive gambler and alcoholic, so very quickly I got fixated on money. And you have had money, I had friends. So, from the age of 11, I had three jobs. I was stealing. I'd do anything to get money in my pocket, but it never lasted long because I always wanted to gamble on anything. I'd gamble on anything.
And I'm going to fast forward to 18. On my birthday, I went to the casino, sat in front of the poker table where I was sitting there. Now, it says, "I'm at home here. This is it. This is where I'm meant to be." And for the next 20 years, I thought I was the best poker player in the world, but I never, ever came out of a casino winning. I didn't have any money in my pocket, ever, you know? And you know, you talk about, "You must have this big win." I never, ever had a big win, but I still thought I was the best poker player in the world. The insanity of it all!
I also started taking cocaine when I was 20. I was doing a little bit of hash before that, but I started selling it. I had people selling it for me. I was making lots and lots of money, but never, ever had money because I just kept gambling it away, or I'd be snorting it up my nose, or be buying things. Anything to escape reality, what was going on.
I met my wife when I was at school at 16, but I never, ever went to school unless I was selling all the stuff that I stole or for gambling. That's the only time I went to school. So, when I left school, I had nothing. I went into catering. This, this gentleman that had a small hotel, and it was a really quite renowned restaurant, took me under his wing, and he showed me what catering was about. And I loved it. I was really good at it. I was good at manipulating people, making people happy, giving them what they wanted. But I thought the money he was making was my money too, so I would just take whatever I wanted.
He retired, and he gave me this massive check, you know, because he didn't know what I was doing. And my wife thought that I had this massive check in the house. We were going to buy our first house. I had to go to the building society steps and then confess, just before we went in, that I had gambled it all away. And this was the very first time that she had ever encountered my gambling. For some reason, she said, "It's okay, you know, I've got enough." So, we got our house. We got married, and I was leading this double life. I was like Jekyll and Hyde, you know. She thought I was one thing, but on the other side, I was doing other things that I shouldn't be doing. I still had people selling drugs for me. I was taking drugs. She didn't know.
I eventually opened up my own restaurant, and then it's just, bang, you know. Everything, everything went absolutely insane. I was doing so much drugs. I was gambling every night. I was never in the house, and it, and it was just an insane time for me.
I had a child, Michael, at the age of 28. And he was born, and I was in the hospital, and I swore on his life that I would never gamble or take cocaine again. And I really meant it. I really meant it. Ten minutes after leaving the hospital, I was on the phone getting cocaine. But people rodent gambling. That is where this illness takes us.
I had a daughter. I did the same. I really meant it, you know. I'm sitting in front of them, and I'm really meaning, "I'm not going to do this again." But this, this illness had a hold of me, and I just couldn't stop. It took me to waking up one day and thinking that the whole world would be a better place without me, you know. So, I took lots of pills, my favorite ball away, and went into the middle of this forest. And the only thing that helped me to survive was a collie dog, a sheepdog, that found me in the middle of this field, its forest. And I was two minutes away from death. And I woke up ten, ten days later in intensive care. A guy, a hospital. My wife had thrown me out by then, and I was in a small flat on my own. I went there, and that didn't stop me. I still got drugs and had people around, and I was gambling. I couldn't stop.
So, one day, I knew, I knew that I woke up one day and I looked in the mirror, and I saw my father looking back at me. And I knew I had to do something. And you had to do something. So, I had this wonderful idea. Some of you have heard this. I had this wonderful idea: took money out the bank, got to the airport, "I have to stop taking cocaine and I have to stop gambling, and I'm going to go to South America and do it." No, that's insane. But I couldn't, I couldn't go there because I didn't have the jags. I ended up in Thailand. Didn't like Thailand. Got a taxi from Bangkok to Cambodia. I got over, over the border, and there were just thousands of children just begging in the streets, and it was heartbreaking. I got in tour with seven monks, and for the next month, I walked, I went around Cambodia, sleeping on jungle floors, and there were snakes and spiders, and went around orphanages. And I didn't take drugs. I didn't gamble. I didn't drink. I came back after a month. Nobody knew where I was. I didn't tell anybody that I was leaving. And the first thing I did was phone my dealer, get some coke, and start gambling.
The next day, I woke up in the afternoon, and that's when I knew I really had to do something. And that's when I got into recovery. Oh, yes, sorry. I went to my mother's house. I threw my phone away. I went to my mother's house, and that's when my, my journey really started. It was the very first time I'd been open and honest with anybody about my life. I was never open and honest with anybody in my life, and this was the first time that I'd opened up. This woman saved my life, I believe that, you know.
I started going to meetings, and I very quickly got a sponsor. I did a lot of voluntary work. I went to prisons. I went to victim support, helping in that. And I also went to rehab, and I did a lot of voluntary work. I was giving back, and this really helped me. My sponsor helped me, you know. I was really angry at my father, absolutely so angry at him. But I knew that I couldn't hold on to that anger and the resentments I had to him. And my sponsor said to me, "Well, write him a letter." I said, "He's dead," because I'd already snorted coke on his coffin, you know. But he was dead. So, I wrote my letter. I went to his graveyard, and I stood over there. You have to remember, I really loved this man as well as hated him, and I had to let things go. And I read this letter out, and I burned it over his graveyard, over his grave. And I walked away, and the relief I felt was amazing, you know. I'd let something go. I was carrying this rucksack full of these boulders for so long, and all of that experience, situations, the bad ones, the good ones, were in there. And I was carrying all of this. Something left me, something left me that day. It was a bit later then. Wow, my life was getting better. My wife saw my life was getting better, and she said, "You can start seeing the children." Wow, that was a wonderful thing. A few months later, she said, "Let's try coming back to the house, you know. There's something different about you." So, she let me back into her life, you know. My life was getting better.
I tried a few different businesses, but I wasn't fulfilled. And one, when I was volunteering, it was the rehab. Once, the guy said, "You should be a therapist. You're great with people." I said, "I'm stupid. I never went to school. How can I go to college and university?" He says, "I didn't go to school." So, I went to, went to college, and eventually went to university. Halfway through university, I tell this story because it's just insane. It's absolutely insane what happened. I thought I was so stupid that I was never going to finish university, and if I'd started something and I thought I was never going to finish it, I would just stop doing it. And this was me going back, and I got off the train, and I thought, "I'm just going to stop." I got back onto the platform, and I was just going to give it up. The doors opened, and the sheepdog got off the train and just, just looked at me. That, that was the same for me then.
I got a placement at Castle Craig, and I became a therapist. Now, when I graduated, I just kept working at Castle Craig for nothing, you know. And I said, "I'm not leaving." So, they eventually started paying me. So, that's why I'm here now. That is the smallest part of my story. I used and abused a lot of people throughout my life, you know. You know how you used and abused a lot of people. I believe that this program made me a better person. I believe that it gave me a healthy way of thinking and living, and all I can do is the right thing here and now. And if I do that, the right thing happens back to me.
I believe I have four things in my life that I put a hundred percent into, and that is my meetings. That is work in this program. We're starting with a sponsor. Then I started sponsoring people. Now, I mentor people by work this program. It's having a routine in my life. My wife knows exactly where I am any particular time now. She never knew where I was at all. And the last thing is honesty. If I take one of these things away, it's like a table is going to wobble. If I take two of them away from me, it's going to fall over. So, I put a hundred percent into these four things, and it's worked for me.
So, gambling, this is where I work. This is where I work now. This is the ADIT unit, okay? The initial treatment unit. And we do a lot of detox here. So, you'd come in for maybe four to six weeks and detox from alcohol, drugs, you know. If you're detoxing from cocaine or gambling, we give you Big Macs, McDonald's, okay? Because there's no details for that. So, we do a lot of this now, you know. We have a lot of patients with mental health problems as well as addiction as well, so we deal with lots of different subjects there. It's an amazing place. I've seen miracles happen there. The very first day I drove down that drive, it was like, "There's something special here." I have seen miracles happen there. I really have.
So, Dr. Ma Grandma Can and Pierre McCann started this 30 years ago. Wonderful people, both in recovery. We do equine therapy. We do lectures. This is called the library. We do lectures for all the patients, and everything here. It's a wonderful, wonderful building. Outside therapy, obviously in the summer, not in the winter. We do one-to-ones and all that. In the now, up here, you know, is an amazing place. We really get stuck into the addiction, I feel, you know. We have to, we have to make sure that we, that we accept that we have this problem before we can start looking at ourselves. Once we've accepted that, then we can start to dig a bit deeper into ourselves, looking at ourselves, because I believe it's about me now. This is not about my addiction anymore. It's about me. How do I change? How do I change as a person? Because I became this person that I did not like. I did not like this person. But this program showed me that, listen, use, there's another person that you can, that you can become. It's an amazing thing, and I started working towards this person. But the problem I've got now is I don't think I'm ever going to reach it because this person is skilled one like this, and I'm trying to game. That's... I don't think it's ever going to happen, so I can just do the right thing now.
So, this is what we're going to look at today: definition, a problem gambling, UK statistics, gambling behaviors, why do people gamble too much, phases of the gambling addiction, and recovery. Whoops, not very good at this. Okay. So, last year, no, last year in London, they, they brought out that gaming for youngsters was an addiction. So, not just gambling in the DSM-5, but gaming also. So, because youngsters, and we're going to go a little bit into that, you know, there's 450,000 youngsters from 11 to 16 that have a gambling problem in the UK. Now, I believe it starts with the gaming. I believe that, you know, a friend of mine's 14-year-old son last year said that, "I want to do a little pop a Don T's game that he was on the internet with." And he said, "Yeah, of course." He says, "So, tenner," he says, "there's my credit card details." One month later, when he got his bill, the young lad had spent five thousand pounds on just pop-ups for games. Now, in the gaming industry, now what's happening is all the gambling is starting to pop up for these children, and they're thinking, "To make money to buy more games, I'm going to start gambling." And I think this is how, how this is started. So, we have to be very careful here. I really feel it's about education for these people, for youngsters, for people at college, at university, you know. I go into, to schools, you know, and I talk a little bit about, about gambling, and the children come up to me and they say, "You know, my uncle or my father or my mother, you know, has that problem. How can I get them help?" You know. So, I feel it's really that we should start from a very young age educating people where gambling and gaming can take them.
So, all of this is from the DSM-5. That's what they say. So, problem gambling, gambling behavior that's out of control, is disrupting my life, family. You talked about the family. I really, really understood what you were saying, you know, why dead to my family, you know. And my wife tried to control me. She tried to do everything for me when I was in the throes of it, but she couldn't do. And it was not until she got help and said, "Enough was enough. I'm not taking it anymore," you know. She got help herself because I made her ill. I made her ill. She thought she was going insane, and I made her like that. And I made her feel as if she was going like that because then I could just do whatever I wanted. Businesses and relationships.
Okay, so 2 million people in the UK are either problem gamblers or at risk. 2 million, according to the Gambling Commission in 2017. Problem gamblers had grown by a third in three years, suggesting it's going... 430,000, but it is really up at 650,000 this year. It's a lot of people suffering out there now. If we think that we affect five people in their lives as addict, how many people are getting affected, you know, by these, these statistics? And we talked about the 450,000 children, 11 to 16-year-olds, and this just came out two weeks ago. There's a lot, a lot of people needing help out there. The Gambling Commission's report found, and it rose, so it's a third. That was just showing you that will go past our GambleAware. So, the gambling, you know, betting shops and, you know, internet use, earn thirteen and a half billion pounds, and what they give to GambleAware is 8 million. That's what they give. Now, what they, what they're saying that we should get on, so that would make 6 million less than what they should get. The problem is, you know, gambling, GambleAware, all they have is telephones. That's what they have. They have an office and they have telephones, and people that have a problem in the UK phone them up and they say, "I've got a problem," and they say, "Go to GA." And they get 8 million pounds for that. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy.
Right, so people are talking about the... I'm not very good at all of this technology, I'm afraid, about Bitcoins, cryptocurrencies. Wow. What's a cryptocurrency? This means I can buy stuff on the dark web. I can get my drugs. I can do whatever I want. I can hire somebody to kill my wife. I wouldn't do that, though, maybe 13 years ago. But how does this affect gambling? How does this affect gambling? Well, it's the volatility of it. It's up and down so quickly. As compulsive gamblers, we love that, you know. It's the front part of my brain and pleasure-seeking part. It's great. It's exciting. The endorphins, the adrenaline, you know. We've had about a dozen, dozen patients now with cryptocurrency addiction, you know. Most of them have made hundreds of thousands of pounds on it, but it's where it's taken them with that money, you know. One of, one of the newest guys has just come in, made seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds on cryptocurrency. What he did, though, he spent a million and a half on other forms of gambling because that wasn't enough for him. He started getting into cocaine, drinking too much. So, this is where, where this takes us to, you know. And it's, it's really risky. So, as compulsive gamblers, we love it. This is not regulated by anything. There's no, there is no substance behind it. If you're buying stocks and shares, there's usually buildings or a business behind it. There's nothing in there. There's nothing as numbers in a computer. There's nothing there. So, it's risky already, you know. It's not regulated by anybody. Governments could come in and shut them down just like that, stop it, and everybody will lose their money. This is about life and death, though. 40% of cryptocurrencies are bought through South Korea, and just two weeks ago, there were two people that killed themselves through cryptocurrencies. They jumped off, jumped off a roof because it fell so much, and they lost so much money. They're gambling. They're chasing money, and I'm not getting it. It's a form of gambling. That's what it is. It's a form of gambling. The Bitcoin was the one that started in 2008, and lots of people invested in that early on, made lots and lots and lots of money, you know. There were people in America, just kids, you know, and they wanted to get fake IDs, and the only way they could do it was buying Bitcoins. So, I feel them bought Bitcoins, and, you know, six, seven, eight years later, they realized they still had that, and they were making hundreds of thousands of pounds just because they got into it with a start. I wonder where they are now. The real attraction is the volatility. We talked about that. But it does mean that people can get rich very quick, but poor very quickly. So, people start chasing. They start chasing that money, you know. I mean, my largest bet that I did was a restaurant I owned, and it was worth 750,000, and I lost it. I lost it in a poker game. A week later, I won a million quid in a poker game. We don't stop. Enough is never enough for us. We just don't stop.
Types of gambling: the casual, but do it for fun. That's how we start. Socially, you know, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it going out with my friends, going to the casino. It was a night out. But then I quickly became addicted to it, and I didn't want to go out with my friends. I didn't want them to see what I was doing. I didn't want to be with them. The serious individual that is powerless over the gambling. It's my main interest, and that's, that was my next step to it. And then the relief and the escape. I had to, I had to gamble because of what I was doing. I didn't like myself, and it was these thoughts that I were having was feeding this feeling. I was having these emotions, and I had to escape from them. So, I had to go and do more gambling, or take more cocaine, or drink more, you know. I had to do something to escape. And then the anti-social. That's when I crossed the line, and I was just going insane, totally insane. Sports betting is better machines. Casino is bingo, lottery, stock market, and the cryptocurrency. The internet is 24/7 in our houses. It's 24/7. You can bet anywhere in the world at any time you want. It's crazy, you know. These children are just pressing, "Yeah, I'm 18." That's it. And they can bet whatever they want. It's insane. The internet is just, I don't know how that... I mean, it's going to be there forever, so it has to be about education now.
Professional gambler. I thought I was a professional gambler, but I never won anything. The problem gambler, and then the compulsive gambler. It didn't matter about the consequences. There were no consequences in my life to myself or to other people. I just didn't care. I got to that stage. I just didn't care. It's an escape from pressure, stress, boredom, a relief from sadness, loneliness, you know. When my dad, my father died, that was a great excuse to use more cocaine and go and run away gambling. It was a great, great excuse. I would justify and excuse every irrational thought that I had to make it rational so I can do what I wanted. Escaped from abusive relationships and substitute another addiction, and we call it cross-addiction. I was really good at taking down my cocaine, and my gambling would go up. Bring my gambling down, my cocaine would go up. Bring both down, my alcohol consumption would come in. When I go into recovery, I thought I was doing great, yes. So, I thought, "Pat on the back," and I went out and bought myself 20 suits. What did I need 20 suits for? I was escaping again, you know. I have to be very careful. I did marathons, you know. You know, I have to be very careful in what I do.
Why is excessive gambling attractive to certain individuals? They believe that they can get this big win. I'd buy hundreds of lorry tickets every week in US, and I wouldn't even look at half of them. I just knew I was going to win it. But they don't even look at half of them. I was crazy. A belief that the big win will magically solve all the problems. "Who's going to buy my mother this massive house? My friend's house is all next to me. I was going to have all these fancy cars," you know. Seeking the high, the thrill, and the rush, the adrenaline, the endorphins that were going on. I just loved it. I loved the action. It was never about the money. When I crossed the line, it was never about the money. It was about the action. It's about getting that bet on, and I would start to bet on anything. I never worked. Never really went, and I was interested in horses, but if I was walking by and had money in my pocket, I'd just go in. I didn't even know anything about horses, and just pick my favorite number, number four. "Yes, it's going to win because it's number four." Jeez, it's insane.
Research shows gambling and drug addiction are very similar, absolutely. When we start, we don't stop. When we start, we don't stop. It's never enough, you know. We can, we can see a, you know, a drug addict walking down the street if they're on drugs and alcohol, if he's pissed. But we cannot see somebody that's addicted to gambling walking down the street. They just look very normal. Both lead to the release of the pleasure chemical dopamine. Drug addicts need stronger heads to get their highs, just like we need to bet more money, you know. I'd start off at a fiver, end up at fifty quid. Both suffer withdrawals, you know. We get shakes, start sweating, get anxious. Research shows that the drug addiction and the gambling alter the same brain circuits. The inability to control or stop the behavior. An increase in the compulsive desire to satisfy our addiction. We isolate. Didn't want anybody to see what I was doing. I'd push people away. I'd put barriers up. Mood swings. I was up and down like a yo-yo. My wife didn't know what was going on with me, you know. The doctor, you know, I'd go in and say, "Fuck," to my wife, "I'm depressed." Get to the doctor. The doctor would give me all these antidepressants, you know. But it was a baby see addiction. I didn't need antidepressants. I just used him to try and kill myself. That's all I did. Increasingly severe consequences to self and others, you know. Always losing lots and lots of money, you know, lots of money. We nearly lost our house, you know. Businesses, yeah, nearly lost everything, you know. And I had lots of things, you know. I had everything from the outside. People thought I had everything: big house, nice cars, you know, this wonderful wife, two gorgeous children, you know. But inside, I was dying. Inside, I was killing myself.
Phases: the winning phase, the losing phase, the desperation phase, the hopelessness. Very similar to, to the chart that you put together, you know. The winning stage. But this is it. This is the, this is it. When we get to there, it's a gate. We have a gate. Can we go through it to recovery, or are we just going to keep suicidal ideation? We'd probably die, or we get incarcerated. But there is, there's a way out. There is a way out of this, and we can gallop to the growth stage. It is amazing what you can do in life. There is a future for every single person that gets into recovery. I promise you, if you work this program properly, there is a future. There is an absolute wonderful world out there for us. It's incredible what we can achieve if we put all the energy that we were using into our addiction into recovery, to being productive. Jesus, I went to university! If I can do it, anybody can do it, you know. There is a way out, and it's there for us. But, you know, I cannot work anybody else's recovery. I wish I had a magic wand, and I could just hit somebody over the head. I don't, I don't have that. You are the ones that have to put the work into it, but it is so worth it, you know. I have my wife back in my life. I've got my two children back in my life. I walked my daughter down the aisle on the 31st of December last year, you know. I have everything in my life I ever wanted through my addiction. I have it now through recovery.
Motivate to achieve abstinence, honesty, openness, and willingness to change. Identify and escape, and I accept the powerlessness. Identify your personal lifestyle changes and be willing to carry these changes. I develop coping strategies to address the triggers. The trigger is the thinking, you know. If I'm walking by a casino that I used to go to, and I'm getting all of this euphoric recall, thinking, "God, I used to win lots of money in there!" That's insane, but that's the trigger, you know. It's that thinking, and if I keep feeding that, if I keep feeding that, all I'm doing is feeding that emotion, the cravings that we call. So, if I keep feeding that, I'm feeding this. My action, my behavior is going to... I'm going to use. I'm going to do something stupid. But if I can keep, keep this under control, keep this in reality, and keep it, keep it in rational thinking, and I stop feeding that craving, that feeling inside of me. So, I have to keep making sure that I'm in reality, and I do that by going to meetings and having a sponsor, you know. I remember about two years ago, a friend of mine, I was at a meeting, and he said, "How's your wife?" I said, "She's great." He says, "She was speaking to my wife, and she doesn't seem very happy." I'm like, "Wow, I do this and this and this." He says, "Yeah, how much time do you spend with her? What time are you going to work?" He says, "Well, I'm going to work about..." "Hey, what time are you coming home?" I said, "I don't know, half six, seven." "What time are you many be there at nine? Whatever you mean, I leave five." I used to go for walks with her and take the dog at tea time, you know. It's very quickly I was just, just going into work mode, you know what it was. But these meetings help us just bring us back to the reality. And now I might go in a little bit early, I might leave a little bit late, but I go for a walk with my wife, with the dog. We'll make tea together. We sit down every morning, and we read our book together, you know. And she tells me what she thinks and feels about it, and I do that. I do the same with her, you know. I had to get to know this woman again, and she had to get to know me again, and we have to build our relationship up again, and it's a wonderful experience.
So, what do we do at Castle Craig? It's a six-week program: understanding gambling addiction, steps to recovery, avoidance of relapse, look at cross-addiction, and the significance of the GA fellowship. So, compulsive gamblers, we just look at Step One. Step One for compulsive gamblers: the consequences offered. We, the consequences. We do lectures on gambling, you know, and it's not all about money anymore. It's about us. We do lectures for them. We focus on Steps One, Two, and Three. We don't usually go past that. We do lectures on the cycle of addiction, you know, the insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting something different. The insanity of it, you know. So, we look at that. How can we, how can we get out of that cycle of addiction? Understanding thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, CBT, you know. And lectures on the signs and symptoms of compulsive gambling, cross-addiction, and the process of change. How do we change? Because this is about us. How do we change what's going on? Identified cognitive distortions, you know, thinking that I'm going to win. "I'm going to have that big win." Never did, never did. "I will get lucky." I was never lucky. Superstitious. "Number four, number four always won." Never, ever won. And that selective memory, you know, going back to that euphoric recall, that this was great. Where really the consequence was that I just about lost my family, my life, business, my house, my life. That was the reality. What I need to do instead. And instead, what changes do I need to make? And explore the perceptions. Deal with the RJs. Deal with the family problem. I utterly believe that this is a family problem. I believe that, and we have our wives, our family have to get help for this as well. This is not a quick fix, you know. This is not a quick fix. You know, our NHS, the National Health Service, you know, they give us like 8-10 sessions of CBT once a week. My God, I spent thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of hours gambling, you know. I was in my addiction for 25 years. This is not going to happen overnight. I needed to have a long-term program. That's why I needed debt management. A lot of people get into financial problems, you know. But once you get into recovery and you stop spending money, it's amazing how quickly, you know, that financial problem actually gets resolved because I'm not spending that money. The impulse control and the assertiveness management. GA. We have 270 means in Scotland, you know. In Edinburgh, where I'm from, we have a meeting every day. We have a meeting every day, you know. And I helped set up the Steps meetings, you know, because GA wasn't really, you know, into the Steps. So, we set the Steps meetings up, and there's just where every meetin talks about the Steps. Know, people are on a program. People are in recovery, and their lives are getting better. It's amazing what we can do, and also what Gamblers Anonymous does. But further, for the, the women, my wife, she needed to get into recovery, you know. She needed to get into recovery. She went to Gam-Anon, which is like Al-Anon. She needed to get well. She needed to get strength, and she actually went to Gam-Anon before I started to get into recovery, and that's what, where she got the strength to throw me out the house from, you know. It was unacceptable what I was doing. It was totally unacceptable. I can see that now, but at the time, I didn't. I really want to thank Adam because that movie that you produced was just incredible, you know. I really felt it, you know. I think I'd really feel that we need to get that out there for people to see because that really, really encouraged me. So, wonderful thing. So, thank you very much for that. I didn't think I'd be able to follow that man. It was just brilliant what you did. Listen, I'd really like to thank everybody in Sweden. That was wonderful for me to be here and just share a little bit my story and what we do at Castle Craig. We also have an extended care unit. So, from going from the ITU, you know, from four to six weeks, people go to the extended care unit, and we really delve a lot deeper, you know. We dealt with people's traumas, abuse issues, grief. So, we have grief groups, trauma groups, ACOA groups, you know. I had all children of alcoholics, so one of the four group, you know, and it's something I could relate to, something, you know, them. I mean, it was an amazing thing, you know. We also, you know, we do art therapy, equine therapy, drumming therapy, you know. It's an amazing place, you know. I'm not an artist, but when I went in and, and I went into the art group, and she said, "Just draw something." I just drew something, and it just came from in here, and it was on a bear paper, and it was just for me, it was just amazing. To everybody else, that looked a mess, but for me, it looked amazing, you know. And one of my, one of my patients just last week, he's just left last week, and, you know, he went into the art group, and I had them do two, two scenarios. One where if he would relapse, and one if he had this one amazing life. And he went into the art therapy group, and he drew this picture, and it was on these two scenarios, he told me. And then one was really black, really black and dark and horrible. But this other side was just so bright, you know. He wasn't an artist, but it really made me done something to me, you know. We can do anything in life. We can achieve anything in life. All we have to do is not get into our addiction. Thank you all very much.
[Applause]