Here is the full transcript of Paul Churchill’s talk titled “I’ve Been Duped By Alcohol” at TEDxBozeman conference.
Paul Churchill’s TEDx talk, “I’ve Been Duped By Alcohol,” is a poignant and personal exploration of his journey through alcohol addiction and recovery. He begins by expressing how societal messages and educational programs failed to warn him about the dangers of alcohol, leading him to develop a severe addiction that overshadowed his life.
Churchill shares the turning point in his life, which came after he moved to Spain to run a bar, only to find his drinking habits spiraling out of control. His story takes a turn as he discusses his struggle to quit drinking, highlighting the powerful grip of addiction. He underscores the misleading portrayal of alcohol in society and the lack of awareness about its dangers compared to illegal drugs.
Churchill’s eventual triumph over addiction led him to create the Recovery Elevator podcast, aiming to provide support and create a community for others facing similar battles. The talk is a compelling call to action against the stigma surrounding alcoholism and an inspiring story of resilience and recovery.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Allure of Alcohol
I feel like I’ve been duped. I recall in high school, the motivational speakers would come to my school and say, “Don’t do drugs, don’t do crack, don’t do heroin, don’t do cocaine, and don’t do meth.” I’d say to myself, “Okay, I heard you loud and clear, I won’t do drugs.” But absent from those talks was any reference to alcohol.
From what I saw on TV and the movies, as far as I was 21, everything was going to be just fine. I started drinking in college, and I loved it. I had a great time. I started to drink more and more and became enchanted with it. After majoring in business in Spanish, I had the brilliant idea to move to Granada, Spain, and buy a bar.
Looking back, it was clear I had a drinking problem at the time. And what ensued over the following three years can be summarized with three words: total shit show. Now, my drinking became so bad in Spain, I was blacking out five to seven nights per week. 20 to 25 drinks a night, that was the norm.
One night, I ended up in the emergency room. I was thinking I was having a heart attack, but it ended up being alcohol-induced withdrawal symptoms and a severe anxiety attack. I said to myself, “What in the hell is going on?”
A Wake-up Call
I’m a smart guy, why can’t I beat this? Well, my drinking only increased, so I did a smart thing. I walked away from the bar in Spain, hoping a geographical change would cure my drinking. But it didn’t taper off, in fact, it escalated.
At a time when it seemed my friends were phasing out of their heavy drinking days, I was ramping up. I began to wonder, “What is going on?” So, I decided to do some research and went to Dr. Google. Now, with the help of Dr. Google, I found an episode on the Freakonomics podcast with Dr. David Nutt, who was hired by the British government to place a harm score on 20 of the world’s most addictive drugs. And his findings surprised me.
He found that magic mushrooms do the least amount of harm to those who take them and others. And guess what landed at number one? It wasn’t meth, it wasn’t crack, it wasn’t cocaine or heroin, it was alcohol. I felt like I had been totally and completely duped by alcohol, and why hadn’t I known it could be so dangerous?
The Hidden Dangers of Alcohol
Well, it turns out that alcohol is quite addictive. What I didn’t hear from those speakers and motivational speakers in elementary school, middle school, high school, was that alcohol kills more people each year than every other drug combined. Currently, 33% of all traffic fatalities involve alcohol, around 11,000 in this country alone, 85,000 Americans. Over 3 million people worldwide will die this year due to alcohol-related causes.
So, at age 28, I decided to quit, permanently, but I couldn’t. Due to the addictive properties of alcohol, I got dragged down in a vicious cycle of addiction again. I’d get a week, a month, a year, only to be dragged down in addiction again. But finally, after a decade of being sick and tired of being sick and tired, and a failed suicide attempt due to that damn stigma, on September 7th, I got sober.
Now let me tell you why this is my most crowning achievement in life. Five percent of people will make it to 90 days. Of those, only five percent will make it to two years. That’s 2.5 people out of 1,000 will make it to two years of sobriety after they make the decision to quit drinking.
Breaking the Stigma
So with two months of sobriety, I went to an AA meeting, and I was ducking and dodging behind trees, thank you stigma, and two things came to mind. Number one, I knew I was going to drink again if I didn’t do something different. Number two, there are so many people struggling, why are we so secretive about our drinking? So I selfishly started the Recovery Elevator podcast to create accountability for myself.
I didn’t care who listened. If it was just me, my brother, my mom, and my dad, then great, as long as I stayed sober. If I helped a couple of other people along the way, that’s a huge bonus. However, what happened next blew my mind. The podcast has been downloaded over one million times in all 50 states and over 140 countries.
Now I’d like to think it’s because I’m a highly skilled interviewer or that my topics are incredibly insightful, but I know it’s because there are so many people out there struggling with alcohol.