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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 932 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mark-j-radio-2000-anonymous-on-air-2006.mp3 Duration: 00:13:23
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And yeah, as I said, we've got here on Radio 2000 Anonymous on air. We have two guests with us from Narcotics Anonymous. First off, we're going to be speaking with Mark. Hi, Mark. Hello, Scott. How are you doing today? Pretty good, thanks. A little nervous. But yeah, please, just share with us your experience, strength and hope. Great, Scott. Thanks for the invitation. Yeah, I'm always nervous when I share, and I guess this is no different.
But part of what I do and part of what keeps me clean is sharing this message and sharing my story. So that's what I'm here to do. I don't speak for Narcotics Anonymous. I speak for myself. Yeah, I've been around a while. I started using very early. Knowing a lot of addicts as I do, a lot of us started using very early, but I started smoking cigarettes when I was nine years old. And I like to think that was the first kind of outward sign of this disease in my life. I also started raiding my dad's liquor cabinet at that age. Mostly the sweet stuff because I hated the taste. But the addict behavior, I guess, came out in the fact that I kept going back despite the fact that I hated the taste.
When I was 11, I started drinking like it was a national sport and I was trying out for the team. And I was kind of lucky, I guess I didn't come across illicit drugs until I was 30, which Scott mentioned this program is a spiritual one. And that's where I see my higher power working in my life. I kind of. Yeah, he waited a while before before I was introduced to street drugs. And as I say, I was 30, which was very unusual. But during that time, I drank very heavily in fits and starts, hated the taste, loved the buzz. It was like a social lubricant for me. I could relax. I could relate to people. And I couldn't do that without help. When I discovered street drugs, I really felt like I'd come home. We consider alcohol a drug like any other, but it wasn't my drug of choice. It wasn't the drug that I enjoyed. Once once, as I say, I discovered street drugs. That was it for me. I tried to control it for quite a long time. I was I was married. In fact, I was divorced and I had kids and I was kind of on a really straight corporate track.
It was socially completely unacceptable for me to be using. But I developed a whole new set of friends. And amongst these guys, it was OK to be using. And I saw less and less of the guys who didn't approve of what I was doing or wouldn't have approved if they knew. And more and more of the guys who thought that I was just a party animal like them. From that point, I mean, my life had been going pretty well up until then.
I was kind of no more dysfunctional than anybody else around me. I've mentioned that I was divorced. I've got three magnificent children who are all grown now. And I had a I had a loving but distant relationship with them. My relationships really started breaking down once I started using, as I say, from the age of 30. Once I started using street drugs, I found it very difficult to hold a relationship together for any length of time. I was very uncomfortable with who I was.
And because of that, I guess I felt like everybody was very uncomfortable with who I was as well. So, yeah, very socially awkward. My drug use escalated. I started what's known as soft drugs, which is a really dumb term because soft drugs are certainly not soft drugs for me, but certainly progressed. I got into hallucinogens, which I absolutely loved. And mostly I loved them because I was really out of it on those drugs. I kidded myself that it was a spiritual thing, that it was mind expanding. I kind of I was. This was the 80s and 90s, but I was really a child of the 60s in terms of my drug use. Did a lot of reading, admired people like Castameda and Leary. And I thought what I was doing was quite smart. At the same time, I started experiencing quite serious mental problems, ended up hospitalized a few times.
And doctors and psychiatrists struggled with the diagnosis. When I declared my drug use for them, obviously, they were horrified. And the minute they said stop, I stopped seeing them. I didn't stop using the drugs. The psychiatric problems were partially to do with the drugs and partially because I had a psychiatric problem. And using the drugs was a little like trying to put out a fire with petrol.
And they really didn't go too well together, particularly the drugs that I liked. So I carried on using. I carried on having more and more problems in my life. The whole corporate track that I'd been on fell by the wayside. I justified it.
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It wasn't cool. I didn't need to conform. One of my favorite sayings was that I only reality is a suburb that I visit when I need money. Otherwise, I was just out there most of the time. And I really did start living on the fringes. All of my important relationships, by that point in time, had fallen away. By that stage, I had two ex-wives, both of whom were completely alienated from me. Before I cleaned up, I didn't speak to my children for a period of about two and a half years, which is completely insane. At the time, I justified it in all sorts of ways, like I was protecting them from who I was and they were better off with their mother.
Lots of justifications. The bottom line is I was just avoiding responsibility. When I did clean up, when I did clean up, it was kind of by accident. Mentally, I was very unwell. I ended up in Johannesburg. I had lost all of my possessions. I didn't even have shoes. I knocked on an aunt's door and she sent her housekeeper to the door with 50 bucks and a message that if I came back, she'd call the police, which confused me. I wasn't in touch with reality. I didn't understand why people didn't want to spend time with me, but boy, they didn't want to spend time with me. Somehow, and again, higher power intervention, my mother and my brother got down to Joburg from Zimbabwe and found me. Through a very strange set of coincidences, which I don't believe were coincidences at all, I ended up in rehab. I was really lucky to get that opportunity. I needed time to just get a little in touch with my sanity.
That took about three months. At three months, I had a counselor who I really owe my life to. He suggested that I just give up this notion that I might not be an addict because that's really what I was wrestling with. I was in rehab anyway. I wasn't going anywhere, so how about writing the first step, which Scott mentioned at the beginning of this program. The first step in NA is an admission of powerlessness over drugs. I sat down, I cleared my mind, and I started writing.
As I was writing, what I was writing became true for me. I started realizing that not the drugs, but my behavior around the drugs was ruling and ruining my life, and that if I didn't make a change, I was going to keep going downhill very fast. So I kept working the steps. I kept working this program, and I followed the suggestions. I became a bit of a, they call them blue flamers in the program, a bit of a Nazi for it. At the end of my time in rehab, this counselor who I admired so much said to me, I'm going to make some suggestions. Will you follow them? When I said yes, probably for the first time in 20 years, I really meant it. Whatever he was going to suggest, I was going to follow. The suggestions were that I didn't go home, that I go to Joburg, which was a horrifying thought for me, that I move into a halfway house. I was 38 years old, and I was tired of living with kids, but I said yes, so that's exactly what I did, and that I accept the first job I was offered. Now I was offered a really shocking job, but I took it, and it changed my life. It put me on a new career track, and since that time, I've followed this program. I've tried to carry the message.
I've attended meetings. I've worked the steps. I've got a bunch of sponsees who are guys who haven't been in the program for as long as I have, that I work with, and it has changed my life. I've got a magnificent relationship now with my kids, which frankly, I still don't feel I deserve. Every day that I have with them is just such a blessing for me. It's such a gift. I met somebody very early in my recovery, and we're still together. She's the best thing that ever happened to me, and the program has brought me all of that. They say it's a simple program, and it is. It's a very simple program. It's quite difficult to work. It's very hard to maintain the discipline to focus on my recovery for me, but it is a simple program, and taking it a day at a time, and that's the biggest blessing for me in this program is just for today. Just for today, I don't have to pick up. Just for today, I have to follow a few very simple suggestions, and it's been working for me now for nearly eight years, and God willing, it's going to keep working for me today and tomorrow, and Scott, thank you very much for the opportunity. No, Mark, thank you so much for your honesty. How are you finding the meetings? Are they growing quite a bit in NA, generally speaking, around South Africa? Yeah, it's been very steady growth in South Africa, particularly compared to the
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rest of the world. We grew slowly from the 80s, but steadily, and we're actually quite unique in the world in that the fellowship has never collapsed. Very often throughout the world, the fellowship will start growing. It'll collapse. It'll be resurrected. We've just steadily grown. We've got about 130 meetings a week throughout the country. Johannesburg, Pretoria has got about 35 meetings a week. Cape Town is bigger than we are. Durban is smaller. It's starting to grow in other places as well. Bloemfontein is starting to grow. The Garden Route has exploded. Port Elizabeth, East London, George, Knysna, Plett is really growing fast now. It's great, but you know, look, we like to be where there's a need. We've also formed a region in South Africa now, so we've become a little more organized and a little more able to respond to wherever the need is, and we're excited about that. Mark, you were talking about relationships and how, for example, your children and how they've been restored, and speaking for myself, once I started establishing a relationship with the God of my own understanding, that's when my relationships outside of myself, that those were really taken to a complete new level. In terms of relationships, that's very important. The other thing that I've found and something that I'm still working with now is expectations. I hear a lot from newcomers here, that first flash of recovery, you're all excited, you've changed your life, and things are great now. Why don't my folks trust me?
And how come my girlfriend won't take me back? And letting go of those expectations is also, it's very liberating. It's when I managed to do that, I think, with my kids, that things really started changing. When I stopped having expectations of them and just did what I did, lived my life, worked this program, just tried to be a regular guy, and things started changing very fast. I babysat my granddaughter last night.
They trust me enough to bring this little angel around and leave her with me to look after her. And so it's special. It's a privilege. There's a lovely quote that I often refer to. I think it comes from Seneca. And it says, expectations are the greatest impediment for living. In anticipation of tomorrow, we lose today. Scott, I'd like to bring something else up. You mentioned the website and people's awkwardness with coming out with this thing. And any of us who've been there can relate to that. I was in treatment for three months before I started thinking about whether I might be an addict or not. But that website's quite a powerful tool. It's got a forum on there.
You can share completely anonymously. You'll find links on the website to email helplines as well, which is a very anonymous way to share your problem, whether you've got a problem, or ask about whether you've got a problem. So I'd really encourage people to visit that. There's a lot of information available on that site. Yeah. Well, once again, guys, thank you so much for joining us. For me, it's been great. I've identified so strongly with you. Hopefully, some people out there have got the message. I really believe it. There was a lot of hope shared here today.
And yeah, next week, we're going to be on again 12 to 1 o'clock anonymous on air on Radio 2000. And stay tuned for the news. And Michel Constant with the Lucky Packet, and we're going to go out.