How to support people with an alcohol addiction

Jake Lloyd 0:15
This show is made possible by you, our listeners. If you like what you hear and if you want to help us tell more stories and reach more people, then from only 2 USD a month, you can become a patron of the show. Just visit patreon.com/arukahnetwork. Hello, I'm Jake Lloyd and welcome to How to build community, a podcast and a radio show brought to you by Tearfund's Footsteps magazine and Arukah Network.

In this episode, we're exploring how people recover from alcohol addiction.

Jon 0:41
If anyone is struggling out there, then one thing I would say is addiction lives in solitude. It lives in aloneness and darkness. It doesn't it doesn't live in community, or togetherness and connection.

Jake Lloyd 0:52
That's the voice of Jon, a recovering alcoholic based in the UK and a member of the worldwide group Alcoholics Anonymous. If you don't know, Alcoholics Anonymous is a support network for people recovering from alcohol addiction. I've been itching to have somebody from this organisation on our show for a while now to learn how alcohol addiction impacts people's lives, but also how people recover from it. And that's exactly what we'll hear from Jon in this episode. He's going to share his powerful story of how alcohol impacted his life and the people around him, for a time making him homeless. And then the remarkable story of how he began his recovery and ultimately how he now supports people on that same journey. On the way, you'll hopefully learn a bit about the power of honesty, love, connection and forgiveness in this healing process. And at the end, Jon will also share his thoughts on how you might best support people around you who might be struggling with addiction. So let's get into the interview now. Here's Jon explaining how his relationship with alcohol began.

Jon 2:08
I started off life as quite a shy, timid, insecure young man and just never seemed to feel like I fit in most places, which is weird because I kind of hung out with all the cool kids at school, but I still didn't feel like it in myself. I guess around that age of 13, 14, when life really started exploding with girls and parties, you know, just life was looming and I was kind of terrified of it. And I soon found out what alcohol did, you know, as a substance, not as, you know, that old thing we would drink in parks and all this sort of things as youngsters and grab bottles of cider with my pals and go to parties. But it certainly wasn't the taste of alcohol that I fell in love with, it was what it did to me as a person. What it managed to do was reach inside me and remove all the fear I was experiencing and all those insecurities and all the shyness, you know. So I turned into somebody who I wasn't, and I loved it for that reason. I turned into this new character who was not afraid any more. I could speak to my father, I could speak to girls. I could go to parties.  It was like this gateway substance that just allowed me to get and not be that shy little boy any more. And I loved it for that reason. So that was fun for me. You know, I think that there is evidence that alcoholics have a physical make up, which is different to those who are not predisposed to that, to alcoholism in a sense of, you know, alcohol affects the body in a way like it doesn't affect others. My sister had exactly the same upbringing, but she turned out completely different. There is evidence that we're physically different, but certainly a lot to do with that mental, spiritual state of who I was, because once I started drinking, it had me, I was almost like an alcoholic waiting to pick a drink. I picked the drink up and the drink took me. That's not the best way I can explain it. I don't believe I drank myself into it, which sounds odd to say, but you know, that was. That was my experience. Yeah.

Jake Lloyd 4:18
So how did you realise it was a problem? When did it become a problem in your mind?

Jon 4:24 
Well, yeah, again, that's a very good question. There's a theory in the world of recovery or sobriety, if you like, that the person, the alcoholic is the last person to know that they're you know, everyone else around them knows, but it comes with a sense of denial. If I'm to be honest, I think when you take it down, that right from the word go, my drinking wasn't normal. It was out of the ordinary. But it by the time I was 17, I could walk into an off licence and I would know exactly what lager had what percentage and what percentage I could get for the money I had in my pocket. By looking around the off licence, I'd know what strengths they were, you know, that sort behaviour obviously wasn't quite normal and it wasn't long before as a youngster, I was drinking before I would go out, if I was going to the pub to meet friends or doing anything really other than if was football or something like that. Playing football I would drink to go out because it made that transition so much more bearable. They took away that shyness and everything. So right from the word go, I knew it wasn't quite right, but I didn't ever want to look at that again. That's kind of a fundamental state that comes with addiction and alcoholism, any kind of thing, that sense of denial that we don't really want to acknowledge it or look at. And it wasn't long before the consequences start coming along and I started to develop quite selfish, self-centred attitude around alcohol. I started to bend and shape my life around alcohol, everything, if there was football, there was always a drink at the end of it, golfers there's always a drink at the end of it. And I worked for people that would pay me cash so that I'd get a drink at the end of it. It was all, you know, that was how my life started. And again, knowing really that that wasn't probably that normal because a lot of my pals one weren't doing that. Yeah. And as time went on, those consequences got worse and worse and worse as they do with addiction. So yeah, I don't know that there was any one point that I realised that was an issue. And certainly if I did, if that did sort of surface up, what I would do, it's a weird thing to say but I'd try and drink that away and try and forget about it.

Jake Lloyd 6:40
So how did you decide to do something about it?

Jon 6:44
And I got to 29 years old, and my life had revolved around alcohol for a long time by that point anyway. I'd spent my life kind of on the run, I didn't realise I was on the run for myself most of the time, if not all the time. And then the consequences were getting worse and worse and they were getting darker and darker and life was getting darker and darker. I'd kind of started to lose who I was. Like, I'd lost that boy I was trying to run away from. I'd lost that sense of who I was and behave in a certain way. Certainly back as 18, 19 years old, you know, my mid-twenties, I'd see myself, I would look to myself and said, 'What are you doing? How are you even behaving that way?' And my moral compass would shift all the time because I would do the same. I'll be deeply ashamed and I'll drink to have, to drink again, to try and get rid of that shame and try and forgive myself in an old sort of way. My son, really, my son coming along was a catalyst to sending me to my rock bottom in a sense that he was going to be the thing that, you know, there's always the thing, or when I get to this age or there's enough money in the bank or meet this woman or, for me there was a condition on when I'd straighten myself out. And I guess I could keep that about a lot of other stuff. But I certainly was around my drinking and, and so my son was going to be the thing, you know, my partner at the time became pregnant. And I thought this has got to be it. I've got to somehow straighten myself. I've got to, you know, and have this well gone by then. And how I thought I was going to do that. I really don't know. You know, I really had this desire to want to be able to step up and be a dad. And that did the right thing, I guess, in some way. I knew there was part of me that was able to do that. But the reality of what happened was that sense of responsibility and that sense of fear around a child coming into the world that I was responsible for actually had completely the opposite effect and I started behaving and then they were more erratic, damaging. I was insane to be around at times, when I'd be drinking I'd become angry like a cornered animal. I felt like trapped. And my instinct was to drink more, to try again to try. And it was drink was my solution. It was my medicine. So that alcoholic head says, drink more, you know, get away from the problem. Then of course, by doing so, you caused more the problem, which I guess you could, because you could say is the definition of addiction in a sense. And so, yeah, I drank myself out of the home. I drank, behaved so badly, and when my son was born, I'd done this home detox and I just stopped drinking. But this is a really important part of my story. I just stopped drinking, and I did a home detox. They sent me Valium to stop me having seizures and such.

Jake Lloyd 9:45 
And sorry, Jon. The seizures, were they caused by stopping drinking?

Jon 9:51
Yes. So, so much, like as I understand it, I'm not a doctor. But as I understand it, your body has relied on alcohol for so many years. So if you suddenly take away that depressant, it's like your nervous system goes into overload and you can have seizures and, you know, it's really damaging stuff. So the medical world mostly advises that you don't just stop drinking because it can be dangerous. So what they did with me is, I had it was a community program and I had a nurse come out to me daily and administer Valium to just ease the nervous system back into normality, if you like. And so that happens, and I was at home and I have to say, my head went absolutely mad and I didn't I didn't get any help, but I didn't go to any groups. I didn't reach out. I tried to do it on my own. And the logical part of my mind said to me, you stop drinking and everything's going to be alright. It's not. And it couldn't have been further from the truth. What happened was, it's almost like the past, the tidal wave of my past, of all the failings and all the emotions and everything that I was trying to push away with alcohol and bottle up and keep to myself and just drink away, it was like they come flying back at me like that, literally with a vengeance. And I didn't know what to do with it all. I had no idea how to cope and how to know. Also with a newborn baby in the house, I mean, anyone as a parent knows that they're scary enough as it is, and I'm not the only man set up. I feel like that for sure. But I just had no tools to deal with it and, and inevitably I drank again after a period of, he was about six, seven weeks old, I think. And I drank or went to the pub to visit the lads. This had been sober for years and I was watching the beers go under my nose and eventually I knew, subconsciously I knew what I was doing. I knew you don't go into the hairdressers and just sit there, you know, I knew what was there and find it out taking that one drink and then it had I was off. I was off. But it hit a different level of a different level of darkness in a different level of shame, guilt, all that stuff. Feeling completely, you know, I'd really started to despise the person I'd become. I just wanted to be a blackout so I didn't have to face the reality of everything that created. Ironically, you know, and absorb paradox, if that's the right word, is needed to get to that level of darkness and pain for me to for it to crack me enough that that place of rock bottom, it had to get painful enough for me to realise that it was the problem, was it? Maybe it wasn't and anywhere else. And I was on my own dossing in a house of that was being used as an office, the mattress on the floor, the cans around me and cigarette ends and just on my own done. That was where I spent that. That was the place, I've got to say. Well I got to a place and I just knew for me, I can't do this any more. And most importantly, I think that's why I don't want to do this any more. Had this, there was something inside me, there was like this pilot light left on inside me of just about enough of me left that I could grasp onto and say, 'I just can't do this any more. I'm done.' And that was every drink I took, took me to that point. Every drink I had took me to that point of rock bottom. And from that point of rock bottom, everything changed.

Jake Lloyd 13:35 
So many questions I have, Jon. Obviously we want to talk about that change and I'm going to move on to that in a second. Firstly, you talked a lot about consequences and you've talked a lot about your personal anguish. How was your alcoholism affecting the people around you?

Jon 13:56
Yeah, what I found, to be honest, that's really what got me sober, because as I started to be able to see, as much as I drank, I wasn't able to run away from the guilt and the shame any more, unless I was in blackout. For me, alcohol had stopped working enough in that sense, which is kind of when I knew the game was up. I was deceitful. I broke trust, I behaved appallingly. A funeral of a relative sort of thing. I was in blackout, started a fight at this funeral and just shocking behaviour and it was my nearest and dearest who I affected the most. I would turn on my sister, she really bore the brunt of my drinking. I would turn up at her door battered and bruised. And I know it got into a turn up there and I just lost, you know, desperately wanting help. But then I'd abuse and be drunk and I'd burn carpets, I'd wet the bed. I would misbehave and just abuse people's trust. And again, you know, just adding to that shame and guilt and my dad was always trying to help me out, bless him. And he got me, dug me out of trouble. And he would give me money and lend me money. And, you know, bless him. He knew time after time where that money was going, you know, and I'd plead and beg for the money and then he gave it to me every time. And he knew and I knew and, you know, and it was unsaid where it was going. And yeah, I guess, you could say the ultimate was how I behaved around my newborn son, you know, when he came along and my behaviour around him was just shocking. There was a ripple effect of alcoholism where, you know, my sister wrote me a letter and said, you know, 'you're my brother. I love you. But I can't have anything more to do with you and tell you, you know, what you need to do, but only you know how you console yourself out there'. I want my brother back', but of course I've read it and a bit drunk and I thought, well, screw you, you know, and carried on drinking. It was the only way I knew how to do it at the time. But yeah, so I think the hardest part of alcoholism is that sometimes you can almost see yourself in the third person behaving in a way and you almost want to crack. You almost want to grab yourself from the neck and shake yourself and say 'What are you doing?' And there's a sense of being powerless over your actions and your drinking and how you've become. That's just so painful. It's such an awful place to be, almost like you're possessed by something. Then you thought you can't do anything about it.

Jake Lloyd 16:39 
So you hit rock bottom, as you said. And then you said you got to a point of surrender. So firstly, what were you surrendering to at that point? And then what did that lead you to today? What did you do from there?

Jon 16:55 
In my recovery, I kind of came into faith, and I wouldn't say 100% into like a Christian faith or anything like that, but I know that something was with me, when it's like I gave up. I just let go. There's this mentality that you've got to fight it and really battle against it.  It's the old adage, anything you resist persists. I think that point to surrender is a place of letting go. It's completely counterintuitive of fighting and controlling it. Just let go and say 'I'm done.'  And it's kind of like an internal action, if you like, or a state you get into, a really difficult thing to put into words, it's when you let go. It's like something else comes in a sight. You make space for something else and I became teachable. I became willing. Through desperation, through pain and misery and darkness, I became willing to do anything it took to not be the way I was any more. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that my sobriety, my recovery literally unfolded in front of me from that moment. It was in a matter of a couple of weeks I was in a treatment center after a Sunday after somebody had made a cancellation, I phoned the doctors up saying I'm desperate, I had already been under the mental health team. And I phoned them back and said, I'm desperate, I need help. And I said, okay. And yeah, I was in this place as in this rehab center in a matter of a couple of weeks later. And  then after that, I was in a dry house, homeless and all this stuff was then in a dry house. And it was like all I had to do was make that next right decision. Well, take that next right action. And it all stemmed from that point of surrender. It was like that old phrase, that old brilliant phrase, not when the pupils ready, the teacher appears. And that was completely my experience. When I was ready, my sobriety was like it was laid out in front of me and I can't explain that. And it still sends goosebumps down my spine now when I talk about it, because it was just, it was waiting for me. And so I grew in faith around that stuff around that point of surrender and a point of letting go, which I still do today, around many different issues and around my alcoholism still, because I'm not cured, so yeah I think that's the point to me.

Jake Lloyd 19:26
So who helped you on this road to recovery and how did they help you?

Jon 19:33
Wow, that's an amazing question. And I'm going to say far too many people for me to say. But very much, again, the right people came into my life even before I hit that rock bottom. I was working. I meant to be working. I was trying to hold it together. And this guy ended up working with us randomly, he was a carpenter type chap. And don't know why but started talking to him about AA and all this stuff. And he said, we started to have this long conversation about. I said, 'Oh, I've been and you should try. You should go.' And it was like this funnel of, so everything was like channelling me to this point. And then, then once I did stop drinking in this treatment center, even from my caseworker who I had in there, just amazing. And I people from my age came in and so took the meetings.

Jake Lloyd 20:27
Jon, tell us what the AA Alcoholics Anonymous means?

Jon 20:33
Yeah, sorry. So Alcoholics Anonymous. Yes. For anyone who doesn't know, it is essentially a 12 step fellowship. It's a 12-step fellowship of alcoholics. Everyone in it is a recovering alcoholic. They are all there are said to be around two and a half million people sober at the moment in AA worldwide. So at the moment we meet on a weekly basis. I mean in my area which is the Mid Surrey area, there are eight full meetings every week in my area, every, every day that way, every night of the week. And it's, it's a group setting. So people come along and we sit and we share our experience about what happens to us. So they say you share your experience, strength and your hope. So what happened to you? So what you were like, what happened to you and what you're like now? And in that, a lot of people go through what's called a 12-step program with a sponsor, which is to answer your previous question, which is also another person who absolutely fundamentally helped me in my sobriety, my sponsor. But the 12 steps are like they are a program of recovery. It's like a place of taking responsibility for yourself. It's a place of uncovering the truth about how you became, what you did,  you go for an inventory process where you write out your harms, you've done, your resentments towards people, your flaws you have. And you look at and you uncover the truth about who you are, and you look at what they might call character defects and flaws in your character or the stuff that that is the undercurrents of the addiction. And you sit with another person and you speak this stuff out, it's called that's called step five. And what you do is you go through that process and it is such a healing moment. I mean, I remember through mine with my sponsor and it was like I was no longer alone any more. I'd felt bet my soul faced up to a lot of truths about myself actually. And I know for me, if I hadn't have done that, I wouldn't be sober today. So I really wouldn't be. And then after that process, you go on the new you work at changing the things you find. So the things I found out about myself, I see fit. So I make a concerted effort to change those things in myself through sort of asking this higher power and saying, 'God, can you take this stuff? I need help with it.' And after that, I'll go out and make amends for my behaviour with those I affected,  through steps eight and nine, which is my direct amends to those at home. So I go out of my direct face to face amends with people that I've harmed through my drinking.

Jake Lloyd 23:16
Sorry, Jon, how did that feel doing that?

Jon 23:20
Yeah, it's both terrifying, but there was a sense for me, and I can only speak for myself, that I knew I had to do this stuff, that I wanted to do the stuff. For someone who had never taken responsibility for anything, oddly I wanted to take responsibility for it. Some of them were very difficult to step in. So I turned on mentioned my dad. I always had a very difficult relationship with my father and it was always going to be probably the hardest. And, you know, I could still walk into a room and feel like a three-year-old boy with my dad, you know, at the age of however. So I was really frightened to doing that. But I knew I had this faith that it was the right thing to do and I have to say, they were certainly with my sister, my mom, you know, all that stuff. They were the most healing moments probably I've ever encountered of her, in a sense, asking for forgiveness. But in a sense, it at the same time, I've forgiven myself by doing that stuff. It's like a reciprocal action of it's like an outpouring of responsibility inside. This was me. This is what I did. I'm ashamed that I'm not trying to say I didn't have any part in this. This is exactly what I did and I want to make amends for that. But equally, I could put my hand on my heart and say, if I continue to do the stuff that I'm now doing within AA and within the 12 steps, I'm not going to repeat that behaviour. You know, if I stay sober and I could for the first time in my life, I could say to someone, I'm not going to do that again. I do my best. And I really know that was a possibility was in my drinking, 'sorry' was the most frequent word that came out of my mouth. And anyone who knew me very well knew that sorry meant nothing coming from me because it would be long before I'd done something else or done it again or broken that trust, you know. So to go to people and make those amends was just mind blowing. And it healed broken relationships. It healed me and it healed them.You know, it really is just such a profound experience that you can't really put it into words. Words don't justify that. But that's what that's what 12 steps are about healing. They're about they're about reconnection with who you are. They're about reconnection with the world. Reconnection with a higher power of God. They're about yeah, not now. Not been isolated in addiction any more, isolated in the dark, you know, living a dishonest, awful life. And this process is such a simple, beautiful process that you go through. And they say at the end of it, you have a spiritual awakening at the end and that's what happened to me. I was like, I woke up. It was like I was in the addiction-driven trance most of my life and through my rock bottom, through that place of desperation, set on this journey and through the 12 steps, went through the 12 steps, and then I woke up, became started to become and it's just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Jake Lloyd 26:32
How important is it? So these AA meetings with people who are going on a similar journey and your sponsor is somebody that you're accountable to who's been through something similar, I guess. How important is it that you are with people who are on a similar journey?

Jon 26:52
Well, this is a really good point. And it is one of the fundamental reasons that Alcoholics Anonymous works so well. It's that you walk into a room where everybody knows exactly how you feel and the feelings you've gone through. And they might be physically different journeys. You might have got you've got to that room for a physical, different journey. But for me, the undercurrents and the reasons, if you like, behind that addiction, they're all kind of the same. And I'm not saying this to put anyone down who hasn't been through what I've been through, but people who haven't been through what I've been through do not, they don't have that internal knowing about. It's just like I've never jumped out of a plane, so I'm not I'm never going to know what it's like to jump out of a plane until I jump out of the plane! And it's the same with Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was one of the reasons it was founded, because I found this they found this absolute identification of this. There's something very, very powerful that happens when one alcoholic talks to another and a recovery starts to happen. I really went when I got sober, I felt a fair bit of guilt for the shame of so scared I didn't trust myself. But that sense of identification, it almost cut through that fear and it said, you can put your trust here. You can start to learn to be who you are, because these people really know how you feel and they really know what it's like to do some of the things you do to those shameful things. Then they don't judge you, they're accepting you, and they say, 'Come in, take a seat, you know, we will love you back together.'

Jake Lloyd 28:25
And do you now are you now involved in supporting people who were maybe at an earlier stage and in that journey of battling addiction?

Jon 28:34
Totally. Yeah, totally. And again, that's another that's another foundational part of what we do in that it's about being there for others. The very reason, the very point of an AA meeting is to be there for that person who walks in off the street. That's the fundamental reason for an AA meeting is that there's somewhere for someone to come off the street and sit down and experience that same thing I experienced and I, I always reach my hand out when anyone new comes, go take their number, see how they are, I'll make contact because I know, I know how scary is to walk. I had to be drunk, really drunk to go to my first couple of meetings prior to going into that hospital. And I know how frightening that is and I know how frightening it is to start to even think about facing your life as it's become. And so I really am keen on being there for the newcomer, being there for the new person and then anyone in and around as well. So that's really by giving it away. We get to keep it in a sense, but it's not that's not my motivation for doing it. It's just an amazing by-product of what we do. And you know what? There's nothing more amazing than watching someone come in, in that state of being like a rabbit in the headlights and watching them go through that process of what I went through, wake up and come alive, come alive out of that darkness and stepping into, like, a way of life that. Yeah, they just wake up. It's a beautiful thing to accompany people along. And I've sponsored many people and it's just the biggest blessing to see people go through that. You know.

Jake Lloyd 30:12
Jon, it's amazing you sharing your story like this. And I'd like to just have a slight change of perspective. What's your advice for people listening to this who know someone who's battling addiction? What should they do? I'm really interested in when is it right to confront someone? When is it right to just be there for them? Do you have any guidance on that?

Jon 30:38
It's another great question and a real puzzling one for a lot of people. Sometimes when I'm speaking, I talk about my addiction being a bit like Gollum, you know, Gollum on Lord of the Rings, where he's gone, where he's got that ring and it is given him something, but he's so protective of it, he gets violent and vicious when anyone goes near it. For me, it's a perfect analogy of addiction and it's really difficult for the onlooker is really difficult for the loved one because I defended my own to the end until that rock bottom. It was like if anyone questioned it or went there, it was not a member. My mum question then my drinking when I was about 20, 21 years old, something like that and I remember being really spiteful back as if to say, you know, don't you dare question, you know, say anything else, but don't go near my drinking. That's mine. It's like this, you know, my precious sort of thing. And so it can be really, really difficult for those who are around you, for my sister and stuff like that, who are around the addiction. Sometimes it can cause more harm by bringing it up than it does by not, which is an odd concept in itself. There is a sister fellowship. So I called Al-Anon, which is a fellowship for relatives and loved ones of the alcoholic or the suffering alcoholic. And one of their terminologies or phrases is to 'let go with love' and not to try and control that person, but to allow them to take their own path, their own journey. You still let a person know that you love them and you're there for them, but to not enable that behaviour and it's a really difficult fine line that there are probably no real clear-cut answers to. But to walk that line. You know, I would never have thought with me when I was drinking, you know, I may not have been gone, but people did. And so it's a bit, I guess it's a bit of an unanswerable question, but a difficult question to answer in as such as that by trying to support someone. Putting it another way, a person who's well entrenched in alcoholism, unless they're ready, is quite unlikely to want to hear about getting better, if that makes sense, it's almost like the illness wants to defend itself. You could argue it's worse for the people around now than the alcoholic because the alcoholic can get drunk and forget about it all. You know what I mean? I always knew I was loved. That's one thing that probably helped to create that, a pile of love. I knew I had a love around me. I knew my family couldn't do anything more for me. But I knew I was loved. And I think that's probably really important.

Jake Lloyd 33:30
That's a brilliant place to finish. Jon, thanks so much.

Jon 33:34
Yeah, no problem, but pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Thanks for asking me.

Jake Lloyd 33:38
So that was Jon, a recovering alcoholic and member of Alcoholics Anonymous in the UK, sharing his story with me and at the end he told me this.

Jon 33:47
If anyone is struggling out there, then one thing I would say is, you know, please don't try and do it alone because it's really painful. The illness, the addiction lives in solitude. It lives in aloneness and darkness. It doesn't it doesn't live in community and togetherness and connection. And that's what I would say to anyone. I try and reach out and speak those words out and be honest about where you're at and who you're with and how you're doing, because that starts that journey, you know.

Jake Lloyd 34:19 
I could have kept asking Jon questions for a long time after this. And I think addiction in its different forms is something we'll return to again on this show. In fact, after I finished chatting with Jon, he gave me a little indication as to why this might be worth returning to.

Jon 34:37
What I didn't mention was how I guess how that I also reconnect families and families here, as well as not just the individual, you know, the whole platinum addiction as a ripple effect, but then recovery has an equal ripple effect, brings families back together, and groups, it's beautiful, a lovely thing to see.

Jake Lloyd 34:56
That's almost it for this episode. Before we go, don't forget you can catch up on previous episodes of How to build community on our SoundCloud page or in your podcast player. Just search How to build community. You can help support this show by making a small monthly donation at patreon.com/arukahnetwork . You can learn more about Arukah on the website arukahnetwork.org . You can download every edition of Tearfund's Footsteps magazine at learn.tearfund.org . And finally, if you have some feedback on this show or suggestions for future interviewees, then you can reach me directly via email [email protected] . But that's it for this episode. Until next time. Bye for now.