 And if I wasn't sober for the last eight years, I'd be back in the pub getting in a big bar fight, smashing someone's face in with a bottle. I'd forget about the animals, forget about my purpose. I wouldn't hear that calling because everything would be dull. Two years sober on Wednesday, 13th of May. It's your three years sober. Three years as of May 13. So four years sober for me now. I've been sober now for six years. Because today is May 13th and it marks my seven years sober anniversary. Hello everyone. Welcome to another video. So I'm actually so happy and excited and very proud to announce once again that another year has gone past without me touching some of the demons in my life which probably number one demon was alcohol for me because every other demon sort of stemmed from alcohol. So you know alcohol I was big into amphetamines you know meth and cocaine and things like this and barbiturates like Xanax and Valium and things like this. Now I always it's like it's like a ritual for me to make this video every year. It keeps me accountable although like I'm so far away from that world and those substances now and I've dealt with so much of my trauma now that I feel like I'm never going to turn back to those things like I really have truly learned my lesson. It took me took me a long time to do that though. So I thought like we would just you know go back through everything like just kind of briefly I mean I've made eight of these now I think or about seven of these now and but you know every year is kind of like another year further away from that life but it's made me who I am so I want to talk about a little bit so so basically I had a bit of a rough childhood I was around you know mom tried her best and that but I was around things that I shouldn't have been around at young age and first time I got drunk I was probably about eight years old to be honest with you I stole some beer at a party because you know people would ask me to get them beers and then I would stash some beers and I got drunk and I was probably a really young eight or nine years old but basically I was very peculiar kid I had night terrors a lot as a child I didn't like going to sleep I would get you know sleep paralysis where I couldn't move and there would be something in my room and I was really frightened of it from about five years onward so I didn't really like sleeping that much and then I sort of had this obsession with experimenting you know with drugs I like it started off obviously everyone starts off with marijuana don't they like but then you sort of trip out at school and then start hanging around with the kids at smoke weed and shave their heads and then we start drinking and you know then we start like I start finding out about like meth and other drugs that keep you up at night and then you know finding ecstasy things like that tablets that make you like fall in love with everything and basically with these new crowds of people and drugs and alcohol comes violence and you know I sort of learned pretty quick that you know you can get your head knocked off on the streets if you're not careful so basically I started hanging around low level gangs like this and you know we would just drink and party and have a bit of fun and get into street fights and pub brawls and things like that and we grew up and things got a bit worse and there were stabbings and there was you know bad beatings and occasionally you'd hear about someone getting you know shot out or something like this and there were like little guns around and that here and there maybe a 22 or a shotgun or a small pen gun or something like this wasn't really that heavy but you know my drug use got more and more and more I was up smoking drugs smoking amphetamines staying up by myself I was riding rhymes and it was just really it was a really like it's really detrimental for me because I really need my sleep and I already had some psychological stuff going on and when you don't sleep it exacerbates everything and you know I already had I had the capability of being violent I knew that because I'd fight in school and stuff so but with the meth you know staying up and the alcohol it really created this environment in me that was like more prone to violence and I would sort of obsess over violence a little bit I was a bit crazy in that way everything sort of graduates to more drug use you know the gangs sort of get into more and more you know heavy duty acts of violence you've got to protect yourself obviously that world breeds violence it does people were trying to survive they're trying to outdo each other but it wasn't really until I got into the more you know you could say the more higher level gangs you know that things got started get really bit out of control I had access to I had access to more drugs then I don't really like talking about this I don't like to incriminate anyone even though like obviously things I don't know much about what went on there I don't know about much about anyone's business I don't like to talk about anyone else's business from my past because that's not my place to talk about I could talk about my story and what I used to do but yeah like I would be selling drugs to feed my habit and addiction and make money and things like this but I was also getting involved with the high level gangs wasn't I so I was you know trying to prove myself a little bit there and you know the violence obviously gets worse and people end up owing you money if you you know this is what happens in the drug business isn't it people have to pay money and if they can't pay then things happen to them obviously you know the story I don't really want to get into the extreme acts of violence I've witnessed and committed and things like this because I don't really it's not really you can sort of put two and two together I'm sort of past sort of going into details about you know that sort of stuff I've dealt with my own trauma like perpetrator trauma and PTSD and things like this I had an amazing therapist for a year and we went through everything which I really desperately needed that therapy I didn't realize it but you tuck things away I landed myself on home detention we'll skip to that part and I went to prison and I was caught with a firearm basically everyone knows the story here we're given like little different insights into this story now but I basically I was caught with a gun to be completely honest with you I had a gun often it wasn't unusual for me to have a gun on me because I was in fear of other people with guns basically the only reason I had a gun is because I know other people had guns and sometimes you have to even the playing field kind of thing and be like okay I've got a gun too now so yeah but that's basically why people carry guns because other people have got guns so a lot of kids carry knives because other kids have got knives and if they get caught without their knife then they're going to get stabbed themselves and that's just basically why people carry weapons and you don't want to be the victim so you have to learn to you know adapt and that's what I did and I got caught one night with a gun and ended up on house arrest and you know I was on house arrest for 18 months and I was in high level gangs and I was still quite violent on house arrest don't you worry I got into some violent altercations in my own house uh because I was a violent kind of guy and that's how I dealt with problems like this this is where the vegan sea got planted for me obviously and uh watching Dan mcdonald the life regenerator on youtube actually to be very specific and he was doing fruits and vegetable juices and I was so fat and depressed and just I was so like I hated myself so much that other people would feel it and uh that's why I was violent I think I hated myself I I really I was obese depressed I had psychosis I was on all of these different medications and uh yeah I really didn't like myself but yeah I wanted to lose weight and I found Dan mcdonald the life regenerator on youtube who was a raw fruits and vegetable juicer who would wear like a clown hair and uh he's like a clown's wig and he would be like in the front of this camper van like with his t-shirt off juicing fruits and vegetables and obviously he was me this you know big bad gangster watching this this guy hippie dude who's nothing like me uh talk about fruits and vegetables and the power of life giving plants and that and uh did I did think about karma like I didn't think about karma a lot I'd seen karma happen in the gang world obviously you see bad things happen to bad people all the time in that world so I understood karma understood like it's you know why would you commit violence to innocent beings you know like in my world a lot of the people that you know got hurt like you felt like it was justified I suppose you felt like they're in that world too they'd do it to you and but with animals I just thought that they're so innocent you know what I mean but so basically ended up in prison 18 months later after being on house arrest with this seed planted in my mind and when I got to prison I was forced to be sober kind of thing in prison I wanted to be sober because in prison I wanted to have my wits about me I didn't want to get caught slipping I didn't want to be out of line on some drugs in jail I knew it was more serious in there and I wanted to be a good representation of myself in prison and you know and trained religiously and stayed sober and that was eye-opener for me to be sober like basically I never saw life clearly I never saw the mistakes I was making very clearly I never realized I was suffering from such hard core trauma from the things that I've done and seen and the drugs that I take in the shameful positions that I've been in I could only start to analyze that with a sober mind and when you get thrown in the cell like in the hole in so G division in Yatla prison in Adelaide it's like the hole basically they throw you in there and you don't have a TB don't have anything except for a potato sack smock you wear that and then you get stuck with nothing but your thoughts and five days of that when you're coming down off drugs and your grandfather's just died it's pretty it's pretty crazy like it really smashes you for six but anyway in prison when I served I served about six months in there and it was the longest I've been sober for for like 12 years of my life on drugs I've seen such see things really clearly I started to see where the gang world leads you not that everyone's bad in gangs there's a lot of really good people that I met there's also a lot of really bad people in those worlds and you just got to kind of keep your wits about you because you never know who's good and who's bad till they till you figure it out until you find out the hard way kind of thing but basically it's that sober mindset that's helped me find my purpose so when I got out of jail I started to align you know my feelings of hypocrisy I started to you know align my values and my actions you know I went vegan almost on the spot when I got out of prison and I've been an activist ever since really I would not shut up about it ever since because when you throw your life down the toilet for so long right and you treat everyone like crap and you've got a loaded 45 in your mouth wanting to shoot your brains into the ceiling and you're bawling your eyes out and you know injecting drugs and just trying to OD on Xanax so that the pain goes away when you do that for so long and and then you snap out of it and you go to prison and you sober up and you get this second chance you really have this desperate feeling in your stomach where like okay I've gone down the wrong track for this amount of time people know me as this person I've hurt this many people I've hurt my family this badly my mum has cried to me you know seeing me fade away on meth and visit me in prison and visited me in the mental ward where I was for five days and you know I put my family through hell and back you know I was a scary person to be around I was violent I was unpredictable when you've lived that life for so long and you finally get the second chance you realize like what legacy am I going to leave behind that's the one thing that just it really started to hit me like if you really got one chance at this life up until this point like the point that I went sober I'd you know live my life like that and what do I want to leave behind from now on and that was the whole idea of me becoming an activist in some way now it's first I was going to help people kids the youth get sober and get out of gangs and you know and I don't know help them find their purpose I guess but when I seen what was going on to the animals I was like why isn't anyone really saying much about this now obviously there's this whole movement animal rights movement I hadn't been introduced you to yet but at that moment I was like why isn't everyone freaking out about this like you know what I mean it made me so angry and frustrated and that's where I directed my fire because I had been in the trenches I'd been you know I'd you know been in battles before with people you know I know what it's like to be on the front lines in you know in the gang world obviously in the front lines and you know I've been a victim as well in the gang world I knew what it was like to be a victim I knew it was like to victimize I knew what it was like to be in battles and fights and I thought that maybe that maybe I could help these victims and battle for them but do it in a positive way you know and um so that was the whole the whole fire in my chest I had this burning desire it was really like a feeling of energy like anxious energy in my chest that like it wouldn't go away and I still get it now if I don't do any activism for a few days I still feel sick like I have to be constantly doing something towards my purpose and if I wasn't sober for the last eight years if if I got back on the alcohol which is the number one demon for me uh alcohol everything every other demon stems from the alcohol um I'd be back in the pub getting in a big bar fight smashing someone's face in with a bottle I'd forget about the animals forget about my purpose I wouldn't hear that calling because everything would be dull but when you you sober your mind up and you get clear and you get healthy you can start to listen to your heart and listen to your stomach you know and that's what will pull you towards your purpose if you're not clear you need to make yourself clear you know get all that crap out of your life come centered and then everything else will fall into place and that's what's happened with me as an animal rights activist uh if you'd known me 10 years ago you wouldn't have expected I'd be an animal rights activist you just probably think who was that dude punched that guy on the face in the pub and pulled his gun out and put it on the table and pulled a pipe out and started smoking meth or something um but yeah here we are eight years sober animal rights activist ain't stopping anytime soon uh that's 100 for sure um I'm gonna stay sober as well and uh keep fighting for what I believe is right and what I believe the animals deserve which is uh total liberation so thanks for everyone who's been on the journey with me I know some of you have are still watching who commented on my first sober video that I made and uh you know you comment every single time and I love you you've been here with me through this journey the whole time so thank you thank you to my family for putting up with my crap for so long I'm terribly sorry about that but uh I hope I've made it up to you guys and um let's see what legacy we can leave behind here's to another year hopefully no of course here's to another 10 years actually yeah