Shortland Streets Chris Hobbs: Addiction, Recovery, and Rediscovering Creativity

Chris Hobbs, a New Zealand actor known for his role on Shortland Street, spoke with NewstalkZB’s The Nutters Cub about his journey through addiction, recovery, and personal growth. After spending years in Australia and Los Angeles pursuing acting, Hobbs returned to New Zealand, where he has embraced a new perspective on his career and life. ​

Hobbs revealed that his struggles with addiction began in his 30s, years after he had established himself as an actor. ​ He described how alcohol became a secret coping mechanism to manage anxiety and boost creativity on set. " ​I felt alcohol reduced my inhibitions and increased my creativity," he said. ​ However, this reliance on alcohol led to a dark secret that weighed heavily on him. " ​If people knew, it would have been the end of my career", Hobbs admitted. ​

Now 18 years sober, Hobbs credits therapy and medication for helping him manage anxiety and depression. He shared how anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications, such as citalopram and buspirone, brought him relief, silencing the critical voices in his head and allowing him to focus on recovery. "I woke up one morning to silence—the voices were gone," he said, describing the transformative impact of the medication. ​

Hobbs has also found solace in boxing, which he practices daily at gyms like Peach Boxing and Mayhem Boxing. ​ He views the sport as both a physical outlet and a way to build resilience. "Boxing gives me the physical thing I need to stay balanced", he said. ​

In addition to acting, Hobbs recently completed a master’s degree in creative performance at Toi Whakaari, New Zealand’s drama school. His research explored whether he could rediscover the creativity he once felt alcohol provided. ​ The process led him to a profound realization: vulnerability, which he once feared, is his superpower. " ​I felt fierce pride in my mistakes and vulnerability", he said, describing the emotional growth he experienced during his studies. ​

Hobbs plans to continue his research with a PhD, focusing on "super vulnerability" and how it can be channelled into creativity. ​ He also hopes to inspire others struggling with addiction". ​I wanted to dedicate my work to anyone suffering with a dark secret", he said. ​

With a new acting role on the horizon and a renewed love for his craft, Hobbs is embracing a life driven by passion rather than external validation". ​If I can rediscover the love of acting, then it’s magic", he said. ​

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Greetings and welcome. I'm Hamish Williams and you're listening to
the podcast version of The Nutters Club, a radio show
broadcast on News Talk SeeDB that talks about mental health
and shares helpful tips about how to live with your own.
The show is broadcast live on Sunday nights on News
Talk seed B right across New Zealand and around the

(00:41):
world since two thousand and nine. Real people sharing their
stories and their words to help others. This week I
handed the hosting rains to good friend of the show,
Richie hardcore and psychologist Ingo logbrest Our guest was a
former Shorten Street actor Chris Hobbs, and listening to Chris's story,

(01:03):
I really learned about the importance of self awareness while
you're an addiction recovery, as well as how vulnerability can
be a strength and that your own personal value has
to come from you rather than relying on validation from others.
Let us know what you learn from the chat with
Chris on any of our social media platforms. Just search

(01:25):
for The Nutters Club en ZID.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
You've recently just moved back to New Zealand from Los Angeles.
And for those who don't know, you're an actor.

Speaker 4 (01:38):
Yeah, I was lucky enough to be on Shortened Street
when I was younger, and I did that for about
four years, and then backwards and forwards between Australia and
New Zealand doing TV work, and then made the leap
to America and tried my hand there. Yeah, didn't have

(01:59):
much success.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
But oh it's got to be a cather at Marquette
trying to be an actor in Los Angeles.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
Oh yeah, yeah. And as an addict, I remember my
therapist saying to me, this is the absolute worst, worst re.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Choice, the worst place, depending on your perspective.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
Well, no, no, it wasn't the place it was. It was
the career choice.

Speaker 5 (02:19):
She said, you know, that is the worst career you
could possibly choose.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
And I thought, oh, okay, So let's start at the start.
So did you what did you grow up?

Speaker 4 (02:29):
I grew up in Wellington actually until we were about
nine years old, and then the family moved to Auckland
and mum and dad got divorced nineteen seventy nine I
think it was, And yeah, then spent the next oh well,

(02:51):
until I finished secondary school in Auckland, went away overseas
for a year, and then I moved to I had.
I tried a Tiger university, even it lasted about eight
or nine months before I dropped out, and then I
went to Australia and I lived there for five years,

(03:11):
working in the film industry in the camera department.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Oh okay, so you're behind the cameras were in front
of it.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
But growing up i'd done. Back in those days, it
was Radio New Zealand and it was in a place
called Durham Street in Auckland. And I don't know if
you guys remember, but back in the days, this is
in the seventies and seventies and maybe the eighties, there
used to be a little speaker in each of the

(03:38):
classrooms and they would play radio plays through them, that
radio dramas. And my mum got promoted from the news
area to the radio drama directing desk, and she and
a lovely guy called Ian Mune, he's a wonderful director
here they directed the radio dramas and they at that

(04:00):
stage it was always adults playing the kids rolesters just
doing kid voices. And said, well, why do we get
kids to do it? It's more kind of natur and
they went, yeah, sure she should. Also, I've got four kids,
you know, babysitting is expensive. So what panned out was
that I've got three sisters and then there's just I'm

(04:20):
the only boy. So I got all the male roles
in New Zealand Radio for drama, which is given to
me as a kid. So I kind of learned acting
with all of New Zealand's most wonderful professional actors. And
acting for me meant a day off school. That's all

(04:41):
it meant. There was there was no nothing fancy about it.
I never got paid any money. It was a day
off school and it was just mucking around with people.
And I to this day, I don't think I ever acted.
I just read the lines out loud, you know, and
I guess I did it in a way that was
kind of okay.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
So yeah, it was oh wow. So and your if
I'm correct, your siblings are actors too.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Whole family not all actors. Jess is a director. She's
based out of the UK. Now. Rebecca is a writer
and also acts from time to time. Little sister Katrina
is an actor and a TV host and designer, and
then all my cousins do it as well, with the
whole family's kind of involved in it.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, is that because of your mother being like this
matriarch in the in the field.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
Or No, I don't think so. I think mum. She
grew up and her mother had excuse me, seven daughters.
Their dad passed away when they were very young. But
she was a really accomplished pianist. My grandma Nana, and

(05:54):
all of the daughters were singers. They taught she taught
them all to sing and they would tour the South
Island singing, and so that kind of whenever we kind
of got together, we would go down to Oxford and
the South Island for Christmas and sometimes during the you

(06:16):
know what were they called the May Holidays the Yugust
Holidays in my day, and all my cousins would be
down there as well, and we just would kind of go, oh,
we'll put on a play, you know, and put on
a play and the adults were very kind enough to
act interested well. We bought them to teams doing it.
So yeah, it's just always been in the in the family,
and then I guess it kind of grew into becoming

(06:40):
actual real jobs for a lot of us, and we're like, oh,
I don't know how that happened, but it sort of did.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, that's I'm not that's very that's like a really
atypical family story, like everyone as a performer or a creative. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Is there a lack of structure that goes with that?
Is it? Because it seems like quite outside and in
like a standard routine for many people's lives. You're always
pitching for jobs or looking for work or I.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Guess I'm just so used to it. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's a really interesting one. I've got a lovely mate, Chris,
and he is a he started his own advertising agency
and he pitches for jobs a lot, and he was

(07:26):
talking about, you know, and advertising. They call it a
spec job. So you kind of create a ad that's
not actually a real ad, and you send it to
the advertising agencies and they go, oh, yeah, we really
like what you're doing. That's great. Or they will pitch
for an ad properly, but they may not get their ad,

(07:48):
they may not get picked, so all that work means nothing.
And I went, oh, yeah, well that's what acting is,
you know. So so when you audition for something, you
put hours and hours and hours and hours of preparation
into it, and then you might just get them say
thanks very much, but that's it.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
You mentioned that acting is probably not the best choice
for someone with an addictive personality or addictive tendencies. Yeah,
that's what what came first, the addiction or the acting.

Speaker 4 (08:17):
Oh, the acting definitely came first.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
And then.

Speaker 5 (08:22):
The addiction probably started.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
When I was about twenty yeah, about thirty probably, yeah, yeah,
and the first kind of taste of addiction because because addiction,
for me, comes on a lot of different areas. So
I was addicted to alcohol. I'm a recovering alcoholic, and

(08:51):
I'm lucky enough to have quite a lot of sobriety
behind me. I'm a recovering recreational drug addict.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
How many is so Bright have you got underneath?

Speaker 4 (09:00):
About eighteen years?

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Oh, that's a good number of not yeah, yeah, but.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
It's really interesting. I've got some very very close alcoholic friends,
and and we'll often talk about you know, you just
sort of think, oh, like I just I trust myself,
But but I've learned to not trust myself. I've learned
to not put myself into situations where it gets very

(09:27):
very difficult too to control my anxiety. So with alcohol,
I've I've I've got quite a good kind of understanding
of myself now not to put myself in those situations,
or if I am in those situations, to just gently

(09:48):
remove myself.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
I love a good friends chickcept.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Yes, well I think I I think I did.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
We did, Chris, I believe. Yeah, it's so.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
Much simpilar It's like, yeah, what's important to me? Sobriety?

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Okay, is here a minute ago?

Speaker 4 (10:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah, dude, I'm I'm first to arrive, first to leave.
Yeah yeah, yeah. The conversation declines anyway, and no one
missed you.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
Well yeah, because I mean with I suffer from anxiety
and depression, which I had no idea I suffered from
until I moved to Los Angeles. And what was happening
was when I each time I would move countries to
try to grow as an actor and kind of develop

(10:35):
and get more famous. If I'm really honest, that was
the goal was to be a movie star. The pool
that I was working in was that much more talented,
and so I would think, oh God, how do I
compete with these people? So I started turning to alcohol,
and alcohol I felt reduced my inhibitions and I felt

(10:57):
that it was increasing my creativity. And then so I
did five seven years in Australia working as a as
an actor, and when I got to America, I kind
of knew that I had a problem and I thought
there must be a way out of this. And I

(11:19):
found a therapist in Los Angeles who was wonderful, and
she said, you're a functioning alcoholic and no, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Do you have addiction in your family other people in
your family who have struggled with yeah, yeah, alcoholism or
other additions?

Speaker 4 (11:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, But I won't to speak to them.

Speaker 5 (11:42):
That's that's there, They're part of it.

Speaker 4 (11:47):
But I will say that the conversations that we have
together are really amazing, like being able to connect on
that level about vulnerability and openness and fear and the
desire to have something that stops those feelings, which was

(12:07):
alcohol for.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Me and my experience, people who have actually done a
lot of work on themselves to overcome indiction is some
of the most insightful, charming, charismatic people that you can
ever have a deep conversation with.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
Yeah, well, I find if I go every now and
then I'll go to AA meetings. I don't go to
them a heck of a lot because I did my work.
I continue to do my work with a therapist. And
then it's kind of with myself. But if I go
to an AA meeting, I talk about it being a barometer.

(12:41):
So if I sit in the rooms and people are talking,
a few different things are going on. Either a I'm
open and I'm listening to them and properly actively listening,
which is which is something I try to practice every day.
And it's really hard, you know, to listen. Or I

(13:04):
might be listening to them and solving their problems in
my head, or I might just be sitting there in
my mind is just on something completely different. So when
I go into an AA meeting, it kind of gives
me an instant thing of where I'm at, just by
the way that I'm responding in the meeting, which is
a really cool thing. And then but it's just the
wonderful thing about the AA rooms is you're not talking

(13:27):
about the weather, you're not talking about the all blacks,
you're not talking about this so that you're talking about
You're going straight to the guts of people's problems. And
listening to people speak in a really raw and open way,
and it's just this kind of like, oh, it's this
breath of fresh air as opposed to kind of the
veneer of day to day chit chat that might be

(13:48):
going on. And yet my heart might be bleeding and
I don't want to talk about the all blacks and
the weather today. I want to talk about the fact
that I'm heartbroken.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
Or do you think that that's an issue with our
culture still? You know that we don't talk about what's
really going on anywhere near enough, and we put this
veneer on and then it's not into we use alcohol
or drugs or other coke mechanisms that we can really
sort of try and have a real conversation, but it's
distorted by substances.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
That's very much my experience. I can't speak to New
Zealand culture that much because I've lived most of my
life away. But I've found in Australia, yes the same,
in America, yes the same.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
What do you think as a psychologist.

Speaker 6 (14:34):
Yeah, I think I'm listening. I think it's quite interesting
how late you came to your addiction. You said in
your thirties. That's a bit unusual, but also how I
wondered when you were talking about creativity, how you were
medicating maybe the anxiety. Yeah, so you could actually be
yourself more in a funny way.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Well, yeh, so my therapist said, you suffer from anxiety,
you suffer from depression. And I've never heard any of this.
This was like America. You know, America is going to
force pills on me. And I thought, well, this is
just nonsense. And I didn't agree for about a year
on trying any medication, and I was still drinking, but

(15:16):
I felt that I was in control of alcohol. She said,
you're an alcoholic, and I was like, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, because you have a different version of what an
alcoholic looks like.

Speaker 4 (15:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alcoholics are idiots, you know, there's just
like losers basically, and I'm not a loser, So I'm
not an alcoholic. I'm fine and I can and I
use alcohol to get a result. And that was what
made me feel like I had like a I had
a superpower that no one knew about. I was using

(15:45):
alcohol to get what I wanted.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Chris, you're talking about the fact that you didn't sit
well with the label alcoholic. You're like I'm not an alcoholic.
Why are you talking aboulbor?

Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah. For me, that label when my therapist said I
was an alcoholic, was essentially I was a loser. And
at that stage in my acting, I had started very
secretly using alcohol on set, secretively so no one knew it,

(16:17):
and I would use the alcohol to reduce my anxiety.
And then what I found was it was really boosting
my creativity. And that was the way I was kind
of climbing the ladder as an actor and getting bigger roles,
and I was getting I guess a little bit more
famous each time. And that was my that was my

(16:38):
that was my secret weapon. So when my therapist said
I was an alcoholic, I kind of took umbrage to
that and thought, no, I have a I have a
I've found I've found the secret door here, I found
the shortcutst forward is exactly yeah. And I didn't agree
with her for probably about a year and a half,

(16:59):
and then I i the night that Steve Irwin sadly
passed away, I was out drinking in a pub and
I work up the next morning having done a whole
lot of really stupid things, and went to myself, Yeah,
I think I think Jodie, my therapist, is right. I

(17:22):
don't have control of myself when I use alcohol because
I told myself, I don't know how many times I'm
never going to do blah blah blah again, And there
I was. I woke up having just done it again,
and I thought, okay. So that started very long and

(17:46):
I continue to this day road of recovery. But the
one thing we did try was we tried anti anxiety
medication and antidepression medication. And in the US, they they
often have ones. You'll know this better than me, but
they have things like Prozac and things that kind of
have an instant effect when you take the medication. The

(18:08):
medication that I got put on is a very slow
release thing, and I didn't actually get any results for
about three weeks. But the big result that happened to
me was all my life, I've had little voices saying,
you're not good enough, You're terrible. You know, Richie's looking
at you thinking you're an idiot. Inger's looking at you
thinking and your idiot, I am being an idiot. And

(18:29):
the voices are just continuous, They're just on and on, And.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Where does that come from?

Speaker 4 (18:34):
In my head?

Speaker 3 (18:35):
No, no, no to me mean, like with your family experiences,
with like schisms in your childhood, I'm trying to understand
was there like ah, I.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
Think, uh, I think I've always admired excellence and exceptionalism
and people, and I think I've grown up in a culture,
in a family culture where that is celebrated, you know,

(19:03):
such and such as doing something or such as doing something.
So the desired to be the best was was very
much something that fired in me. So anytime I did anything,
I wanted to be the best that was that was
always the goal.

Speaker 6 (19:19):
That sounds heavy because if I'm not the best, I'm nobody.
I'm assuming.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
Well, for me personally, I told myself I wasn't wasn't
that I was nobody. It was just that I wasn't
in the running kind of that I didn't really matter.
I was forgotten. I would be forgotten, lost in the
in the in the general masses, whereas I wanted to
be No, no, I've got to be exceptional.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yeah, your self worth is really tied into your career
and yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:49):
And that's why my therapist said acting is the worst
thing for you because you're thinking you want to be
the next Chris Hemsworth. You want to be the next
movie star, and if you're not achieving that, each day
you're saying, is that blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
I see, there's a lot with sports people that I know.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
But I was going to say that the anti anxiety medication.
After about three weeks of being on it, I woke
up one morning to silence, the most extraordinary silence, and
I couldn't figure out what was going on. And I
realized that my little voices just chipping away at myself
weren't there when I woke up and they were gone.

(20:29):
That's amazing, and they were just replaced with silence, and
I almost cried with relief. So that I've been on
mental health medication for about twenty years, and looking back,
you know, right up until I didn't start it till
I was in my early thirties, up until that age,
I would have never described myself as being suffering from

(20:53):
depression or anxiety. I thought everything I had was pretty
much normal, and I don't. I think the thing with
mental health that my takeaway is it's an incredibly individual thing.
And if the men medication helps the individual, that's an
end of story. It's not to be. It's not to

(21:13):
be compared to this person or this person or this
person or this person. It's just if it helps that individual,
then that's fantastic. And so for me, that's what mental
health medication is all about. I have learnt over the
years what works for me, and I've had some amazing
psychiatrists that prescribed the medication, and we've changed it over

(21:39):
the years because what happens is my body got used
to the ones that I was on, and after sort
of fifteen or so years, the my therapist said, it's
probably not having it's probably not as effective as it
used to be. So we changed it and again that
extraordinary kind of peacefulness and relief, and for me, that's

(21:59):
been amazing, you know, really really amazing.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
We've had a text message for you, Chris. Someone asked,
what's the name of the medication that you would take?

Speaker 4 (22:09):
So when I first started, the first one was called cetelepram,
which I think has a is a generic of something
called Selexa c E L e x A. That was
for my depression and for anxiety. It was one called
busparone b U s P I R O n E,
which I think is also BUSBA b us P A R.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
And are you familiar with those?

Speaker 6 (22:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (22:34):
How do they? How do they work with someone?

Speaker 6 (22:36):
So they belong to a kind of group of medication
that affect our serotonin and and the serotonin is a
kind of near a transmitter, but it's actually found throughout
this throughout the body. That's why when you start taking
them you have certain side effects like around your stomach sometimes,

(22:57):
et cetera. So and they start. The theory is that
it balanced things out and in your case, which is wonderful,
You've got some really good results. That's fantastic.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
So, Chris, you've change your medication and you are you
acting still?

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Yeah? I've actually got a job coming up next week
on a new TV show. I don't think I can
say what it is because it's all at the moment,
but yeah, there's a new television New Zealand television drama
which I have a tiny little roll on, which should
be really fun and I start shooting on Tuesday. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Oh great. They's exciting man. Yeah, it's because it's a
tough industry man like acting.

Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah. I made a decision, a conscious decision that if
I was going to get back into acting, I was
going to enjoy it, and that was that was the
the key number one thing is no longer to be
a Hollywood movie star, but actually to do it because
I enjoy it and rediscover the love of it. Because

(23:55):
if I can rediscover the love of it, then then
it's magic. And that's that's what I wanted to find again,
I guess, yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah, I can imagine you imagine you actually get in
your own way when you're looking for the external validation
of like, ah, I've got this, you know, name, brand,
role or whatever it is, rather than doing it for
the love of that, like you know, like like many
things in my fami agen No.

Speaker 6 (24:22):
I agree. I think if we do things because we
feel alive and then we're passionate about them, that's a
good enough reason we don't need to be famous.

Speaker 4 (24:32):
But it is something I struggle with every day, I
mean every I've learned that I have an addictive personality.
And the best way that that was described to me
by my therapist was very simply, you want a little
bit more, and you always want a shortcut. And that

(24:53):
is kind of me to a t I always I
was saying to you before, Richie, if there's cake, I
want a second piece or a third piece of cake,
and if there is something that needs to be done,
I'm looking immediately for anyone that I can make it
easier or find a shortcut.

Speaker 6 (25:11):
Can I also turn that around what I find people
who struggle with addictions. They are also wonderful at not
accepting the normal and the boring twice and look for
the edge, and they also push us forward into unusual areas.
So I'm just going to a plug for that. You
have strength that I think we need inside the people

(25:34):
who because they're looking for unusual experiences. That's why substances
are used. I mean, they're different ways, and we could
do this, but actually, when I've worked with people who
struggle with this, that's they're looking for this edge, a
different state of consciousness. When that's why that also get
attracted to religion or transspiritual things meaning and you find

(25:56):
joy in passion in your actor. Yeah, fantastic.

Speaker 4 (25:58):
When I was taking recreational drugs, often what would happen
is that the I would take, say something like ecstasy,
and I would be sort of on the high of
the ecstasy, and then there was a part of my
mind that would start thinking about, oh okay, when I
start coming down. I want I want to make sure
I've got another pill of ecstasy somewhere so I don't
come down. And that was always a driving thing behind me,

(26:23):
was I didn't I wanted more. I wanted more, and
I was I was thinking about it, and that voice
would just get louder and louder and louders. Then I
went on. That was something that seemed to set me
apart from my friends, was they seemed to be okay
with the kind of normal to normal, and I was like, no, no, no, no,
no no, I want to keep going upwards.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Yeah. Yeah, living with normal can be hard, horrible. That's
a rough time out.

Speaker 6 (26:52):
There, boring.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
I allegedly have tattoos about how I dislike normality.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yea, yeah, it's but I mean I'm starting to see
the magic and normal if that can make sense.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
Oh dude, that makes the most sense.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
Yeah, like like, I think the biggest thing I've taken
away in my journey of recovery is learning to listen.
And so my therapist said this thing to me one year.
I was coming back to New Zealand for a family
Christmas and she said, how are you feeling? I said, great,

(27:28):
I'm looking forward to everyone. She said, I want you
to try something from it. I said what she said,
I want you just to listen. So when in my
family we have tons of us around the table, everyone,
everyone talking over each other, one.

Speaker 5 (27:39):
DA DA D D, and I'm used to it.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
I've grown up with it. But I thought to myself, Okay,
Jodie said, just listen. So I just listened, and I
just listened, and I just started to see extraordinary things
of when sometimes when someone was speaking, they weren't actually
articulating what it is that they wanted to say, until

(28:02):
five minutes later in the conversation, out would come what
they wanted to say. And I went, ah, that's really interesting. Yeah,
they can't yet articulate it, but if you give them
the chance, if I just listen, it will come later.
And then I would clock when other people would talk
over other people and not be listening to them, and

(28:24):
see how that was affecting other people. Because because I
was not talking and I was just going, okay, just listen,
just listen, I started to see all these things that
I've not seen before. And that's something I actively work
on every day, is listening, because it's kind of extraordinary.

(28:46):
If I just shut up and listen. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
They say you've got two ways in one mouth, so
listen twice as much as you speak.

Speaker 6 (28:56):
Right, Yeah, then listen to yourself.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yeah, because who are just talking? Bright of the break
and about the listening. And as a student, you've obviously
been listening a lot, as you include your master's degree.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
Yeah, I was lacking enough. In Wellington, toy Facati, the
New Zealand Drama School, asked me if i'd like to
do their inaugural Masters in Creative Performance and I said, yeah,
but there's something I'd like to do it on, and
they said, absolutely, that's what we want. So I think

(29:36):
there was eight of us and we each chose our
own sort of question or subject, and mine was there
a way that I could rediscover the creativity that I
felt alcohol gave me when I was working as a
professional actor. And so I worked on that for eighteen months,

(29:56):
which was a kind of an amazing thing, coming up
with my own crazy experiments, and the end result of
it was there was this kind of quite amazing moment,
but it was not the moment that I had hoped for.
What I had hoped for and which I later realized

(30:17):
was the addict in me was I was hoping to
just connect the neuron that fired for creativity and to
the other neuron and then BOM I would be able
to do. I wanted the shortcut. I absolutely wanted the shortcut.
But what I found was when I was compiling my

(30:39):
appendix of things, the work that I had done, I
became quite emotional when I was compiling it, and there
was a feeling I hadn't felt before, and it was
a fierce pride in what I had done. And it
was a fierce pride in the vulnerability and the mistakes.
And what I kind of realized was I had created

(31:04):
the neuroplasticity that I was hoping for, but how it
had actually come, how it had shown itself, was it
was a sort of emotional neuroplasticity of being proud of myself,
which wasn't something that was normal.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Well, I imagine listen to speak about the desire to
be seen and to be recognized, and there's this intense
family competition and a family of creators and actors. You're
pretty harsh in yourself, and it's not a like just
enjoying the process or I did my best. It's like
I'm really good or I'm a failure. So there must
have been quite a nice I think I change your perspective.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
Yeah, I wasn't sort of negative about being a failure.
I was just it was black and white. You're either
cast as the lead in something or you're not right.
And and I didn't sort of cry myself to sleep
over not not booking jobs, but it was just that
is the reality. So I had to get to that level.

(32:07):
I had to book the job. I had to find
a way to do it. And I went, oh, well, alcohol, alcohol,
lets me do.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
That, Chris. So we were talking about your master's degree,
and then I think, what's after the masters? Well, have
you graduated.

Speaker 4 (32:22):
I'm supposed to graduate in November. I've been told that
I've passed, so I'm very excited about that, and I'm
hoping to do a PhD to continue my research into it.
Because what I'm looking at now, what really intrigues me
is the notion of what I'm calling super vulnerability. So
what I feel my greatest fear, my anxiety, is my vulnerability.

(32:48):
But I'm learning that my vulnerability is actually my superpower.
So what I found when I was doing the appendix
of my left hand drawings was the pride I was
feeling over how vulnerable I'd been. That was a completely
new emotion for me, and I went, this is exactly

(33:11):
what I'm after. So what happens with me when I'm
on set with stage fright is there's kind of a
chemical dump that just happens, and.

Speaker 5 (33:22):
You'll be able to speak better to what it is.

Speaker 4 (33:24):
But I just it's panic and my voice actually catches
in my throat and I can't speak properly. So I
use stuff called beta blockers on occasion.

Speaker 6 (33:34):
What is that, Well, basically it's medication to calm your
system down, so it's useful for cardiac issues as well.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
So yeah, what I find for me is my heart
rate can't go above seventy five or something like that,
so the pan, the physical, the physical things of my
panic attack don't actually happen, so I don't feel the panic.
So I just go, oh, I've been doing this job

(34:06):
for all of my life, there's nothing to panic out
what am I thinking? And then I'm back in in
the work that I've been doing, it just comes out.
So yeah, beta blockers are great, but for me, I
want to actually not use the beta blockers because that
chemical dump of fight or flight. What I want to

(34:30):
do in my studies is can I rechannel that into
just a tidal wave of creative imaging style. Yeah, so
I haven't. The thing that made me want to continue
with my studies and do the PhD was that pride
in the work that I'd done with my left hand,

(34:51):
which at the time I thought, I'm so useless, I'm
so terrible, this is just the worst. When I compiled
it all for the exegesis and the pride I felt,
I went, oh, this is a really new feeling. I've
never felt pride over like my dumbness before or my
uselessness before. And I thought, oh, hell, this is me
being proud of my vulnerability, and I'm feeling really strong

(35:14):
about it.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
That's not a very key we man thing to do. Like,
vulnerability in general is something that men are conditioned away from,
at least until relatively recently. Culturally, we're encouraged to put
on a really stiff, stoic, masculine facade and hide everything
underneath our tattoos or our job title or our sporting

(35:36):
success or our game patch or whatever it is.

Speaker 6 (35:37):
So because I actually think as a martial artist, you
have to be really vulnerable and open to be able
to read an opponent. And as an actor, you have
to equally be vulnerable to be able to pick up
cues to re bring that back in. I mean when
I saw your part on Hamlet in your movie, I
mean you said something really powerfully. You said you cried

(36:00):
beforehand to make yourself vulnerable to be able to play
this piece, and as a martial artist actually to be
able to eat things, you need to be open. M Yes,
And that is the problem with guys who are just tough,
because we know they miscues.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
If you want to win on this conversation, I'd love
to have from you give us a ring eight hundred
and eighty teen eighty or continue as a text on
nine two niney two. Yeah. I think a lot of
men in particular and some woman yeah, are rigid. Yeah yeah,
to protect myself. Yeah, it's a protective mechanism, isn't it
Like the avoidance of vulnerability is a protective thing, and

(36:37):
it makes good sense, but it only serves us for
so long. To go back to your martial arts analogy,
Bruce Lee says, the oak breaks in a strong wind,
but the bamboo tree tree you know beans and moves
with it, and it's actually a lot stronger I haven't.

Speaker 4 (36:53):
I have a passion and a love for boxing, and
the number of times I've seen in a professional fight
a boxa will breakdown crying at the end of the
fight because they are so raw, you know, it's just
such a raw, primitive state that they're in when they're
in the fight that at the end of it, it's
just the thought of like hiding, hiding behind some sort

(37:17):
of mask. It's like they're so far past that already
with what they've been doing physically for the last ten
twelve rounds.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah, it's funny culturally how we allow men in particular
cry during sports, particularly contact sports, but nowhere else. So
PhD hopefully a PHRD acting. So your future looks really
bright and you've come through like just poor but bright. Hey,
but you're not in it for the money and the

(37:44):
FAMI anymore.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
No, that's what I've got to remove myself. Oh boy,
that would be nice. No, I don't think like that,
or yeah, yeah, I wanted to. There is one thing
I wanted to share, which is a discovery that I've
sort of made, is that whatever the thing is, so
since I've been sober a long time. I got very,

(38:06):
very fat. I remember the doctor writing down ob sum
I think because I got to about one hundred and
forty kilos oh when I should be sitting around seventy five.
And what I learned was that if I don't like
the way that I'm feeling, I want to change the

(38:27):
way I'm feeling, and I would either use alcohol or
recreational drugs or after that, food to change the way
I was feeling. And the big thing for me was
learning to understand that that's what's going on, that what
is actually happening for me is I want to change
the way that I'm feeling. So we were talking before
this interview started. One of the things I learned to

(38:48):
do was to recognize unsafe situations for me, where I
don't feel comfortable or whatever it is, and tell myself
my sobriety is the most important thing to me, So
I just take myself. I don't say goodbye to anyone
at the party. I just quietly leave. And that's I
know that about myself. Now, if I've got those things

(39:10):
saying that I want to change the way that I'm feeling,
and I'm looking around for something to make that change
rather than it happening with me internally, to recognize.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
That it's come back and talk about that more, because
I think many people don't know how to sit with themselves,
and I think that'd be a good thing to explore.
And I think one thing that many of us do
to get that mean fix is social media. Like that's
definitely been something that I've spent a lot of time
wasting time on and then also like getting kind of

(39:41):
dysregulated and having these stupid arguments with absolute strangers about
things that don't matter, Like I'm actually really good at
disengaging now, or I will write out this ridiculous multi
paragraph argument for like John with two followers and then
delete it before I post it. But is that something
that you've struggled with too, Like do you find social

(40:02):
media as an escape, escape hatch from yourself?

Speaker 4 (40:06):
I think they call it dooms scrolling.

Speaker 6 (40:08):
I scroll.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
There's a great podcast called doom Scroll.

Speaker 4 (40:12):
But I don't post anything. I was very, very fortunate
to be doing Shorty Street before we had smartphones and
social media.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
You didn't have to read the comments.

Speaker 4 (40:25):
No, we we had we were told what the ratings
of the show was. But we didn't have likes or
loves or any of those sorts of things. But we
also didn't get anything unless someone actually wrote into Shortened
Street or TV and Z what their opinion was. We
never heard about it unless you were out on the street.
So I kind of missed that. And but but what

(40:47):
I did learn from that was that everyone, everyone has
has an opinion, and it's not you know, you know.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
What they say about opinions, Well you don't know. No, Well,
we had this whole conversation about I'm not allowed to
swear before I it on the shadow, So we'll leave
it at that. But right, not all, not all pins
are equal, and unfortunately, social media seems to have given
people this concept that all opinions are of equal weight,
worth and value, and that's just simply not true.

Speaker 4 (41:21):
I'm sorry to say, I refer to the Internet. This
is my personal take on the Internet, as it's the
screaming abyss. So I never bother to do. I don't
bother reading the comments, and I don't bother writing stuff
because it's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny tiny fraction of
a percent of people that are actually interacting with the post.

(41:45):
And I, you know, I just I've been very luckily
lucky in that. I don't I haven't managed to kind
of get into that world.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Ah yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I haven't dodged that, Billow.
That is bill that I kind of like read hamlog into.
Because I do enjoy social media and I find it useful.
I do find it useful for work and advocacy and
connecting with friends. But there's definitely a dark side to
it as well. And as a psychologist you might see this.
I don't know if you work with a lot of
young people, but I know by the data a lot
of young people really have issues.

Speaker 6 (42:15):
I think we are going to come see what effects
it has on our brain. I think attention deficits is
maybe could be connected. I don't know how what we
will see. I think we will see mental health as skyrocketed.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Now.

Speaker 6 (42:31):
I don't want to make simplistic correlations, but I think
we haven't yet seen the.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
End of there. There is quite a strong argument from
researchers like Jonathan Hite or Jean Twingy or you know
these are common names. Chris. You mentioned the journalist Johan Hari,
who wrote a book called Stolen Focus talking about what
social media has done to attention spends. So yeah, I'm
big on trying to like not ban anything, But how

(42:59):
do you regulate the tech industry which are designed to
make it as addictive as possible.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
Oh yeah, there's some extraordinary statistics on, like we're exposed
to something like twenty thousand advertisements as we walk around
a day. We're not designed to actually take on all
of this sort of stuff. So the ability to put
my phone down. I had a job when I was
in my early twenties, and this was in about nineteen

(43:28):
ninety one and cell phones had just arrived in Australia
and they were rare, and the guy I was doing
the job for I was setting up a new office
for him in Queensland, and he said, oh, I'll give
you a cell phone because we were renting equipment out
to the film industry and they would off to do
night shoots and if they needed something during the night shoot,

(43:51):
they would call me on this phone. So I have
always linked cell phones to killing a good time because
when that phone went off, I had to stop what
I was doing, drive all the way into the office,
pick up a few lights or something for them, and
wait for someone to come and pick it up. And
it basically if the phone went off, night was over.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
That's a really generational difference because now our young people
socialize online, like by the data, young people go out
list their date list, they drink less, have sex lists,
sex list and all their risk taking exploratory behavior is
done through that dull blue light of a screen. So
you've got seemingly quite a busy schedule coming up with

(44:34):
your you know, your potential PhD and yeah, shooting.

Speaker 4 (44:38):
If the university have applied to us listening.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
I'm curious. I'm curious. I'm curious to know lifestyle factor wise,
what do you do to look after your your stress
and your your you know in busy times?

Speaker 6 (44:51):
I box?

Speaker 3 (44:52):
Oh yeah you did? Did we even talked about this?

Speaker 4 (44:55):
So big shout out to Peach Boxing to I.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Know, yeah Isaac, I know, I've known a SAX since
high school.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
So I came back to New Zealand and also big
shout out to Mayhem Boxing and uh, Peach have just
been really lovely. They've been so welcoming to me. So
I find if I do boxing every day, I work
out quite hard when I'm doing it, uh, and that's
kind of just me. The physical thing that I need

(45:22):
to kind of just.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
For those who don't know, the Peach Boxing Stable is
one of you know, it's like I don't know, like
it's it's where champions are made. They've got me and Mootu,
dr Power Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:36):
Oliver Firth, Yeah, I can't remember all the other names.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Yeah, but it's they're putting out, like you know, people
out there in the world. Man, Yeah, building champions. Yeah.
And along the same with the main boxing tear.

Speaker 4 (45:48):
Terry Bachelor's got some amazing people.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Amazing came through. Yeah. Oh that's great. So that's your
primary because I relate to that. So if you've never
I've done martial arts for over thirty years myself, you
speak com beauter fighter. Now I'm a coach and this
is a safe space for me in gyms. You know.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
Yeah, it's really interesting.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
It's cathartic.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
But with the stuff that's going on in the world,
I'm very much a left leaning person, but I kind
of I don't know if I should be saying this.
There's there's a there's a there's a certain point where
I want to actually be able to look after myself,
stand up to myself because there are some personalities that

(46:32):
use bullying, you know, as as kind of a tactic
in day to day social life. And I like the
fact that that if it gets to that point, I'm
going to go great, you know, let's let's stop talking
and let's do what you want to do, because we're.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
Going to take a moment to stop talking right now.
We're not going outside. I'll see you. We're actually going
to cross to a break. We'll be back very shortly.
We're back on the another scube. I'm Richie Hardcore here
with our guest Chris Hobbs and our psychologist Ngo. We're
just talk been about boxing and maybe you want to

(47:13):
come back and discuss he drama.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
It's very good at boxing.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Because I've had some I used to be a competed
fighter doing more time keep boxing. He had a couple
of boxing flights as well. I've been knocked out a
couple of times. I had my skull fractured. For the
listeners out there, how does concussion play into mental unwellness?
How does it play into depression? Because as a sporting culture,

(47:42):
I think it's something we don't talk about enough.

Speaker 6 (47:44):
Yeah, we don't talk enough about looking after your brain.
I think I think what is it Sweeden, We're boxing
is banned because of this.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
Oh really yeah?

Speaker 6 (47:54):
Yeah, because the brain is far more sensitive than we acknowledge,
and this knocking and the bouncing back of the brain
like jelly. You need to think about your brain as
a three pound jelly and if you shake it enough
will create not only bigger tears, but micro tears and ses.
And we know that people will get either headache, depression,

(48:18):
they get fatigued. How was it for you? Could you
actually work through a whole day with no you were
so fatigued.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
It was like Chris was talking about earlier, how we
didn't have the language for depression and stuff. So this
is going back nearly twenty years when I was, you know,
finding stuff. I didn't know that I was can cast.
So I was trying to go to university and do
a degree in political science with a serious brain injury.

Speaker 5 (48:46):
That's crazy.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
Yeah. I actually had to go to hospital because I
had double vision, and they were like, did you have
a car accident because your skulls fractured? And I said,
I said, nah, I had a professional keybox you fight,
but I wasn't where it was going on. So it's
how all I can remember is being really irritable, really
grumpy with my girlfriend at the time.

Speaker 6 (49:07):
So short your emotions.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Emotions are really like volatiles.

Speaker 6 (49:13):
And then roughly around lunch you get either so fatigued
or very irritable. And guys can get irritable when they're depressed.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
You know.

Speaker 6 (49:19):
That's when you said that your therapist said, you're anxious
and depressed. Are meaten? But actually, men, we usually get irritable,
We get restless. We don't know what to do with ourselves.
But actually we're anxious and depressed, and we just don't
have a language for that. And now the younger people
do actually have a much better language around that. But yeah,

(49:41):
we men don't often do that so well. And then
we use alcohol to shift a feeling. And then with
concussion alcohol concussion. Wow, that's like a double Webby, can
you talk about that about Okay? So, like the brain
worth concussion is super vulnerable. You need to rest, you
need to sleep, you need to eat well. You take alcohol,

(50:02):
which is actually a toxin to the brain, it will
be like a double concussion, actually feel far worse. You
will feel far more confused. It's like you're drinking double
when you are having a concussion so when you have
three beers actually having sixs, you know, so it's really
I mean, it depends on the intensity of the concussion,

(50:25):
but it has a profound effect, and usually quite a
negative one. But maybe there's some callers who.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
Yeah, we have Joseph, we have Joseph on the line
to talk about concussion. Oh he's gone.

Speaker 4 (50:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
No, I can definitely relate to that, and I think
a lot of people, I think, particularly masculine spaces, don't
want to acknowledge that.

Speaker 6 (50:43):
Yeah, and sadly, because you need to rest the brain
and give it time to heal, and it takes longer
than you think. And I always have to tell my
clients just stop, do not push through. This is not
the way to heal the brain. Do not drink, you know,
because it will actually slow down the healing.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
Pro is that something that you've experienced a lot of Chris,
have you dealt with concussions pretty badly?

Speaker 4 (51:12):
I experienced massive mood swings, And the way that it
was explained to me was what you were saying there was,
when I'd been knocked out, everything in my head or
kind of like all the memories and everything went booth
and got shaken really badly, and they would take a

(51:33):
little while to kind of make their way back. And
that was something that I experienced. But the mood swings,
that was the scary thing that lasted for three or
four months. I would I would just become enraged at
stubbing my toe or a door not closing properly, no proportionality, yeah, yeah,

(51:55):
and I didn't understand it and I didn't have control
over it, so that was strange. And then initially when
the concussion happened, I couldn't concentrate to remember, the doctor
was talking to me, and I thought I should be
listening to what they're saying, but my mind just was
going off doing its own thing.

Speaker 6 (52:16):
So very good description. You get poor attention, so poor
impulse control, Your emotions are flare up. For relationships, this
is really difficult. So suddenly you get so raging when
in fact you just you know, something little happened. It's
just a bit of a loud noise. You can't handle
noise very well. By the way, any overload overstimulation happens

(52:38):
very quickly, so you just feel very vulnerable. But it
comes out as a restlessness and irritability.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Can that be prolonged like if you have historic concussions,
say in your twenties, in your forties or your fifties,
are you still irritable and crumpy?

Speaker 6 (52:55):
Or what can happen?

Speaker 3 (52:56):
Though?

Speaker 6 (52:57):
Is any further concussion? Even smaller ones have a profound impact.
You don't even need a big concussion to have quite
an impact on your brain. So that's why you know,
when people have quite a few concussions, it just really
adds up quite quickly.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
I mean, yeah, I should I should be wearing a
helmet and those floody paints you.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
Were saying, you were saying earlier, how many concussions do
you think you've would have experienced?

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Four or five?

Speaker 3 (53:27):
I think I'd be I'd be about the.

Speaker 4 (53:29):
Same from twenty to thirty.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Through boxing or through drunkennding.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
I was never really that good at what I was
trying to do right and as results of accidents would
happen as a result.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
So, apart from your PhD and you're apart from your
new acting gig, what else is going on with you? Chris?
Do you do like this is this is a question.
Do you do a lot of like recovery advocacy? Because
some people that I know who are in the you know,
they've got prolonged so variety in number of years, and

(54:05):
they're about they sort of they sponsor people or they're
like a sober advocate, Right, Is that something that I
think when I part your life.

Speaker 4 (54:15):
When I did the Masters at Toy, one of the
things that I said, actually wrote it at the beginning
is I wanted to do it for anyone that was
suffering the way that I was with a dark secret
because my alcoholism, my functioning alcoholism, whatever I wanted to
call it, the fact that I was using alcohol at

(54:37):
work to get through work and I felt that it
made me better. It became the secret that just got
heavier and heavier and darker and darker, and I had
no one I could share it with, because if people
knew that that was the end of the career, that
was that I had been spending all of my life

(54:57):
going from country to country to country to try to
achieve my goal, and if people knew that, it was
all over. So I kind of wanted to dedicate the
the film I did for my Masters to anyone out
there who is struggling and just there's something that might

(55:17):
maybe offer a hint or a possible avenue. That they
might explore, but to offer that freely and with love.

Speaker 6 (55:30):
I must say I've seen it and it's amazing. It's
really worth watching, especially if you have wanted to bring
out a passion and of course come in the way
and maybe this is just one person in the movie
who's trying to find a way out of there and

(55:51):
it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
Is that available for who have watch? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (55:54):
I can make it available to you guys here. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Oh cool, Yeah, put it out online or something. Yeah,
oh great, okay, cool, it's very good, very good.

Speaker 5 (56:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:02):
It's called try Hard because what I realized was that
was the thing that scared me the most growing up
was to be called a try hard And what it
meant was that not only was I kind of to
be mocked and laughed at, but it also carried the

(56:23):
connotation that I would never be good at the thing
that I was attempting.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
Can the way to puble check this out somewhere?

Speaker 4 (56:29):
Yeah, I'll give it to give a link to you
guys here so that people can gemult it or whatever.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Yeah yeah, okay, yeah, we'll put it up on the
the well populated Facebook page and we've got very dedicated.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
But for me, it was about reclaiming that we're try
hard into. Actually, that's what I learned in my practice
was this is a journey. It's about learning, it's about practicing,
and it's hard work and I need to work on
it every day and I have to try hard.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
Ah, I see what you did there? Yeah nice? Yeah,
how are you doing with normality? I related? I related
to that because yeah, I know, I used to be
I used to you know, fight people, and I used
to travel a lot and hang out with the rock
stars and brush shoulders with celebrity and there's kind of
a buzz to that. And it definitely was something that

(57:22):
I think came from my own insecurities, you know, like
being around famous people made me feel good. Yeah, and
now I now I have a family. I've got kids
and you know, a wife, and I don't run off
whenever I feel like it.

Speaker 4 (57:37):
Yeah. I have an extraordinary girlfriend and if she's listening,
I should score huge bonus points for that. But she
has been the most unbelievable support system for me over
the last five ten years. Oh yeah, I have a
dog who's my whole whole life. Wellie, but I can't

(58:02):
I can't stand normalcy. I can't stand, but you must.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
You must be able to do it at some level.
Now though, routine with the dog, you got to walk it.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
Yeah, well, routine is really important for me. Yeah, meaning
to have the routine of doing my boxing, to have
the routine of trying to eat well, those are things
that keep me balanced.

Speaker 6 (58:23):
I wonder whether way to escape normality is actually to
look for the small things and how surprisingly beautiful they are,
and what gratitude we can find in that. So that's
the way I escape boarder a normality. It's in the
tiniest beautiful things. Yeah, on that, you know, in that moment.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
That's the key takeaway I took from Victor Frankel.

Speaker 6 (58:43):
You've read their book Search of Meaning.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
Man Search Meaning. That's the one that's the thing I
remember the most. Do you know the book?

Speaker 6 (58:50):
No, you it's worth reading. It's man Search for Meaning.
It's about a psy analyst who survived a concentration camp
for five years and he left it without bitterness.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Yeah. He went to.

Speaker 6 (59:07):
Perhaps Auschwitz and he survived, and even the German guards
would come and talk to him, and he found meaning,
his way of holding on to when things got tough.
And it's not surprising that people with substance issues often
choose spiritual meaning or something in their life just escape normality, right,

(59:27):
or you can find it in the beauty of things.
And I think there's something to be said and in
your movie that is in a strange way, you know,
I like that line. I just told you that before.
You cannot make a mistake when you draw with your
left hand with your right hand. You know, like that's
really lovely. You're not worrying about mistakes, You're just looking
at what you're creating. I just thought you got lost

(59:49):
in the moment.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
I think that comes back to what you were saying earlier,
is about how you detached your acting from the desire
for fame and money or rather just for the enjoyment
of the process or the enjoyments of the art creation.
It's like a like a purpose. It's like a purpose,
or it's fulfilling practice, or.

Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
It is will always struggle with the voice going yeah, yeah,
and maybe maybe this will lead to something and I'll
be away. And that voice is always there and it's
just learning to go. Boy, that voice is loud today
or you know whatever, but the voice will always be there.
But I'm aware of it now.

Speaker 6 (01:00:24):
I think also, we have this fantasy that if we
if we made it, we pure, we virtuous, we never
have any struggles. This is a nonsense notion. Even in
the Middle Ages, the Saints, we're constantly hearing demons, we
hear our impulses. The issues are not whether we hear impulses.
This is what we do with Yes, that's the defining

(01:00:46):
difference between making us human or being driven by them.
And you're no longer driven by them, you're free. It
doesn't mean.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
There is I to have ice cream home when you
go there was for ages, there was actually that's they
have Sweden Connens milk, and then they started making an
actual caramel the santin oh that stuff. You know. We're
talking about food throughout the show, and I think that
is something that many people don't recognize as an addiction.

(01:01:18):
Is it is it? Can we call it? Is there
a food addictions? It a real diagnosis?

Speaker 6 (01:01:24):
I suppose it's it's called an eating disorder if you
want to be technical. But sugar is a really addictive
drug that we often don't acknowledge, and how you know
how hard it is for some to resist it, and
how they have to and of course it has huge
profound health effects, et cetera. But yeah, I respect sugar.

(01:01:47):
That's a rush, you know, and I have to be
quite careful. But we were talking a bit about it,
you know. It's just another form of thinking about how
stuff controls us, rather than that we can handle it well.

Speaker 4 (01:01:59):
For me, because I don't use alcohol or recreational drugs anymore,
I want to change the way that I'm feeling. Sugar
makes me feel great, so I have sugar, and then
I kind of crash and feel terrible. So it's understanding
that what's actually going on is I want to change
the way I'm feeling. That's what's behind it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
So what do you do to change what you're feeling
that's not going to me feel terrible?

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
Uh? I sit. I learned to sit in it and
live with it. I can't change it. I just have
to recognize that it comes to me a number of
times a day and go, okay, this is that. Let's
maybe go for a walk.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
That's it for this episode of The Natas Club. Thanks
to Richie Hardcore and NGO for hosting, as well as
our guest Chris Hobbs. If you like what you heard
and think it might help someone out there.

Speaker 4 (01:02:53):
Then please share.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
This episode on your own channels or with family and friends,
and if you ever want to be part of the show,
give us a call or text. When we broadcast live
on News Talk set B eleven pm Sunday nights, New
Zealand standard time, check out Newstalk SEDB dot co dot
nz for local frequencies or a link to the live stream.

(01:03:17):
A big thanks to New Zealand on air for their
ongoing support and making the show.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
Take care and always remember the world's.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
A better place with you in it. Life it isn't easy,
it is, however worth it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
For more from News Talk SEDB, listen live on air
or online, and keep our shows with you wherever you
go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio