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Dopamine is a crucial neurotransmitter that helps facilitate reward, motivation, memory and movement within the body. But are its effects always beneficial? Watch Insight episode Chasing Dopamine on SBS On Demand.
Content warning: This article references drug use and addiction
I always had a burning desire to be liked. But my pursuit of 'fitting in' and the subsequent ways I'd seek dopamine came with serious consequences.
Growing up, I felt like a fat little loser and weighed almost 100kg by age 15.
I was bullied for it, not terribly, but it was enough to make me constantly insecure for the next five years.
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I also had one of my testicles removed at this age because doctors believed the tumour that had developed on it was cancerous.
But still, I felt less of a man coming into adulthood.
I was especially desperate to feel accomplished in something after I recovered from surgery and decided I would lose weight.
About eight months after surgery, I had lost 23kg from calorie counting and exercise. And I started feeling confident for the first time in my life.
But this didn't satiate my need to be liked by my peers.
At 16, I discovered alcohol and found that when I drank, I would become a version of myself that wasn't insecure.
And this is when I started to make more friends.
I became the life of the party in my early twenties — the guy who said yes to everything.
Eventually, if somebody wanted someone to do drugs with, they knew they could call me and I'd do cocaine every weekend.
I'd start with around $1,000 in my account and finish the weekend owing $1,000.
I was also drinking almost 12 standard drinks every night.
I'd often sneak in a few on my shift at work and would often stop in at the bottle shop on my way back because I didn't want to wait until I was home.
This behaviour continued for about six years while I still went to work and had a functional life as a tradesman.
I convinced myself I was just young and having fun — that I was fine.
But my body constantly hurt, my weight had climbed back to around 112kg and I was depressed.
I destroyed friendships, treated my then-partner terribly and put my family through too much.
One night when I was about 20, while absolutely smashed, I crashed my mum's new BMW into a parked car and drove away.
When the owners tracked me down, I was too ashamed and stubborn to face them.
My mum dealt with it for me. I wasn't only an addict; I was also a massive coward.
Although my parents made me do the right thing and call the people to apologise, I still had no remorse at the time.
Around this period, my best mate at the time and I started talking about trying ice.
We never smoked it, thankfully — although I did try speed on multiple occasions.
I knew by then this wasn't just partying.
There wasn't an overnight transformation.
But between many bad magic mushroom trips (when I would cry thinking about how I'd let everyone down) and the weight of knowing my path was possibly leaning towards jail, I was forced to stop and think about my future properly for the first time ever.
My girlfriend at the time had stuck with me through my absolute worst years because she had seen the good in me before everything went off the rails.
I owed it to her and my family to change my habits and start the road to recovery.
I was still an addict as I then smoked weed daily (only after work) but I had stopped cocaine and alcohol.
And after countless failed attempts, I also managed to string together a few good days of eating better.
I wasn't sure I could lose the weight but as the story goes, a few days became weeks. And I eventually went from around 112 kilograms to about 80 kilograms.
Before then, I had never run 5km continuously in my life.
But something clicked in me when I read a book by an American ultramarathon runner.
That very same day I ran 7.6km. The next day, I ran 10 and then ran 10km every day for a month to train for the Maribyrnong River Run in Melbourne.
I finished in the top 50 out of roughly 500 people. For someone who had never run 5km only a couple of months before, that was absolutely mind-blowing.
I decided I wasn't done yet. I wanted to push my limits on a trail and signed up for a marathon (42km) two weeks later.
I was terrified yet I finished sixth somehow.
That's when this became something much bigger, and I've been running long-distance races ever since.
My proudest physical achievement so far is when I covered roughly 170km in the You Yangs mountain range in Victoria with around 5km of elevation in about 32 hours.
Looking back, I've realised something uncomfortable about why ultrarunning appealed to me so much.
I still liked feeling like 'the f---ing man', which is what drugs and alcohol used to do for me.
I loved people's reactions when I told them how far I was running. That desire to be accepted never completely disappeared.
In some ways, I had just found another way of getting it. But there's a difference.
Running gives me a measurable way to see how far I've come from the person I used to be.
Drugs gave me the reward of dopamine first and made me suffer afterwards.
Ultrarunning works backwards. The longer I suffer, the greater the dopamine reward afterwards.
When everything hurt during my 100-miler (161km), and stopping would have ended the physical pain immediately, I didn't stop.
Because I knew the mental pain of giving up would last much longer than the physical pain of continuing.
Today, I rarely drink but I do smoke weed. I know I'm not at my best because of it, but I still do enjoy it.
I'm not interested in pretending I've become a perfect person. But I'm a completely different son, brother and friend.
My relationship with my family is now so much better, and my mum is my best friend who constantly tells me how proud she is.
I've also started coaching people who want to run trails and ultramarathons.
The fact that somebody would pay the bloke who once couldn't run 5km to teach them how to run further is still wild to me.
Helping people has become the point and I believe it's God's purpose for me — to help others who were where I was.
I regret hurting people, but I don't regret what happened and wouldn't erase those years.
The good I can do with what I've learned can outweigh the bad it took to get here.
If I could speak to somebody living the life I was living, I'd say that if you can fight your way through this, there's an entirely different life waiting on the other side.
You don't have to return to the insecure person you were trying to escape.
And you have absolutely no idea yet what you're capable of.
Readers struggling with their use of alcohol and other substances can contact the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015 for free and confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
For crisis and mental health support, contact Lifeline (13 11 14), SANE Australia (1800 187 263) or 13Yarn (139 276), a 24/7 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders crisis support line.
And for more stories on sex, relationships, health, wealth, grief and more, head to Insightful — an SBS podcast series hosted by Kumi Taguchi. Follow us on the SBS Audio App , Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or wherever you get your podcasts.
Insight is Australia's leading forum for debate and powerful first-person stories offering a unique perspective on the way we live. Read more about Insight
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