There are too many people to personally thank but hopefully this does it justice.
A big thank you goes to all of the personalities and experts who were generous and kind enough to lend their time, knowledge and expertise (as you will read throughout the book). I am so fortunate to be able to connect and collaborate with such talented and inspiring people from all over the world. And a huge thank you to the Mental Health Charity One in Five for the ongoing support.
I would like to say thank you to Annie Reid from Atrium Media (www.atrium.media) for her incredible support and guidance in writing this book. I feel so lucky to have met and worked with her. She is an amazing person and someone I now consider a friend.
To my close friends (you all know who you are!) — thanks for always being there for me, supporting me and being unconditional. As you will read in the book, I feel very fortunate to have such an amazing support group. And a special thanks to Vincent De Luca and his extended network for the early support in this book.
I want to say a major thank you to Wiley for believing in me and publishing this book. They have been there every step of the way and have been an absolute joy to work with. They were the publisher I always wanted to work with and I couldn't have done it without them.
And finally to my family…
To my Mum, Terry and Dad, Steve — thank you for being the best parents in the world. Thank you for being amazing role models, teaching us about values and for genuinely being the best people I know.
To my brother and sister, Amy and Will, you are my best friends and the most genuine people I know. I wouldn't be who I am without you guys and am forever grateful for the relationship we have.
And to my extended family, again, I can't express how lucky I am to have such a loving and close family who support each other no matter what.
Finally, to Rob and Bruce, my Aunt and Uncle who are no longer with us, I dedicate this book to them. As you will read, they passed away during the formation of this book and have been my rock throughout life. They supported, pushed and encouraged me in every challenging endeavour I ever took on, were unconditional in their love and support and were always there for me. This book is for them.
INTRODUCTION
I just didn't know any better.
Time stopped, just like in the movies. I could see the houses in front of me as my car was spinning, and I could hear the song ‘Under the Bridge’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers at full blast. I remember thinking quite clearly, ‘This could be the end’, and having a wave of emotions crash over me. My heart sank.
It was a cold, rainy night on 13 July 2007, on the back of a big week of partying. My parents were away at our family holiday house in Wye River, Victoria, and I had a group of friends staying over at my home in Williamstown, Melbourne. We'd been out drinking on consecutive nights and, apparently, I'd been drinking everyone else under the table that week. Always the dedicated obsessive: if I was going to drink, I was going to do the job properly.
That night, we'd been out drinking again at Seven Nightclub at a night called ‘Unlucky Thursdays’. It was our favourite and I looked forward to it all week. Drunk after another big session, I finished up and left, along with my best friend, Huw, and mates Aidan and Jason. We took a taxi and headed back to my house.
Once home, I don't know what had possessed me to get into the family Saab. Maybe I wanted to grab some food. I can't be sure. Huw, who I'd grown up with, decided to jump into the car with me. He was in a similar drunken state, and for some reason decided to lie down across the back seats of the car.
I took off, flying down the main street in Williamstown at 90 km/h in a 60 zone, screaming the lyrics to that song. Then, something clicked in my head and I realised what I was doing and what was happening in that moment, and I knew it was very dangerous.
I instantly tried to turn the car around to head home, and I remember the feeling as it happened. Everything was in slow motion and my life flashed before my eyes. It was just like you’d see in a movie. As I wrenched the steering wheel, the car hit a traffic island and started spinning out of control. I could see the houses in front of me as the car continued to spin, only stopping because it slammed into a tree, completely crushing in one side — the side Huw's head was facing as he lay down.
I was stunned, and for several moments after the car finally stopped, I sat there gripping the steering wheel and breathing hard. I ripped the cassette player out to make it stop playing.
With my seatbelt on, I miraculously suffered no injuries beyond a bit of whiplash. Dazed, I looked over my shoulder at the back seats. Huw was lying across the seats, covered in blood and dangerously still. I called out to him, but he didn't answer. Ripping off my seatbelt, I turned, shouting his name again and again to no response.
Finally, he twitched, shook his head and sat up. I was enormously relieved to discover that he was alive, and not at all surprised to find that he was completely shell-shocked.
Had he not had a reflex to jolt up, he would have been killed instantly. But somehow, he seemed relatively okay, and despite being covered in blood with gashes in his arm and face, decided to walk home, which was a few kilometres away. He hoped it would save me from getting into more trouble.
By this point I knew I was in trouble. People were running out of their houses, and I ended up asking them if I could call the police because I wanted to handle the situation myself. When they arrived, they took me willingly to the police station, from where I had to make one of the hardest phone calls of my life. It was to my dad, Steve Bracks, the premier of Victoria at the time. After I explained what had happened, his and my mum's main concern was our wellbeing. It was now 7 am and I was told my incident would be all over the news by 8 am that morning.
At 8 am, it became a national story. I couldn't leave the house for days because media were camped out the front. Bizarrely, one of the main photos that appeared was of the written-off car in a junk yard with a black cat sitting on top of it. Our night out at ‘Unlucky Thursdays’ seemed very apt.
I remember telling myself at this time that I had to make a change, that I was going to stop drinking, and had to make a plan to get myself on track. Enough was enough. I'd been given a second chance. The police who were at the scene of the incident said they had never seen one that severe where anyone had survived. I was lucky to be alive, and even more so, was lucky I didn't kill my best friend or harm anyone else.
Furthermore, I had brought my family front and centre into the wreckage that was my mind and body, and it was time to see the signals and make a change. I stuck to this for a couple of weeks, but because I was still not willing to talk openly about what had happened and seek the help that I needed, I quickly fell back into the same behaviour patterns and regularly found myself in life-threatening situations.
I think the car crash was when my bad-boy image was born. After the story came out, I found myself the centre of attention, and people were watching every move I made. As long as I was drunk, though, I didn't mind. I felt like I could get away with anything.
The weird part was that I wasn't famous for being an amazing football player or an Olympian or an actor. I'd done nothing more than crash a car. Looking back, I realise now that I was very naïve and stupid, but at the time I thought it was fun to get into nightclubs without having to pay the cover charge. I loved the approval from crowds of people I didn't even know. During this time, going out was my world.
Even then, I could see that things had taken a seriously wrong turn in my life, but I couldn't see that I had bigger issues to tackle than just the drinking — alcohol had been nothing more than a really bad coping mechanism for some serious problems.
I