I would say I was an alcoholic, but I'm not one now.

What about you, Vic?

It's a word I've always shied away from.

I mean, that's why this scene.

God, you're not very brave, are you?

No, I'm not very brave with the words because I don't like to be labelled. I don't like people using words that give them the wrong mental connotations of

what I am. So if I say to someone, look, I'm an alcoholic, I know that their image of me in their

brain is me passed out on the floor in a pile of vomit with a crying baby crawling over me.

It's extreme circumstance.

And they're going to jump to that conclusion straight away into their brain.

And that's not who I am.

So I don't want that word to represent me.

Even though I probably am an alcoholic and I have been an alcoholic and a lot of institutions would call me an alcoholic.

I guess that's what we are, is alcoholics.

But I think there are softer

terms that we can use that don't make us feel, you know, that word in itself comes along with

all that guilt and shame and all those negative, like, all those negative feelings. So, but for some

people I know that they say, I'm an alcoholic, they can say it in a very, very strong way and go, that's who I am.

And I think being an alcoholic is sort of part of the human condition.

So there's no reason why we should be ashamed of it because we are almost trained as humans to drink because it's the way that we heal ourselves and it's the way that we numb out from our traumas and our pain and everything else that that life throws at us. So we should be

able to go, look, life has made me into an alcoholic and I'm proud of that and I'm not one anymore,

but that's how I identify. But for some reason, culturally, I find that word difficult to accept.

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