Jack Thompson 0:00

But I think it's interesting to look at yourself and say, Why do I need to go out and get shit faced on a Friday night? Is it because I'm not happy? Is it because I don't have the confidence to meet someone otherwise? And I think there's a lot to be learned from that.

Alex Melia 0:15

Welcome to stories of men beneath the surface.

Alex Melia 0:19

I'm Alex Amelia. Join me as we discover what it means to be a man in the modern era

Alex Melia 0:32

Have you ever felt pressure to drink when you really didn't want to? Today's episode features professional Ultra cyclist Jack Thompson, who it turns out, sometimes feels that pressure to Australian Jack Thompson set the world record for the most kilometers ridden in a week. Recently, he was cycling with a big group in northern Spain. This was during the offseason for the ride was more about socializing than competing.

Jack Thompson 1:02

We were heading up north to the sort of coastal French border typically coastal Spain white building Sandy coastline and blue skies chugging along at a pretty nice place. We reached the top of the first big climb for the day and made our way down to the Port of Port della Silva. And I remember quite clearly the sound of the freewheels buzzing as we were lined out one by one descending this beautiful coastal road down to the to the sandy shores and you know, the wind was in our ears. It was cold, but it was blue skies, you know, it's just a beautiful day to be on a bike. I was just really looking forward to wrapping my hands around a hot cup of coffee and you know, watching that steam, rise off the have a coffee and enjoy something sweet to eat. And it's fun, like sitting there with the guys and having a chat. And when we got there. We had the coffee and we're sitting there and one of the boys said to me, you know you're going to have a beer and sort of looked at him and he was smiling at me and you could tell it was offseason, he was ready to sink his lips into a into a cold beer and a sort of non problem. Probably not going to have a beer made I haven't drunk for a couple of years. I remember the conversation around a table that went silent as though everyone has heard what I've said, and a bunch of 12 guys, well, you're not going to have a beer. And I said, Well, I don't drink. All the eyes were on me. I had 12 guys around the table looking at me. Surprised, you know, why aren't you having a beer? It's offseason. At first I thought it was a bit of a joke. You know, like, yeah, I don't have to have a B, you know, we're midway through a Righto you know, I'm gonna carry on and go home and get on with my day. But it was this sense of shock that I wasn't going to have a beer. And almost like I was a bit of a laughingstock, each of them nudging one another, you know, what do you mean isn't gonna have a beer? Some quiet laugh, quite intimidating. You got guys looking at you, and they're all there together. And it did make me feel quite uncomfortable. The look of you know, you're not one of us. You're different. You're, you're weak. You're not one of the boys. I felt as though I actually wanted to go and ride home by myself. I didn't want to be part of that group anymore on that particular day. I guess I felt like a black sheep.

Alex Melia 3:36

Did you have a thought in your mind of oh, maybe I should just cave to this peer pressure and get a beer just to appease them?

Jack Thompson 3:41

No, I didn't have any sense of caving in it probably made me more I was probably more wanting to stick with my initial decision not to having a beer because not because it's a sense of weakness, but because, you know, no, I'm gonna show them like, I don't need to have a beer.

Alex Melia 3:58

How long did that whole exchange stay in your mind for?

Jack Thompson 4:01

I'd say it probably stuck with me for a good couple of weeks, you know, that whole offseason period. So let's just say six, six to eight weeks, it sort of stayed with me because you know, every every five or six days you know we get together and go for another ride and I almost became nervous on what on accepting to go for these rides. Because sure I was up for going for the ride. But I wasn't up for thinking a whole heap of pitch in and around the ride.

Alex Melia 4:30

Why do you think there's so much pressure on guys to drink a lot of times I've been out in the past with friends bars, nightclubs or whatever. What I tend to do because I know there'll be just be insane peer pressure to carry on drinking carry on staying out till three, four or 5am. What I do and a lot of English guys do is they just disappear. They just go home. They don't tell anybody because you know, if you tell someone, hey, I'm not going to drink anymore. I'm going to go soon. They said wow, what are you doing? You should stay the nights only getting started. We're gonna have Some shots of tequila, we're going to have beers, we're going to have vodka. I just disappear completely. And I remember being out at a stag do last November, November 2021, in Liverpool, and I remember being out, it was about probably 1am. And there was about 10 guys in the club, and there was three or four of us outside. And three of the guys that are outside with me said, Oh, we're just gonna go into the bar next door. And I said, Yeah, sure. I'll see you in there in a second. I just completely lied. And what I did was both, we'd been out all day. So it must have been like a 12 hour thing. I was so tired. By the end of it, I had a lot of beers, I'd say a lot. It's five or six years, I was tipsy. I wasn't drunk. And they went into the bar. So yeah, I'll be there in a second. Five minutes later, I just dashed off down the street and went to a noodle bar by myself and had an amazing time. I was there for about an hour. Got right into these noodles, lovely bit of vegetables and everything else that came with it the soy sauce, and had a great time in solitude. But yeah, why is it that we put so much pressure on other guys to drink beer and to drink alcohol?

Jack Thompson 6:05

It's a good question. And I think it stems back to when we first turned 18. If I think back to when I first turned 18, I did have a lot of fun going out and drinking with the guys. And I think we almost associate drinking with having a good time, by saying no to a drink, it's like you're refusing to partake in having a good time with the guys that you're with. And so I've been in a similar position where, you know, I'm out with a bunch of guys, and I've never been lost, I was a big drinker, and a big party drug user growing up, and I think I've, I've essentially done my dash, I don't need to do any more. And, you know, I've slowed down and where the guys can, you know, in the past, I've had five or six beers, you know, I might only be able to handle three beers. Because otherwise I'd be legless on the on the floor. And so, you know, if we're doing something like rounds, it becomes almost a little bit embarrassing, because, you know, I'm going off and buying these rounds. And I'm not actually buying a beer for myself, I'm actually just buying beers for the rest of the guys because, you know, I don't need to have another drink. And I think it's almost, you know, it's a sense of, like, macho isn't like who can drink the most who can handle the most it's, we I think we associate drinking with. You know, being a bit of a worrier

Alex Melia 7:26

is really interesting, you say that you don't drink equals boring, you do drink means you're an interesting and fun person. And I don't really know where that's coming from. But I think there is this sort of pack mentality. And you don't want to be the one left out, like you said before, when you when you ordered coffee, and everyone else had a beer?

Jack Thompson 7:43

Yeah, for sure. And I think, especially growing up as men, like we're trying to define who we are. And I think as young adults, we have this sense of wanting to be a man, whatever that may be, you know, we all have a different sense of what a man is. But I think growing up, we're really intent on trying to find what that is and trying to define ourselves. And as an Australian, perhaps it's the same in the UK, like, we grow up, men should be strong, they should be resilient, they should be able to withstand hardship. And I think, you know, drinking becomes a part of that, you know, you should be able to drink six beers and still stand up and walk to the next place. And you shouldn't be able to do this. Because if you can't, you're weak. You're not a man. And I don't know where it comes from, but I definitely feel that. Yeah, I think it's changing though. Let's be fair, I think it's changing.

Alex Melia 8:40

Yeah, I think there's definitely a step in the right direction. I always think the whole macho thing about being able to handle it, not just beers is handling the hangovers are real men can handle a long hangover, you know, so if you go out on a Saturday night, and you have a hang of for the whole of Sunday, be a man about it. lick your wounds, not lick your wounds, but, you know, be able to deal with that deal with the headaches deal with the vomiting. But why Why go to that extreme of having that? I mean, as a 35 year old, not that you're you're you're 34 Right? Yeah. So why would we just waste the whole day in this off horrible hangover feeling when we could actually use that day, more constructively.

Jack Thompson 9:20

And I think, you know, working a typical nine to five Monday to Friday, it becomes even more extreme because you get two days off a week. And you're going to spend one of them hung over. Like it doesn't really make a lot of like I was all for going out and like I want to do things on the weekend. I don't want to be stuck at home drinking Powerade trying to replenish my electrolytes and eating shitty food like I'm there's more of a licen that

Alex Melia 9:48

if you could tell me what was your worst hangover that you've ever had? That was almost a trigger for you to say enough is enough. Now I'm not going to drink anymore.

Jack Thompson 9:57

For me, my background it was a lot of drink. came but it was also a lot of drugs. Like I can think of an instance where I was actually in Indonesia of all places. And I was using gear in Indonesia. And I woke up the following following morning after a big night out. And I was not like not in a good way, like, my blood pressure would have been all over the place. Like I was dizzy, like, I didn't really know what was going on. And I came back to Perth and I was having these sort of like weird spasms in my mind that didn't really understand what was going on. I actually had to go and sit in your neurologists. And they did some scans of my brain. And they said that I was that close to actually cooking my brain. That for me was an absolute wake up call like, yeah, I was that close to overdoing it. Now, I don't need to do this anymore. Like honest enough.

It's interesting, that experience, because you, I suppose the health scare is always a big motivator to stop doing something. But what what made you just go completely cold turkey on on alcohol, why you don't actually have just one beer or two beers, because obviously, that's not really going to get you drunk. But what made you go completely teetotal,

for me, I now associate drinking back to negative times and negative thoughts. And even if I have one drink, I automatically my mind reverts back to that negativity, or the negative thoughts that I was experiencing at the time that I was using. And for me, that's enough just to do without it like, I've got an alcohol free beer here 0%. For me, it tastes as good as a normal beer. I love the I do like the taste of beer, but I don't enjoy the effects of beer. So I can have three or four of these a night. And you know, I'm not doing any harm. I'm damaging my my mental health. And I'm in a far better place because of it the next day because I'm not hungover. Like I think there's alternatives to drinking nowadays that don't require the sacrifice. I know, mates used to say to me, as part of their drinking that say like, let's say they were going out on a date or something, they say I'm going to have a couple of shots of vodka before I go. And I said, Well, why are you doing that? So I need a little bit of liquid confidence. For me, it was always like I don't, I don't need liquid confidence. Like I'm confident enough in myself that I don't need to have a couple of drinks, to be myself and to be fun and to be enjoyable around somebody. And I think a lot of that comes back to how much do you value yourself? Do you have goals and ambitions? Like what is your direction in life? And I think there's like a bigger picture to that. You know, liquid confidence. I think if you have goals ambitions, and you know you're driven to achieve something, for me anyway, that gives me enough sense of confidence in myself that I don't need to drink.

Or think about your mate stare what you said about the your mates needing some liquid confidence, that makes me think that they've got some issues that they've not dealt with.

I just think when it comes to what in that particular instance, talking with the opposite sex, and suddenly that they then nervous in doing like better have a conversation doesn't come easy to them. By having a couple of drinks, suddenly, they're a little bit more loose, they're a little bit more free flowing. And they feel like it's easier to talk and interact. To be fair, I think that's something that perhaps a lot of guys deal with in not even just Yeah, late teens, early 20s. I think there's those guys in their 30s and 40s, that probably have a hard time talking with or socializing in general. But I don't think it needs to be alcohol that substitutes that need for confidence.

Absolutely. And it's all about perspective as well. Because for me, if I had two beers, and I went on a date, or did something that was nervous about, I'm not actually fully present, I'm not actually fully there in that moment. Because your your, your presence is altered a little bit by the alcohol. So it's almost like I prefer not to have that. So I can be completely there with that person at that time. And if I've got any nerves, then deal with it. Because I feel like nerves are a natural thing. Why are we trained to avoid those things?

Yeah, I think it becomes like a masking agent for something else that needs to be dealt with. And perhaps that's the reason why, you know, alcoholism exists, because people are trying to hide or mask or deal with something that requires dealing with, like, if I cast my mind back, like, I think for me drinking and using substances was an escape from normal life, because I wasn't actually content with what I was doing. Like I was working in an office job, I didn't enjoy what I was doing. And when it finally got to the weekend, like I wanted to let my hair down and I wanted to go and have fun. And I wanted to forget about normal life. You know, like I wanted to disappear into the into the night. Yeah, there's probably other guys and girls and in a similar position. And I think again, it comes back to like what what is your purpose like? Why are you doing it? Is it because you're trying to mask something to try it? Because you're trying to fulfill something that doesn't exist elsewhere in life? I don't think there's any wrong answers. But I think it's interesting to look at yourself and say, why why do I need to go out and get shit faced on a Friday night? Is it because I'm not happy? Is it because I don't have the confidence to meet someone otherwise. And I think there's a lot to be learned from that.

Definitely, there's a lot of escapism reasons as to why men have so much alcohol and they get it. So they get shit faced, perhaps running away from issues they've got in their life. So for example, if they're in a nine to five, Monday to Friday job, and it gets to Friday, and they just hating things, then they just want to have that escapism don't in and beer is, and alcohol is synonymous with that. And that's something that we need to address. But a lot of times we want to avoid pain, and we want to seek pleasure. But actually, the next day, you actually are in pain, because you've got the hangover to deal with.

Like, I don't want to come across like I'm an alcohol Nazi, like a couple of years here and there. If you're up for it, it's fine. I don't drink myself. And I'm not saying that nobody should, should drink, but I think it's yeah, it's worth looking at and asking yourself like, why are you drinking? Why do you feel the need to drink that copious amounts of alcohol?

I'm curious, are you? Are you a kind of an all or nothing kind of personality?

Yeah, I'm definitely the same, like I'm all or nothing. Like I'm diagnosed obsessive compulsive. Like on the bike, I can channel my mindset so that nothing becomes impossible. But I can also do that in other ways. And to me, it's the same with drinking, like Alan was using, like, I was all in for using and, you know, I spent a good couple of years of my life using pretty hard. But now I'm all out. And I don't see myself slipping back. Because I have that sort of drive not to go back there. And, you know, I have other things in life that fulfill me on a day to day basis. But yeah, to answer the question, I'm like, 200% in or nothing?

Where do you think that comes from? Do you think it's just inbuilt in you to be at the extremes?

It's a good question. Like, I come from a family where my parents are quite driven. Like my dad's written his bike around the world. And my mom's climbed up Everest and like, I come from a family where, oh, if you want to have like, high high achievers or wanting to they want to do things well, like my brother is actually Mr. Australia. So he's, he's gone the other way. He's a bodybuilder,

God, so your family is just full of successful people. What if you just wanted to be a normal nine to five person.

That's what I'm going to be next year, I'm going to have a break from writing for a little while because I'm bloody tired. Yeah, so like, I haven't had pressure growing up. But it's more like we've grown up seeing, like our parents achieve things and, you know, being ambitious about what they want to do both working and outside of work. And I think, you know, we've essentially been painted with the same brush, so to speak.

I was gonna say, I've never done cycling long distances. But I did do something about 10 years ago, I cycled from Florida to New York all over three, three and a half week period, it was particularly dangerous for the fact that didn't have health insurance. I did it on it on a whim, and I did it on a really ship, mountain bike as well, like a second hand mountain bike, I remember doing that and just feeling how amazing it was a constant reminding myself to be to be present. In that moment, I've done I've done a lot of running as well, in the past, I've done a marathon years ago, but I didn't live. I didn't love the pain enough to keep on doing it. It was a joyful pain. But I feel like a lot of it was not down to enjoyment in wanting to do it. It was almost, I felt like I needed to deal with some traumas in my life. And that was the motivation around it. So I was motivated by the pain of the trauma. And because I don't have that trauma anymore, I don't feel motivated to do huge, long distances. What what is it that's motivating you to keep doing what you do?

I like to be honest, like, I just love being on the bike. Like I like this year, I've spent 1400 hours or something writing so far. And like I like I'm doing more, more every week than a writer does in the Tour de France. I've done that for 44 weeks. I think for me, it comes back to goal setting, and that sense of achievement. And every day I go out and I go for a ride, I have a goal of what I want to achieve. And if I can achieve that, I feel a sense of achievement. The rest of my day just seems to fall into place. So that's one aspect of it. I also have a greater goal of wanting to help others. And so when the going gets tough, I drop it down a year and I can push on further because I know what I'm doing is actually going to benefit other people. It's not just about me doing something for me. And you know, I want to give back like I've suffered from mental health. I've suffered from depression and built into rehab and I know what that's like. And the thought that if I can ride a bike and help other people, you know, overcome those difficult times in my life for my mission in what I'm doing is it becomes very purposeful. And it becomes quite easy that riding the bike is the easy part. Yeah.

We talked before recording about being an outsider, I think what you're doing and not just being a long distance cyclist, but also ultra long distance cyclists. But the fact that you're doing it by yourself as well puts you in a even smaller sort of niche category. What does this motivation? Or where does this pursuit of being an outsider come from? Do you think?

I think we all have a level that we can reach as a human, like, whether it's performance level, or, you know, we have something that we can live up to. And I read this book recently that said, Imagine if you that when you died, you realize that you'd actually never lived up to your full potential, like, how would you feel about that? And you know, like, we discussed it before, you could die tonight, you could die in a week's time. I don't want to die thinking that I didn't do everything that I wanted to do. And I didn't push myself as hard as I could push myself to achieve as much as I could achieve. I'm here to live life because I only get one chance to live it and I'm going to do the best that I possibly can. That's enough for me.

It's a life well lived, isn't it? Exactly. And I've had those feelings before of when people say, Oh, what's your biggest fear in life? I always say mediocrity. But then I start to think, Well, why do I feel mediocrity? Is it because I'm driven by my ego? Because I feel like I want to be the most successful at this, that or the other? Do you think you're driven by ego in any way?

I don't think it's driven by ego, I think I'm driven by wanting to be the best possible made that I can. And yeah, but I'm like you, I don't want to be mediocre. I don't want to be normal. Like, for me, like living a normal, normal life, like living by societal norms is like an boring, like, there's enough people doing that, like I want to push the limit of, of what the human body is capable of. And I want to pursue that. It's a sense of freedom. It's a sense of exploration. It's a sense of, you know, all these sort of goals, and I guess, an exciting life to live.

There's a quote that I remember years ago, I remember the line it said, I wanted movement and not cam course of existence. And it's always this feeling of progression, progression progression, because I've had times where I've just settled back, I've just kind of not really pushed myself any further, I've got maybe I've got to a point and then just sort of said to myself, I made that decision. I'm just, I'm just gonna let allow myself to plateau for a while. And those were the times where depression and anxiety kicked in. Have you ever had that sort of experience?

Yeah, I think so. Like as a cyclist, we often will under contracts with different brands or teams. And often you'll sign a one year contract, in which case, you're always eager to please because you know what's, you know, next year, you're going to have to negotiate that contract again, sometimes you sign a two year contract. And what I find in the past, I've slipped into the mindset of I don't need to try as hard and delivering this year, because next year, I still have another year in my contract. And I found that the end of my second year, a sponsor might say, Oh, we don't want to renew your contract, because you actually didn't perform in that first year. And that happened to me once a couple of years ago. And since then, I've learned like you can never settle for doing the bare minimum. You have to be proactive, you have to, you know, yeah, you know, getting paid to the average less. Push yourself do as well as you can as a sense of reward in oneself in doing that.

Listening to Jack's story makes me think about all the decisions that we make when we're under peer pressure from our friends and our networks. It made me think about instances where I think my life would have been different if I hadn't succumb to peer pressure. An example of peer pressure takes me back to when I was 18. And there was an expectation that was going to lose my virginity to a girl I've met a few weeks previously. So I met this girl for a second time in Wigan. And I remember her friend driving us home back to my house. And after a few hours of kissing and doing other things. I just didn't know what I was doing. And we actually didn't end up having sex and therefore I didn't lose my virginity. But the next day, I remember all my friends asking me how it was and saying, it must be amazing now that you know that you've lost your virginity. And I didn't say yes. And I didn't say no. So I didn't tell the truth, but it didn't lie either. I just kind of kept quiet, which made them think that I actually had lost my virginity even though I hadn't. And I just felt this weight off my shoulders completely go I didn't have that pressure anymore, even though I was misleading them. And I feel like if I hadn't had the peer pressure to lose my virginity, I probably would have just been honest and said, Listen, guys, it just didn't happen for all these other reasons. But I didn't want to have the pest taken out of me or can't believe you didn't know what you were doing. You know, there's this expectation that you know what you're doing in this scenario. Nowadays, I don't really drink that much. But thinking back to my late teens and early 20s, and even mid 20s, we have this expectation or this idea in our mind that drinking makes us more manly. We want to be more masculine. In a lot of cases, while I'm talking for myself personally. And it makes me think, why do we link drinking pints drinking beer having alcohol with being manly? Why do we link those two together? It's this sort of stereotype of what a masculine man is, oh, he drinks pains. He meets lots of women. He watches sports in the pub. He goes plays football or rugby, or whatever. Nowadays, I'm almost more intrigued and more interested in people who don't necessarily conform to this sort of idealized perception of what a masculine man is. I've not drank until recently for about 10 weeks. And I met an English guy whilst traveling. And I ended up drinking again, I almost didn't want to have the repeated questions of why not drinking, if you're having the next drink. And I wasn't really necessarily drinking very much, maybe two or three drinks a night. But I just wanted to keep this perception that I do drink. And I'm not some weird guy who doesn't drink because there is this perception in the UK, that if you don't drink, you're somehow weird. I also have this inbuilt feeling within me that I need to justify myself in some way if I'm not drinking. And I remember saying to this guy recently, oh, well, I'm not drinking a lot at the moment because I had a big spell of drinking constantly. So I want to cut back. But what if I just say, Well, I just don't want to drink right now and not feel the need to justify myself. What's really fascinating is is almost this new normal that's established now, where 16 to 24 year olds are rapidly reducing the amount of alcohol they drink, or there's a big section of society that just do not drink at all. But 2015 study I was reading about saw that 25% of 16 to 24 year olds, don't drink anything at all. That's the total. So is this a new pattern is emerging right now. That's going to continue into the future. Jack Stone made me think about this all or nothing mentality. Recognizing this mindset within ourselves. I'm refraining from this can be considered a bold decision. I see this within myself and I see this within my social circle as well. It's sort of this, okay, I'm going to go out on Friday or Saturday night, I'm going to drink eight to 10 pints and vodkas and whatever. I'm not going to drink anything at all. So I still think there's a long way to go to move away from this all or nothing mindset around alcohol. Now, I'm not necessarily saying that an all or nothing mindset is bad, because in Jack's case, it worked really well for him and he's breaking records all the time by being all in on cycling. So a question to ask yourself is Do you have an all or nothing mindset? And is this a good or bad thing for you?