Interview by Rin Hamburgh

SIDE BY SIDE:
LUKE AND PETER

When 47-year-old Luke Richards, from Melbourne, started wild swimming, he discovered a metaphor for recovery. After years of addiction, pain and attempted suicide, the ocean offered connection, wonder and more life than he imagined possible - including a friend, Peter, 64, who’s own life he would go on to save. Find out more about Luke and his journey at Swim 4 Recovery.

DESCENT INTO DRUG AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION:

My first addiction was drugs. I'd met and fallen in love with a girl in my late teens but when we eventually broke up in my mid-20s, I was lost. My identity was formed around her so when you detached me from that I was gone. I’d always refused drugs from my friends at parties but after the break up I thought, why not? They’d always been ok.

The problem was that for me the drugs immediately erased all the pain I’d felt all my life. And that was it.

For the next seven years I was under the influence of drugs pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week with very few clean days in between. Then I met someone who didn’t want to be involved with a druggie so incredibly I put it down. We ended up getting married but when that marriage dissolved in a blaze of glory, I was back where I started.

I decided that I would go to the bottle shop and drink so much that I died from alcohol poisoning. And I almost achieved that goal. Except one of my best mates, Matt, found me and stayed with me until I was somewhat straight.

The problem was that it didn’t stop there. The drinking got progressively worse from that point. I couldn’t regulate my drinking at all and that’s really the difference between dependence and addiction. You lose your ability to say no. In the end I was drinking a litre of bourbon a day.

CHOOSING TO LIVE:

Throughout my life, no one ever really knew what was going on with me, not since my sister walked in on me when I was 11. My friend Matt was the only one who had an idea. But after trying to take my life again in my late 30s, I was in hospital with a lot of time to think. And I decided that I didn’t want to die.

That was the start of the recovery process. But it took another eight months of destruction for things to really change. Another important step was realising I was close to losing my job. I’d been “sick” and disappeared one too many times. So I took a week off to try and get sober, just sipping a small amount of gin each day to ease the withdrawal. It didn’t work. I woke up three days later on my bed and realised that I couldn't do it by myself.

In the big book of AA there’s this passage that says if you follow our path you won’t fail - but you have to be honest. And I realised I’d been lying this whole time to myself and everyone.

So I started calling all the people I’d been lying to and told them exactly what was going on. I went to a meeting and really liked it. From the first time I attended that meeting, I haven't had a drink and in fact, I haven't even pined after one, so powerful was the experience.

PETER: When I first met Luke, at the Bay Open Water Swimmers group, I had no idea we would be such good friends or that he would end up very likely saving my life. At first I thought of him as the gadget man because he always had the latest tech gadgets, like a camera perched on an inflatable that he would take swimming with him. He got some amazing photos with that, which was a real talking point for us.

Over time we got to know each other better - we’d swim together and get a coffee or a bite to eat with other people from the group afterwards. We’ve also done road trips together, going to swimming events and taking part in duo swimming competitions.

Luke is a real straight shooter. He’s always been very open about his past and although I was a little shocked at first, I was also very proud that he felt able to share it with me and the rest of the swimming group. Over the years we’ve known each other, he’s shared different stories with me and I guess that’s allowed me to be more open about myself too.

PUTTING OTHERS FIRST:

Luke is also incredibly kind, thoughtful and caring of others. He always wants to help people. And last winter, he proved it when he risked his own safety to rescue me. We were doing our regular early morning swim. When we arrived down at the beach there was a thick layer of heavy fog. None of us had swum in the fog before so we just prepared for the swim and went down to the water’s edge as usual, even though we couldn’t see more than 5 meters ahead of us.

I remember saying, “Well, this is a first.” And everyone just sort of nodded and started swimming out to our usual start point. I put my head down and did about 6 strokes - and when I looked up to take a breath, everyone had gone. I couldn’t see anyone.

I called out but no one returned my calls so I started swimming in the direction I thought they’d gone. Then I realised it would probably be safer to get back to shore so I turned what I thought was 180 degrees and carried on.

LOST - AND FOUND - AT SEA:

Except I wasn’t swimming back to shore. I realised later, when I looked at the data from my Garmin watch, that I’d been swimming parallel to the shore. At one point I heard a dog barking but the sound echoed all around me and completely disoriented me. I had been in the water for almost an hour - in temperatures of 10 degrees with no wetsuit - when out of the fog I saw Luke paddling on a surf ski. There was more anxiety on his face than I imagine there was on mine! 

He’d rallied a group of people to try and find me, many of which told me that they were concerned about going too far in case they got lost too. But Luke, he was so desperate to find me he didn’t even think about it, he just got on his surf ski and started paddling.

 That was definitely a bonding experience for us. For someone to take that chance on himself, that’s a pretty amazing thing to do. Luke and I have a lot more years of swimming together ahead. Next year we’re planning to swim the English Channel. It’s important to have a great buddy with a common vision and dream to train with.