The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast
Meg and Bella discuss the ups and downs of navigating an alcohol free life in Australia's alcohol centric culture. This highly rated podcast, featuring in Australia's top 100 self improvement podcasts, is a must for those that are trying to drink less alcohol but need some motivation, are curious about sober life or who are sober but are looking for some extra reinforcement. The Not Drinking Alcohol Today pod provides an invaluable resource to keep you motivated and on track today and beyond. Meg and Bella's guests include neuroscientists, quit-lit authors, journalists, health experts, alcohol coaches and everyday people who have struggled with alcohol but have triumphed over it. Our aim is to support and inspire you to reach your goals to drink less or none at all! Meg and Bella are This Naked Mind Certified Coaches (plus nutritionists and counsellors respectively) who live in Sydney and love their alcohol free life.
The Not Drinking Alcohol Today Podcast
Tara Hurster on Resilience, Addiction Recovery, and Finding Purpose
Meet Tara Hurster, a remarkable voice in addiction treatment, as she shares her empowering journey and insights from The Tara Clinic in Sydney. From grappling with insecurities about her height in school—turning to smoking as a coping mechanism—to discovering her passion for helping others as a mediator between students and teachers, Tara's path was shaped by unexpected twists. Her story is a testament to how personal experiences can lead us to our true calling, offering a fresh perspective on addiction recovery and the power of self-discovery.
Through themes of resilience and transformation, Tara explores the deep connections between family dynamics, early education, and identity. She sheds light on the challenges of maintaining lifestyle changes post-addiction, emphasising the need for purpose, connection, and practical life skills like communication, boundary-setting, and emotional regulation. Drawing from her work at The Tara Clinic, she illustrates how shifting focus toward positive life goals can create a fulfilling recovery journey. Join us for an enlightening conversation filled with inspiration, insight, and actionable wisdom.
LEARN MORE ABOUT TARA
https://www.thetaraclinic.com/
MEG
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BELLA
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Online Alcohol Self-Paced Course: ...
Hello everybody. Today we have another awesome guest on the podcast. Today, Tara Herster from the Tara Clinic is our amazing guest. So a huge welcome to you, Tara.
Speaker 2:Hi, thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're welcome, Tara. You're also based in Sydney, aren't you?
Speaker 2:I am yes. Yes, I mean, my services are online, just like you.
Speaker 1:but yes, I'm based in Sydney. It's beautiful and sunny today it is, I know, I know, compared to yesterday, we're out doing our exercise in the rain. Yeah, not okay, not at all. Would you mind, I guess, telling us a little bit about your background, what you do, but also perhaps on a more personal level? We might kick off with this question what led you to want to work, study and help people in the addiction space?
Speaker 2:work, study uh and help people in the addiction space gosh if I got a dollar for every time.
Speaker 2:I was asked why. Addiction? It's yes, it is a very, very common question. Uh, my honest answer is that the universe decided that that's what I was going to do. And I have a real uh, I have a real and I have a real Steve Jobs kind of moment where you know you only notice how things line up when you look back and see the stones along your road and it's really, really interesting to me how that progressed into what it's become now. So I guess, to kind of give you the abridged version, when I was in high school, well, I started smoking when I was in year six because I heard it stunted your growth and I was always really picked on for being tall.
Speaker 1:We've got the opposite problem. That's funny. Oh God, what a, oh, what a young age though.
Speaker 2:Yes, it definitely was. Most people kind of look at me and go what, when, when I? When I say that and it is, though at the time it was my way of identifying a solution to a problem that I was trying to control and that was the best way that I could figure it out in that short sort of, you know, lifetime, really Over time. I was in high school and I was this really interesting kind of bridge between the naughty kids in inverted commas and the teachers, because I love learning, I loved school so much. I, you know I'm quite intelligent, so I'm a good student and I enjoy that. So I was really connected with the teachers, really quite quite well connected there, really connected with the teachers, really quite well connected there. But I also smoked, which meant that I was often hanging around and sitting with the quote unquote naughty kids, because usually it was the quote unquote naughty kids who were in the smoker's corner around behind the toilets, right.
Speaker 1:You actually sound a little bit similar in that regard, you know, but I was and you just sparked this memory rolling up tea leaves or broken up leaves in the papers and sneaking out somewhere, I think with mates or my cousins which had to have been. I don't know if that's unhealthy or not, but I digress. Gosh, was that the 90s or are you a bit younger than me? I suspect.
Speaker 2:I was born in 86. So when I became an auntie, which was at 10 and a half, that was in 96. That was in 96. So I'd say, yes, oh, year six was 98. Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So year six was 98. So it was really early 2000s. Late 90s is really kind of yeah, more early 2000s. I finished year 12 in 2004. Got you.
Speaker 1:So I think there's a 10-year difference there.
Speaker 2:Pre-vape in any event.
Speaker 1:Definitely pre-vape. Yes, definitely pre-vape. Yes, yeah, sorry to interrupt you.
Speaker 2:Tara, no, this is great, yeah, so, uh, what I started to notice was that there was, uh, so you know, by the time I progressed to year nine, I uh, there was this boy who was in year seven who kept disappearing, and I I one day said to him where do you go? Is there a new smoker's corner that I don't know about, where the teachers aren't there as much you know? Why do you keep disappearing? And he said oh, you know, I'm either on detention or suspended.
Speaker 2:And I said to him well, why, what's happening that's resulting in you always being suspended or on detention or after school detentions. And his response, full earnestly, was the teachers hate me. And I said, okay, sure and yes, he was coming into school with a big brother who had a name for himself that was a bit more rambunctious than the average kid. So, sure, yes, he came in with that sort of overshadowed-ness. However, I said to him well, teachers don't hate me, so what are you doing that's potentially resulting in them acting in that way towards you? And he's like oh, I don't know, shit, shit, fuck, fuck, whatever, blah, right, like it was just that whole teachers hate me, it's the worst.
Speaker 2:And I said to him you know, after a little while of us talking, I said to him well, how about we play a trick on the teachers? Let's experiment on them? And he's like, oh yeah, that sounds cool. What are we going to do? And I said, all right, how about this? Turn up on time to every single class between now and lunchtime, because it was at recess when we had this conversation. Take your books in, leave your bag outside, have your pens there, sit down, shut up and do your work and see how they react. And he thought that this was going to be hilarious, so he gave it a go.
Speaker 2:When he came back to me at lunchtime, I said to him what was the experiment like? What happened with the teachers? He said every single one of the teachers was looking over their shoulder expecting him to be doing something. You know all of that. And he found that really, really fun and hilarious, that he was able to kind of, in a way, play a trick on these teachers. But what came to be is over, oh I don't know. Less than six months he went from being suspended all the time, having every lunchtime on detention and every week after school detention, to only having one lunchtime detention in a week, and he did that through his change of behavior in terms of the way he interacted with the world around him, which resulted in the world around him reacting differently to him and when I thought you know, initially in high school I wanted to be a forensic investigator, and then CSI came on TV and everyone thought that was cool, and one of my core values is nonconformity.
Speaker 2:So the idea of following a trend just basically makes my blood boil. So I decided well, I can't do that anymore. What else am I going to do? And when I thought back of that time with that boy and that through that kind of conversation of him being able to see, oh, hang on, the way that I interact with the world around me changes, the way that the world around me interacts with me, I thought, if I can do that without training, if I can do that without training, imagine what I can do with training. And so that's how the, the, the, the decision to go to university, for psychology specifically, was started.
Speaker 2:How I ended up in addiction was literally the universe. So, uh, when I look back, I was. I don't know why, I don't know how, but in my high school I was chosen out of every single student, every student in the entire school. I was chosen to be a leader of the drug and alcohol sort of youth thing that was going to be in our whole area. I went away to this conference and leadership mentorship thing came back, provided all these trainings to the kids in school and then started doing talks for parents as well, trying to help them to see that, you know, telling them not to do something doesn't actually solve the problem. What age was that, tara? That actually was in year nine as well, so I think I was about 16, 15.
Speaker 1:That would have been a hard task at that age when everybody is pretty much gravitating towards alcohol and cigarettes. Did it cause a bit of friction there amongst the cool kids in quotes?
Speaker 2:Well, to be honest, I was never one of the cool kids because, again, I was very different. This whole non-conformity thing is such an ingrained value of mine that I just ran my own race throughout my life, and my grandfather was an inventor and an engineer and I grew up around him a lot, and so I learned that that just because people do something this way, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way to do it. And I had a really a really well built in internal sense of self, and saying no to the sort of societal norms was just. I did that with my eyes closed, so for me it didn't really impact me, if anything. Now, looking back, it makes sense why I was chosen, but I still have no idea how it happened.
Speaker 1:There you go, and just out of curiosity, because you know, having a really lovely sense of self, that emotional resilience is such a lovely core trait that helps you not get into. You know the problematic drinking patterns that then snowball on and on as you get older, and often it's what we try and help and support people to obtain to help them get out of a problematic relationship with alcohol. How do you think you developed a sense of self that was so solid at a young age?
Speaker 2:it's a really, really interesting and I think a lot of it comes down to the sort of family environment and also my view on how to interact with that family environment. You know, one of the interesting things about me is that theoretically I was an only child. But I'm not actually an only child. My sister is 11 years older than me, so when she was in year 12, I was in kindergarten. So that in itself meant that there was such a separation between myself and my sister, whereas my sister and my parents, whereas my sister and my parents they almost were kind of like a group like in my view. So I really found a lot of safety and security within my own time, within my own ways of going about life, and I think part of that really helped to build that skill of I. You know, when you've got, when you've got siblings or or lots of big group of friends and you're all sort of together, right, you kind of have this sense of group think, which is a psychological term, and and what that does is it means that whatever the group is doing, you kind of go along with that. I mean, uh, a really big, big, uh. Example of that was the um, the riots that happened in crinola a number of years back, uh, that whole process. It was actually researched and they were able to see how groupthink actually occurred in that situation. And so, because I was really such a loner within my family environment and so different to the rest of my family in the way that I thought, in the way that I chose to do life, it meant that I didn't need to sort of lean into the identity that other people may have given me.
Speaker 2:Plus one of the things actually, now that I think about it, one of the really beautiful things I think helped me when I was in preschool, so prior to kindergarten my birthday's in July, which means I'm on the cusp I could have gone when I was younger, or I could have been held back and gone. I think you can either turn five or turn six in kindergarten, and so I was always very tall, I was very loud, I was very confident, I was very assertive. So my mum said to the preschool teachers should we send her now or should we wait till next year? And I'm really grateful for this teacher and I, you know, I don't know if it's my personality or if it was this decision but she said if you send her when she's older, she will always be a leader. If you send her when she's younger, she might become a follower. Oh, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. I think it's such a fascinating conversation about how you can develop, or encourage the development of a strong sense of self, even in your 30s, even in your 40s, if you're missing it and I love it because I think it's always been something that I've been aspiring to find that confident, content, sense of self that probably was absent there in my 20s and 30s and probably was a reason for getting that safety blanket in the form of alcohol that then perpetuated as time went on. But it's often, you know something that I work with, particularly women who are 40s, 50s, who have given up alcohol, have been sober for some time but now want that extra layer of resilience. It's a beautiful, beautiful topic. So thank you for going down that rabbit hole with me. I mean, if you could bottle it, if you could just, you know, give every child that head start in life, wow, wouldn't that be fabulous.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I guess that's that's you know. To kind of circle back to your original question, which was how did you end up working in addiction? How did this all kind of happen? I'll I'll finish that little bit in a moment, though it's a big part of you mentioned just then. It wouldn't it be great to be able to bottle that and give it to people? And it is literally what I've been attempting to do in the way that I've formulated the programs that I run at the Tara Clinic, because what I realized over my life is that the skills and the tools and the implementation of those things, such as, you know, effective communication, boundary setting, emotion regulation and those real sort of life skills, are things that I was very grateful to have learned in certain situations and also just from me being who I am and also throughout my education within the psychology space. So many things are taught to us in that area that I feel need to be taught to everyone on the planet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, It'd be great to have that confidence building. Yeah, it'd be great to have that confidence building resilience really built into the education system for young kids.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I spoke to a few guests about that as well. I mean, it would be hopefully something that would encourage kids, teenagers, to reach inside of themselves. I guess it makes you less susceptible to peer pressure reaching out for external substances, all of those things.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and the interesting thing about that is, when I'm working with someone who's in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s that are coming to me with addiction concerns, what I can see, even without asking them when did you start to engage in the problematic behavior in a problematic way? It doesn't happen so often. What happens is you start out with one behavior, then you swap to another behavior, then you swap to another behavior and then the final behavior that you've swapped to is usually the thing that you think shit, now I've got to get help for this because it's uh, you know, it's overtaking my life, right? Um, so people will say oh well, you know, I only started drinking when I was 30 and I go okay, cool. So when you're interacting with stress, the age group that you show me, that you demonstrate in this, is actually sort of a 13, 14 year old. So what were you doing then? Because what happens is when, whatever age we're at, when we start to engage in the problematic behavior in a problematic way, that's actually where our emotional maturity stunts in terms of its growth.
Speaker 2:And so that means like, if you think about it, for me, when I was smoking throughout my high school years, you know, I stopped smoking in the middle of my HSC trial exams. You know, one of the most stressful times of a teenager's life just happened to be the time when I stepped into the action stage of change and started making changes in my behavior. Right, however, up until that period, I would smoke when I was excited, when I was bored, when I was hungry, when I was tired, when I was angry, when I was sad, when I right any feeling that I experienced. I would utilize nicotine in the form of cigarettes in order to cope with that or enhance that or overcome that. And what that meant is that throughout my 20s, when I was starting to really actively learn about myself through the study that I was doing in psychology and also the implementation of that in my own personal life, because it's important to remember that not all clinicians are actually self-actualized as much as they present that they could be, because it's very easy to go into the helping profession in order to avoid your own stuff. So one of the things that I tell young clinicians all the time go to therapy, do loads of therapy yourself so that you can start to implement what you're learning on yourself, so you can touch it, feel it, taste it, smell it and then be able to to provide that that sort of structured foundation of support to your clients, right? And so I was doing a lot of that therapy, a lot of that learning, a lot of that implementation of the skills that I was learning throughout my psychology degree as well, and that's really helped me to identify when I engage in unhelpful communication, when I struggle with boundary setting.
Speaker 2:You know, even if I just think about this, last weekend I had a oh gosh. About 10 years ago I was prescribed this medication, that is, it actually ate away the gut lining. So it meant that I had all of these really different changes to my ability to eat different foods, and one of those foods that I can no longer have is gluten, anything with gluten in it. But my grandma, who is, you know, a 96 year old german lady who lived through the war and was bombed out and all of those things, she's like oh, it's just a little bit of flour, it's not a problem, right?
Speaker 2:And just this last weekend I engaged in people-pleasing behavior and said you know what? Yep, sure, I'll deal with all of the discomfort that I'm going to have as a result of eating this just because you want me to. And so you know, being able to see and make a, make a clear decision and a distinction between she didn't make me do something. I made the decision to go along with what she asked of me, and being able to do that is a very big piece of the puzzle to be able to build in recovery into your life rather than just sitting in the maintenance phase.
Speaker 1:Because you can see it, yeah, that's right, and we've spoken about that on the podcast previously, I guess it kind of under a different label, and I think there'd be lots of little different ways of you know, nervous system regulation or emotional sobriety. It's 10% physical, but it's 90% the emotional sobriety. And part of that, of course, is dealing with your own behaviors, whether it's people pleasing, trying to control the outcome, trying to manipulate other people to act in a certain way, or using the silent treatment in a manipulative way, all of those behaviours that can add that emotional stress, the emotional layer, or just keep you from personal growth. You know, all of those sorts of things keep you quite trapped and, yes, it is a wonderfully freeing moment because it then allows you to enter into or freeze up space. Freeze up space to then grow and do things differently, so you're not coping and using the same coping mechanisms.
Speaker 1:Tara, what I would love to hear from you about is your, what you've developed at the Tara Clinic, how it works, who it's for, how would you kind of describe that in a bit of a nutshell so that people can kind of get the gist around? Yeah, what do you do? What do you offer people who are struggling with various addictions?
Speaker 2:Well, that last point that you made is an important point. The Tara Clinic works with any addiction and that's something that is quite unique, I guess, outside of the inpatient addiction treatment setting. So, first of all, tara is an acronym, it stands for Therapeutic Addiction Recovery Assistance, and we support busy and successful people to regain control over substance use and addiction while leaving the guilt and shame behind. I felt that it was really important to disrupt the way that society views addiction and engages in its treatment, and so I developed the programs that we run at the Tara Clinic to be able to facilitate someone who is otherwise successful, who you know is working full time or is in a high pressured environment, or perhaps is, you know, a busy stay at home parent that feels that you know their lifestyle is thankless, and you know those sorts of people to be able to redefine the nature of their relationship to stress, distress and the addictive behavior itself. And so the way that we do that is through three consecutive programs that are designed to go back to back, and those programs really are developed to help you to take action, build resilience and find purpose in your life.
Speaker 2:The way that we do the programs in the Tara Clinic is. It's kind of it's aligned really closely with the fundamental aspects of adult learning principles, and so what that means is you have a section that is self-directed online learning, which you associate with your workbook and go through the exercises there and then in your individual session with your primary therapist, that's where you get to go on that sort of deep dive into what's going on for you right now, what's been getting in the way in terms of being able to achieve your goals, and how do we build a lifestyle, so your style of living, that facilitates long-term change. Because it's actually really easy and I know this is controversial, but it's actually really easy to stop something. But it's actually really easy to stop something.
Speaker 1:The challenge is change. I don't think that's so controversial because I think many, many listeners would be like yep, I was able to stop for a year or three months or a hundred days. Yeah, it's the stay, stopping the emotional, the emotional baggage that comes after. So I'd love to hear yeah, what do you have to say about that?
Speaker 2:Yes, well, the change process really, from my perspective, comes down to rather than well, ok, I'm a bit of a storyteller, ok, and when I was learning how to, well, I was doing my learner's driver's license thing for the motorbike, and one of the things that the instructor said is where your eyes look, the bike will follow. And I saw that very vividly when I grew up on dirt bikes, and so for me, riding a bike was literally just like riding a bike, so that I didn't necessarily need those skills. But when I was watching someone who hadn't been riding a motorbike prior to that, we were in a very clear car park and there was one what are they called? A pothole in the car park, and a big concrete bollard was placed over that so that it was not dangerous for the people on the motorbikes. This one person rode full speed straight into that single concrete pylon, even though everyone was screaming at him turn left, turn left, turn brake, brake, brake, turn left. He just ran straight into it, went over the top of his bike and we all rushed over to him. Thankfully, he was not hurt, however, rushed over to him, thankfully he was not hurt. However, when we said, like the instructor said to him what happened. That was the only obstacle in the entire area. What happened? And he said I couldn't take my eyes off it because I didn't want to hit it. And it was this perfect example, this practical example of what it means to whatever you focus on you create more of.
Speaker 2:So so often, addiction treatment programs are focused on the stopping of the thing or removing the thing from your life. And so what I do at the Tara Clinic is I help people to build a lifestyle, so this style of living that actually promotes their full, rich and meaningful life. That means that we are focused on where we do want to go rather than on what we don't want. And so, if you think about it, if you just think about pressure systems right, if there's a low pressure system in one area, that means there's a high pressure system somewhere else and the air wants to go into that low pressure system. Right, it wants to be equal as much as possible.
Speaker 2:That's why I guess wind happens. So when we think about removing something from our life, if we are not consciously proactive about what we choose to fill that gap with, it will be filled with more of the same thing, which is why people tend to swap behavior when they stop. So you might go from alcohol to cannabis, or maybe alcohol to food, or maybe alcohol to work right, or and this is again controversial you might go from alcohol to addiction recovery. So you get so focused on the stopping of the thing that it tends to take up so much of your life, and that means that, again, we're focusing our lifestyle, our style of living, around the absence of something, rather than building something that is actually exciting, that you don't even really think about the thing that you're not doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you kind of want to fill the void that alcohol or the substance is taken with building a quality life that you want to well, you want to love and enjoy rather than numbing yourself out to avoid. And I guess it kind of aligns with the Johan Hari line in the TED Talk that you know addiction comes from not having the quality of life that allows you to thrive, that allows you to connect, that has all of those other aspects in it that really makes you want to be present and to show up from everyday life. And, yes, I mean it's something that we talk about a lot here on this podcast. Where are you moving towards? What are you going to fill your life with? What's going to give you that meaning and that purpose?
Speaker 1:I think it's a concept that is just so wonderful. It's such a lovely thing because it's full of growth and it's full of movement towards something that's not holding you back. That's wonderful. And so, with your programs, you're a person that's struggling with, say, cocaine or another drug. You might still be in the throes of active addiction. Is that somebody that could come to you and ask for help?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. There's a change model that's called the stages of change and there's a free resource on my website about the different stages of change and how to identify what stage of change you're in. So, yeah, feel free to access that. Though the first stage of change is pre-contemplation, which is kind of known as denial, and it's really this sense of I don't think there's a problem or I don't think that there's a solution, so I'm not going to bother trying. Basically, in pre-contemplation, we're in active throes of addiction and we're not necessarily going to be self-motivated to make change. Someone in that stage of change is more than likely going to require significant guidance and support in a wraparound way, which would be more of a detox or an inpatient setting, and more often than not, people who are in the pre-contemplation stage of change in that sort of scenario are going to go to treatment as a result of some form of a, an ultimatum right. So when, when you move through the pre-contemplation stage into the contemplation stage, that's where you start to acknowledge that there's a bit of an issue, though you're not really ready to do anything about it yet. So in that stage of change, usually what happens is you'll listen to people talking about the fact that there's an issue happening and they can see that something's going on, though you probably will be like, oh no, look, it's not that bad. Oh, I don't really have time, or no, I'm not as bad as that guy over there, right? That's the sort of language that you'll start to notice In that stage of change. Again, you're going to require that real wraparound support of a more inpatient service that helps you to kind of have those boundaries and barriers to kind of buck up against.
Speaker 2:As you are exploring the early throes of change Into the preparation stage, that's really where you've acknowledged that there's an issue and you're exploring, or you're interested in exploring, options outside of the status quo. And this is really the first stage of change where you would qualify to come to the Tara Clinic and really that's where you are noticing that perhaps you might not necessarily feel ready yet to actively reduce or stop, but you're in this space of I've had enough. This is just not cool anymore. It's getting in the way of my whatever, whether it's health, well-being, relationships, work, productivity, sleep, sex all of these things can be really impacted by the choices around addiction, right? So when you're in that space and you think you know what.
Speaker 2:I want to start to understand what the next steps are. That's actually a beautiful place to start a program such as ours at the Tara Clinic. A beautiful place to start a program such as ours at the Tara Clinic because you're learning the practical skills in a harm minimization setting, which means that the expectation is not that you are to be abstinent from the time you start At the Tara Clinic. Abstinence isn't our goal. Our goal is for you to achieve whatever your goal is and over the time that we provide support for people. So our programs are. The research shows that between 12 to 18 months of active work in recovery is the best predictor for lasting change, so I've designed our programs to go over 18 months, which means that you are supported in a structured way throughout the entirety of the change process.
Speaker 1:And Tara, can I ask you this? It's online, so you're, I imagine, being introduced to tools and tactics and wonderful learning programs. Is there any face-to-face individual face-to-face that's offered for people?
Speaker 2:So, yes, however, it is also through telehealth, so that means that we're able to support people Australia-wide and also over in New Zealand as well. So it means that, in terms of your accessibility to the treatment is really there and because we provide support over that length of time, we're very aware that people go on holidays, right, they travel for work. They have all of these things that shouldn't get in the way of their recovery and their recovery shouldn't get in the way of their life. So that's why, again, we do the individual sessions that are with their primary therapist in an online format as well, so that, no matter where you are in the world, you can continue doing the progress that you've been getting with the programs Fantastic.
Speaker 1:I just love how there are these programs emerging around Australia. It's just making treatment and help so much more accessible, reducing the stigma, and it sounds like your program helps to build skills that people can introduce into their everyday life. It's really easy to hear the passion in your voice. Tell me, what do you most proud about your work?
Speaker 2:Gosh, if I wasn't a psychologist, I could tell you all of the things that I'm proud about. As a psychologist, I am bound by really strict rules and regulations around what I can and can't share about incredible outcomes that I've seen with our clients and you know the stories that they've shared with me as a result of their life changing completely and how that's helped them to grow and develop and change their family tree. I would love to be able to tell you all of these things in more detail. I think the thing that I'm most proud of is that I believed in myself enough to take on an industry that was really lagging in its interest in achieving a modern approach to recovery, and I'm really proud of being able to see that there are clients and people around you know Australia who have trusted in me and my process to be able to help them move through their own recovery journey and get out the other side and live a full, rich and meaningful life. I mean that is just so exciting to me. I'm yeah, and you know I'm grateful to the universe for literally handing me my first job in the addiction treatment programs, because that's literally what happened.
Speaker 2:I remember when I was between my undergrad and postgrad. I took some time off and I sent out empty CVs to different places and a year and a half later, when I was doing my postgrad studies, I got a phone call from a rehab that said oh, I know you were looking for a job, can you start on Friday? And I said, well, would you like to interview me? And they've gone oh yeah, good, yeah, let's do that. And so I walked in for the interview and before I even sat down, they said can you start on Friday? And I was like sure, what am I doing? And I said we need you to run the inpatient addiction treatment programs here. And that is literally how I got on this trajectory to be able to build what I think is a program that makes addiction treatment sexy.
Speaker 1:Ah, love it. Where can people find you? Where can people?
Speaker 2:find you. The best way to find me is through my website, so thetaracliniccom, otherwise most social media platforms, I am either Tara Herster or the Tara Clinic. Most people tend to reach out to me through LinkedIn, my personal account on there. So, tara Herster, and yeah, it's really simple to to schedule yourself in just simply click, you know, schedule your assessment and we will go through where you are on the stages of change and whether or not you feel like the Tara clinic is the right program for you.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. We will place all of that contact information in the show notes. Thank you, tara, for hopping on to the Not Drinking Alcohol Today podcast. Thanks so much for having me, it's been great.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
