The Willy Wonka of Craziness

Damien shares his transformative journey from battling addiction and bipolar disorder to founding the Coffee Foundation, showing how embracing vulnerability became his path to purpose. His story reveals how our inner voices can either destroy or rebuild us, and why creating spaces for authentic mental health conversations saves lives.

• Finding ourselves on the other side of the world with the same internal issues
• The battle with our inner voice when it becomes destructive
• How mental health stigma and vocabulary prevents open conversation
• Young people struggling to discuss mental health when adults can't model it
• Damien's rock-bottom moment through intestinal surgery and alcohol detox
• Creating the Coffee Foundation to promote mental health conversations
• The power of vulnerability as a superpower that connects us
• Embracing our unique "craziness" as potential strength rather than weakness
• Breaking down the facades we create that prevent authentic connection

Damien O'Brien

• Tel: +41 79 777 0489
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damien-o-596032b/
• Website: https://www.coffeefoundation.com/
• Email: hello@coffeefoundation.com

If you're struggling with mental health issues, reach out for help. As Damien discovered, sometimes our greatest challenges can become the source of our purpose when we learn to work with our inner voice rather than against it.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Damien's Journey
• 3:33 The Battle with Inner Voices
• 6:16 Embracing the Crazy Inside
• 12:05 The Intervention Through Pain
• 18:35 Birth of the Coffee Foundation
• 22:20 Breaking the Mental Health Stigma

Transcript

Voiceover: 0:03

Tales from the wild, stories from the heart. A journey into the mind and soul of fired-up business professionals, where they share their vision for the future and hear from a different non-profit organization every month as they create awareness of their goals and their needs. Dive into a world of untamed passion. As we join our host, Shireen Botha, for this month's episode of Friends from Wild Places.

Tanya Scotece: 0:36

Wow, what a journey. What a journey. First of all, damien, thank you so much just for you know being your authentic self and sharing you are and how we come to be with you today here in 2025. But I mean, the many facets of you are just so enlightening and inspiring. I will say A couple of things that you touched on that really just resonated is, I think, so many of us you know over the years think that you know if we get a new whatever, fill in the blank new home, new car, new job, new person, and but yet we are still taking ourselves to that, whatever that may be, and sometime, you know, you find yourself literally across the world with the same issues that you started with, on the other side of the world. So it's yeah, and I think that's so true for our listeners because everyone can relate to that right. They may not have had, you know, quite the journey, or maybe some people have.

Tanya Scotece: 1:35

I always Shireen has known me for quite a few years now.

Tanya Scotece: 1:38

I always like to say you know, we can always look to the left and see somebody worse off than us in any situation emotional, finances, anything and then you could always look to the right and see somebody you know more in, whatever that capacity may be, but we all are on our own journey.

Tanya Scotece: 1:54

So I think the message is to you know when you come into your own light as you had shared the quote and to really, you know, embrace what that is and share that journey and give that hope to other people that are out there that may not know what to do. I mean we all know where we've come from, right, I mean that's a fact, but I mean you know trying to identify and address okay, what do we do now? And for you, the consistent theme that I heard from you sharing your story was that little voice. That little voice never left you. So that part from you sharing your story was that little voice. That little voice never left you. So that part of you was your guiding light throughout your whole journey and it seems that still is your voice today.

Damien O'Brien: 2:32

It is. But what had happened six years ago is that inner voice had become, it had taken over, it had basically become it's my worst enemy, in a way, that said it had basically become my worst enemy, in a way that said that, okay, we're going to drink, we're going to self-abuse ourselves, we're going to mistreat my wife, we're going to talk. You know, we've become the worst version of myself and I used to tell that inner voice, but now I can't do that. And then the inner voice would say to me but Damien, hey, let me remind you where I took you from. And you have that.

Damien O'Brien: 3:06

And of course, people today feel uncomfortable because, oh, this sounds a bit crazy, but a lot of people have that inner head noise, that battle. Let let's be honest about it. Let's be honest that I don't think most people take their life because they're uh, they want to. They're in a such a dark place. At that time and my mother was included in that and you know, and I was probably there as well I was in such an internal battle in my mind and when you're a strong-minded person and most of us, you know, might say we are or we don't, but when you start to have a fight with your greatest asset, which is your mind, and you know both of you are very strong-willed women and you know what I mean.

Damien O'Brien: 3:47

That mind can take you so far when it's working with you. It's your greatest strength and away you go. But then sometimes we don't know, it decides to play the other game and say, no, I want to take you down a path of self-destruction. And basically we have that fight for so long to say is this really happening? Am I and you? You know millions of people are having this internal battle through depression and this struggle. Is this really happening to me? Is this going to get better after two days, three days, and and we always fight with the stigma of but I can't reach out for help because I'm going to look like I'm a, I'm a broken, uh, I'm a broken commodity and uh, that's kind of what which I struggled for many years.

Damien O'Brien: 4:32

I was suffering and I was like and I'm today, I'm like why would you put someone you love or yourself through so much sufferance? Uh, that sometimes you just need to take a pause and you need to reset and what I realize is the power of surrender. I was never going to beat this enemy inside me. This inner voice is still with me today, but I was never going to beat it and I'm still not going to beat it. It's still sitting there with me today and we've done a deal. We've said how about we do something constructive instead of self-destructive?

Damien O'Brien: 5:07

And this is what I said the inner craziness with everybody. You know so many people have got that talent. Sometimes it's misconsumed as crazy or a crazy idea or a crazy quality that we have or we take things too far. And finding that balance about what's inside us, that sometimes can be the double-edged sword and in my case it's bipolar disorder. I had to have someone professionally explain that to me for the last six years and I still are. And that's the name of your monkey inside. That's what we call it and my inner voice says, excuse me, I won't be called bipolar, because there's my bipolar. He doesn't want to be compared to another bipolar, he wants to be unique.

Voiceover: 5:50

And that's it.

Damien O'Brien: 5:51

And now I realize this sounds crazy for a lot of people, but I try to do this in a way now where I can communicate to young people and they come and they radiate to me.

Damien O'Brien: 6:00

I'm like the Willy Wonka of craziness, because they're like I kind of tell them the the little voice inside you is trying to kind of isolate you and keep you away from the pack. It wants to separate you. It wants to, it wants to take you down a path of maybe drugs and alcohol to say to say, well, you're going to feel better for 10 minutes or an hour a day, but then you know, and that's that's kind of a different communication style that I'm looking at to try to radiate to a different, younger audience. You know, because younger audience today they don't want to hear a PhD lesson on neurons of the brain, they want to actually understand why am I feeling shit, why am I feeling terrible? This doesn't make sense, why am I alone? And then they see this crazy Australian guy with a Willy Wonka tuxedo on and I say, hey, this is OK, you don't have to, you don't have to feel like you're alone and you should be talking about these things with the people around you.

Tanya Scotece: 7:00

Right, I want to interject one moment, damien. So, and again, I think you know a lot of our listeners. I personally have done a lot in the female sense as far as around what they call women's work and that's a lot of like carpet work, workshops. And so for our listeners out there that you know in hearing your story, damien, if they, for example, are not maybe diagnosed or actually clinically diagnosed, with a mental disorder or disease or whatever the quota of the word is today, but some of us can definitely identify, growing up with the good voice or the bad voice or the parts of us that you know, whatever resonates.

Tanya Scotece: 7:41

You know, I teach mortuary science atami-dade college and I see my students the first week of class. Everybody is so enthused they want to be here, they share their why, they share their, what they share, what they're doing. And then about four weeks, in some of them just the voice of one of the voices is too loud and it's like we can't do this right now and that takes over. So the spectrum of the voices can be from very minute to major in all different facets, and sometimes it's the younger self, right the child, sometimes the teenager, and sometimes it's just the good versus the evil. You know as far as you know, kind of directing us. So I appreciate you highlighting, you know, your story as far as the extreme part of what you personally have and experienced, yeah, absolutely.

Damien O'Brien: 8:31

And again, thank you for giving me that space to talk about it, because for a lot of people this is terribly uncomfortable and you know people what voices Well, and we can go around and around and pretend that that doesn't happen. But let's be honest, you know there's 700, 900, 1,000 to a million suicides per year. Don't tell me that those people in those last moments aren't having an extreme to the worst experience with head noise and they take a decision that under the right circumstances come on, let's be honest majority would think again. And you know we don't need experts constantly telling us that everything is taboo and it has to be, you know, classified right, the right I'll get in trouble for this the right word, the right mental illness, neurodiversity.

Damien O'Brien: 9:28

We're so now caught in a vocab of words that it's paralyzed us to even have this conversation, because I've said some things on this podcast already that are technically not correct, but that's, we're having a conversation. That are technically not correct, but we're having a conversation. It's the intention, how I speak. I'm not trying to portray to know more than someone that's academically smarter than me, but the majority of us don't live in an academic world. We live in general population, with people that are around us, and all of us, a lot of us, are paralysed because we don't actually know how to have a conversation with people, because it's impeded, as it might be perceived as rude, to ask someone hey, Tanya, how's things going with your mental health, you know? Have we ever lost a friend because we care too much? I haven't, but that's kind of how I look at it.

Damien O'Brien: 10:28

And if this is happening with adults, as I've seen here in Switzerland and around the world, what chance have young people got to speak about mental health if we can't talk about it? Do you think teenagers are going to be able to do it? Absolutely not, and we all, as parents I'm a parent of two teenage daughters I fell into this perception oh, my children will reach out to me if they need me. A lot of parents have got this. Oh, my kids know that I'm there for them. Really, when I was a young teenager, I wasn't going to be reaching out to no adult. You know what I mean Children. Children are like, they read the land better than us. They, they look for the people they can trust and they definitely don't come next to the ones that they can't feel that they can, uh, open up to.

Shireen Botha: 11:13

Yeah, no, I agree, but I've got to say one thing though. Um, I find that the the newer generations find it easier to talk about mental health than the older generation. So, from our generation and older, we actually are the ones that struggle to talk about it. I find the youngsters. They tend to be able to talk more freely about all the different mental struggles and illnesses, and when I was a young girl, that was taboo, like you said.

Shireen Botha: 11:45

Now, before we continue, I want to talk a little bit more about the Coffee Foundation with you, damien, but before we continue, I just want to pop in with a buzzsprout ad here. So Friends from Wild Places is a place to share stories from other business owners and professionals like Damien, a safe space to show support for other business owners and entrepreneurs all over the world. We feature non-profits like the Coffee Foundation every month to try and make a difference and give a helpline to someone in need. Now do you have a message you want to share with the world? Or maybe you just think it'll be fun to have your own talk show? Podcasting is an easy, inexpensive and fun way to expand your reach online. To start your own podcast, please follow the link in the show notes. This lets Buzzsprout know that we sent you and it helps support the show. Remember, the team at Buzzsprout is passionate about helping you succeed.

Shireen Botha: 12:46

Now, damien, you spoke about an intervention. You also spoke about how you were diagnosed with bipolar and how you got into alcohol as your drug of choice. When you speak about intervention, what was your intervention? When, finally, you realized, oh my gosh, there is a need here that needs to be filled in Switzerland, and I want to fill that need. When did that?

Damien O'Brien: 13:17

happen. That's a yeah. The intervention for a lot of silly men like me comes from pain. You know us men, we're pussycats in many aspects. We can't. And I'm too. I'm the big my wife calls me the biggest pussy. I get the. I had the man flu the other day, a few coughs and my, my wife, you know she's like get over it. And I said, oh, I'm dying, I've got the man flu. For me, pain physical pain and emotional pain is something that I'm like a horse that gets whipped. If I have that pain, I react.

Damien O'Brien: 13:49

And six years ago, in the height of my addiction, drinking one afternoon, I felt a little bit of a twitch in the left side of my stomach and within, probably within an hour, I was on my knees praying to God in the emergency ward. I'd had a, let's say, intestinal twitch where all my testines had started to roll over on each other, and for six days we tried to let those intestines unwrap themselves before we needed to have an intervention. So I didn't realize that full blown alcoholic, that the minute I could stop drinking I was starting to go into detox while I was going through, I'm sure plenty of people have had intestinal surgery. There's something about intestines. They don't like. They don't like rolling over on each other. And I started expanding like you would say, like a balloon, and for six days we we thought that this would untangle. So I was in the grip of a detox morphine cocktail. And on day seven, the the professor came in and said we've got to get you into surgery now. This is not working. And I signed all the papers Please, doc, you know, get me in there and we're going to do keyhole surgery. It's going to be all good. And so I got in there, kissed the nurses as you do, I love nurses and went under the magic gas. And then, as soon as I come out, I put my hand in my t-shirt and I felt the first stitch of 37 straight down the middle. There was no keyhole surgery. The professor came in and said what I saw inside was horrific. I had to take out 15, 16 centimeter intestine bowel had to be removed. If I didn't do do it, you would have, uh, you would have had a full hemorrhage and uh, that was it. And I've again played rugby, had other surgeries.

Damien O'Brien: 15:51

I went into the pain zone that I can even today, I just could never describe, and then detoxing, uh, nurses trying to cool me down, trying to say what's going on. And I was hiding my alcohol, of course do you. You know I was not telling the poor nurses that are there to try and look after me. I'm a full-blown alcoholic and they're like something else is wrong with you and I'm like I don't know, maybe it's this, and they're like this is bad, but something else is happening to you. And then the beautiful african nurse came at 2 am, know, putting wet towels on me. And again we got the whole superpowers wrong. Superheroes in the world, you know, they're around us everywhere nurses, paramedics, when you're at your bottom, these people, and the nurse at three in the morning. She's like Damien, you can tell me. And I said, yeah, I drink a lot. And finally she got the alcohol team in to support me and okay, well, you know, we don't care if you drink, we're here to get you better.

Damien O'Brien: 16:46

And 30 days in intensive care, looking at the ceiling and you know, people have religion. It's always that moment when you're at your rock bottom. You're looking for any God. It doesn't matter which God it is. You want someone to connect with, to try and make sense of where you go.

Damien O'Brien: 17:02

I had two young daughters at the time looking at their father, my wife and she was going to leave me. I'd become the worst version of myself and the hallucination from the morphine I started seeing cats walk around the hospital. You know, you're losing everything and the elevator has basically come at the bottom. We're at basement now and a lot of people say, you know what? I'd like the elevator to go lower, I'd like to check out here now and whatever.

Damien O'Brien: 17:33

My elevator was at rock bottom and I had 30 days to look at the ceiling and say you know, I've got two daughters and don't let any alcoholic tell you that you can do it for someone else. You can't, you know. I'll do it for the kids, I'm going to do it for the wife, I'm going to do it for other people. No, you've got to decide. You're going to do it for yourself. And I kind of I just said to myself, damien, that inner voice. I said, really, is this what we survived? Is this what we came from? I've become my father, I've become this. And I said, nah, nah, I'm a winner, I'm going to do, I'm going to fight back here.

Damien O'Brien: 18:05

And from that moment, never touched another drop of alcohol. I had to sign a deal, bart, with whatever God there was that day and I don't know if it's jesus, allah, whoever, whatever god was there something came down to me and said okay, you touch one more drop of alcohol, I'll kill you. And I remember that it just radiated through me touch one more drop of alcohol, I'll kill you, you're dead. And I was signing now in the bed in my mind, signed, I'm doing the deal, let's go. And I remember, are you sure? And I said I'm sure, sign that deal. And then, step by step, day by days, you know, I get get better, get out.

Damien O'Brien: 18:47

Uh, diagnosed mentally ill, uh, bipolar, my job had finished, no more company, no company. He's going to hire me. Society doesn't want anything to do with me. We We'll talk about that in a second. There's also there's the parallel world of coming out of hospital that you're diagnosed as mentally ill, your career is finished and I kind of like far out. This is going to be tough to come back.

Damien O'Brien: 19:11

And from that moment there it's been six years of a journey. It was probably two years of getting sober and getting stable, just to realize okay, I need to see the psychiatrist, I need to go to AA, I've got to actually invest in my health here. I've got to invest in this rebuild. This is not just going to be an overnight success. And then, uh, yeah, two or three years my wife's such an incredible supporter of me. Uh, damien, you're too good. You're too good to waste your talent. You've got something and I'm like but the answer to my future is in the past.

Damien O'Brien: 19:43

And I kept saying to my wife I said how can I find the answers to my future, my purpose, in darkness? That doesn't make sense. And I grappled with that for two or three years. I'm like, I'm not an expert in mental health, I haven't got a PhD. And then everyone around me, they're like but, damien, you are the expert. You talk about the real voices and I'm like, yeah, that's right, mental health is all these voices of people that you know around here in Switzerland. They're all experts and I said their stories aren't radiating to me.

Damien O'Brien: 20:16

So, yeah, about three years ago I was walking through the forest and I said what do Swiss people love doing in this country? They don't drink alcohol like Australia. They're all drinking coffee. And I kind of realised that's the only, sometimes last, ritual of people, that they have a connection with people. They sit for that traditional five to ten minutes to share a coffee and some type of conversation. And I and that was like bingo I said Switzerland's got 16, 17,000 foundations. I said imagine if there was a Willy Wonka coffee foundation that did one sole thing, which was to try to cause, create conversation around mental health. And that was it. I did it back to front. I had the Coffee Foundation and then I built the branding and the logo and I said I want our association to have a world-class brand, like we have around the world great brands, but they're all actually no disrespect, they're in a business mechanism. I said I want this to be a social brand that actually does a great cause with branding for its cause. And that's how I come about it.

Tanya Scotece: 21:22

Beautiful Call.

Damien O'Brien: 21:23

Us. Crazy is the hashtag and that's kind of what it all is. Yeah, everything about it was based on crazy. So, yeah, that's what we do and that's the essence of what we do. We embrace craziness because it's not something that's for too many years and too many decades it's been something to be feared of.

Damien O'Brien: 21:42

Too many tears, too many heartaches, too many stopping people from communicating and speaking because we all wear this mask in society. Uh, that we have to hide our vulnerabilities. It's another thing that I had to learn to learn the superpower of vulnerability, because when I'm vulnerable, it allows you to to be vulnerable, and sometimes we realize, wow, we've got so much more in common than we ever would have imagined and we're not such alone as we think we are, and that gives the other person the opportunity to make a deeper connection with you, and sometimes you stop small problems becoming big ones wonderful yeah and uh, I do a lot of funerals for suicide and it's no disrespect that a lot of people stand around because they're terribly in mourning and they're saying I wish I I didn't see anything wrong with john.

Damien O'Brien: 22:34

I didn't see anything wrong with John, I didn't see anything wrong. He had a perfect wife. And I always say, did you ask? No, I didn't ask. And that's the thing we all have.

Damien O'Brien: 22:43

Some people have the amazing mask and we see this in the media the perfect life. And then something happens and the mask falls off and then, oh, hold on this whole facade that we sometimes spend a lifetime to create. And when you get, as you know, when you get to the hospital, they don't care about your salary, what your car you're driving, the nurse treats you on, how you treat her. And you know, I get to the hospital and the big smart guy next to me at the last vision he was wondering why she wasn't coming when he's talking to her with disrespect and I said, mate, here at the hospital we're all the same bare bum, like when we came out at birth. It's just an amazing way, hospital death it recalibrates you to how we came in this world and that's how we're judged. We're judged on how we treat other people, and when you're at your most vulnerable, you kind of would love to see that people will give you the same compassion that we do for physical health.

Shireen Botha: 23:47

Tune in next week for part three of Friends from Wild Places.

Voiceover: 23:53

You've been listening to Friends from Wild Places with Shireen Botha. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast from the links to catch every episode and unleash your passion.