Eventually – with the help of antidepressants and swimming – he clambered out of long-term depression.<\/p>\n
In his memoir The Desert Swimmer, he writes about training for and swimming the English Channel – something only 20% of people who attempt it achieve – despite living on a farm 600km from the coast.<\/p>\n
Working on a 60,000-head sheep station often afflicted by drought, Cullen tells RNZ that for a long time he drank alcohol to cope.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt became the thing that I thought was helping me out at the time. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt made me feel better. But I ended up drinking a lot of beer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSelf-imposed pressure\u201d can be a heavy load for farmers, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou envisage what you want to achieve in the day or the week or the month, and if you\u2019re not reaching that target…<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t foresee what your future is going to look like, you don\u2019t know if you\u2019re going to be earning any money. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s quite difficult to navigate around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pushing himself too hard, Cullen says he wasn\u2019t present with his family and spent too much time dwelling on the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had an inability to be able to get rid of a lot of the rubbish that was in my head and had been there for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2015, after he was diagnosed with depression, antidepressants were \u201clife-changing\u201d for Cullen and from that point, his life pivoted for the better.<\/p>\n
But it was seeing his brother Lachlan – who lost a hand at age 2 in a farming accident – complete the Bondi to Bronte Ocean Swim that really got him on the new, healthier track.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in awe, probably both of his ability to be able to do that. But secondly, the camaraderie, all his mates around him… And I thought, I\u2019ve got to have a crack at that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Active from an early age, Cullen says he\u2019s always been a runner and played a lot of AFL, but had never considered himself a swimmer.<\/p>\n
Yet back home at the sheep station after watching Lachlan, he \u201cpulled on the goggles and the budgies\u201d and joined the local Broken Hill swim club – a 60km drive away.<\/p>\n
In 2018, after seeing an ad about swimming the English Channel, Cullen decided he would train to take on the challenge in 2022.<\/p>\n
While he loved the \u201cphysical exertion\u201d, finding time to train in the water was difficult with the pool so far away.<\/p>\n
Brendan Cullen describes his memoir as “a story of resilience, love, and the power of rediscovering yourself”.<\/p>\n
Sometimes he swam in the Menindee Lake system – \u201czero visibility, murky brown water, dead trees\u201d – and on a tethered band in his pool at home. <\/p>\n
If it was late, he\u2019d drive to the local dam and shine his car headlights at the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an interesting way to train, I must admit.\u201d<\/p>\n
To get accustomed to the freezing cold wearing just Speedos, he \u201cpushed himself to the absolute limits\u201d in a freezer full of cold water, and ate a lot to put on weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just gutsed myself with so much tucker, you know, like ice cream and carbohydrates and whatever I could get my mouth into. <\/p>\n
\u201cI started at 87 kilos, and by the time I was heading over to England, I was 97.\u201d<\/p>\n
Apart from the physical prep for a big ocean swim, having an incredible team is the most important thing, Cullen says, and this inculded his wife Jacinta, oldest daughter, and sister-in-law.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust swim until you hit something, meaning France,\u201d his coach, Mike Gregory, said as Cullen entered the water.<\/p>\n
After 17 hours, in which strong currents dragged him off-course and extended his journey to almost double the most direct route, the 52-year-old farmer felt his left hand scrape the sands of Cap Gris-Nez.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it, it was an emotional point of my life. <\/p>\n
\u201cMike just said, \u2018Stand up, mate, and walk out\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo I stood up – I didn\u2019t think I was going to be able to – and I walked out and got on the beach and put my arms up. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey blew the horn, which meant that the swim had finished. I embraced my coach and just sobbed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I just had this thought, \u2018Geez, I\u2019ve got to go and get some momentos for the kids\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cI started racing around on the beach looking for bloody pebbles of all things at three o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Cullen says \u201cthere were warning signs everywhere\u201d that he was severely depressed, for a long time, he just ignored them and kept ploughing on.<\/p>\n
On average, it takes someone struggling with depression about eight years to put their hand up to ask for help, he says, which can be especially difficult for men because it requires vulnerability.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut once you\u2019ve done that, you\u2019ll find that you attract people who want to help you, and vice versa, and that\u2019s what I found.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cullen now speaks to farming communities around Australia about his story and how important swimming has been for his mental health.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Exercise] gives you natural endorphins, which you don\u2019t get from alcohol, and that sort of coincides with nutrition, you know, all the fundamentals of having a clear mind…you know, fit body, fit mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to do a channel swim. You can just go and buy yourself a pair of sneakers and go for a walk and get out of your own head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew there was a lot of hurt out there. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce I exposed myself and I was diagnosed with depression, and I just wanted to change that, and I wanted to be a sounding board for those people that were struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eventually – with the help of antidepressants and swimming – he clambered out of long-term depression. In his…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":644630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[36],"tags":[50113,125336,232786,6017,9204,210,1530,3861,517,1539,19686,714,274050,67,132,68,14164],"class_list":["post-644629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-australian","tag-brendan","tag-cullen","tag-depression","tag-farmer","tag-health","tag-his","tag-how","tag-mental-health","tag-of","tag-out","tag-rural","tag-swam","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-way"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116202697445237380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}