‘This is where I’m going to change this’: How a superstar guru helped an SA dad kick meth addiction

For years, Mark Sandercock had a secret. But a surprise birthday present from his wife Monica was the “golden ticket” to beat his addiction.

Adelaide husband and wife "love coach" team Mark and Monica Sandercock. At their Pooraka home. Picture: Tom Huntley

Mark Sandercock was a secret meth addict. For years, he’d sneak out to his garden shed and feed his hidden habit. If he was travelling with work, he’d slip his “gear” into his suitcase to make sure he could take his daily hit.

It was a deep, dark truth he kept locked away from everyone he loved – even his wife, Monica.

“You become an expert at hiding it,” says the 53-year-old father, who had started using marijuana as a teenage student at St Paul’s College in Gilles Plains in the 1980s.

“It was hard because it was my secret. Not even Monica knew, my closest friends, no one.

“I was using every day by the end. People going through that, it’s bloody tough because they don’t know how to escape. I had all the negative self-talk of ‘here I am again in the afternoon, taking a hit of meth’.”

Monica and Mark Sandercock. Picture: Supplied

Monica and Mark Sandercock shortly after they meting in Alice Springs in 2002. Picture: Supplied

Bridled by guilt, Sandercock reached a crossroad 10 years ago. He questioned himself as a father and a role model to his three children – two from his first marriage and a young daughter with Monica, 46.

“The demons had started tapping me on the shoulder. I wanted off, I just didn’t know how,” says Sandercock, who had first used meth when he was a young baker, working early-morning shifts, and later relied on it to give him energy as a fast-paced corporate manager and trainer.

On his morning walks, he would sternly tell himself to go a day without drugs. And then later in the day, the busy small business owner would find himself back in his shed, deflated and giving into temptation of a meth boost.

“I suppose you have this feeling of ‘let’s just get stuff done’. I felt I could function a lot harder, a lot quicker,” Sandercock, who was running his own company, says.

His turning point came with a birthday treat from Monica, who had known over the years her husband had smoked marijuana – a habit she was encouraging him to kick – but had no idea he was also a meth addict.

She surprised him with a trip to Sydney to attend American life coach Tony Robbins’s Unlock the Power Within event.

American life coach Tony Robbins. Picture: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

“It was the golden ticket. I was so happy on the inside because I was like ‘this is where I’m going to change this’,” says Sandercock, who had been married to Monica for 10 years at the time. “I decided before I went I wasn’t taking any marijuana or any gear, any meth, because normally any time I went travelling with work, I’d always take marijuana and meth with me. I decided ‘this is where I’m going to change’.

“I went there with the full intent of ‘this is now my time’.”

On the first night, he was challenged to walk on coals – a life-changing feat that was “absolutely off the charts, amazing”.

Another task was to write down what he wanted to change about himself.

“I wrote down ‘drug addict’ for the first time and it was scary as,” he says.

“Just to write it down was so confronting and it was scary, it was vulnerable, it took a shitload of courage. I had to share it with the stranger next to me and I was beside myself.”

For the first time in years, Sandercock went three days without meth or marijuana and felt overwhelmed by the immediate changes.

“I could actually feel myself, I could feel emotions and express emotions. I cried, I laughed, I danced at the event – you name it.”

Life and relationship coaches Mark and Monica Sandercock. Picture: Tom Huntley

Fuelled by his new-found determination, he called his wife and told her to go to his shed, grab his marijuana pipe and drugs and “chuck them out”. A relieved Monica – who had left her native Sweden to be with Mark in Adelaide back in 2003 – was happy to oblige.

“But I knew I had one more thing Monica didn’t know of – she didn’t know I’d gone there to give up meth, she had no idea,” he says.

“So in my mind, I’m thinking I still had more to share and I was scared, thinking ‘how’s Monica going to handle this, because this is big news? Is she going to kick me out? Is she going to say ‘you lied to me’. And I totally understood that … because it’s very normal to feel betrayed, having secrets kept from you by your husband.”

Monica and Mark Sandercock on their wedding day in Stockade Park, Northfield. Picture: Supplied

Arriving home from Sydney, Sandercock found Monica in the kitchen and confessed his long-held secret. “I told her ‘I’m a drug addict, I’ve been using meth every day’ and she hugged me and we just cried,” he says. “And she said ‘thank you for sharing that with me’. That was just massive – for your partner or anyone to be there in that space for you.”

A stunned Monica “couldn’t believe it”.

“How did I not notice?” she says. “Mark was very, very good at hiding it. We were living behind a facade. When Mark opened up, our relationship took to a whole new level.”

They have now trained as life coaches and together run their business, Magnificent Mindset, using their life lessons to help individuals and couples bring greater meaning and direction to their relationships and lives.

“We keep challenging each other as well and we grow together,” Monica says. “We feel like life’s only just begun.”