Time and date functions give me headaches!!

Hello,

I have a table with columns defines as varchar that have values in format
'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'.

Now, if I do a
select timestamp '2005-10-10 10:10:10';
I get the value just fine. I can use abstime()::integer on the result to
find the unix timestamp. (This is the simplest way I could find, are there
any others?)

However, when I try doing the same with the values in the table I can't
get it to work.

select timestamp setuptime from billing; - error
select timestamp(setuptime) from billing; - error
select setuptime::timestamp from billing; - error (cannot cast type
character varying to timestamp without timezone!?)

So, how can I convert this string into a timestamp, pleeease! :(

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