I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
that is Transcend.
Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
for 14 years.
Suffering from sleep deprivation, body composition challenges, mental health challenges, libido,
hair loss, etc.
Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have
seen is a shift from doctors telling us that we were within normal limits, which was definitely
incorrect all the way to the other way now where men's clinics are popping up left,
right and center.
So I myself wanted to find a reputable company that would do an analysis of my physiology
and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down
my throat.
Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason
why the 7X project I was a part of was able to proceed because of their generous donations.
They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first
responders through some of their therapies at no cost to the individual.
So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood
drawn and a few days later I'm talking to one of their wellness professionals as they
guide me through my results and the supplementation that they suggest.
In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.
So I went down the peptide route and some other supplements to try and maximize my physiology
knowing full well the damage that 14 years of shift work has done.
Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
they offer, they will talk about the pros and cons.
So for example, a lot of first responders in shift work, our testosterone will be low,
but sometimes nutrition, exercise and sleep can offset that on its own.
So this company is not going to try and push you down a path, especially if it's one that
you can't come back from.
So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely
one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the
Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and I've used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've
worked for.
Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they
are also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance
Project.
We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier.
I ended up buying real ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been
my ride or die through Murph the last few years as well.
One area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous sponsorship spots is their brick
and mortar element.
They were predominantly an online company up till more recently but now they are approaching
100 stores all over the US.
My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts
you see online are applied also in the stores.
So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every purchase that you make but I do
want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount especially around
holiday times.
But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order or in the stores every
time you make a purchase.
And if you want to hear more about 511, who they stand for and who works with them, listen
to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 511 regional director Will Ayres.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is James Gearing and this week
it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show former SAS soldier, contractor, author
and archaeologist Ben Timberlake.
Now as you will hear Ben has such a unique story from his journey into the military,
the resilience that allowed him to pass the revered selection, his work in the Middle
East, thrill seeking behavior, his extremely unique journey into addiction, the cost of
that exploration, the powerful journey out, his incredible book High Risk and so much
more.
Now before we get to this amazing conversation as I say every week please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single 5 star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for
other people to find and this is a free library of well over 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said I introduce to you Ben Timberlake.
Enjoy.
Well Ben I want to start by saying two things.
Firstly thank you to Johnny Lee Miller for connecting us and secondly to welcome you
onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Yeah thank you Johnny, it's good to be here and that's kind of a circle of trust already
because he loved going on your podcast and he said he had never spoken so much in his
life and if you know Johnny it's pretty hard to get two words out of him consecutively
so I was interested to talk to you and undergo the same ordeal.
Yeah, beautiful.
That's a hell of a compliment but I think it's about trust and it's what we're going
to get into today.
You know two people create an environment where they feel safe enough to actually be
vulnerable and you know talk about their struggles so I think it's phenomenal.
While we're on that subject you just saw his show in the West End, talk to me about that.
Yeah that's the second time I've seen his show it's called A Mirror and he's starring
in and it's a show about censorship and it's a play within a play and what appealed to
me initially about it was the fact it was only two hours long and didn't have an intermission
so I didn't mind going along to see it because I don't really get theatre, I don't really
get you know acting or actors.
I think you know actors, you know people like them kind of pretend to be people like us
and we've got a fucking silly job so it's even sillier kind of pretending to do that
so I didn't really get the whole you know any of it but and I'm not blowing smoke up
the man's arse but look that's the first time I ever thought fuck this is I completely
get acting, he was absolutely spectacular in it, he was awesome in it and yeah so I
went back to see it again it was on some sort of some tiny little theatre in North London
to begin with and then it did a massive sort of West End run which is right in the middle
of it and yeah if anyone is in England now or I'm hoping it's going to go to the States
next year then they should definitely watch it especially if you're not a theatre person
but it was gripping, it was gripping stuff.
Cool, actually when is he there till, do you know when he comes back?
End of April.
That's a shame because I'm going to be in England in June but I would have missed him
by that point.
Yeah yeah yeah so it's on for another month, please go see it.
Perfect, all right well then that being said where on planet Earth are we finding you today?
So I'm in France at the moment, I'm right down sort of near about 45 minutes north of
Marseille and it's a beautiful area with some amazing walking and some great archaeology,
some great food.
I mean it's just the sort of seasons, they're just sort of tipping at the moment so there's
a sound on in the background that's the sort of fire blazing away but it's all spring flowers,
a tiny bit of snow on one of the mountains to my north but yeah it's a good place to
relax and do some writing which is what I'm trying to do at the moment and just finishing
off another chapter for book two at the sequel.
Fantastic, I'm actually going to France near Poitiers to do a pilgrimage to the origin
story of my book that I'm finishing up now so yeah I will be in that beautiful country
myself in a few weeks.
Quite a nice one, I don't want to give any sort of yeah I don't tease out any kind of
plot spoilers but let's talk about that maybe afterwards, I want to hear more.
Yeah absolutely, absolutely.
All right well then let's start at the very beginning of your journey then so tell me
where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents
did, how many siblings?
Okay so I was born in New York, both my parents are, we almost have like a sort of reverse,
transatlantic reversal I think are our stories because I was born in New York, both my parents
are American and I moved to the UK when I was about six months old.
My dad was, is a journalist, a foreign correspondent for a wire service and my mother was a teacher
and taught in state schools or what are they called in the states, public schools.
Yeah so government funded schools so she taught in the Bronx when she was in New York and
then taught in a bunch of sort of Tuskels in London.
So I grew up, I have a younger sibling who's my brother, four years younger than me who's
a zoologist and we grew up in West London and in a you know it's a relatively kind of
sort of poor area, it was full of Irish and West Indian and it was a lovely area, it was
a good time to sort of to be growing up in the 80s I guess, you know late 70s, 80s and
London was a bit of a dive back then, it just really was a backwater, it only kind of you
know hit the big time with sort of all that cool Britannia stuff in whatever it was, the
mid 90s all that kind of cool stuff slightly eluded me.
But happy, happy childhood, you know my parents were immigrants to the UK and my mother was
and is sort of committed anglophile or Europhile so I was dragged off every single weekend
to you know historical sites, archaeological sites, cultural sites and yeah it gave me
kind of a love of all the things which I do now, you know I could trace a lot of my, I
mean the work I'm doing now to rainy days in the British Museum and just spending ages
and ages and ages in that place and sucking it all, kind of taking it all in and I'm incredibly
grateful for that.
I want to just kind of unpack a couple of things about your parents first, with your
dad I had a journalist on the show Larry Doyle, hugely respected to kind of underline who
he was, he was the first person to interview Nelson Mandela when he came out of Robben Island
so that kind of you know journalism and you know I listened, I asked him you know what
happened, how do we get from the golden age of journalism to where we are now especially
in America with this sensationalism and this clickbait you know news, I'm using that term
loosely, and you know I won't dive into why he said initially because I don't want to
take away from your answer but what are the conversations you've had with your father
about the evolution or devolution of journalism through his eyes?
Maybe just in terms of my grammar, how my grammar has devolved from his generation,
how I could barely string a sentence together in a straight way.
I think we bear a collective responsibility for where journalism is now, we as the readers,
you know there wouldn't be clickbait if we weren't clicking on it so I think everyone
you know has an individual responsibility to get journalism to subscribing to it, to
subscribing widely to it so you get a full picture and just concentrating on your own
intake.
I mean I like thinking of, I think of the data which I take in the same way I think
of diet and nutrition.
You know you want to be sourcing good feeds of data, you know that stuff will, that has
the real kind of deep nutrition in it, you don't want to be going for the fast food equivalence
because if you just you know if you if you if you just read junk data you're going to
feel like a you know like a junk person aren't you?
Yeah I agree completely and it was interesting because I'll kind of circle around what Larry
had really said.
Back in the day and I would say this mirrors BBC even today today even though you know
they seem to have slipped a little bit from the more true north that I remember as a child
but you know that there were other areas of a corporation that made money and that funded
creating the news so you had the news and then there was a shift I forget when he said
70s or 80s where they said okay now we need the news to start making money and that's
what you've got now is you know don't go anywhere because after the break we'll tell you why
this guy's a shitbag but let's talk about Cadbury's cream eggs you know what I mean?
So it shifted from dissemination of information to whatever it took to keep the reader or
excuse me the viewer watching that screen while the advertisers funded the news.
Jamie you're absolutely right and it follows those kind of those dopamine cycles you know
it's time very very cleverly to keep you to keep you hooked I mean when I was starting
out sort of in news straight after school there was the phrase you know if it bleeds
it leads and that was kind of that was the way that you get people hooked now that people
talk to sort of you know in rage to engage or rage to engage and it's basically working
people you know it's aiming for an emotional response it's not aiming for an intellectual
response and it's and that's yeah that's that is it is it is sad and it's you know you I
look through you know you look at the let's say the UK Guardian or Times or you know I
read the read the New York Times but it has got into that much more sort of you know it's
emotional it's breaking news it's hitting you and hitting your kind of that dopamine system
it's really targeted.
It is.
Well going to your mum as well interesting perspective American school system to British
school system any observations that she's discussed with you?
I mean she had gone from you know from the Bronx teaching one of the toughest girls in
the Bronx to teaching on the toughest girls in West London and you know the Bronx wins
100 to 1 you know in terms of how you know how tough things will you know things can
get I think she found it a blessed relief dealing with dealing with the English system
after you know after yeah being kind of doing the school of hard knocks in the States.
What do you think or if she's discussed it with you the reasons were that because I mean
we're all children once we're all born we're all you know cooing and then we're chasing
bulls and butterflies what was it that created you know the issues that she had in a Bronx
classroom in contrast to the one in West London?
I don't know but that's the first question I'm going to ask when I see her again that's
a fantastic question I wish I thought of that she's my own mother but no I've never
asked my mother about what observation she's made.
That's all right.
And I feel like I should I will.
Brilliant well let me know.
All right well then you touched on archaeology when you were in the school age I mean obviously
when I think of archaeology you know the kind of caricature goes to Indiana Jones because
that's what all archaeologists do they run from boulders and whip people but you know
what was your exposure and where was that seed planted that that would be something
that you actually would pursue when you were older?
I guess I mean sort of on two halves what one was just the perpetual visits to the British
Museum and also visits to every single sort of castle and lump and bump stone circle lump
and bump in the landscape that was on an ordnance survey map that my mother could find and then
on the other hand was sort of was was paleontology and going down every half term or long weekend
or summer holiday going down to let's say Dorset or to up to up to Scarborough and Yorkshire
and all these places I'm talking about for you know American listeners are all spectacular
fossil areas so the idea as a young child that you could find something which was hundreds
of millions of years old connect with that period keep that artifact that you know that
that fossil just kind of just blew me away so I think it was one of those things that
I kind of I guess I when I hit my early teens I kind of left all of that behind for a while
that that fascination and it was only coming back to wondering what I was going to study
at university that I reconnected with archaeology I can't say I reconnected it in a profound
and intellectual way so I was a terrible student I found I found academic archaeology incredibly
boring after about the first the first year and but I I loved it and I loved what archaeologists
were doing so immediately after after studying it I I would write about it or I'd make sort
of documentaries about it and that was a means of kind of a floating above the subject and
engaging with the really best finds and the most you know exciting theories that were
happening at the time without having to spend two decades in a you know a ditch somewhere
in East Anglia excavating you know some Roman site and maybe making the find of a lifetime
once a lifetime so I've also I've got I guess I've also sort of found I mean maybe we can
talk about this this this later but I've found that the past is a source of sort of not any
inspiration but consolation I like sticking my head in the in the past not in a sort of
an escapist way but I just find it I find it quite I find it quite calming quite soothing
knowing all these people before me have faced all the same challenges and you know done
a right done a right by us I'm quite optimistic about our species in its and its achievements
I think we're a good thing yeah I think that this as long as we don't rebuke history I
think that's that's an important thing you know there's all this cancellation at the
moment you think about Bristol where they're tearing down the the statues and throwing
them in the rivers like I've said this a few times like leave the statue up maybe change
the plaque say actually this guy was a bit of a shit bag he traded you know here's the
things that came from the money that actually benefited the city of Bristol but that was
on the backs of slavery and so now you you know you you're putting it front and center
the things that were successes in our past the things that were lessons that we need
to make sure we don't repeat in our past but if we just kind of rebuke history and cancel
everything or carry on a victim mentality from something that happened hundreds of years
ago to your country race whatever it was then we're never going to move forward so we've
got to acknowledge history but not also pretend that this is you know for example 1950s America
in the south or whatever it is because a lot of that rhetoric I think continues that you
know that feeling rather than putting it to bed learning from it and moving forward as
a species. That's beautifully said I mean definitely there's two things there one you
know I guess anyone who's on a who's in a statue or on a stamp probably is not going
to be you know one of my heroes on the whole you know I don't know if you're taking you
know if you're taking history from sort of government mandated park sculptures then I
think I think I think sort of you know we're in trouble and also two I think I think one
of the most dangerous things I think I think the victim mentality is basically a victim
is like sort of a the lava stage of a bully and and if you if you allow that victim mentality
to continue it will always end in bullying and then the cycle repeats itself so no I
don't I don't I don't like anything to do with the victim mentality. Well you mentioned
about making documentaries and writing about archaeology I read your book High Risk and
it wasn't just a memoir of a you know a guy's had all these adventures and was in the SAS
and these things it was a an incredibly well written story you know and and I was reading
it in awe going okay I'm not able to write this kind of layer of description and it just
just I mean that's bullshit you know I've read your book too and it was spectacular
you did exactly that and also you did it in a really annoying way where you actually you
you wove in a lot of the kind of a lot of the science and the social science and the
personal stories you you you've nailed that so so yeah I thought you thank you but two
different writing styles like mine was 160 pages yours is like 300 and something so not
that the number of pages deems you know anything but it was it was an immersive descriptive
journey that you were in you know you could see when when every scene that you were in
you could kind of visualize it in your head which is something that I struggle with and
I have to put a lot of effort into doing so with that being said when you were younger
you know were you a writer then were stories something that drew you in because I mean
as an adult now you're not just an ex-soldier who wrote a biography it's way more than that
you're you're an accomplished author that wrote a biography.
Oh thank you so do you mind if I vape this is no vape away it's been my first vape on
the podcast though.
Am I?
Are you serious?
No no.
I'm an ex-junkie I get to do this it's my last vice as well it's literally my last
my last vice apart from the coffee.
No I did a St. Patrick's Day episode of whenever it was what two weeks ago now and we both
drank Guinness it's no different it's a vice so there we go.
Did I I I grew up you know my dad was a journalist my mom was yeah she was an English teacher
so I grew up in a very very sort of wordy bookish house I always wish I was much more
of a of a visual person I'm just not I'm not particularly good at sketching or photography
or kind of or seeing things and and I guess that yeah that's sort of that pushed me even
more towards towards words I always I just I guess I always like them I always that's
how I think I'm I don't I mean it's very kind what you said about me being a good writer
I think I've just been I've been very very fortunate to have this life that I have had
which has had multiple multiple different sort of jobs and careers and skills and and
comrade groups I'm just a very good note taker I'm quite good at sort of at keeping a keeping
a journal or if I'm seeing something which I find interesting or even new even sometimes
not interesting I'll just pull out a notebook and just try and sort of just try and sketch
it out so I was fortunate when it came to writing high risk that I had all of these
all of these notes and these letters and these emails which was also good because I you know
I blew my brain out with drugs so my my sort of my recall my recall wasn't wasn't as strong
as it should be but it just would take just a few sort of a few details to jog me and
then you know and then there's a little bit of tape is falling down that and then I was
back in back in that in that in that moment.
Beautiful well you end up obviously joining the SAS what were you actually doing as far
as sports and exercise when you were in school age were you an athlete back then or was it
something that you can't lean into later?
That's the weirdest thing was I was I was I was a terrible athlete at school I was always
the I was the last to be picked for anything at school and I and I really resented it the
high point of my sporting career was being captain of the third eleven there wasn't even
a you know there weren't even eleven kids in it I was always I was the kid who made
the pact with you know with a fat kid on the on the on the school race that we'd crossed
the finish line you know together at the last so so when I sort of decided to to go for
the military I've never run nothing more than four miles in my life and there were four
very flat miles around the the riverbank in in London but I had I had friends who were
who were already serving who'd passed selection and they gave me kind of a a fitness plan
signed up for a gym for the first time and only time in my life I signed up for a year
a year before I was I was due to sort of turn up at the door and do the basic fitness tests
and and it and it worked and yeah I didn't I found the I mean the this is 2121 SAS and
I found I found that there's there's two phases of it there's the the selection side of it
which is where they they run you around the the Welsh hills with with a backpack within
sort of increasing weight and a and a weapon and then there's the the next bit which is
the sort of the the military bit and I I found the first bit didn't find it easy because
no one found it easy I just didn't find it as tough as everyone else but I just I loved
I loved that landscape and I yeah I I liked being out on my own compared to all the other
kind of special forces tests that you know that I've heard of or that I've I've seen
or they're all done in as as a as a team and you function as a as a team with with with
with the SAS you just sort of sent out by yourself and you have to slog for huge distances
and you have to navigate but it's all done by yourself and that that just appealed to
me and I also love the landscape those ancient Welsh hills so I was really quite happy out
there.
I know we're jumping ahead a little bit I want to get to the journalism before but while
we're on this subject one thing that jumped off the page to me was you mentioned of all
the the military special forces special operations groups that you worked amongst it seemed like
the SAS was the one where humor was also a big part of the selection process and the
kind of ethos there and it's a massive part for example of the fire service you know but
maybe not in the drill tower specifically but when I think of just British culture in
general you know that you could take a step back and go it's gray it's wet it's cold
you know we we've been raped and pillaged for hundreds and hundreds of years but it's
such a such a beautiful culture when it comes to being able to shrug off adversity you know
depending on the time the period and just kind of laugh about it and move forward so
talk to me about that that observation of humor in in the SAS versus other ones that
you'd observed.
Yeah I mean it's one of it's one of the the the precepts is that sort of sense of of humor
and it goes I mean often it's sort of paired up with with humility which is one the other
sort of the other important ones I guess with with with humor it's a fascinating test because
you know humor is is is kind of one of the few preserves of of homo sapiens it's a real
it's a it's a prefrontal cortex skill and it's yeah it's one of the defining traits
of of what it means to be human so it's also one of the first to go in stressful situations
if you think of other sort of ways of saying that someone's having a bad time we talk about
them having a sense of humor failure so your ability to to to to crack jokes is is also
indicative of your ability to think clearly in fucked situations so simply just me know
measuring someone's humor as you you know subject them to increasing amounts of stress
is a good indication of how they're going to respond how they're thinking you know up
there as the situation deteriorates and also whether it's whether it's negative humor or
whether it's kind of positive humor I mean anyone can make a sort of shitty joke or make
a you know crack or sort of a put down onto their onto their fellow man but actually seeing
a positive humor in very very negative circumstances is actually also revealing of just your your
your mind's ability to to play with ambiguity and to see positive things in any situation
so it's a you know and then to one is actually humor you know and wit is is kind of actually
a lot like a lot like fighting you know being a sort of stand-up comedian is not that far
off from being a being a boxer you know you've got to sort of you've got to read read your
opponent and and you know land your blows well and you know a good punch like a good
joke relies on timing so I guess I guess there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of crossover
between yeah between between humor and and and fighting and also just thinking thinking
clearly in extraordinarily tricky situations interesting I've never I've never heard that
particular kind of perspective discussed but it's it's so true because when you think about
how myopic you can get under severe stress and how that can be detrimental and you know
I've talked about this a lot you know humor dark humor is the way that you can down regulate
you you kind of come off the fight or flight a little bit which is why in a firehouse after
something horrific we will you know ultimately someone crack a joke and I was telling somebody
the other day it's almost like that the needle was in a record an old record and then when
you crack a joke you pull that needle out again and we can kind of move on with everything
but uh but yeah but I mean as far as the the ability to perform I've never really you know
thought about that but yeah I mean you can almost self-assess like would I someone cracked
a joke would I laugh right now you know or could I come up with something it doesn't
have to be as deliberate as that but it is an interesting self-reflection on on your
mental place at that moment it yeah it is it humor can only survive in a mind which
is which is coping adequately with everything else quite well I guess so so if you if you
if you're dealing with people who are losing their sense of humor very very quickly then
they're not the type of people who are going to think their way out of you know a cataclysmic
event you want people who can switch quickly and who can you know and you can come up with
a with a plan and a joke is kind of like a plan hopefully not too much like a plan but
you know to me absolutely well I know before you ever put on a uniform you ended up in
combat journalism so walk me through what you were dreaming of becoming in school and
how you found yourself in Croatia oh wow uh yeah so I mean those I just I was in a in
this middle eastern country trying to pick up the pick up the the language and so I bought
lots of Tintin books in that local local language and I hadn't read it for or for you know 25
maybe even 30 30 years and I was deeply shocked to discover that you know that Tintin was
this perpetually immature young journalist who went on you know lots of adventures involving
opiates and only then did I kind of realize how deeply it had it had marked my psyche
as a as a as a kid so I think somewhere in between Tintin and Hemingway I thought it
would be a brilliant idea the moment I left school to to head off to to Yugoslavia during
the war there and my plan was to be you know to be a great big war correspondent and you
know write the next version of Michael Herr's Dispatches which was you know which was a
book that I've read six or seven times by by that point and you know I lasted about
three months there and and got a yeah pretty badly pretty badly injured which which kind
of made me swear off war for you know for a good few years I went I went back to the UK
and I went back to I went I went to study archaeology and it was a long time before
I before I went back to to war archaeology led to what did that lead to I could do I
wound up doing forensic work I could do murder investigations and yeah miscarriage of justice
work for sort of for charities and for and for for tv companies and that led to sort
of doing criminal investigations undercover investigations and then at that point once
you start doing kind of you start working in the in doing investigations into sort of
the criminal world you're in what they call hostile environments which is sort of which
is a it's almost a legal term it's only an insurance term for basically saying that you
have to have special special training to to work in those environments and the other side
of hostile environments for me was kind of was going into into the into war zone
journalists but once I guess what I'm saying is once you've kind of cut your teeth
working in tricky situations in the UK they then let you go work in some tricky situations abroad
2003 the invasion of Iraq and I started I made a couple of documentaries out there looking
at war crimes out there and also looking at mercenaries looking at private military
private military forces out there because that was kind of that was one of the big stories of the
time 2003 2004 2005 I did no 2000 up to 2004 I did that and I was working at the time there
were just two of us doing it we're kind of our own little unit for a few films and I worked with
this spectacular guy who had just done 20 years in the SAS and he'd spent his sort of his his golden
handshake you know resettlement money on a camera and the two of us made these made these films
together and I was kind of you know just a bookish west london kid and you know been to
good school and to university but here was this guy who could you know who had these incredible
medical skills mechanical skills language skills and you know navigation and all this kind of
practical stuff that that appealed to me a lot and he suggested that I give 2-1 SAS a call which is
kind of like a volunteer bit of it and I did but I didn't really think I was gonna I was gonna pass
um very few people I think there was about 400 people on our on our initial intake and at the
end of it they gave you know they gave a beret to 10 people in the end so the the pass rate was
incredibly small but I was just interested in in in the process and and the challenge and also
because it's one of those things that you know that I mentioned to to my friends I said oh I'm
thinking about during the SAS and they you know they all just laughed at me uh which was definitely
the correct thing to do but it was just it kind of it um it fired me up I thought no fuck it I
could do this um and also it's the military you know I just I just I come from uh a background
mainly because of my sort of radical lefty parents where the military wasn't you know
didn't have a huge amount of respect for it and the only times I'd sort of dealt with it were
dealing with you know posh officer types uh who I didn't really like much so yeah I bet
I guess what I'm saying is I was clueless and often in life it's best to be clueless about big
decisions yeah it's interesting I was relatively clueless about the fire service because a lot of
my friends I went to the academy with they had family or you know whoever it was and they they
knew what we were going to be doing I just knew there was ladders and hoses involved and then it
was kind of this journey of enlightenment as you go through academy and then and then you start as
a firefighter like oh my god you know this is the other 95 percent they didn't talk about like the
actual human beings that you interact with but I think there is there's also I guess some value to
that because you're not overthinking it you're just you know taking it day by day but had you
known all of that stuff beforehand I mean you surely you would have I'm not saying you would
have bottled it but you're more likely to bottle it on the first challenge if you'd known just how
many hard steps you had ahead of you I think yeah you had to be fully informed it would have been
more terrifying yeah it would have been more daunting exactly and it would I think ignorance
is bliss in some respects I mean even even in interviewing um I know we're going to talk about
Ramadi in a little bit but I had Jocko Willink on the first time I over prepared I did too much and
it was you know it wasn't a great interview and he was you know to be fair to me he was giving me
really shitty short answers as well and we had another we had a part two and it was a much you
know more open conversation but I over thought it I kind of got intimidated and he's just another
person and I'm way past that now I will definitely definitely over prepare if I had Jocko Willink on
I think that's quite yeah yeah but again he's just a man you know and it's not downplaying it at all
like none of us should be intimidated by anyone else we're just human beings that do a thing
um and so yeah but I mean as an example I over prepared you know would I have overthought the
fire service and got overwhelmed because I you know the the what they call it the imposter syndrome
if you feed it with all these things that you know are gonna happen then it's just gonna grow even
more but if you just you know day by day step by step I think there's less less ability for that
imposter syndrome to sink in because all you got to do is just navigate that one task they've given
you I don't my favorite people have got imposter syndrome I don't know why I think it's just the
flip side of of of I don't know being real or something like that but but uh no it seems it
seems quite a sort of healthy flip side of a decent character I like imposter syndrome
yeah yeah I think someone said that there's a difference between humility and meek meekness
I think that's that's the secret source there I think you know and this I've said this just the
other day as a firefighter we're a jack of all trades master of none like truly I mean you if
it doesn't involve being arrested firefighter EMT and medics we do everything else so you're never
going to be great at everything you're just not so that imposter syndrome is healthy it moves you
to keep training keep training keep training but if you start if it's self-degradating I think
that's when you get in trouble so that's where you become meek rather than humble yeah and and
there have been some interesting studies on on people's ability to absorb information linked to
humanity and the more humble they are the better they are at absorbing new lessons and taking in
you know fresh fresh ideas so I think I think yeah it's it's a key to to to further grow
throughout your throughout your life is maintaining that humility going back to what you were talking
about before you entered the uh the military you talked about doing documentary on war crimes and
mercenaries what were some of the takeaways through that lens in 2003 and then did that shift over the
the next 15 or so years uh to some degree I mean look the the the investigation we were doing was
was into British war crimes I mean there was a friend of mine who was a sort of teacher in the
in the west country was given a letter by a former student of his who's this young kid who signed up
I would say which bit of the which bit of the military but it signed up and and it spent yeah
had done the invasion sort of March you know uh 2003 and that's Jesus that's you know 21 years ago
and he had seen uh his fellow soldiers you know execute a bunch of Iraqi officers that's that's
that's what he what he um what he he claimed um and we did this investigation and it was a tough
time to be you know to be investigating the kind of the the British army uh because nothing had
really kind of come to light about this and it was still in those sort of in those early days where
this was a noble and and and just kind of you know mission I mean it had you know had been relatively
kind of successful uh at that at that point um the main person who pulled the trigger on it
interestingly left the military very quickly nothing to do with the fact that he'd executed
these these officers he went there was a lot of people jumping from the military into the private
military at that point and this guy who who I figured was the was the shooter in this in this
uh in this execution series of executions uh wound up joining a a PMC a private military company
and in a sort of in a in a possible uh fit of cosmic justice was killed in a roadside bomb
uh months later not actually that far from the you know from the site where he where he you know
executed these people so I never managed to get my my hands on him uh uh myself um because he was
he was he was you know taken out of the game uh yeah it's like that's a weird rambling answer but
so let's see next to the next documentary I think we called it war incorporated or war ink and that
was a that was an embed embeds were really sort of popular back then it's the first time that
journalists were allowed to embed with the with with the military and it's a very clever idea
because if you stay with a bunch of guys on the ground and they share their sleeping bags and
they're in their suites with you you kind of develop Stockholm syndrome and you're less likely
to report uh how unjust or or shit the war is because all you're seeing it is from you know
sort of platoon eye level there's been lots of sort of embeds into the regular military and
this this ex-sas friend of mine and I managed to get our first sort of embed into into a private
military and we spent a month kind of bombing around Iraq with an interesting crew of of of an
Irish uh uh ex-officer a bunch of Serbs and um some sort of pretty mad South Africans who was
sort of at this forefront of the the privatization of war they were they were a relatively benign
uh private military company they were pretty small they were operating up in the up in the north
um but you know no one should have been doing that you know there shouldn't be private military
soldiers anywhere they're mercenaries it's a it's a medieval throwback by the way and I say that
myself you know with some of my some of my best friends are in that business but I don't think
I don't think I don't think it's a good one and I think it it costs us like a lot of a lot of things
cost us the war in Iraq but of all the things I speak to my Iraqi colleagues about my Iraqi friends
it was the mercenaries which was which was the biggest slap in the face to uh to them and if you
had spent if and you know if anyone had spent a couple of days in Iraq anywhere near root Irish
you know the the the famous road that connected the airport and and Baghdad and witnessed the
behavior of these mercenary crews there anyone would have picked up a Kalashnikov and taken a
pop at them um as well it was just it was it was it was pretty uh pretty sickening among you know
in a war where a lot of sickening shit was happening um there was there was something
particularly insulting about about that. How did that even come about because I mean again I've had
lots of people on here that have contracted and you know certainly it seems like as time went on
the the dynamic changed and I think there's there's a seemingly universal agreement that the early
days of contracting in the recent two conflicts that we had you know there there were some things
that were wrong um but then you know strength uh parameters were tightened that seemed like it was
you know less and less and less but in for example obviously a nation like US that has so you know
such a vast military um with your lens why are contractors even a thing?
Um because they can do it cheaper in the short term you know a a contractor is is
the the military is if you send I've said this we can use this example again and again because it
because it plays out into into lots of different things about the public and and the military and
how we sort of how we perceive militaries if you send a hundred say men off to off to war tomorrow
only 10 of those people are going to see any actual fighting they're the ones who have them
you know who have the guns and go off and do the shooting and all the things that we kind of we
we understand uh as you know as war the other sort of 90 are going to be folding blankets stirring
soup manning the radios doing all this incredibly important patriotic stuff that keeps that other
sort of 10 running um but you know they'll live in massive forward operating bases you know small
cities uh which are incredibly safe and have burger kings and air conditioning and all these
other kind of you know wonderful amenities they will have gone to war and and again they're they
are proper patriots or you know buy any of them a drink tomorrow but they're not going into not
going into combat mercenaries on the other hand they can get you know some of the job done because
they are literally just just guns for hire and on paper that looks a lot cheaper because you don't
have to have all the other 90 they're not billing for the other sort of the 90 of the of the support
but so they're cheaper in that sense but actually they still have to rely on all of the medevac and
all the other kind of things which which the military provides this secure basis so it's just
kind of a it's a bit of a um it's a con i mean it's essentially it's it's a it's a con it looks
it looks good in the short term but it never ever works out and also they're they're you know they're
unregulated they operate in sort of a gray area of the law certainly they did in in in iraq because
they weren't under military law they went under iraqi law and yeah it's just a it's a it looked
good for a while but it wasn't and also it wasn't it wasn't good for any of and you know any of the
guys concerned who who picked up a gun for you know and and and good cash i lost more friends
to you know to to the private military uh to shit standards uh and sort of roadside bombs and
suicide and drug overdoses and all the other kind of things which went with that poor mental health
landscape of being a bring a private military contractor it was it was a it was a it was a really
nasty life i mean it looked it looked good on paper because you could earn hundreds of thousands you
know just by by by leaving the military and signing on to work you know whatever it was
if whatever cycle you were working on in in iraq and that was great you know you could pay off that
you could pay off that pay off that house send your kids to school do all of that but you were away
for so long you wound up getting divorced from your you know your wife you know pay off for that
house then you often they would start sort of second families even third families sometimes they
were tax exiles and would go spend their r and r time in patia in thailand where there was a huge
kind of mercenary scene out there but you know but that was just kind of hookers and crystal meth and
way too much drinking i mean it was it wasn't a good life at all it's been interesting speaking
to so many veterans from so many different countries on here and you know you hear about
the you hear all the good that they did in that moment when they were there you know rebuilding
of schools and you know taking care of local animals and you know whatever the the beautiful
moments were and i'll ask you about some of those in a little bit but there's also this sense
of what was it all for you know i think anyone that's served out there and then looks at that
country and sees where it's at now is you know is disappointed and through my complete non-military
eyes war to me is like obesity there are a lot of people in america a lot of companies that are making
millions if not billions on the ill health of americans so therefore there is no real
drive to make americans healthier they're the customer the sick american is a lifelong drug
addict the same with war i mean down the road is uh oh my god i'm forgetting the name of the
lockheed martin nine lockheed martin has a has a place here they're they're gonna want us to be a
war we've got missiles to make come on you know chop chop so again it really worries me because
where are the checks and balances where is that resistance to sending our you know young men and
women and almost children to war when you've got people embedded in certainly in america lobbyists
in in in you know white house that their profit line depends on us being overseas in combat so
what is your kind of perspective of um the pull to be in conflict when there are so many
organizations including contracting companies that need conflict for them to make money yeah i mean
the war on terror wasn't a war where anyone got none of us were drafted into it you know we all
we all volunteered and you know or not you know signed up for it so i mean sure we can blame you
know we can we can blame the military industrial you know complex but but i mean there was no sort
of shortage of of uh of people willing to sign up in you know in in my generation who wanted to go
to war and wanted to see what it was what it was all about i mean i kind of by the time 2003 came
along you know i'd already i'd already seen a pretty nasty war in in yugoslavia so i wasn't
i wasn't in any kind of rush to you know test myself or do any of the other kind of usual
reasons why why young young men go to go to war but you know i still wanted in on it um because
it was it was the biggest show on earth it was the biggest game in town at that at that time
since writing this book i've come across a lovely one of the coolest groups of of veterans that i
know and that's the the dead reckoning collective uh and they are a bunch of uh a bunch of veteran
writers and poets scattered all across america but they reissued a very very important book
i think it's called war is a racket and it was written by an american general in the in the
1930s and it's you know it's as true today as it as it was back then uh what war is is kind of a
and people say it's a perpetual feature of of of human history but i also believe that it's it's
something which is getting a lot less over you know over time i do believe that the amount of
you know the amount of wars has has lessened certainly over the last 150 years um and i do
think it's it's still increasingly uh lessening uh um you know we have gaza at the moment but that's
that's horrific but that's a lot of cameras in a very sort of small place you know it's not it's
not a big war even though it feels like one at the moment and we have ukraine which is a you know
which is it's a fucking disaster and and and you know yeah and and and needs to be needs to be won
but it's not you know that those those there aren't that many conflicts in the world no i mean i you
know i'm i'm i'm still in that life in the sense that i am a high you know high risk you know
advisor i work specifically in war zones that's where all my all my all my work is and you know
i have i have lots of colleagues uh who are ex-military and you know and and from that life
as well the job market's not looking that great at the moment for people for people like us there's
simply not that much work out there and i take that to be a good sign yeah good beautiful we
mentioned dev reckoning collective i just literally was texting tyler a few minutes before we sat down
yeah okay nice one nice one all right all big shout out to them yeah because because they are
they are just doing the coolest the coolest stuff out there by by by a long way so if if anyone can
uh can get stuck in and buy their you know buy more of their books then then the better because
uh because that that's an example of a really powerful veterans collective who are looking
after each other and producing some amazing amazing art based on some pretty horrible
experiences well forged in some pretty horrible experiences not necessarily based on them
absolutely well you mentioned about going to iraq um there's a question i always ask the
two-part question um and the reason i ask it especially here in the u.s we get such a polarized
perspective of war either the stacking bodies let god sort them out mentality or as you mentioned
you know they're all baby killers on the other side um but in the middle are the men and women
that we send overseas with our flag on their shoulder who actually do the work and see the
things so firstly and this can be any any conflict you found yourself up to today today was there
a point where regardless of the politics that sent you to this particular you know war zone
that you realized that there were some some horrific people that need to be taken care of
oh you know most of the sort of horrific people that needed to be taken care of was you know that
that was uh yeah yeah i mean they yeah of course they were there they were there were lots of them
but most most of the people who were who were who were shooting at me uh i you know were iraqi
insurgents you know you know it metastasized into much more sort of jihadi movement later on but i
think i think a lot of the people who were who were fighting the coalition were were actually
were actually probably quite honorable local iraqis who wanted us the fuck out of their country
in the same way i would feel exactly the same if i was if i was in in in their position um
i you know did i what did i think back then i don't know i mean i'll tell you what i think now and
you know i'm spending a lot of time in let's say northeast northeast syria and you know dealing
with the remnants of of you know of isis or people who are still you know in isis but uh in prison
they're about sort of the furthest point from you know from from me and my upbringing that i can i
can imagine and yet you know i talk to these people in these prisons or in these or in these camps
and i can't help but see some of myself in them you know i was i was dealing with a
uh with a uk jihadi kid last year uh you know and he traveled he traveled to syria signed up
you know was was at was at mozal i think he was at baghuz he was he was at some sort of some pretty
um some pretty big sort of moments in in in isis isis history and he could you know he could speak
fluent arabic and his you know his knowledge of of of not only the quran but of sort of you know deep
deep bits of islamic uh theological sort of knowledge was was incredible and yet i just
sort of saw i kind of saw you know an 18 year old kid much like me who had probably read the
wrong books as a kid and traveled to the nearest war zone he could because of you know generally
because of you know good reasons and wanting to sort of wanting to help people but also wanting
to be part of the biggest story you know ever there's there's a lot more under the surface that
unites people who go to war than actually unites people who don't go to war i feel often more sort
of connected with with sort of you know with jihadis than sort of than than the home front
i mean just as an interesting experiment i kind of think if you if you watch an isis recruitment
video and then you watch a an army recruitment video you know the types that they show sort of
10 10 30 in the morning to you know for for young men sort of you know falling you know asleep on
their sofas and it basically promises you exactly the same thing here are some mates here's some
belonging here's a bit of excitement here's a chance of you know sort of making making a
bit of history and you know the rest of the stuff the flags and you know all of that bullshit
that's that's that's not why people sign up to these things people sign up because we want to
we want to belong you know we want friends we want we want to test ourselves we want to be men we
want to be you know we want to be alive so yeah i think i think even even the sort of even though
but there's there's there's lots that unite us it's weird in this world comment to end on but you
know what i mean no well here's the analogy i use all the time i don't think i did i touched on it
a little while ago was we all start as babies you know we don't start you know thinking about
beheading people when we're in kindergarten you know we start as little kids and and you know
little children all over the world of some of whom belong to a place that's in conflict at the moment
are running around you know chasing goats and you know falling over and laughing and splashing in
puddles the same as they are in england and america and everywhere else and then you know
life happens and then conditioning happens and you know there's no difference in my opinion to a
jihadi group than you know a kid that finds themselves in the crypts of the bloods or
you know whatever it is or the kkk it's just you know who is your tribe and and that's why it's so
important to have this kind of compassionate community conversation and stop this divisive
rhetoric that's on all our screens at the moment because you know it takes a village and that child
is either going to go through your mentorship through their football you know coach or whatever
it is and find a good path or through you know a 20-year ex-sas that steers a young englishman
towards you know what the journey that you went or your role model ends up being the guy's thing in
dope and he's got all the money he's got the chains or you know he's got all the tattoos
whatever it is insert bad role model into this analogy still tribalism still a sense of belonging
still a sense of purpose but in a very very negative way so this is what i love is and i've
had this from many people in uniform is that commonality that respect for other fighters they
may not agree with and they're not aligning with the true atrocities the real butchers of
every military including the u.s and the uk that we will have our psychopaths but you know there's
that commonality and i think ultimately you see that humanity even though it might be hard when
they're trying to shoot you in the face yeah that's that's again you put it better than
that i than i have and also i guess just back to that kind of statistic of setting you know sending
100 people off to off to war and 90 of them you know staying on the big base and and being fine
the other 10 doing the fighting in a regular let's say nato military the same is equally true if
100 people from let's say from the uk decide that they want to go join isis you know 100 of them go
off to to to join isis listen most of them probably reached that decision because you know they were
failures in many other points of their you know their lives we're not dealing with the creme de
la creme here who you know who go off and join a sort of jihadi terrorist group so if those 100
people then get to then get to syria and you know join isis you know 90 of them are going to be
stirring the soup folding the blankets doing all that other kind of boring stuff that
you know they don't make computer games about you know 10 of them might go off and you know strap on
a suicide vest and and do some fighting but most people when they go off to war they have one look
at it and they go no fucking way this isn't what i signed up for and you know we'll we'll we'll
leg it you know unless you're in a uniform you know and and and can't but you know just because
someone joins you know joins isis doesn't necessarily mean that they're a you know they're
a bad person they're just they're just on the wrong side of history that's all
i'm just envisioning what call of duty kitchen edition would look like and it wouldn't be very
interesting it wouldn't be endless peeling potatoes yeah yeah all right well then the other side of
that question because this is equally important and equally never really discussed is kindness
and compassion i've heard so many beautiful stories and whether it's the fellow soldiers
that people have worked with or the indigenous population that they're working alongside or
trying to protect so in all the times that you spent in some of these um you know more uh uh
conflicted places are there kind of um moments of kindness and compassion that really stuck with you
oh man do you know what i mean that was that was the whole the whole beautiful thing about iraq
while it was while it was beautiful while in in that that bit of the war on terror was you know
and i say this as you know as a sort of as an anglo anglo you know american or american who's
lived a long time in the you know in the uk was was that that war was was was won for a while by
the kindness and compassion of individual soldiers on the ground and i'm not it's not like the brits
didn't have much of that but it's just sort of the way that the brits let's say the brits behaved
down south was they kind of they they they behaved like sort of old-fashioned imperialists
slightly it was kind of it was very sort of officer officer led and they thought you know if we raise
the flag you know up and down and give give them you know give the locals tea ceremonies and kind
of because that's what you know won it for us before then that'll sort of that'll carry carry
the day and the iraqis just weren't weren't impressed and i saw you know amongst amongst the americans
i just saw this sort of this form of of tactical kindness that operated you know you just sort of
you saw like corporals like you know 21 year old sort of corporals on the street win over locals
through sort of good old-fashioned american manners that's just i mean my mind again and again that's
what carried the day was was was there was just a universality of of kind of yeah of kindness
compassion but delivered in a really kind of well-mannered way that i saw more amongst the
americans because because because their hierarchy got it that this this was going to be this kind
of hearts and minds stuff had to happen at a you know at a street level and so and so it yeah it
it worked um for a bit it worked for i mean what's 2006 7 8 the sort of the surge the battle of ramadi
uh winning ramadi over i mean sort of in what in 2007 i mean that that was so that was kind
of extraordinary and all of that stuff was done by you know it was done by patreus and john nagel
who wrote who wrote that incredible counterinsurgency book so a lot of it was done yeah that that kind of
and compassion is one one the day i thought beautiful see this is why i think these these
questions are so important because you know a lot of times like i said the worst is also
you know nuanced with these people you know were occupied they were defending their homeland etc
etc and again excluding the real sadistic bastards but then also the kindness and compassion and the
heroism that i hear over and over again from our men and women in uniform that didn't include you
know chasing down a you know a turret full of gunners but it was way more than that it was
taking care of a sick child or you know whatever it was and this is this is a beautiful thing i
think it humanizes our military when you hear these human stories yeah yeah no i've i've
militaries are just reflections of our of our own societies it's got you know it's got some of the
some of the best and the worst in it you know certainly for the british military there's
there's you know there's vast pockets of it which are which are riddled with with with class issues
and with racism and with all this backwards backwards shit that you know that belongs long
in our past and there's also beautiful bits of it which are you know which are multicultural
tolerant respectful of others you know adaptive open to learning they're just reflections of us
these militaries absolutely so i want to transition to your journey into addiction
you know global because in the book obviously you hit on on certain certain adrenal backed
practices um you know as you're chasing you know the the dopamine as it were so kind of walk me
through if there was any sort of kind of devolution with a prior to military or or during combat and
then kind of kind of let's go through that that pursuit that led you ultimately to heroin um
i guess do it look throughout my 20s uh and looking back on it now my my life was kind of a series of
you know of of pursuits with increasing levels of risk so you know i started off let's say doing the
you know the undercover undercover stuff doing i don't know ticket touts for for you know for
football matches uh that was i think my first sort of you know undercover undercover work and then it
was sort of you know doing local you know i don't know trying to get guns on the streets of london
again like wearing a wearing an undercover camera and then it sort of progressed to to buying
uh radioactive material or sort of you know or or nuclear material when we were trying to sort of
build or buy a weapon of mass destruction again working working kind of you know undercover and
buying human organs uh on something else then kind of going 2003 going to going to war
uh then picking the most dangerous bit of war or just sort of you know picking the sas uh to sign up
to then doing the battle of ramadi which i picked because it was most dangerous you know battle at
the at the time so again just increasing increasing increasing increasing risks and uh
the decision the decision to do heroin which which was that which which was an incredibly dumb
decision i don't regret any of it by the way but we can talk about that later uh was based on it
was actually just there's locker room locker room chat amongst the guys and everyone was sort of
saying you know you passed sas selection what's the toughest thing next you know and it's called
one kind of like slightly kind of bullshitting macho uh talk and someone would say yeah you know
let's you know we're going to run the sort of marathon de salvlo backwards or we're going to
backwards or we're going to do there's some there's some sort of rare invite only ultra marathon in
you know in arizona or someone wanted to climb some face of k2 and by the way these are lads who
all what you know subsequently went off and did these things it wasn't just you know it wasn't
just chat uh and one lad who came from a particularly uh tough background and his
dad had been a heroin junkie for for 30 years so i you know i hear coming off heroin is the
toughest i thought wow that's that's that's fucking awesome um how could you how could you do that
you know what would it take to get addicted and i wasn't i wasn't interested in the oblivion of
the drug itself i wasn't a particularly druggy person i never didn't have any experience of
heroin before that but i was never so much of a stoner growing up but that idea was sort of
fascinating could you get addicted to heroin and then get off it uh and so i've researched it for
a couple of years and you know i did psychological screening uh with with a respected you know
addiction addiction clinic i talked to lots of sort of gps i talked to sort of former
former addicts um and i you know i researched it researched it well and in the end looked at doing
you know an experiment where i would take uh increasing doses of heroin for 28 days and then
see what what cold turkey was was what it was like um i mean yeah not a particularly bright idea i
fucked it up i fucked it up really badly uh but i think charles bukowski said that you know that
the dumb decisions make great stories uh and it taught me a lot and i did it not just because it
was kind of it was you know it was it was it sounded like the toughest thing to do i did it
because it was one of the few ideas which genuinely kind of scared me uh that idea of of of surrendering
control losing control that that that terrified me uh so what is it joseph campbell who said you
know sort of the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek uh i didn't know that at the
time but yeah you know i've spent five years uh in in the in the abyss of of heroin and it kicked my
arrogant ass really really badly and um i wouldn't uh yeah i would i would do it all over again um
you know um it made me a better person i needed my ass kicked yeah and i really
administered a spectacular self-ass kicking
firstly from the very first hit through to the end of the five years what were the impacts of the
addiction on the rest of your life obviously you've got this physiological response that you're
fighting internally but how did that impact everything else
uh i mean it took me from you know from having a beautiful uh boat that i lived on in the center of
the center of london to sort of leading living like a like a sort of uh a ghoul on a on a
ruined lighthouse in in in scotland uh so i kind of went from went from having having it all in
terms of you know career and lovely place to to to to live to having you know having not very
not very much and it kind of it stripped my my personality and my character oh you know
of most of its better traits alarmingly quickly i should i should have i was quite i was quite
surprised how how very thin the sort of veneer of my character was back then and also that
this is the first time i've been genuinely properly helpless and i was amazed at how
shit i was at being at being helpless uh so yeah it's it's it's a weird um feeling watching your
sort of your your character uh self-destruct dissolve degenerate devolve or you know whatever
whatever you want to call it and took me you know took me right right to the right to the very very
very sort of bottom of uh of you know of who i was and then at age 39 this this was a was a complete
choice that i got to rebuild it all had fuck all but you know there is something immensely liberating
about um about that moment you know and and just being able to sort of put yourself back together
again uh and that that was that was the that was kind of the good thing i think i think having a
midlife crisis or or having any kind of crisis at that age should be a good thing and i think
it should be a good thing always a good thing if you do it right um so yeah i'm not recommending
that your your listeners take heroin when they get a divorce or anything but i'm just saying that
there's a lot of uh there's a lot of you know there's a lot of valuable lessons to be learned
uh down down there uh and also again it really you know it re-taught me humility
uh again when i when i needed that i think i've just been kind of you know mouthing mouthing off
about it but before then. When you look back now with this mature lens that's you know been all
the way to the valley and then come back out again what were the contributing factors because
as you mentioned you said you had a good upbringing and then there's obviously you know struggles
trauma can can manifest in a variety of ways um but you know me listening having heard so many
stories and hearing that kind of chasing of the uh the dopamine it sounds like there maybe was
some sort of subconscious void even when you were you know emerging out of childhood so
that no that's a really interesting point that's something that only sort of became became apparent
to me when uh when i started to listen to the stories of you know of of other other addicts uh
uh around me and i think i think nine out of ten people who become addicts are running from
something uh and they want to get out of themselves you know because because being themselves is is
is just it's just too painful i never felt like that i always felt i always felt like i was sort
of i was running towards something which was which was bigger and greater and and and lovely i always
sort of thought with all my sort of with all my forays into into these risky places that i was
running you know into life more and you know all i wanted to do was just experience you know this
incredible life in in as many ways that i that i could do and sat sat in you know if i if i go
to a narcotics anonymous you know meeting i'm sat next to i would say i would say probably 95
percent of the men in in those rooms have got some severe childhood trauma behind them probably 100
percent gabor mate that uh you know the the psychologist who works up in in vancouver with
addicts gabor mate says 100 percent of all the female addicts that he deals with uh have are
victims of childhood you know sexual uh sexual abuse or other types of use so these people are
dealing with huge amounts of trauma and they are running from this from this trauma and drugs drugs
drugs are the the escape and that that's a huge difference between i'm not saying listen not
necessarily just between me and them but i can i can put my hand up and i can say look you know
i was a heroin addict for five years and it did all these terrible things to me and you know but
because of what i because of the way that i got into heroin and the way that i i popped back out
of heroin into quite a nice life you know i had loving friends loving family you know a career
awaiting me i didn't i didn't have anything to really to kind of to deal with apart from just
the addiction the addiction itself um all of my friends who are heroin addicts who have had abuse
in their backgrounds they had to do all the stuff that i had to do in terms of you know freeing
yourself from the slavery of this of this you know of this molecule getting away from this addiction
but that's where their hard work started was you know so where where my kind of story ended in
terms of my addiction their one was just beginning because then they had to tackle all of this dark
shit that put them under in the you know in in the first place does that make sense no it does it
does completely you know i can go yay you know i kind of overcame heroin well that's yeah that's
that that's cool but but these people next to me you know these these are the kind of the ones who
are like the proper you know explorers these are the the people who are really kind of you know
tackling the big summits because they have to you know climb and deal with all that abuse
as well make sense yeah no it does completely and it's interesting um i just interviewed yohan
harry for the second time about three days ago and his book chasing this brilliant uh it's
phenomenal it's fantastic and it's one of yeah it's one of it's one of the best researched
most intuitive it's just it's just humane it's brilliant the sourcing on it is incredible i cite
it in in in my book i think i think that guy is is probably one of the best um the best writers
out there not just about drugs but also about mental health in in in general so he's a pretty
pretty cool human being yeah absolutely yeah i actually i sat with the um the guy who
spearheaded decriminalization in portugal we did face to face one time and then i just interviewed
him probably eight months ago a year ago um and so it's it's it's interesting because there's been
this evolution through the life of the podcast seven and a half years from kind of resistance
to any talk on decriminalization through understanding now and i think the veteran
community's success with you know ibogaine and psychedelics has really kind of opened people's
eyes the the uh growth of cbd i mean you know the legalization of of uh thc i mean all these little
factors but when you view an addict the way that we're supposed to look at them as someone who's
got trauma and they're trying to fill a void and that could be drugs could be alcohol could be sex
could be social media could be whatever then you realize well then why are we arresting these
people they're hurting and so what portugal did is took them out of the criminal system and put
them in the medical system but they also put the money over to actually provide the resources to
help those people heal when you hear conversations in america and canada they just decriminalize and
like look see it doesn't work and stuff because you didn't put anything to help these people
you just you know just didn't arrest them but that's not the whole conversation and you only
decriminalize this thing and this thing so all the other heroin addicts and meth addicts they're
still in the shadows being preyed upon by the underworld because you've told them oh no no
you're still going to be you know arrested so it's it's so important to have empathy when you're
talking about addiction now people that are addicted commit crimes and that's a separate thing
and you know if they beat someone up or rob someone that's another part that has to be you
know criminalized of course but if we right off the back and funnel people that are struggling
you know in and out of uniform because how many addicts wear uniforms i mean i've lost i've buried
friends from opioid overdose so and show that compassion and empathy towards them we would
absolutely revolutionize you know the addiction crisis in this country but as long as we throw
guilt and shame at an addict all we're doing is expedite in their death dude that's the best thing
we've we've um we've said in the last you know one hour and 20 that that's exactly exactly the way i
feel about it uh and if anyone can come away from this this podcast with a slightly changed mind
you know there's just there's just there's no point in shaming an addict uh you know you wouldn't you
wouldn't you you wouldn't go to a cancer ward and shame someone there for taking dimorphine you know
to to alleviate their pain why the fuck are you why would you do that to someone who is you know
who is taking the street variant you know of of dimorphine to to deal with their with you know
with their childhood abuse or to deal with you know the trauma that they saw in their line of
work if they're a firefighter i mean that's just a you know it's a it's a ridiculous attitude to
pain and the only people who you know who judge pain and the people who haven't suffered from it
you have to be really really comfortable to think that you know that you can judge another person's
pain you know if you've worked you know like like you have you know as a you know on on on the
ambulances you know you know the pain is just one of the weirdest and most you know most most
you know subjective things possible and it's just it's it's impossible to judge pain really in another
you know you and i are trying to you know we're used to to dealing with you know with medical
pain scales to sort of you know to dealing with with dosage and it's still just a complete
you know uh head fuck i mean trying to sort of trying to work out what a pain scale is on
someone's you know if someone's had childhood abuse or rape or you know other kind of stuff
it's just it's impossible to do so so so why why try and judge it that's one of the the saddest
things i had recently happened i was watching an amazing show called dope sick which i ended up
watching twice because it was just so damn good and the oxycontin crisis that i you know stumbled
across when i first moved to america as we moved to broward county which was the hub of the pill
mills so we got to see it firsthand but that smiley face scale was created by purdue that was never
supposed to be in a medical assessment tool no it was a marketing tool for them to look at their
patient you know and uh and then assess if they need more more opiates and you know that created
so much addiction in the u.s but what dope sick did really well was also tell the story you know
they a lot of times they targeted you know west virginia ohio some of these places and they had
mining and they had a lot of injuries and they had you know the the uh the financial struggles
so you combine someone who as we just said has already some some some trauma in their life and
now you bring a super powerful opiate into that community it's a recipe for disaster so what is
interesting to me though is that as you touch on the book there are a lot of people that will
break an arm break a leg be put on opiates for a week two weeks and then successfully get off so
that's the other side when you analyze your childhood and you know you like no it really
was a great childhood what was it that kept you in the graphs of opioids for five years
when other people seemingly were able to walk away from it oh i don't think so i think i think that's
a i think that's just simply the mechanics of of um of addiction i mean i think i think that
you know to do 28 days is to is to create it is to create your rewiring the brain at that point
i mean that that's that's a dopamine rewiring it's nothing to do with actually the the you know the
opiates itself i mean most most addictions whether whether it's a you know whether it's
heroin addiction or whether it's cocaine addiction or whether it's something that you know that
actually doesn't involve any substance at all like i mean i think radicalization i think is you know
radicalization towards you know towards hard religion uh being an Islam radical is actually
probably the same rewiring as any other sort of form of of uh of addiction ditto for for you know
for eating disorders you know you can have a you can have a gambling addict you can go full
blown cold turkey if he's taken away from you know from from the casinos for a few days it's
not like he's snorting you know roulette balls or something and you know and needs them needs them
in his in his system so uh no i think i mean i think if you see short term uh opiates being
used to alleviate a specific pain uh in a medical capacity it's incredibly rare to see uh to see
that form of you know that that uh to see addiction emerge out of it um if you see it if it's longer
term then you know and also there's you know there's other sort of psychological things in the back
actually let's break this down what you saw with with with with opioid addiction in my understanding
when when you were growing up and you're right is that it's the problem isn't just that the guy's
had a bad back from his accident at the at the auto plant and is you know and is out of work
it's also the auto plant has shut down there's no jobs in that area you know anymore and then
you've got impoverished areas and ready access to you know to to opioids you know in the uk if you
look at where where heroin takes takes its grip where opiates take take its grip on on communities
you know the opiates are causing heroin addiction causing huge amounts of problem in coal mining
areas where there's there aren't any you know there aren't any pits open there's no sort of coal mining
jobs it's taking it's causing huge amounts of damage in deprived fishing ports where they're
not allowed to you know to to fish anymore it's not like heroin arrives and you know
and you know fucks these communities and then they're too high to go dig coal or or go fish
heroin moves in after these communities have lost all sense of you know purpose when there's not
you know there's not enough jobs there's not enough pride there's not you know families
families breaking down that's the point that sort of that that heroin moves in it doesn't move into
the good neighborhoods it doesn't move into you know areas where there's you know where there's
jobs you could have tons of you know people with with you know with them with with bad backs and
taking taking you know opioids in a you know in a wealthy area not that they're going to be doing
that type of work where they get they get bad backs but it's not going to get its grip into
those kind of communities um i've gone the other bit i was gonna i was gonna answer about my
personal self i just sort of i guess why was it five years most most heroin addictions
mature out after about between seven to ten years so i think five years was kind of short
for me and also me i was having lots of fun i mean let's let's not you know it wasn't it wasn't all
bad you know i lived on a lighthouse and you know i dated lots of strippers and i took lots of drugs
i mean it wasn't you know it wasn't it wasn't the worst there were some great times as well it
wasn't sort of there you know i didn't realize there was so many strippers living in lighthouses
no there's not you gotta go bust them in from fucking ages away
but it was so i you know i lived on this place with uh with my dog and i you know did lots of fishing
and uh yeah i had i had some i had some it just got boring in the end that was it you know it just
kind of just it just uh i just felt my sort of you know my identity and my soul and all that kind of
stuff but just i guess you are you know you are what you do aren't you you are what you do daily
and i was junkie and that's just a boring person to be
so what changed what what was was there a lowest point and then what were the tools that you used
because i mean it's not like you just you know decide wake up one day i'm gonna i'm gonna go
cold turkey and have no implications from it so what would you perceive as as the low if or lows
and then you know how were you able to gain strength to climb your way out and what were
the tools that seemed to be successful for you okay okay now that's a really good question um
so look there was there was no there was no kind of moment where you know i woke up covered in blood
you know having murdered the you know the money lender and her daughter or you know or any kind
of real sort of crime and punishment dramatic shit going on on there i simply ran out of steam
and i guess i kind of called myself or maybe i call myself looking at my dog and just realizing
this isn't this isn't really me any you know anymore just this isn't the life that i was
i kind of signed up for um and i've been i've been fighting it for so long now i guess that's what
kind of kept me kept me going is because i just i didn't want to give up i didn't want to i just
wanted to keep keep fucking fighting keep going on and after five years i guess what i did was i got
i got i got on a train and i had this tiny little kind of uh you know i was like i was like i was
like i was like i was fighting it was a tiny little kind of uh rusty rusty uh yacht uh like
some 35 foot down in down in cornwall it was tied up on this on this muddy sort of tidal creek
in the far depths of of west cornwall i went down there with with uh with my dog and my army
down there but what i did was i gave up i stopped i just stopped fighting uh and that was kind of the key to um
to getting out of it was was kind of was to give up to give up the struggle and that kind of that
that that surrender uh and just kind of trust that things would be all right i mean maybe that's
maybe that's an exaggeration uh i guess heroin can kind of only keep you in the grip
if you keep stepping into the ring with it um and and that was that was the real kind of revelation
to me was uh was i didn't have to kind of fight it anymore and it just felt like it felt like sort
of you know like miniature kind of enlightenment but only because i'd put myself you know down in
the cellar and was was you know it was kind of was was in the was in the dark um i don't
don't i don't believe rehab is a good thing um on the whole i think rehab is is has been proved
and i think johan harry proved this it's just as successful as staying at home and doing a few 12
step meetings you know around around the corner uh rehab is you know is is incredibly expensive
and often they give you drugs which might mask the uh the the symptoms of your of your withdrawal
and i think the more painful the rebirth the more painful the withdrawal the less likely
you are to repeat it that's that's my personal personal theory on this um if i did it all over
again i probably would have stopped the boat with with maybe a few more protein shakes and some
decent hydration and you know and and things like that but i didn't do any of that and i just i just
i just did i think on water uh so it was it was pretty it was pretty horrible but
look coming off heroin is is it's like a you know it's like a really bad flu i mean that that's
just on the on the physical side of it psychologically it's it's pretty screwed up
because it's called kicking the habit because your limbs they're always they're always moving
you know every single bit of you just just just wants to move and so it's sort of it's a three to
five day sleep deprivation torture you know uh on on top of on top of a flu so you feel you feel
pretty pretty miserable and crap and you feel pretty stupid if it's you know if it's your clever
experiment which you designed yourself what kept you off it
um do you know the thing about heroin is that is that i don't know whether heroin's easier to give
up than smoking but but no one you know i don't see lots of people jabbing up on the streets you
know i'm just it's no one offers you heroin in a dinner party it's not sort of if you can get out
of that life you know and i was i was just dating quite a nice lady back uh back then who was you
know who was on heroin too and but that was kind of that was that that was really the kind of the
size of my heroin universe so so when i you know quit heroin and and you know avoided her calls or
you know or didn't call her probably knowing me um uh that was that was the end of my sort of that
was the end of my heroin world again and which made it a lot easier than than you know some of
my friends who've you know who grew up in families or in communities where there was a lot of heroin
around you know and that makes makes giving giving it up a hell of a lot trickier yeah yeah i think
you will mention that you know you have to change person place and people place and possessions i
think it was so you know whatever i think this is important even for the first respondent mental
health conversation you know if you're not if you're not changing things around you and and
and bringing your family in and hoping that they can get some some um access to therapy whatever
it is and improving your finances you're gonna do this beautiful little you know 30 day military or
first responder retreat and you're gonna start healing and then you're gonna go back to the same
shit show that you left so you may not be able to pack up and go live in a lighthouse but i think
it's a really important conversation you know cutting ties with people that were toxic that
were enabling whatever it was or or physically moving or whatever it was or whatever it was
physically moving if it's that you know bad of an issue you know just uprooting with your family and
trying to do a clean start but yeah that's why i think a lot of the follow-ups in these mental
health programs are so important because you of course you're gonna do well you know at the beach
surfing every day for two weeks in costa rica but at some point you got to go back to reality have
you fixed that part definitely and have you fixed the things which caused you heroin is just the
symptom you know heroin is just a painkiller what is causing that pain absolutely well speaking of
that we were talking before we hit record and i've talked about this and i think we kind of
were agreeing on on this element there is um there is undoubtedly a horrendous mental health crisis
in uniform you know and i just we just lost another firefighter in california a couple days
ago to suicide that being said the push is always we've got to remove the stigma and i feel like
that message has kind of run its course now um and what i see is you know some people with some
incredible stories who are beacons of light out there and then some other people it's almost
kind of like doom and gloom but well i'm just living with my ptsd now you know and it's
it's it's a shame because i'm not saying that everyone's gonna have this
you know miraculous rebirth but in general i truly believe that when you process your struggles your
trauma whatever you want to label them as that becomes a superpower i really believe that that
creates strength and growth on the other side which then infuses a beautiful message of hope
to the trauma story and including the performance like when you have a calm mind you are going to
be a better operator firefighter in a police officer whatever it is so what is your perspective
on that principle so i mean just to take things back to you know to absolute sort of basics um
let's say i mean you know you and i walking down the road and we're we're relatively well adjusted
human beings and some traumatic event happens to us we were in a car crash we witnessed a shooting
there's some some some bad shit goes down there's kind of like there's four things that can happen
there one is that you stay at your baseline yep you're unmarked by that trauma and the definition
that you're you're you're robust people say that you know you're you're robust i don't i don't know
anyone who is who is who is honestly robust and i don't i don't really want to because i think
they're kind of they'd probably be psychopathic uh to to be robust most people dip you know they
have post-traumatic stress and that'll you know go on for you know i mean it can be a week it can be
up to about sort of you know about about three months they're marked by by that trauma and they're
upset and you know cry they have sleepless nights they might have you know some sort of form of you
know flashbacks or or intrusive intrusive thoughts but they return to their to their baseline after
let's say about about three months tends to be you know when you start to worry if it's if it's if
it's longer than that or you're walking on the street bad shit goes down you go you go down as
as as because of that and you stay down you stay down longer than three months and that's post
traumatic stress disorder yeah the third thing you can do he bounced back you kind of you you
you you come back up you're sorry i'm getting confused now you go back up again and that's
resilience to return to your you know to your your natural your natural baseline now the other one is
you pop back you go down you come back up you reach your former baseline that's resilience but
then you go on to form new and profound and interesting insights into you know into yourself
and it's not it's not just how you were marked by by trauma but how you took yourself back up
and used actually used that adversity to you know to come to to to rebuild and to grow and to exceed
your your former former baseline and i think it's important that people that people know
that it's completely natural to to to be upset by something but just because you're upset by something
and you're stressed by that trauma doesn't necessarily mean you're going under in fact
it's actually rarer for you to for for you to go under and get pro post-traumatic stress disorder
than it is to be resilient or to to achieve post post-traumatic growth and so there is you know
there is you know that and post-traumatic growth is is a new term it was termed in the 1990s by
was it richard tedeschi and and and lawrence
calhoun you know and they interviewed lots of people who had had you know who'd lost family
members to you know to murder or to you know to cancer they interviewed you know prisoners
they interviewed people who'd lost children and they found that actually there were more
reports of post-traumatic growth and there were reports of post-traumatic stress disorder and so
it's it's a new term in terms of psychological literature but actually post-traumatic growth is
one of it's like this is the very sort of engine of of evolution it's certainly the foundation of
just about all religions who are you know that are worth anything and that there that there is
you know the the core message there is that there is some meaning in in suffering and it's our job
as people who've suffered trauma to try and to try and extract that meaning from all the
horror and use it to become better people better better fathers better you know better
colleagues better members you know members of our our community but it's inherent on us not to take
that trauma back into our our personal lives and I don't know I did I did a bunch of trips during
during COVID times to to war zones and back and forth and you know wearing having to wear masks on
on on airplanes and all that stuff that you know we all have to do during during the COVID times
but I sort of I've started to sort of think of of trauma as you know kind of like a virus
you know if I go off to let's say Syria and I witness something traumatic I should almost
sort of behave like I've got I've got COVID yeah if I should I should I should come back I should
isolate I should isolate myself from my community from my family members until I get over this
trauma instead of wearing a mask I shouldn't really speak about my my trauma unless I'm talking to a
medical professional who's you know who's an expert in trauma or I'm talking to my colleagues
who know you know who are in that sort of circle of circle of trust who can deal with you know who
understand the terminology of trauma but I do think I I'm slightly worried that we're just talking
about it too much I know that's a bad thing to to to say but I just I I think there is a lot of
a lot to be said in talking about it in the right way and and by that I mean talking to
psychologists, counselors, people who are trained to deal with trauma and talking about it within our
our tight kind of community of people who are used to dealing with it I don't think
I'm not sure what the benefit is of us talking to people in the wider community or are we kind
of infecting them with our trauma so this is a rough idea which I'm which I'm having at the moment
but it's a uh but it's kind of where I'm where I'm at about this. I think the problem is again it's
not solution focused it's oh my god we've got a crisis what are we gonna do 22 a day blah blah blah
and for example the fire service we are exposed to a shitload of trauma I mean I'm writing my second
book now and I'm just going through the little mental roller decks going you know and it's funny
because people say uh you know the worst thing you can ask a firefighter is what's the worst thing
that you've seen well some of these are going to be in the story so you know congratulations careful
what you wish for because there's going to be some horrible shit in this but for example the the
mental health conversation of fire service is always what we've seen well when for example we
have a profession that works so much is so under slept and there's a resistance to addressing the
shift work as a big reason why these men and women aren't able to process that so to go back to your
analogy you've gone in the down you're trying to get up to baseline at least but the sleep deprivation
is keeping you in that hole now you see another fucking horrible thing now you're even deeper now
you're even deeper and then you obviously factor in things that happen before you ever put on the
uniform organizational stress and betrayal there's layers and layers and layers so if you have a
nuanced intelligent conversation that then becomes solution focused because you're identifying all the
pieces of the pie chart that are causing you to struggle now again there's that hope you know you
talk about psychedelics and equine therapy and all these things outside of the you know talk therapy
and meds there's hope so i think that we can talk as much but we need to shift the focus on what
we're talking about dude i know i like that i like that a lot i also think i certainly in terms of
the job that i do at the moment i just feel i feel quite lucky in the sense that there's a there's a
ritual to how i you know to how i deal with with any kind of stress or trauma in a war zone but look
i'm also very lucky in terms of the fact that i get a phone call and i get a job coming in and i have
a few days to prepare for it hopefully then i get on a plane and i fly off to a distant country i see
and do xyz over there and then afterwards i'll put in a couple of days in a hotel there to sort
of decompress and then maybe i'll kind of you know maybe i'll come back to you know to this place in
france before i go i go to go see you know go see you know family members and i have a lot of time
to sort of to compress and to sort of enter and to decompress and also the you know the stuff that
i've seen is is thousands of miles away you know so that that's a look that's very very different
from you know it's it's acute that i have a huge period of recovery afterwards what you're describing
and what you know what what why i've got so you know such a huge amount of respect for for your
profession is that you're doing this stuff on your doorstep that shit follows you home do you know
i mean and definitely follows you home if you're not you know if you're not getting the right
amounts of sleep you know you're much more likely to go on that's that that's chronic long-term
exposure to to trauma which is very very different from the stuff that you know that that i think
most you know myself or you know or people war correspondents or people who work in war zones
are you know are dealing with it's a much more complex thing that you're that you're talking
about yeah yeah i mean it is and i've had the military say exactly that you know we get to leave
it in afghanistan in iraq you know and then to make it even worse so i still have never lived
in the town that i worked as a firefighter it might be you know one or two towns over but never
right there so i'll volunteer fire service a lot of times they're running in their own neighborhoods
on their own friends and community so that's even another layer yeah that's my idea of a nightmare
to you know to to turn up to a to a call where it's someone i know all their kids yeah that's
that's horrible i think i don't i don't i don't necessarily know what what all this means but i'm
making sort of more of a research journey now into positive psychology and that that interests me
because you know traditional traditional psychology it it's reactive uh you know you're going on the
road something bad happens and and traditional psychology's job is to return you to that form
of baseline at that point it cuts off you know it doesn't want to it doesn't want to know anymore
it just wants to get you back to that that little thing positive psychology seems to be much more
sort of much much more proactive and you're doing the training before the traumatic you know event
happens and i think i think that the sort of the future of i hope that a lot of the sort of the
future of of how professionals like ours deal with with with trauma is actually putting in
really solid good daily mental health training before any of the bad stuff goes you know goes
down so we're much more sort of you know resilient and open to post-traumatic growth than let's say
previous previous generations but we've just done 20 years on the you know in in the in the
war on on on terror and you know if there's a good thing about you know about all of this is that is
that you know a very wealthy nation has subjected an entire generation several generations to to
trauma and when that happens generally a lot of money follows you know into working out what the
what the cure is you know and and i certainly know having talked to you know to to my um you know
friends and and former colleagues that there is a wealth of possible you know cures you know out
out there and also we're one of the most of a psychologically literate generations that that's
you know that's that there's been we're having these we're having these conversations but you
know there's there's incredible shit going on as you as you know with mdma therapy or ketamine
therapy or you know even dmt therapy and psilocybin and you know and and all of that so
i don't think look there's there's there's always there's always an excuse to have excuse you know
you said some people like to sort of nurse their ptsd it's almost sort of it's almost their
you know their their black dog is almost their best friend and you know and and pet but there's
not an excuse nowadays to not be trying to do something about about your ptsd uh because just
because so many so many people so many brave people have seen way more fucking shit than i
than than i will ever see you know are tackling it so i just i think that now is the time to be
fucking getting getting stuck in is that is that too harsh or no no no i think it is because there's
always anomalies as you know there's uh i had a firefighter on um uh pat kenney amazing beautiful
soul of a man um and he lost his son shawn to suicide and and they you know labeled it as
terminal suicide which i know it sounds like an a bizarre term but basically it's uh i think it was
terminal so maybe it was term but anyway the point is that's the kind of person that no matter what
you do the moment you turn their head you get they're going to try and do it that's not most
people most people you know there's that feeling of burdensome there's that wanting the pain to end
but it's the miswiring again 100 and obviously this is miswiring too but you know most people
that i think that i've heard story tell about their near suicide attempt or actual suicide
attempt that they they survived you know the brain has become so miswired that there's this
distortion of reality that they believe that they are such a burden to the world to their family to
their kids whoever it is that it's a selfless courageous act to just take themselves out of
the equation therefore their family will be happier that's the group that you can absolutely
help if someone has been born and maybe just for whatever horrendous reason their their you know
neurochemistry is just off where no matter what you do whatever therapy you've a loving relationship
that they can't overcome it that may be an anomaly and that is absolutely tragic but that doesn't
mean everyone else you know and it's the same with everything i mean every every you know
scenario has an exception to the rule but i 100 believe that most people once they actually have
the capacity to identify what the problems are and find their own individual personal toolbox i'm
going to use cbd i'm going to have a dog and i'm going to join this hiking group that's what works
for me beautiful then i think there's this it's encouraging it's exciting the hope that you can
grow from this and then just as a as an example i never got in a very very very low place in the
fire service and when i was four years old i almost died in a house fire when i was a few years older
than that a wall collapsed by cheddar gorge almost crushed me and i missed the car by a few feet
yeah yeah um and parents had a horrible divorce you know so there was trauma but as i always tell
people equal and opposite i grew up on a farm i ate healthy food i was outside working with my hands
getting muddy people came through the farmhouse because my dad was a vet and veterinary surgeon
everyone from gypsies to extended royal family so i got to see this diverse spectrum of people
and so completely by winning the lottery that was it where i was born i had the tools ingrained that
helped process these hard things and so to the point where i forgot i was even in a house fire
until i started writing my first book and i was like oh yeah that's probably why i became a fire
yeah thank you yeah thank you so so that's my point though is is that hope if that carried over to me
having resilience as a firefighter and never getting to that really really dark place then that's a
walking example of you can have stuff happen you can grow from it and it can become an asset you
can become a better version of yourself whether it's in uniform whether it's as a parent whatever
it is and it's an ongoing roller coaster of course i mean i've had highs and lows you know my whole
life but there's a difference between being depressed and being in a shitty place and sitting
with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol in your hand two very different scenarios and if we can
infuse that hope i think will really pull a lot of these men women and children away from that
because they will be inspired that there is this beautiful version of themselves on the other side
of their crucible dude that's no that's that's a good way of of of saying it um i also i just think
i think i think that men men on the whole only build big walls around you know around a terrible
emptiness they don't tend to be all my friends you know who've got kind of you know big walls
it's it's because it's because they haven't done something and it's not because they've got some
terrible secret all the ones i know who've got you know terrible secrets or terrible traumas
you can't shut the little fuckers up about it i mean they're just talking fucking great fucking
talk you know just keep keep fucking talking because because that is that is you know we
are going to find the solution by doing that but but but but talk amongst let's talk amongst
ourselves i think i think that if you know if trauma happens to you it is beholden on you
you know to protect your family and your community and so so you know as best you can and i know
there's there's horror there's terrible cases out there but but we we need to you know you need to
protect your your kind of your your loved ones uh and you know seek yeah just just just talk talk
talk amongst your peer group you know find find proper medical help find counseling find you know
find find all of that because you know because it's the best time uh as far as i know in human
history to you know to to suffer this i couldn't agree more well i want to transition to the book
i'd love to hear a kind of like a concept of what you're writing about for the second one but your
first book high risk to me the way that you really kind of help people understand ideas is through
storytelling something that you know humans have done for millennia um what was it that made you
decide to put all these emails notes journals etc together and actually write a book um well
i just wanted to get those stories out of my head uh and the best way i knew of doing that was to
get them down onto onto paper i did it just simply as a sort of as a uh a bit of free therapy you
know at best i sort of thought i was going to print it up for you know maybe do a hundred copies
and you know give it to poor uh unsuspecting friends at you know at christmas or on their on
their birthdays i never thought that it would you know it would turn into this book or it would be
as successful as it as it has been so you know people people talk about you know people talk
about writing a book as if they you know it's like it's my baby and i'm sort of giving birth to this
to this to this book for me it was it was you know excising a tumor uh and getting that out of my
out of my system and i felt i just felt lighter the more the more i wrote um because it was just a
way of having you know the stories that kind of kept repeating they just stopped repeating if they
were they were on the page um and it was an immensely powerful tool i originally originally
i think it was going to be called extremists that i'd known and loved because i was interested in
in all the sort of extreme characters which i've met along the path and also in terms of the
similarities that i saw between them that kind of fascinated me that you know the junkie was actually
slightly similar to the to the special forces guy who was quite similar to the jihadi you know
extremist uh so i was lucky enough that the publisher came along gave me gave me an advance
and then i could not only write all my stories down which was which was which was one thing
but i could actually dig into the into the science and look at you know at dopamine and
oxytocin and sort of the the neuroscience of you know of extremism and and risk taking so it was a
it was a joy to spend a you know a couple of years just just writing that and getting all of that
you know out of out of out of my head and i felt i felt much better for it yeah well i mean you did
like i said an incredible job and you've got some some pretty powerful reviews from some you know
coffee or die vice times magazine so you know obviously it was extremely well received but i
can totally relate to that catharsis i got on the first one but actually this one this fiction that
i'm writing now which is based on you know obviously some real stuff that happened to me as well but
this is a fictional character and it goes back in time there's some real historic events but i i'm
there in the the burden phase still but i can feel it you know chapter by chapter just like you said
it kind of sloughs a little bit and i know even though this is a completely fictional story
that when i'm done it's going to be this huge breath of relief because it's not just like my
own stuff so much as the messages that i feel like people need to hear at the moment so once
that's kind of out into the ether then you can go okay i've done i've done that part now so
i totally understand what you're talking about dude good for you and no i think i think i would
love to have the balls to tackle to tackle fiction because i do think you can tell greater truths
with fiction than than you know than with non-fiction i'm just terrible at dialogue
as you can probably tell from the podcast so my poor editor is just gonna have an absolute
shit fit when she sees my first draft i kind of remember if you're supposed to do you know
full stop or comma within the quotation marks and you know so yeah i put the mark inside outside
inside outside i can't walk out you that yeah all right well just just talking about the next one
do you is there a kind of overview or a kind of area that you're wanting to write about with book two
yeah so i want to i want to write about archaeology at the moment i'm i've got kind of a quite a few
series of a series of jobs working for different organizations but looking at archaeological sites
in in war-torn areas so uh it's it's a it's a joy i get to travel to iraq or travel to syria to lebanon
all of these places and visit some of these archaeological sites and see whether they're at risk
and trying to pair up local local people with some some foreign foreign money to protect these
these areas uh these these sites and yeah it's been you know it's been there's a lot of it has
been a lot of fighting in the last 20 years in in the middle east but this area is the cradle of
civilization we owe these people especially the iraqis you know absolutely everything they invented
writing farming the wheel beer you know maths and all of this and we owe it to them to you know to
help them protect their own their own sites so it's that it's a it's a dream job where um i travel
to these countries that you know that that i i love and i get to eat as many kebabs as i could
possibly i love me i've just i'm obsessed uh so so i'm trying to uh i'm i'm trying to sort of pick
a series of you know a series of artifacts and and and sites which you know will will tell the
story of what's going on out there um yeah and also just the the local heroes and sometimes the
local baddies who are who are obsessed by this archaeology whether it's the you know it's the
it's the poor farmer who is you know who is looting a local archaeological site to you know to to pay
for his you know family family food or it's you know it's it's a local jihadi who's making a you
know a buck looting you know some sort of site in uh in in wherever these are
they're interesting characters they're interesting characters engaging with some of the most
incredible archaeology you know in in the world which is fundamental to to who we are so it has
it has all the kind of you know all the all the all the all the good plot dynamics there
so when we circle around to the indiana jones comment at the beginning yeah you found yourself
in a very unique position where unlike the actual archaeologists themselves there is an
element of protection and bad guys and good guys um i don't know definitely i mean that's the
sometimes i worry that i'm sort of leading this you know that i've got i've got sort of the fantasy
life of you know of my sort of 15 year old spotty spotty self i just wish to you know too hard when
i was when i was i was that age you know a few years back just after the sort of you know well
a few years back just after the sort of you know well when the when the battle for for mozl you
know was just finishing i found myself you know crawling through isis tunnels you know that and
you know checking out for sort of you know for for booby traps uh you know and and seeing
seeing stuff that basically just kind of came straight out of an indiana jones film there
weren't any nazis it was you know it was it was isis terrorists but uh yeah it's it's a it's a
good life and you know indiana jones wasn't a bad role model in in in the 80s he was you know he was
a he was a proper dude wasn't he yeah absolutely well we talked about your books then first are
the closing questions is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend it can be related
to our discussion today or completely unrelated oh man what yours obviously thank you yeah uh
anything by anything by our friends at the at the dead reckoning collective uh because they are they
are a gifted gifted bunch of of uh of writers um and also i think i think to be honest i think
anyone who is looking at uh looking at trauma and looking at writing about it should do one
of their courses they've got some very very good courses uh going on at the moment um
going on in the next the next year or so uh and i think writing is a great way of dealing with
with with trauma and you don't have to create great art or great poetry out of it
just simply keeping a journal and keeping up keeping a log of your recovery is is a very very
powerful uh tool um who else's uh sort of books can i recommend um one of my favorite books uh
although the author's name is going to elude me right now is a book called war is a force
that gives us meaning war is a force that gives us meaning that's probably one of the most
incredible books about why people go to war and about the sort of the addictive nature
of war and trauma that's pretty powerful and then look anything by sebastian junger if you're gonna
you know i mean he's just he's just the man tribe um freedom all of those they're just uh are some
of my favorite books when it comes i know you've had him on a couple of times haven't you yeah he's
been on three or four times but i'm gonna be getting back on hopefully because he's about
to release his new book on his near-death experience so he's looking at mortality really
i think yeah brilliant brilliant no no he's he's he's he's he's the man beautiful what about
documentaries and films that you love uh man you're asking the wrong person um i'm i'm not
particularly good at uh no i'm i'm it's very rare that i watch i watch anything which doesn't
involve cartoons uh what's your favorite cartoon i just watched soul on the plane um with uh with
jamie fox i thought that was just an absolute joy uh yeah up uh it's pretty fantastic i've cried
through that bloody film before yeah right yeah so so no i want to i don't want to see war and i
don't want to see you know i don't want to see the everyday i want to see something sort of i want
to see something fantastic and wonderful and uplifting and so yeah i'm afraid it's cartoons
on the whole brilliant love it i love them too all right well then the next question is there a
person you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders military
and associated professions of the world um i would probably recommend i'd actually recommend two of
my buddies and in fact you should probably get them on together um one's levenson wood uh he's
a writer and and an explorer and gifted photographer uh and the other one is jerry jones uh they're both
ex-military lads um uh and jerry does um does these incredible books about um about his
experiences in in afghanistan but also about uh roman uh roman history he writes these really
cool novels uh and they are yeah in fact they just did a did a book called escape from kabul
um that i wrote a blurb for and it's it's i can't remember exactly what blurb said but it but it's
it was yeah it's a pretty spectacular uh book about the kind of the the heroism of of a few
people on the ground who managed to sort of snatch a bit of sort of honor um in that in that
clusterfuck uh that happened out out there so definitely yeah those two lads would be
would be very entertaining for you i think yeah let's make it happen if you can help i'd love
to get them on i definitely will james yeah beautiful all right well then the last question
before we make sure everyone knows where to find the book what do you do to decompress
uh i run i run and i stick my head in in absolutely as much nature as possible uh and i think i think
nature does have all the answers and i also think that kind of just being exposing yourself to a
week or two of nature where basically you can kind of observe a few of the changes is is important
because i think healing in ourselves at a sort of you know neural pathway level occurs at exactly
the same speed that you know the grass grows or the green shoots of you know of of trees and you
know and spring reemerge so i guess it just nature can kind of teach you to be patient with your
healing um and that's that's a very sort of that's that's quite a profound lesson if you can take that
in it's funny how many people say exactly that and my one of my decompressers i always walk my dog
twice a day a runner and like a local sportsplex um in the morning usually and then walk her later
in the day but i'll leave my phone at home um and it's yeah i mean we you hit on on the the fact
you know our food now and i'm gonna have to go to the grocery store next day or two i'm gonna go
into a building i'm gonna take things off a shelf put them in a bag and take them home versus you
know 100 years ago you didn't have to plant the seeds in this month and then you'd finally be
able to get that food out in this month and we've lost we've lost any real example of patience i
mean even you know i want to landscape my my garden if i wanted to i just pay people and they
bring new flowers that already grown and they plop them in and there you go done so yeah i mean
it's interesting that that reminding ourselves that until very recently nothing was fast you
know and we've we've found ourselves in such an artificial environment where i can click on something
and amazon might even deliver it the same day versus i make a list and go down to the you know
the village and go to the baker for my bread and the butcher for my meat and you know so i think
that it's uh it's a valuable perspective being reminded on the fact that you know just as nature
is a beautiful reminder nothing nothing is supposed to come quickly we're the ones that
have immersed ourselves in this artificial environment yeah that's that's a much more
profound point than than i made and also yeah yeah i think i think you're right i think i think a dog
tends to be worth several psychologists on the whole just the wisdom the wisdom that a four-legged
friend can provide and also just their ability to spot when you're having a bad day way better than
you know than most therapists can so yeah they're pretty incredible uh healing buddies
they are indeed all right well then the book is high risk where are the best places for people
to find it uh you can you can get it uh on on amazon uh the paperback came out in the states
last year and you can download it on on audible i had to do i had to do an audition from my own
from my own book but i think i narrowly passed so i'm narrating it uh but please listen to it at
1.1 speed if you want to do that because it's uh it's for some reason they slow you down on
audible when when when you when you speak yeah i'm pretty slow already so yeah it's for the
fast talkers i actually when i did i narrated mine that's the thing about self-publishing you
don't have to you know no one can tell you what to do but you know it's very hard for you to
promote your book but um it was actually josh brolin who wrote the forward and he was telling
me i think it was like 0.9 or 0.85 percent speed is what i ended up doing because a lot of people
do just talk a little bit too fast for a listener to comprehend but i could see with you being very
slow and deliberate that maybe it went too far the other way it went too far the other way that
that forward by josh brolin by the way is absolutely beautifully written has he has he written a book
yet he just wrote a uh which i bought um the kind of a accompanying book for june and so we've got
all this you know his poetry yes but then he's also um i don't know exactly when it's going out
but he's going to be releasing an actual book which uh i can't wait because i mean that man
is just a wordsmith and obviously he's a phenomenal actor and he's a great human being but you know
the way he writes again we're talking again earlier about about color and description i mean
it's it's like he paints with words it's hard to even describe but so yeah to have someone like
that write the forward i mean was an honor and i always joke in the the audiobook he narrated the
forward in the audiobook so you know you've got this you know this known voice of hollywood and
then the rest of the chapters me hello chapter one it was all downhill from there exactly he's a
gifted gifted writer so i was just i mean just a natural so i was interested to see what um
yeah what he's going to produce next yeah yeah i mean i'm hopefully i'll be able to get back on
the show when it comes out so we can talk about it but uh we shall see um all right so are there any
other places for people to follow you you know social media websites etc oh i've got a i've got
an instagram account that i'll send if people want to see lots of pictures of kebabs and
middle eastern archaeological sites and they should look up ben timberlake high risk uh on
instagram but yeah i mean that is just a lot of archaeological sites but yeah stay tuned
perfect well ben i want to say thank you so much we've uh been you know so many different places
but rather than obviously focus in you know the kind of quote unquote war stories which you have
told you know so many in in the book and people can really look forward to that um your perspective
on this journey your perspective on addiction you know on war has been absolutely invaluable so again
i want to say thank you to johnny for the connection initially but i want to say thank you to you for
being so generous with your time and coming on the behind the shield podcast fun huge huge huge
pleasure and listen it's such a it's such a spectacular kind of project that you're
that you're doing and i know you're sort of you're almost at a thousand podcast so i've got a lot of
back listening to do but the ones that the ones that i've heard you know are just just brilliant
and you're doing an incredible service for for for people who are right out on you know on the
front lines even if those front lines are just in their own towns even that's properly fucking
braised man