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I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast

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that is Transcend.

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Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did

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for 14 years.

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Suffering from sleep deprivation, body composition challenges, mental health challenges, libido,

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hair loss, etc.

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Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have

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seen is a shift from doctors telling us that we were within normal limits, which was definitely

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incorrect all the way to the other way now where men's clinics are popping up left,

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right and center.

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So I myself wanted to find a reputable company that would do an analysis of my physiology

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and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down

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my throat.

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Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason

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why the 7X project I was a part of was able to proceed because of their generous donations.

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They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first

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responders through some of their therapies at no cost to the individual.

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So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood

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drawn and a few days later I'm talking to one of their wellness professionals as they

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guide me through my results and the supplementation that they suggest.

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In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been

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very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.

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So I went down the peptide route and some other supplements to try and maximize my physiology

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knowing full well the damage that 14 years of shift work has done.

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Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies

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they offer, they will talk about the pros and cons.

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So for example, a lot of first responders in shift work, our testosterone will be low,

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but sometimes nutrition, exercise and sleep can offset that on its own.

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So this company is not going to try and push you down a path, especially if it's one that

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you can't come back from.

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So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely

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one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.

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So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the

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Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.

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This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.

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I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and I've used their products ever since.

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From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female

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responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've

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worked for.

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Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they

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are also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance

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Project.

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We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier.

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I ended up buying real ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been

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my ride or die through Murph the last few years as well.

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One area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous sponsorship spots is their brick

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and mortar element.

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They were predominantly an online company up till more recently but now they are approaching

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100 stores all over the US.

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My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts

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you see online are applied also in the stores.

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So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every purchase that you make but I do

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want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount especially around

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holiday times.

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But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order or in the stores every

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time you make a purchase.

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And if you want to hear more about 511, who they stand for and who works with them, listen

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to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 511 regional director Will Ayres.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is James Gearing and this week

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it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show former SAS soldier, contractor, author

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and archaeologist Ben Timberlake.

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Now as you will hear Ben has such a unique story from his journey into the military,

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the resilience that allowed him to pass the revered selection, his work in the Middle

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East, thrill seeking behavior, his extremely unique journey into addiction, the cost of

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that exploration, the powerful journey out, his incredible book High Risk and so much

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more.

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Now before we get to this amazing conversation as I say every week please just take a moment,

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go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and

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leave a rating.

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Every single 5 star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for

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other people to find and this is a free library of well over 900 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so

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I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said I introduce to you Ben Timberlake.

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Enjoy.

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Well Ben I want to start by saying two things.

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Firstly thank you to Johnny Lee Miller for connecting us and secondly to welcome you

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onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.

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Yeah thank you Johnny, it's good to be here and that's kind of a circle of trust already

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because he loved going on your podcast and he said he had never spoken so much in his

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life and if you know Johnny it's pretty hard to get two words out of him consecutively

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so I was interested to talk to you and undergo the same ordeal.

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Yeah, beautiful.

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That's a hell of a compliment but I think it's about trust and it's what we're going

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to get into today.

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You know two people create an environment where they feel safe enough to actually be

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vulnerable and you know talk about their struggles so I think it's phenomenal.

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While we're on that subject you just saw his show in the West End, talk to me about that.

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Yeah that's the second time I've seen his show it's called A Mirror and he's starring

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in and it's a show about censorship and it's a play within a play and what appealed to

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me initially about it was the fact it was only two hours long and didn't have an intermission

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so I didn't mind going along to see it because I don't really get theatre, I don't really

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get you know acting or actors.

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I think you know actors, you know people like them kind of pretend to be people like us

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and we've got a fucking silly job so it's even sillier kind of pretending to do that

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so I didn't really get the whole you know any of it but and I'm not blowing smoke up

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the man's arse but look that's the first time I ever thought fuck this is I completely

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get acting, he was absolutely spectacular in it, he was awesome in it and yeah so I

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went back to see it again it was on some sort of some tiny little theatre in North London

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to begin with and then it did a massive sort of West End run which is right in the middle

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of it and yeah if anyone is in England now or I'm hoping it's going to go to the States

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next year then they should definitely watch it especially if you're not a theatre person

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but it was gripping, it was gripping stuff.

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Cool, actually when is he there till, do you know when he comes back?

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End of April.

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That's a shame because I'm going to be in England in June but I would have missed him

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by that point.

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Yeah yeah yeah so it's on for another month, please go see it.

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Perfect, all right well then that being said where on planet Earth are we finding you today?

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So I'm in France at the moment, I'm right down sort of near about 45 minutes north of

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Marseille and it's a beautiful area with some amazing walking and some great archaeology,

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some great food.

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I mean it's just the sort of seasons, they're just sort of tipping at the moment so there's

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a sound on in the background that's the sort of fire blazing away but it's all spring flowers,

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a tiny bit of snow on one of the mountains to my north but yeah it's a good place to

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relax and do some writing which is what I'm trying to do at the moment and just finishing

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off another chapter for book two at the sequel.

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Fantastic, I'm actually going to France near Poitiers to do a pilgrimage to the origin

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story of my book that I'm finishing up now so yeah I will be in that beautiful country

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myself in a few weeks.

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Quite a nice one, I don't want to give any sort of yeah I don't tease out any kind of

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plot spoilers but let's talk about that maybe afterwards, I want to hear more.

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Yeah absolutely, absolutely.

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All right well then let's start at the very beginning of your journey then so tell me

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where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents

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did, how many siblings?

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Okay so I was born in New York, both my parents are, we almost have like a sort of reverse,

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transatlantic reversal I think are our stories because I was born in New York, both my parents

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are American and I moved to the UK when I was about six months old.

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My dad was, is a journalist, a foreign correspondent for a wire service and my mother was a teacher

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and taught in state schools or what are they called in the states, public schools.

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Yeah so government funded schools so she taught in the Bronx when she was in New York and

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then taught in a bunch of sort of Tuskels in London.

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So I grew up, I have a younger sibling who's my brother, four years younger than me who's

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a zoologist and we grew up in West London and in a you know it's a relatively kind of

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sort of poor area, it was full of Irish and West Indian and it was a lovely area, it was

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a good time to sort of to be growing up in the 80s I guess, you know late 70s, 80s and

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London was a bit of a dive back then, it just really was a backwater, it only kind of you

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know hit the big time with sort of all that cool Britannia stuff in whatever it was, the

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mid 90s all that kind of cool stuff slightly eluded me.

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But happy, happy childhood, you know my parents were immigrants to the UK and my mother was

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and is sort of committed anglophile or Europhile so I was dragged off every single weekend

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to you know historical sites, archaeological sites, cultural sites and yeah it gave me

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kind of a love of all the things which I do now, you know I could trace a lot of my, I

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mean the work I'm doing now to rainy days in the British Museum and just spending ages

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and ages and ages in that place and sucking it all, kind of taking it all in and I'm incredibly

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grateful for that.

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I want to just kind of unpack a couple of things about your parents first, with your

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dad I had a journalist on the show Larry Doyle, hugely respected to kind of underline who

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he was, he was the first person to interview Nelson Mandela when he came out of Robben Island

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so that kind of you know journalism and you know I listened, I asked him you know what

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happened, how do we get from the golden age of journalism to where we are now especially

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in America with this sensationalism and this clickbait you know news, I'm using that term

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loosely, and you know I won't dive into why he said initially because I don't want to

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take away from your answer but what are the conversations you've had with your father

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about the evolution or devolution of journalism through his eyes?

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Maybe just in terms of my grammar, how my grammar has devolved from his generation,

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how I could barely string a sentence together in a straight way.

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I think we bear a collective responsibility for where journalism is now, we as the readers,

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you know there wouldn't be clickbait if we weren't clicking on it so I think everyone

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you know has an individual responsibility to get journalism to subscribing to it, to

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subscribing widely to it so you get a full picture and just concentrating on your own

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intake.

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I mean I like thinking of, I think of the data which I take in the same way I think

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of diet and nutrition.

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You know you want to be sourcing good feeds of data, you know that stuff will, that has

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the real kind of deep nutrition in it, you don't want to be going for the fast food equivalence

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because if you just you know if you if you if you just read junk data you're going to

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feel like a you know like a junk person aren't you?

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Yeah I agree completely and it was interesting because I'll kind of circle around what Larry

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had really said.

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Back in the day and I would say this mirrors BBC even today today even though you know

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they seem to have slipped a little bit from the more true north that I remember as a child

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but you know that there were other areas of a corporation that made money and that funded

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creating the news so you had the news and then there was a shift I forget when he said

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70s or 80s where they said okay now we need the news to start making money and that's

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what you've got now is you know don't go anywhere because after the break we'll tell you why

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this guy's a shitbag but let's talk about Cadbury's cream eggs you know what I mean?

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So it shifted from dissemination of information to whatever it took to keep the reader or

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excuse me the viewer watching that screen while the advertisers funded the news.

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Jamie you're absolutely right and it follows those kind of those dopamine cycles you know

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it's time very very cleverly to keep you to keep you hooked I mean when I was starting

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out sort of in news straight after school there was the phrase you know if it bleeds

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it leads and that was kind of that was the way that you get people hooked now that people

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talk to sort of you know in rage to engage or rage to engage and it's basically working

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people you know it's aiming for an emotional response it's not aiming for an intellectual

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response and it's and that's yeah that's that is it is it is sad and it's you know you I

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look through you know you look at the let's say the UK Guardian or Times or you know I

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read the read the New York Times but it has got into that much more sort of you know it's

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emotional it's breaking news it's hitting you and hitting your kind of that dopamine system

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it's really targeted.

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It is.

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Well going to your mum as well interesting perspective American school system to British

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school system any observations that she's discussed with you?

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I mean she had gone from you know from the Bronx teaching one of the toughest girls in

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the Bronx to teaching on the toughest girls in West London and you know the Bronx wins

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100 to 1 you know in terms of how you know how tough things will you know things can

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get I think she found it a blessed relief dealing with dealing with the English system

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after you know after yeah being kind of doing the school of hard knocks in the States.

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What do you think or if she's discussed it with you the reasons were that because I mean

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we're all children once we're all born we're all you know cooing and then we're chasing

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bulls and butterflies what was it that created you know the issues that she had in a Bronx

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classroom in contrast to the one in West London?

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I don't know but that's the first question I'm going to ask when I see her again that's

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a fantastic question I wish I thought of that she's my own mother but no I've never

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asked my mother about what observation she's made.

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That's all right.

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And I feel like I should I will.

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Brilliant well let me know.

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All right well then you touched on archaeology when you were in the school age I mean obviously

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when I think of archaeology you know the kind of caricature goes to Indiana Jones because

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that's what all archaeologists do they run from boulders and whip people but you know

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what was your exposure and where was that seed planted that that would be something

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that you actually would pursue when you were older?

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I guess I mean sort of on two halves what one was just the perpetual visits to the British

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Museum and also visits to every single sort of castle and lump and bump stone circle lump

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and bump in the landscape that was on an ordnance survey map that my mother could find and then

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on the other hand was sort of was was paleontology and going down every half term or long weekend

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or summer holiday going down to let's say Dorset or to up to up to Scarborough and Yorkshire

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and all these places I'm talking about for you know American listeners are all spectacular

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fossil areas so the idea as a young child that you could find something which was hundreds

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of millions of years old connect with that period keep that artifact that you know that

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that fossil just kind of just blew me away so I think it was one of those things that

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I kind of I guess I when I hit my early teens I kind of left all of that behind for a while

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that that fascination and it was only coming back to wondering what I was going to study

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at university that I reconnected with archaeology I can't say I reconnected it in a profound

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and intellectual way so I was a terrible student I found I found academic archaeology incredibly

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boring after about the first the first year and but I I loved it and I loved what archaeologists

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were doing so immediately after after studying it I I would write about it or I'd make sort

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of documentaries about it and that was a means of kind of a floating above the subject and

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engaging with the really best finds and the most you know exciting theories that were

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happening at the time without having to spend two decades in a you know a ditch somewhere

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in East Anglia excavating you know some Roman site and maybe making the find of a lifetime

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once a lifetime so I've also I've got I guess I've also sort of found I mean maybe we can

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talk about this this this later but I've found that the past is a source of sort of not any

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inspiration but consolation I like sticking my head in the in the past not in a sort of

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an escapist way but I just find it I find it quite I find it quite calming quite soothing

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knowing all these people before me have faced all the same challenges and you know done

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a right done a right by us I'm quite optimistic about our species in its and its achievements

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I think we're a good thing yeah I think that this as long as we don't rebuke history I

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think that's that's an important thing you know there's all this cancellation at the

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moment you think about Bristol where they're tearing down the the statues and throwing

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them in the rivers like I've said this a few times like leave the statue up maybe change

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the plaque say actually this guy was a bit of a shit bag he traded you know here's the

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things that came from the money that actually benefited the city of Bristol but that was

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on the backs of slavery and so now you you know you you're putting it front and center

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the things that were successes in our past the things that were lessons that we need

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to make sure we don't repeat in our past but if we just kind of rebuke history and cancel

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everything or carry on a victim mentality from something that happened hundreds of years

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ago to your country race whatever it was then we're never going to move forward so we've

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got to acknowledge history but not also pretend that this is you know for example 1950s America

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in the south or whatever it is because a lot of that rhetoric I think continues that you

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know that feeling rather than putting it to bed learning from it and moving forward as

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a species. That's beautifully said I mean definitely there's two things there one you

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know I guess anyone who's on a who's in a statue or on a stamp probably is not going

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to be you know one of my heroes on the whole you know I don't know if you're taking you

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know if you're taking history from sort of government mandated park sculptures then I

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think I think I think sort of you know we're in trouble and also two I think I think one

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of the most dangerous things I think I think the victim mentality is basically a victim

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is like sort of a the lava stage of a bully and and if you if you allow that victim mentality

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to continue it will always end in bullying and then the cycle repeats itself so no I

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don't I don't I don't like anything to do with the victim mentality. Well you mentioned

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about making documentaries and writing about archaeology I read your book High Risk and

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it wasn't just a memoir of a you know a guy's had all these adventures and was in the SAS

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and these things it was a an incredibly well written story you know and and I was reading

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it in awe going okay I'm not able to write this kind of layer of description and it just

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just I mean that's bullshit you know I've read your book too and it was spectacular

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you did exactly that and also you did it in a really annoying way where you actually you

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you wove in a lot of the kind of a lot of the science and the social science and the

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personal stories you you you've nailed that so so yeah I thought you thank you but two

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different writing styles like mine was 160 pages yours is like 300 and something so not

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that the number of pages deems you know anything but it was it was an immersive descriptive

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journey that you were in you know you could see when when every scene that you were in

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you could kind of visualize it in your head which is something that I struggle with and

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I have to put a lot of effort into doing so with that being said when you were younger

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you know were you a writer then were stories something that drew you in because I mean

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as an adult now you're not just an ex-soldier who wrote a biography it's way more than that

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you're you're an accomplished author that wrote a biography.

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Oh thank you so do you mind if I vape this is no vape away it's been my first vape on

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the podcast though.

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Am I?

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Are you serious?

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No no.

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I'm an ex-junkie I get to do this it's my last vice as well it's literally my last

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my last vice apart from the coffee.

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No I did a St. Patrick's Day episode of whenever it was what two weeks ago now and we both

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drank Guinness it's no different it's a vice so there we go.

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Did I I I grew up you know my dad was a journalist my mom was yeah she was an English teacher

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so I grew up in a very very sort of wordy bookish house I always wish I was much more

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of a of a visual person I'm just not I'm not particularly good at sketching or photography

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or kind of or seeing things and and I guess that yeah that's sort of that pushed me even

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more towards towards words I always I just I guess I always like them I always that's

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how I think I'm I don't I mean it's very kind what you said about me being a good writer

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I think I've just been I've been very very fortunate to have this life that I have had

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which has had multiple multiple different sort of jobs and careers and skills and and

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comrade groups I'm just a very good note taker I'm quite good at sort of at keeping a keeping

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a journal or if I'm seeing something which I find interesting or even new even sometimes

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not interesting I'll just pull out a notebook and just try and sort of just try and sketch

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it out so I was fortunate when it came to writing high risk that I had all of these

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all of these notes and these letters and these emails which was also good because I you know

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I blew my brain out with drugs so my my sort of my recall my recall wasn't wasn't as strong

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as it should be but it just would take just a few sort of a few details to jog me and

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then you know and then there's a little bit of tape is falling down that and then I was

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back in back in that in that in that moment.

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Beautiful well you end up obviously joining the SAS what were you actually doing as far

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as sports and exercise when you were in school age were you an athlete back then or was it

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something that you can't lean into later?

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That's the weirdest thing was I was I was I was a terrible athlete at school I was always

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the I was the last to be picked for anything at school and I and I really resented it the

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high point of my sporting career was being captain of the third eleven there wasn't even

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a you know there weren't even eleven kids in it I was always I was the kid who made

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the pact with you know with a fat kid on the on the on the school race that we'd crossed

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the finish line you know together at the last so so when I sort of decided to to go for

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the military I've never run nothing more than four miles in my life and there were four

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very flat miles around the the riverbank in in London but I had I had friends who were

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who were already serving who'd passed selection and they gave me kind of a a fitness plan

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signed up for a gym for the first time and only time in my life I signed up for a year

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a year before I was I was due to sort of turn up at the door and do the basic fitness tests

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and and it and it worked and yeah I didn't I found the I mean the this is 2121 SAS and

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I found I found that there's there's two phases of it there's the the selection side of it

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which is where they they run you around the the Welsh hills with with a backpack within

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sort of increasing weight and a and a weapon and then there's the the next bit which is

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the sort of the the military bit and I I found the first bit didn't find it easy because

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no one found it easy I just didn't find it as tough as everyone else but I just I loved

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I loved that landscape and I yeah I I liked being out on my own compared to all the other

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kind of special forces tests that you know that I've heard of or that I've I've seen

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or they're all done in as as a as a team and you function as a as a team with with with

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with the SAS you just sort of sent out by yourself and you have to slog for huge distances

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and you have to navigate but it's all done by yourself and that that just appealed to

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me and I also love the landscape those ancient Welsh hills so I was really quite happy out

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there.

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I know we're jumping ahead a little bit I want to get to the journalism before but while

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we're on this subject one thing that jumped off the page to me was you mentioned of all

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the the military special forces special operations groups that you worked amongst it seemed like

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the SAS was the one where humor was also a big part of the selection process and the

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kind of ethos there and it's a massive part for example of the fire service you know but

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maybe not in the drill tower specifically but when I think of just British culture in

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general you know that you could take a step back and go it's gray it's wet it's cold

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you know we we've been raped and pillaged for hundreds and hundreds of years but it's

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such a such a beautiful culture when it comes to being able to shrug off adversity you know

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depending on the time the period and just kind of laugh about it and move forward so

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talk to me about that that observation of humor in in the SAS versus other ones that

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you'd observed.

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Yeah I mean it's one of it's one of the the the precepts is that sort of sense of of humor

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and it goes I mean often it's sort of paired up with with humility which is one the other

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sort of the other important ones I guess with with with humor it's a fascinating test because

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you know humor is is is kind of one of the few preserves of of homo sapiens it's a real

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it's a it's a prefrontal cortex skill and it's yeah it's one of the defining traits

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of of what it means to be human so it's also one of the first to go in stressful situations

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if you think of other sort of ways of saying that someone's having a bad time we talk about

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them having a sense of humor failure so your ability to to to to crack jokes is is also

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indicative of your ability to think clearly in fucked situations so simply just me know

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measuring someone's humor as you you know subject them to increasing amounts of stress

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is a good indication of how they're going to respond how they're thinking you know up

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there as the situation deteriorates and also whether it's whether it's negative humor or

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whether it's kind of positive humor I mean anyone can make a sort of shitty joke or make

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a you know crack or sort of a put down onto their onto their fellow man but actually seeing

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a positive humor in very very negative circumstances is actually also revealing of just your your

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your mind's ability to to play with ambiguity and to see positive things in any situation

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so it's a you know and then to one is actually humor you know and wit is is kind of actually

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a lot like a lot like fighting you know being a sort of stand-up comedian is not that far

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off from being a being a boxer you know you've got to sort of you've got to read read your

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opponent and and you know land your blows well and you know a good punch like a good

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joke relies on timing so I guess I guess there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of crossover

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between yeah between between humor and and and fighting and also just thinking thinking

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clearly in extraordinarily tricky situations interesting I've never I've never heard that

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particular kind of perspective discussed but it's it's so true because when you think about

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how myopic you can get under severe stress and how that can be detrimental and you know

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I've talked about this a lot you know humor dark humor is the way that you can down regulate

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you you kind of come off the fight or flight a little bit which is why in a firehouse after

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something horrific we will you know ultimately someone crack a joke and I was telling somebody

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the other day it's almost like that the needle was in a record an old record and then when

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you crack a joke you pull that needle out again and we can kind of move on with everything

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but uh but yeah but I mean as far as the the ability to perform I've never really you know

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thought about that but yeah I mean you can almost self-assess like would I someone cracked

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a joke would I laugh right now you know or could I come up with something it doesn't

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have to be as deliberate as that but it is an interesting self-reflection on on your

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mental place at that moment it yeah it is it humor can only survive in a mind which

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is which is coping adequately with everything else quite well I guess so so if you if you

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if you're dealing with people who are losing their sense of humor very very quickly then

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they're not the type of people who are going to think their way out of you know a cataclysmic

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event you want people who can switch quickly and who can you know and you can come up with

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a with a plan and a joke is kind of like a plan hopefully not too much like a plan but

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you know to me absolutely well I know before you ever put on a uniform you ended up in

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combat journalism so walk me through what you were dreaming of becoming in school and

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how you found yourself in Croatia oh wow uh yeah so I mean those I just I was in a in

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this middle eastern country trying to pick up the pick up the the language and so I bought

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lots of Tintin books in that local local language and I hadn't read it for or for you know 25

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maybe even 30 30 years and I was deeply shocked to discover that you know that Tintin was

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this perpetually immature young journalist who went on you know lots of adventures involving

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opiates and only then did I kind of realize how deeply it had it had marked my psyche

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as a as a as a kid so I think somewhere in between Tintin and Hemingway I thought it

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would be a brilliant idea the moment I left school to to head off to to Yugoslavia during

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the war there and my plan was to be you know to be a great big war correspondent and you

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know write the next version of Michael Herr's Dispatches which was you know which was a

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book that I've read six or seven times by by that point and you know I lasted about

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three months there and and got a yeah pretty badly pretty badly injured which which kind

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of made me swear off war for you know for a good few years I went I went back to the UK

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and I went back to I went I went to study archaeology and it was a long time before

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I before I went back to to war archaeology led to what did that lead to I could do I

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wound up doing forensic work I could do murder investigations and yeah miscarriage of justice

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work for sort of for charities and for and for for tv companies and that led to sort

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of doing criminal investigations undercover investigations and then at that point once

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you start doing kind of you start working in the in doing investigations into sort of

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the criminal world you're in what they call hostile environments which is sort of which

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is a it's almost a legal term it's only an insurance term for basically saying that you

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have to have special special training to to work in those environments and the other side

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of hostile environments for me was kind of was going into into the into war zone

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journalists but once I guess what I'm saying is once you've kind of cut your teeth

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working in tricky situations in the UK they then let you go work in some tricky situations abroad

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2003 the invasion of Iraq and I started I made a couple of documentaries out there looking

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at war crimes out there and also looking at mercenaries looking at private military

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private military forces out there because that was kind of that was one of the big stories of the

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time 2003 2004 2005 I did no 2000 up to 2004 I did that and I was working at the time there

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were just two of us doing it we're kind of our own little unit for a few films and I worked with

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this spectacular guy who had just done 20 years in the SAS and he'd spent his sort of his his golden

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handshake you know resettlement money on a camera and the two of us made these made these films

418
00:37:56,080 --> 00:38:06,560
together and I was kind of you know just a bookish west london kid and you know been to

419
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:11,520
good school and to university but here was this guy who could you know who had these incredible

420
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:18,720
medical skills mechanical skills language skills and you know navigation and all this kind of

421
00:38:18,720 --> 00:38:28,880
practical stuff that that appealed to me a lot and he suggested that I give 2-1 SAS a call which is

422
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:38,320
kind of like a volunteer bit of it and I did but I didn't really think I was gonna I was gonna pass

423
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:45,120
um very few people I think there was about 400 people on our on our initial intake and at the

424
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:50,400
end of it they gave you know they gave a beret to 10 people in the end so the the pass rate was

425
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:56,640
incredibly small but I was just interested in in in the process and and the challenge and also

426
00:38:56,640 --> 00:39:00,560
because it's one of those things that you know that I mentioned to to my friends I said oh I'm

427
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:06,080
thinking about during the SAS and they you know they all just laughed at me uh which was definitely

428
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:10,720
the correct thing to do but it was just it kind of it um it fired me up I thought no fuck it I

429
00:39:10,720 --> 00:39:18,400
could do this um and also it's the military you know I just I just I come from uh a background

430
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:22,880
mainly because of my sort of radical lefty parents where the military wasn't you know

431
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:27,600
didn't have a huge amount of respect for it and the only times I'd sort of dealt with it were

432
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:35,760
dealing with you know posh officer types uh who I didn't really like much so yeah I bet

433
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:40,560
I guess what I'm saying is I was clueless and often in life it's best to be clueless about big

434
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:45,520
decisions yeah it's interesting I was relatively clueless about the fire service because a lot of

435
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:50,560
my friends I went to the academy with they had family or you know whoever it was and they they

436
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,800
knew what we were going to be doing I just knew there was ladders and hoses involved and then it

437
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:59,360
was kind of this journey of enlightenment as you go through academy and then and then you start as

438
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:04,320
a firefighter like oh my god you know this is the other 95 percent they didn't talk about like the

439
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:09,760
actual human beings that you interact with but I think there is there's also I guess some value to

440
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:14,560
that because you're not overthinking it you're just you know taking it day by day but had you

441
00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:19,360
known all of that stuff beforehand I mean you surely you would have I'm not saying you would

442
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:24,640
have bottled it but you're more likely to bottle it on the first challenge if you'd known just how

443
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:31,680
many hard steps you had ahead of you I think yeah you had to be fully informed it would have been

444
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:35,760
more terrifying yeah it would have been more daunting exactly and it would I think ignorance

445
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:41,120
is bliss in some respects I mean even even in interviewing um I know we're going to talk about

446
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:47,760
Ramadi in a little bit but I had Jocko Willink on the first time I over prepared I did too much and

447
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:52,320
it was you know it wasn't a great interview and he was you know to be fair to me he was giving me

448
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:56,560
really shitty short answers as well and we had another we had a part two and it was a much you

449
00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:02,400
know more open conversation but I over thought it I kind of got intimidated and he's just another

450
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:07,840
person and I'm way past that now I will definitely definitely over prepare if I had Jocko Willink on

451
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:14,320
I think that's quite yeah yeah but again he's just a man you know and it's not downplaying it at all

452
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:18,080
like none of us should be intimidated by anyone else we're just human beings that do a thing

453
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:23,440
um and so yeah but I mean as an example I over prepared you know would I have overthought the

454
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:29,440
fire service and got overwhelmed because I you know the the what they call it the imposter syndrome

455
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:34,000
if you feed it with all these things that you know are gonna happen then it's just gonna grow even

456
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:39,440
more but if you just you know day by day step by step I think there's less less ability for that

457
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:43,680
imposter syndrome to sink in because all you got to do is just navigate that one task they've given

458
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:50,080
you I don't my favorite people have got imposter syndrome I don't know why I think it's just the

459
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:56,880
flip side of of of I don't know being real or something like that but but uh no it seems it

460
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:03,840
seems quite a sort of healthy flip side of a decent character I like imposter syndrome

461
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:10,560
yeah yeah I think someone said that there's a difference between humility and meek meekness

462
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:14,640
I think that's that's the secret source there I think you know and this I've said this just the

463
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:19,200
other day as a firefighter we're a jack of all trades master of none like truly I mean you if

464
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:25,040
it doesn't involve being arrested firefighter EMT and medics we do everything else so you're never

465
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:29,920
going to be great at everything you're just not so that imposter syndrome is healthy it moves you

466
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:35,200
to keep training keep training keep training but if you start if it's self-degradating I think

467
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:40,560
that's when you get in trouble so that's where you become meek rather than humble yeah and and

468
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:46,800
there have been some interesting studies on on people's ability to absorb information linked to

469
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:53,120
humanity and the more humble they are the better they are at absorbing new lessons and taking in

470
00:42:53,120 --> 00:43:00,320
you know fresh fresh ideas so I think I think yeah it's it's a key to to to further grow

471
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:05,920
throughout your throughout your life is maintaining that humility going back to what you were talking

472
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:12,080
about before you entered the uh the military you talked about doing documentary on war crimes and

473
00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:20,160
mercenaries what were some of the takeaways through that lens in 2003 and then did that shift over the

474
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:28,800
the next 15 or so years uh to some degree I mean look the the the investigation we were doing was

475
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:34,880
was into British war crimes I mean there was a friend of mine who was a sort of teacher in the

476
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:40,880
in the west country was given a letter by a former student of his who's this young kid who signed up

477
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:46,800
I would say which bit of the which bit of the military but it signed up and and it spent yeah

478
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:54,160
had done the invasion sort of March you know uh 2003 and that's Jesus that's you know 21 years ago

479
00:43:54,160 --> 00:44:01,520
and he had seen uh his fellow soldiers you know execute a bunch of Iraqi officers that's that's

480
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:08,960
that's what he what he um what he he claimed um and we did this investigation and it was a tough

481
00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:15,920
time to be you know to be investigating the kind of the the British army uh because nothing had

482
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:20,400
really kind of come to light about this and it was still in those sort of in those early days where

483
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:25,840
this was a noble and and and just kind of you know mission I mean it had you know had been relatively

484
00:44:25,840 --> 00:44:34,400
kind of successful uh at that at that point um the main person who pulled the trigger on it

485
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:39,360
interestingly left the military very quickly nothing to do with the fact that he'd executed

486
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:45,120
these these officers he went there was a lot of people jumping from the military into the private

487
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:52,560
military at that point and this guy who who I figured was the was the shooter in this in this

488
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:59,600
uh in this execution series of executions uh wound up joining a a PMC a private military company

489
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:08,400
and in a sort of in a in a possible uh fit of cosmic justice was killed in a roadside bomb

490
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:14,160
uh months later not actually that far from the you know from the site where he where he you know

491
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:23,520
executed these people so I never managed to get my my hands on him uh uh myself um because he was

492
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:31,280
he was he was you know taken out of the game uh yeah it's like that's a weird rambling answer but

493
00:45:32,560 --> 00:45:39,520
so let's see next to the next documentary I think we called it war incorporated or war ink and that

494
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:44,400
was a that was an embed embeds were really sort of popular back then it's the first time that

495
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:49,200
journalists were allowed to embed with the with with the military and it's a very clever idea

496
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:56,000
because if you stay with a bunch of guys on the ground and they share their sleeping bags and

497
00:45:56,000 --> 00:46:00,240
they're in their suites with you you kind of develop Stockholm syndrome and you're less likely

498
00:46:00,240 --> 00:46:06,400
to report uh how unjust or or shit the war is because all you're seeing it is from you know

499
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:11,520
sort of platoon eye level there's been lots of sort of embeds into the regular military and

500
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:17,680
this this ex-sas friend of mine and I managed to get our first sort of embed into into a private

501
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:25,600
military and we spent a month kind of bombing around Iraq with an interesting crew of of of an

502
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:35,600
Irish uh uh ex-officer a bunch of Serbs and um some sort of pretty mad South Africans who was

503
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:41,680
sort of at this forefront of the the privatization of war they were they were a relatively benign

504
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:49,200
uh private military company they were pretty small they were operating up in the up in the north

505
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:57,680
um but you know no one should have been doing that you know there shouldn't be private military

506
00:46:58,720 --> 00:47:04,640
soldiers anywhere they're mercenaries it's a it's a medieval throwback by the way and I say that

507
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:10,160
myself you know with some of my some of my best friends are in that business but I don't think

508
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:17,200
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

509
00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:24,160
cost us the war in Iraq but of all the things I speak to my Iraqi colleagues about my Iraqi friends

510
00:47:24,720 --> 00:47:32,560
it was the mercenaries which was which was the biggest slap in the face to uh to them and if you

511
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:41,120
had spent if and you know if anyone had spent a couple of days in Iraq anywhere near root Irish

512
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:46,320
you know the the the famous road that connected the airport and and Baghdad and witnessed the

513
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:52,800
behavior of these mercenary crews there anyone would have picked up a Kalashnikov and taken a

514
00:47:53,680 --> 00:48:00,080
pop at them um as well it was just it was it was it was pretty uh pretty sickening among you know

515
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:04,400
in a war where a lot of sickening shit was happening um there was there was something

516
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:12,400
particularly insulting about about that. How did that even come about because I mean again I've had

517
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:17,440
lots of people on here that have contracted and you know certainly it seems like as time went on

518
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:22,800
the the dynamic changed and I think there's there's a seemingly universal agreement that the early

519
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:28,480
days of contracting in the recent two conflicts that we had you know there there were some things

520
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:34,000
that were wrong um but then you know strength uh parameters were tightened that seemed like it was

521
00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:40,240
you know less and less and less but in for example obviously a nation like US that has so you know

522
00:48:40,240 --> 00:48:48,160
such a vast military um with your lens why are contractors even a thing?

523
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:57,520
Um because they can do it cheaper in the short term you know a a contractor is is

524
00:49:00,240 --> 00:49:08,160
the the military is if you send I've said this we can use this example again and again because it

525
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:13,360
because it plays out into into lots of different things about the public and and the military and

526
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:20,160
how we sort of how we perceive militaries if you send a hundred say men off to off to war tomorrow

527
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:25,840
only 10 of those people are going to see any actual fighting they're the ones who have them

528
00:49:25,840 --> 00:49:29,520
you know who have the guns and go off and do the shooting and all the things that we kind of we

529
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:37,120
we understand uh as you know as war the other sort of 90 are going to be folding blankets stirring

530
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:44,240
soup manning the radios doing all this incredibly important patriotic stuff that keeps that other

531
00:49:44,240 --> 00:49:52,640
sort of 10 running um but you know they'll live in massive forward operating bases you know small

532
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:58,160
cities uh which are incredibly safe and have burger kings and air conditioning and all these

533
00:49:58,160 --> 00:50:03,600
other kind of you know wonderful amenities they will have gone to war and and again they're they

534
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:10,720
are proper patriots or you know buy any of them a drink tomorrow but they're not going into not

535
00:50:10,720 --> 00:50:17,440
going into combat mercenaries on the other hand they can get you know some of the job done because

536
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:22,880
they are literally just just guns for hire and on paper that looks a lot cheaper because you don't

537
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:28,400
have to have all the other 90 they're not billing for the other sort of the 90 of the of the support

538
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:36,400
but so they're cheaper in that sense but actually they still have to rely on all of the medevac and

539
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:41,040
all the other kind of things which which the military provides this secure basis so it's just

540
00:50:41,040 --> 00:50:48,800
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

541
00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:55,120
it looks good in the short term but it never ever works out and also they're they're you know they're

542
00:50:55,120 --> 00:51:01,840
unregulated they operate in sort of a gray area of the law certainly they did in in in iraq because

543
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:11,120
they weren't under military law they went under iraqi law and yeah it's just a it's a it looked

544
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:16,560
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

545
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:26,400
guys concerned who who picked up a gun for you know and and and good cash i lost more friends

546
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:34,320
to you know to to the private military uh to shit standards uh and sort of roadside bombs and

547
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:40,240
suicide and drug overdoses and all the other kind of things which went with that poor mental health

548
00:51:40,240 --> 00:51:47,600
landscape of being a bring a private military contractor it was it was a it was a it was a really

549
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:52,400
nasty life i mean it looked it looked good on paper because you could earn hundreds of thousands you

550
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:59,920
know just by by by leaving the military and signing on to work you know whatever it was

551
00:51:59,920 --> 00:52:05,040
if whatever cycle you were working on in in iraq and that was great you know you could pay off that

552
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:10,480
you could pay off that pay off that house send your kids to school do all of that but you were away

553
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:15,760
for so long you wound up getting divorced from your you know your wife you know pay off for that

554
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:20,640
house then you often they would start sort of second families even third families sometimes they

555
00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:28,000
were tax exiles and would go spend their r and r time in patia in thailand where there was a huge

556
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:34,400
kind of mercenary scene out there but you know but that was just kind of hookers and crystal meth and

557
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:42,640
way too much drinking i mean it was it wasn't a good life at all it's been interesting speaking

558
00:52:42,640 --> 00:52:47,120
to so many veterans from so many different countries on here and you know you hear about

559
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:54,320
the you hear all the good that they did in that moment when they were there you know rebuilding

560
00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:58,480
of schools and you know taking care of local animals and you know whatever the the beautiful

561
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:04,240
moments were and i'll ask you about some of those in a little bit but there's also this sense

562
00:53:04,240 --> 00:53:09,280
of what was it all for you know i think anyone that's served out there and then looks at that

563
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:16,400
country and sees where it's at now is you know is disappointed and through my complete non-military

564
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:25,600
eyes war to me is like obesity there are a lot of people in america a lot of companies that are making

565
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:32,320
millions if not billions on the ill health of americans so therefore there is no real

566
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:37,680
drive to make americans healthier they're the customer the sick american is a lifelong drug

567
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:44,160
addict the same with war i mean down the road is uh oh my god i'm forgetting the name of the

568
00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:50,240
lockheed martin nine lockheed martin has a has a place here they're they're gonna want us to be a

569
00:53:50,240 --> 00:53:56,000
war we've got missiles to make come on you know chop chop so again it really worries me because

570
00:53:56,000 --> 00:54:00,560
where are the checks and balances where is that resistance to sending our you know young men and

571
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:07,440
women and almost children to war when you've got people embedded in certainly in america lobbyists

572
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:15,600
in in in you know white house that their profit line depends on us being overseas in combat so

573
00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:23,200
what is your kind of perspective of um the pull to be in conflict when there are so many

574
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:31,600
organizations including contracting companies that need conflict for them to make money yeah i mean

575
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:39,600
the war on terror wasn't a war where anyone got none of us were drafted into it you know we all

576
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:48,000
we all volunteered and you know or not you know signed up for it so i mean sure we can blame you

577
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:53,120
know we can we can blame the military industrial you know complex but but i mean there was no sort

578
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:59,120
of shortage of of uh of people willing to sign up in you know in in my generation who wanted to go

579
00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:04,480
to war and wanted to see what it was what it was all about i mean i kind of by the time 2003 came

580
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:09,360
along you know i'd already i'd already seen a pretty nasty war in in yugoslavia so i wasn't

581
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:14,400
i wasn't in any kind of rush to you know test myself or do any of the other kind of usual

582
00:55:14,400 --> 00:55:21,440
reasons why why young young men go to go to war but you know i still wanted in on it um because

583
00:55:21,440 --> 00:55:26,960
it was it was the biggest show on earth it was the biggest game in town at that at that time

584
00:55:27,920 --> 00:55:34,480
since writing this book i've come across a lovely one of the coolest groups of of veterans that i

585
00:55:34,480 --> 00:55:40,880
know and that's the the dead reckoning collective uh and they are a bunch of uh a bunch of veteran

586
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:48,240
writers and poets scattered all across america but they reissued a very very important book

587
00:55:48,240 --> 00:55:53,600
i think it's called war is a racket and it was written by an american general in the in the

588
00:55:53,600 --> 00:56:02,720
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

589
00:56:04,320 --> 00:56:09,840
and people say it's a perpetual feature of of of human history but i also believe that it's it's

590
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:15,200
something which is getting a lot less over you know over time i do believe that the amount of

591
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:21,600
you know the amount of wars has has lessened certainly over the last 150 years um and i do

592
00:56:21,600 --> 00:56:29,920
think it's it's still increasingly uh lessening uh um you know we have gaza at the moment but that's

593
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:35,920
that's horrific but that's a lot of cameras in a very sort of small place you know it's not it's

594
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:40,800
not a big war even though it feels like one at the moment and we have ukraine which is a you know

595
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:49,280
which is it's a fucking disaster and and and you know yeah and and and needs to be needs to be won

596
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:54,800
but it's not you know that those those there aren't that many conflicts in the world no i mean i you

597
00:56:54,800 --> 00:57:00,480
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

598
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:07,040
advisor i work specifically in war zones that's where all my all my all my work is and you know

599
00:57:07,040 --> 00:57:13,120
i have i have lots of colleagues uh who are ex-military and you know and and from that life

600
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:18,640
as well the job market's not looking that great at the moment for people for people like us there's

601
00:57:18,640 --> 00:57:25,840
simply not that much work out there and i take that to be a good sign yeah good beautiful we

602
00:57:25,840 --> 00:57:30,800
mentioned dev reckoning collective i just literally was texting tyler a few minutes before we sat down

603
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:37,600
yeah okay nice one nice one all right all big shout out to them yeah because because they are

604
00:57:38,160 --> 00:57:45,520
they are just doing the coolest the coolest stuff out there by by by a long way so if if anyone can

605
00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:51,760
uh can get stuck in and buy their you know buy more of their books then then the better because

606
00:57:51,760 --> 00:58:01,120
uh because that that's an example of a really powerful veterans collective who are looking

607
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:08,720
after each other and producing some amazing amazing art based on some pretty horrible

608
00:58:08,720 --> 00:58:14,080
experiences well forged in some pretty horrible experiences not necessarily based on them

609
00:58:14,720 --> 00:58:21,360
absolutely well you mentioned about going to iraq um there's a question i always ask the

610
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:27,200
two-part question um and the reason i ask it especially here in the u.s we get such a polarized

611
00:58:27,200 --> 00:58:33,680
perspective of war either the stacking bodies let god sort them out mentality or as you mentioned

612
00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:38,080
you know they're all baby killers on the other side um but in the middle are the men and women

613
00:58:38,080 --> 00:58:42,160
that we send overseas with our flag on their shoulder who actually do the work and see the

614
00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:48,880
things so firstly and this can be any any conflict you found yourself up to today today was there

615
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:55,840
a point where regardless of the politics that sent you to this particular you know war zone

616
00:58:55,840 --> 00:59:00,080
that you realized that there were some some horrific people that need to be taken care of

617
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:06,800
oh you know most of the sort of horrific people that needed to be taken care of was you know that

618
00:59:06,800 --> 00:59:14,720
that was uh yeah yeah i mean they yeah of course they were there they were there were lots of them

619
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:25,120
but most most of the people who were who were who were shooting at me uh i you know were iraqi

620
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:31,440
insurgents you know you know it metastasized into much more sort of jihadi movement later on but i

621
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:38,800
think i think a lot of the people who were who were fighting the coalition were were actually

622
00:59:38,800 --> 00:59:45,040
were actually probably quite honorable local iraqis who wanted us the fuck out of their country

623
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:52,560
in the same way i would feel exactly the same if i was if i was in in in their position um

624
00:59:54,080 --> 01:00:01,280
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

625
01:00:01,280 --> 01:00:05,520
you know i'm spending a lot of time in let's say northeast northeast syria and you know dealing

626
01:00:05,520 --> 01:00:12,400
with the remnants of of you know of isis or people who are still you know in isis but uh in prison

627
01:00:15,120 --> 01:00:20,560
they're about sort of the furthest point from you know from from me and my upbringing that i can i

628
01:00:20,560 --> 01:00:25,520
can imagine and yet you know i talk to these people in these prisons or in these or in these camps

629
01:00:26,080 --> 01:00:34,320
and i can't help but see some of myself in them you know i was i was dealing with a

630
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:46,320
uh with a uk jihadi kid last year uh you know and he traveled he traveled to syria signed up

631
01:00:46,320 --> 01:00:51,200
you know was was at was at mozal i think he was at baghuz he was he was at some sort of some pretty

632
01:00:52,080 --> 01:00:58,880
um some pretty big sort of moments in in in isis isis history and he could you know he could speak

633
01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:03,840
fluent arabic and his you know his knowledge of of of not only the quran but of sort of you know deep

634
01:01:03,840 --> 01:01:12,320
deep bits of islamic uh theological sort of knowledge was was incredible and yet i just

635
01:01:12,320 --> 01:01:18,480
sort of saw i kind of saw you know an 18 year old kid much like me who had probably read the

636
01:01:18,480 --> 01:01:23,680
wrong books as a kid and traveled to the nearest war zone he could because of you know generally

637
01:01:23,680 --> 01:01:27,280
because of you know good reasons and wanting to sort of wanting to help people but also wanting

638
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:34,320
to be part of the biggest story you know ever there's there's a lot more under the surface that

639
01:01:34,320 --> 01:01:40,560
unites people who go to war than actually unites people who don't go to war i feel often more sort

640
01:01:40,560 --> 01:01:46,000
of connected with with sort of you know with jihadis than sort of than than the home front

641
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:50,640
i mean just as an interesting experiment i kind of think if you if you watch an isis recruitment

642
01:01:50,640 --> 01:01:55,840
video and then you watch a an army recruitment video you know the types that they show sort of

643
01:01:55,840 --> 01:02:01,280
10 10 30 in the morning to you know for for young men sort of you know falling you know asleep on

644
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:07,680
their sofas and it basically promises you exactly the same thing here are some mates here's some

645
01:02:07,680 --> 01:02:12,640
belonging here's a bit of excitement here's a chance of you know sort of making making a

646
01:02:12,640 --> 01:02:18,880
bit of history and you know the rest of the stuff the flags and you know all of that bullshit

647
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:23,600
that's that's that's not why people sign up to these things people sign up because we want to

648
01:02:23,600 --> 01:02:29,440
we want to belong you know we want friends we want we want to test ourselves we want to be men we

649
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:36,160
want to be you know we want to be alive so yeah i think i think even even the sort of even though

650
01:02:36,160 --> 01:02:44,000
but there's there's there's lots that unite us it's weird in this world comment to end on but you

651
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:48,320
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

652
01:02:48,320 --> 01:02:54,880
a little while ago was we all start as babies you know we don't start you know thinking about

653
01:02:54,880 --> 01:02:59,360
beheading people when we're in kindergarten you know we start as little kids and and you know

654
01:02:59,360 --> 01:03:05,680
little children all over the world of some of whom belong to a place that's in conflict at the moment

655
01:03:05,680 --> 01:03:10,480
are running around you know chasing goats and you know falling over and laughing and splashing in

656
01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:15,120
puddles the same as they are in england and america and everywhere else and then you know

657
01:03:15,120 --> 01:03:19,200
life happens and then conditioning happens and you know there's no difference in my opinion to a

658
01:03:19,200 --> 01:03:23,680
jihadi group than you know a kid that finds themselves in the crypts of the bloods or

659
01:03:23,680 --> 01:03:29,360
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

660
01:03:29,360 --> 01:03:35,280
important to have this kind of compassionate community conversation and stop this divisive

661
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:40,640
rhetoric that's on all our screens at the moment because you know it takes a village and that child

662
01:03:40,640 --> 01:03:45,760
is either going to go through your mentorship through their football you know coach or whatever

663
01:03:45,760 --> 01:03:51,760
it is and find a good path or through you know a 20-year ex-sas that steers a young englishman

664
01:03:51,760 --> 01:03:58,400
towards you know what the journey that you went or your role model ends up being the guy's thing in

665
01:03:58,400 --> 01:04:02,400
dope and he's got all the money he's got the chains or you know he's got all the tattoos

666
01:04:02,400 --> 01:04:08,880
whatever it is insert bad role model into this analogy still tribalism still a sense of belonging

667
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:13,920
still a sense of purpose but in a very very negative way so this is what i love is and i've

668
01:04:13,920 --> 01:04:19,520
had this from many people in uniform is that commonality that respect for other fighters they

669
01:04:19,520 --> 01:04:24,080
may not agree with and they're not aligning with the true atrocities the real butchers of

670
01:04:24,080 --> 01:04:29,760
every military including the u.s and the uk that we will have our psychopaths but you know there's

671
01:04:29,760 --> 01:04:34,080
that commonality and i think ultimately you see that humanity even though it might be hard when

672
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:40,480
they're trying to shoot you in the face yeah that's that's again you put it better than

673
01:04:41,440 --> 01:04:48,160
that i than i have and also i guess just back to that kind of statistic of setting you know sending

674
01:04:48,160 --> 01:04:54,160
100 people off to off to war and 90 of them you know staying on the big base and and being fine

675
01:04:54,160 --> 01:05:00,880
the other 10 doing the fighting in a regular let's say nato military the same is equally true if

676
01:05:00,880 --> 01:05:08,560
100 people from let's say from the uk decide that they want to go join isis you know 100 of them go

677
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:16,080
off to to to join isis listen most of them probably reached that decision because you know they were

678
01:05:16,080 --> 01:05:19,840
failures in many other points of their you know their lives we're not dealing with the creme de

679
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:25,680
la creme here who you know who go off and join a sort of jihadi terrorist group so if those 100

680
01:05:25,680 --> 01:05:32,400
people then get to then get to syria and you know join isis you know 90 of them are going to be

681
01:05:33,120 --> 01:05:37,600
stirring the soup folding the blankets doing all that other kind of boring stuff that

682
01:05:37,600 --> 01:05:43,200
you know they don't make computer games about you know 10 of them might go off and you know strap on

683
01:05:43,200 --> 01:05:48,960
a suicide vest and and do some fighting but most people when they go off to war they have one look

684
01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:54,800
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

685
01:05:54,800 --> 01:06:01,840
leg it you know unless you're in a uniform you know and and and can't but you know just because

686
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:06,480
someone joins you know joins isis doesn't necessarily mean that they're a you know they're

687
01:06:06,480 --> 01:06:09,920
a bad person they're just they're just on the wrong side of history that's all

688
01:06:11,040 --> 01:06:15,600
i'm just envisioning what call of duty kitchen edition would look like and it wouldn't be very

689
01:06:15,600 --> 01:06:23,280
interesting it wouldn't be endless peeling potatoes yeah yeah all right well then the other side of

690
01:06:23,280 --> 01:06:29,040
that question because this is equally important and equally never really discussed is kindness

691
01:06:29,040 --> 01:06:33,520
and compassion i've heard so many beautiful stories and whether it's the fellow soldiers

692
01:06:33,520 --> 01:06:37,520
that people have worked with or the indigenous population that they're working alongside or

693
01:06:37,520 --> 01:06:44,240
trying to protect so in all the times that you spent in some of these um you know more uh uh

694
01:06:44,240 --> 01:06:50,080
conflicted places are there kind of um moments of kindness and compassion that really stuck with you

695
01:06:50,080 --> 01:06:57,600
oh man do you know what i mean that was that was the whole the whole beautiful thing about iraq

696
01:06:57,600 --> 01:07:03,920
while it was while it was beautiful while in in that that bit of the war on terror was you know

697
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:10,080
and i say this as you know as a sort of as an anglo anglo you know american or american who's

698
01:07:10,080 --> 01:07:19,440
lived a long time in the you know in the uk was was that that war was was was won for a while by

699
01:07:19,440 --> 01:07:29,040
the kindness and compassion of individual soldiers on the ground and i'm not it's not like the brits

700
01:07:29,040 --> 01:07:35,520
didn't have much of that but it's just sort of the way that the brits let's say the brits behaved

701
01:07:35,520 --> 01:07:41,840
down south was they kind of they they they behaved like sort of old-fashioned imperialists

702
01:07:41,840 --> 01:07:46,320
slightly it was kind of it was very sort of officer officer led and they thought you know if we raise

703
01:07:46,320 --> 01:07:51,600
the flag you know up and down and give give them you know give the locals tea ceremonies and kind

704
01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:56,800
of because that's what you know won it for us before then that'll sort of that'll carry carry

705
01:07:56,800 --> 01:08:05,680
the day and the iraqis just weren't weren't impressed and i saw you know amongst amongst the americans

706
01:08:05,680 --> 01:08:11,600
i just saw this sort of this form of of tactical kindness that operated you know you just sort of

707
01:08:11,600 --> 01:08:19,440
you saw like corporals like you know 21 year old sort of corporals on the street win over locals

708
01:08:19,440 --> 01:08:26,320
through sort of good old-fashioned american manners that's just i mean my mind again and again that's

709
01:08:26,320 --> 01:08:33,200
what carried the day was was was there was just a universality of of kind of yeah of kindness

710
01:08:33,200 --> 01:08:38,880
compassion but delivered in a really kind of well-mannered way that i saw more amongst the

711
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:44,240
americans because because because their hierarchy got it that this this was going to be this kind

712
01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:52,400
of hearts and minds stuff had to happen at a you know at a street level and so and so it yeah it

713
01:08:52,400 --> 01:09:02,720
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

714
01:09:03,840 --> 01:09:09,840
uh winning ramadi over i mean sort of in what in 2007 i mean that that was so that was kind

715
01:09:09,840 --> 01:09:16,000
of extraordinary and all of that stuff was done by you know it was done by patreus and john nagel

716
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:21,520
who wrote who wrote that incredible counterinsurgency book so a lot of it was done yeah that that kind of

717
01:09:21,520 --> 01:09:27,840
and compassion is one one the day i thought beautiful see this is why i think these these

718
01:09:27,840 --> 01:09:32,160
questions are so important because you know a lot of times like i said the worst is also

719
01:09:33,440 --> 01:09:38,480
you know nuanced with these people you know were occupied they were defending their homeland etc

720
01:09:38,480 --> 01:09:43,920
etc and again excluding the real sadistic bastards but then also the kindness and compassion and the

721
01:09:43,920 --> 01:09:49,680
heroism that i hear over and over again from our men and women in uniform that didn't include you

722
01:09:49,680 --> 01:09:55,520
know chasing down a you know a turret full of gunners but it was way more than that it was

723
01:09:55,520 --> 01:10:01,120
taking care of a sick child or you know whatever it was and this is this is a beautiful thing i

724
01:10:01,120 --> 01:10:08,240
think it humanizes our military when you hear these human stories yeah yeah no i've i've

725
01:10:09,040 --> 01:10:13,600
militaries are just reflections of our of our own societies it's got you know it's got some of the

726
01:10:14,160 --> 01:10:17,840
some of the best and the worst in it you know certainly for the british military there's

727
01:10:17,840 --> 01:10:23,760
there's you know there's vast pockets of it which are which are riddled with with with class issues

728
01:10:23,760 --> 01:10:29,680
and with racism and with all this backwards backwards shit that you know that belongs long

729
01:10:29,680 --> 01:10:33,680
in our past and there's also beautiful bits of it which are you know which are multicultural

730
01:10:34,320 --> 01:10:41,600
tolerant respectful of others you know adaptive open to learning they're just reflections of us

731
01:10:41,600 --> 01:10:52,400
these militaries absolutely so i want to transition to your journey into addiction

732
01:10:53,200 --> 01:11:00,080
you know global because in the book obviously you hit on on certain certain adrenal backed

733
01:11:00,080 --> 01:11:05,840
practices um you know as you're chasing you know the the dopamine as it were so kind of walk me

734
01:11:05,840 --> 01:11:13,920
through if there was any sort of kind of devolution with a prior to military or or during combat and

735
01:11:13,920 --> 01:11:22,000
then kind of kind of let's go through that that pursuit that led you ultimately to heroin um

736
01:11:24,720 --> 01:11:31,840
i guess do it look throughout my 20s uh and looking back on it now my my life was kind of a series of

737
01:11:31,840 --> 01:11:39,440
you know of of pursuits with increasing levels of risk so you know i started off let's say doing the

738
01:11:40,080 --> 01:11:46,320
you know the undercover undercover stuff doing i don't know ticket touts for for you know for

739
01:11:46,320 --> 01:11:52,000
football matches uh that was i think my first sort of you know undercover undercover work and then it

740
01:11:52,000 --> 01:11:57,440
was sort of you know doing local you know i don't know trying to get guns on the streets of london

741
01:11:57,440 --> 01:12:02,560
again like wearing a wearing an undercover camera and then it sort of progressed to to buying

742
01:12:03,680 --> 01:12:09,440
uh radioactive material or sort of you know or or nuclear material when we were trying to sort of

743
01:12:09,440 --> 01:12:14,320
build or buy a weapon of mass destruction again working working kind of you know undercover and

744
01:12:14,320 --> 01:12:21,360
buying human organs uh on something else then kind of going 2003 going to going to war

745
01:12:21,360 --> 01:12:28,000
uh then picking the most dangerous bit of war or just sort of you know picking the sas uh to sign up

746
01:12:28,000 --> 01:12:33,520
to then doing the battle of ramadi which i picked because it was most dangerous you know battle at

747
01:12:33,520 --> 01:12:39,280
the at the time so again just increasing increasing increasing increasing risks and uh

748
01:12:40,880 --> 01:12:46,240
the decision the decision to do heroin which which was that which which was an incredibly dumb

749
01:12:46,240 --> 01:12:52,240
decision i don't regret any of it by the way but we can talk about that later uh was based on it

750
01:12:52,240 --> 01:12:57,520
was actually just there's locker room locker room chat amongst the guys and everyone was sort of

751
01:12:57,520 --> 01:13:03,920
saying you know you passed sas selection what's the toughest thing next you know and it's called

752
01:13:03,920 --> 01:13:09,360
one kind of like slightly kind of bullshitting macho uh talk and someone would say yeah you know

753
01:13:09,360 --> 01:13:14,320
let's you know we're going to run the sort of marathon de salvlo backwards or we're going to

754
01:13:14,320 --> 01:13:20,880
backwards or we're going to do there's some there's some sort of rare invite only ultra marathon in

755
01:13:20,880 --> 01:13:26,960
you know in arizona or someone wanted to climb some face of k2 and by the way these are lads who

756
01:13:26,960 --> 01:13:31,040
all what you know subsequently went off and did these things it wasn't just you know it wasn't

757
01:13:31,040 --> 01:13:38,320
just chat uh and one lad who came from a particularly uh tough background and his

758
01:13:38,320 --> 01:13:43,840
dad had been a heroin junkie for for 30 years so i you know i hear coming off heroin is the

759
01:13:43,840 --> 01:13:50,720
toughest i thought wow that's that's that's fucking awesome um how could you how could you do that

760
01:13:50,720 --> 01:13:57,360
you know what would it take to get addicted and i wasn't i wasn't interested in the oblivion of

761
01:13:57,360 --> 01:14:02,560
the drug itself i wasn't a particularly druggy person i never didn't have any experience of

762
01:14:02,560 --> 01:14:08,960
heroin before that but i was never so much of a stoner growing up but that idea was sort of

763
01:14:08,960 --> 01:14:17,520
fascinating could you get addicted to heroin and then get off it uh and so i've researched it for

764
01:14:17,520 --> 01:14:23,520
a couple of years and you know i did psychological screening uh with with a respected you know

765
01:14:23,520 --> 01:14:28,320
addiction addiction clinic i talked to lots of sort of gps i talked to sort of former

766
01:14:28,880 --> 01:14:35,600
former addicts um and i you know i researched it researched it well and in the end looked at doing

767
01:14:35,600 --> 01:14:40,960
you know an experiment where i would take uh increasing doses of heroin for 28 days and then

768
01:14:40,960 --> 01:14:48,560
see what what cold turkey was was what it was like um i mean yeah not a particularly bright idea i

769
01:14:48,560 --> 01:14:55,680
fucked it up i fucked it up really badly uh but i think charles bukowski said that you know that

770
01:14:55,680 --> 01:15:06,080
the dumb decisions make great stories uh and it taught me a lot and i did it not just because it

771
01:15:06,080 --> 01:15:12,080
was kind of it was you know it was it was it sounded like the toughest thing to do i did it

772
01:15:12,080 --> 01:15:19,600
because it was one of the few ideas which genuinely kind of scared me uh that idea of of of surrendering

773
01:15:19,600 --> 01:15:29,200
control losing control that that that terrified me uh so what is it joseph campbell who said you

774
01:15:29,200 --> 01:15:35,440
know sort of the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek uh i didn't know that at the

775
01:15:35,440 --> 01:15:46,160
time but yeah you know i've spent five years uh in in the in the abyss of of heroin and it kicked my

776
01:15:46,160 --> 01:15:56,400
arrogant ass really really badly and um i wouldn't uh yeah i would i would do it all over again um

777
01:15:56,400 --> 01:16:04,880
you know um it made me a better person i needed my ass kicked yeah and i really

778
01:16:04,880 --> 01:16:08,320
administered a spectacular self-ass kicking

779
01:16:08,320 --> 01:16:15,280
firstly from the very first hit through to the end of the five years what were the impacts of the

780
01:16:15,280 --> 01:16:19,600
addiction on the rest of your life obviously you've got this physiological response that you're

781
01:16:19,600 --> 01:16:22,160
fighting internally but how did that impact everything else

782
01:16:24,160 --> 01:16:32,800
uh i mean it took me from you know from having a beautiful uh boat that i lived on in the center of

783
01:16:32,800 --> 01:16:39,200
the center of london to sort of leading living like a like a sort of uh a ghoul on a on a

784
01:16:40,000 --> 01:16:48,160
ruined lighthouse in in in scotland uh so i kind of went from went from having having it all in

785
01:16:48,160 --> 01:16:54,960
terms of you know career and lovely place to to to to live to having you know having not very

786
01:16:54,960 --> 01:17:01,120
not very much and it kind of it stripped my my personality and my character oh you know

787
01:17:01,120 --> 01:17:07,520
of most of its better traits alarmingly quickly i should i should have i was quite i was quite

788
01:17:07,520 --> 01:17:14,640
surprised how how very thin the sort of veneer of my character was back then and also that

789
01:17:14,640 --> 01:17:18,640
this is the first time i've been genuinely properly helpless and i was amazed at how

790
01:17:18,640 --> 01:17:29,040
shit i was at being at being helpless uh so yeah it's it's it's a weird um feeling watching your

791
01:17:29,040 --> 01:17:38,720
sort of your your character uh self-destruct dissolve degenerate devolve or you know whatever

792
01:17:38,720 --> 01:17:42,960
whatever you want to call it and took me you know took me right right to the right to the very very

793
01:17:42,960 --> 01:17:52,000
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

794
01:17:52,000 --> 01:17:59,040
choice that i got to rebuild it all had fuck all but you know there is something immensely liberating

795
01:17:59,040 --> 01:18:05,520
about um about that moment you know and and just being able to sort of put yourself back together

796
01:18:05,520 --> 01:18:13,280
again uh and that that was that was the that was kind of the good thing i think i think having a

797
01:18:13,280 --> 01:18:21,040
midlife crisis or or having any kind of crisis at that age should be a good thing and i think

798
01:18:21,040 --> 01:18:27,360
it should be a good thing always a good thing if you do it right um so yeah i'm not recommending

799
01:18:27,360 --> 01:18:33,840
that your your listeners take heroin when they get a divorce or anything but i'm just saying that

800
01:18:33,840 --> 01:18:38,960
there's a lot of uh there's a lot of you know there's a lot of valuable lessons to be learned

801
01:18:39,520 --> 01:18:45,840
uh down down there uh and also again it really you know it re-taught me humility

802
01:18:45,840 --> 01:18:52,240
uh again when i when i needed that i think i've just been kind of you know mouthing mouthing off

803
01:18:52,240 --> 01:18:59,600
about it but before then. When you look back now with this mature lens that's you know been all

804
01:18:59,600 --> 01:19:05,200
the way to the valley and then come back out again what were the contributing factors because

805
01:19:05,200 --> 01:19:09,520
as you mentioned you said you had a good upbringing and then there's obviously you know struggles

806
01:19:09,520 --> 01:19:16,080
trauma can can manifest in a variety of ways um but you know me listening having heard so many

807
01:19:16,080 --> 01:19:21,280
stories and hearing that kind of chasing of the uh the dopamine it sounds like there maybe was

808
01:19:21,280 --> 01:19:26,240
some sort of subconscious void even when you were you know emerging out of childhood so

809
01:19:27,760 --> 01:19:32,160
that no that's a really interesting point that's something that only sort of became became apparent

810
01:19:32,160 --> 01:19:39,040
to me when uh when i started to listen to the stories of you know of of other other addicts uh

811
01:19:39,040 --> 01:19:47,760
uh around me and i think i think nine out of ten people who become addicts are running from

812
01:19:47,760 --> 01:19:54,480
something uh and they want to get out of themselves you know because because being themselves is is

813
01:19:54,480 --> 01:20:00,400
is just it's just too painful i never felt like that i always felt i always felt like i was sort

814
01:20:00,400 --> 01:20:07,360
of i was running towards something which was which was bigger and greater and and and lovely i always

815
01:20:07,360 --> 01:20:12,160
sort of thought with all my sort of with all my forays into into these risky places that i was

816
01:20:12,160 --> 01:20:18,480
running you know into life more and you know all i wanted to do was just experience you know this

817
01:20:18,480 --> 01:20:26,320
incredible life in in as many ways that i that i could do and sat sat in you know if i if i go

818
01:20:26,320 --> 01:20:33,920
to a narcotics anonymous you know meeting i'm sat next to i would say i would say probably 95

819
01:20:33,920 --> 01:20:42,320
percent of the men in in those rooms have got some severe childhood trauma behind them probably 100

820
01:20:42,320 --> 01:20:48,080
percent gabor mate that uh you know the the psychologist who works up in in vancouver with

821
01:20:48,080 --> 01:20:54,880
addicts gabor mate says 100 percent of all the female addicts that he deals with uh have are

822
01:20:54,880 --> 01:21:01,920
victims of childhood you know sexual uh sexual abuse or other types of use so these people are

823
01:21:01,920 --> 01:21:08,560
dealing with huge amounts of trauma and they are running from this from this trauma and drugs drugs

824
01:21:08,560 --> 01:21:14,000
drugs are the the escape and that that's a huge difference between i'm not saying listen not

825
01:21:14,000 --> 01:21:19,840
necessarily just between me and them but i can i can put my hand up and i can say look you know

826
01:21:19,840 --> 01:21:25,840
i was a heroin addict for five years and it did all these terrible things to me and you know but

827
01:21:25,840 --> 01:21:32,000
because of what i because of the way that i got into heroin and the way that i i popped back out

828
01:21:32,000 --> 01:21:38,000
of heroin into quite a nice life you know i had loving friends loving family you know a career

829
01:21:38,000 --> 01:21:42,320
awaiting me i didn't i didn't have anything to really to kind of to deal with apart from just

830
01:21:42,320 --> 01:21:49,920
the addiction the addiction itself um all of my friends who are heroin addicts who have had abuse

831
01:21:49,920 --> 01:21:54,960
in their backgrounds they had to do all the stuff that i had to do in terms of you know freeing

832
01:21:54,960 --> 01:22:00,560
yourself from the slavery of this of this you know of this molecule getting away from this addiction

833
01:22:01,120 --> 01:22:08,160
but that's where their hard work started was you know so where where my kind of story ended in

834
01:22:08,160 --> 01:22:13,440
terms of my addiction their one was just beginning because then they had to tackle all of this dark

835
01:22:13,440 --> 01:22:19,200
shit that put them under in the you know in in the first place does that make sense no it does it

836
01:22:19,200 --> 01:22:25,040
does completely you know i can go yay you know i kind of overcame heroin well that's yeah that's

837
01:22:25,040 --> 01:22:30,640
that that's cool but but these people next to me you know these these are the kind of the ones who

838
01:22:30,640 --> 01:22:37,680
are like the proper you know explorers these are the the people who are really kind of you know

839
01:22:38,320 --> 01:22:42,000
tackling the big summits because they have to you know climb and deal with all that abuse

840
01:22:42,000 --> 01:22:50,080
as well make sense yeah no it does completely and it's interesting um i just interviewed yohan

841
01:22:50,080 --> 01:22:55,200
harry for the second time about three days ago and his book chasing this brilliant uh it's

842
01:22:55,200 --> 01:23:02,080
phenomenal it's fantastic and it's one of yeah it's one of it's one of the best researched

843
01:23:03,360 --> 01:23:09,520
most intuitive it's just it's just humane it's brilliant the sourcing on it is incredible i cite

844
01:23:09,520 --> 01:23:15,440
it in in in my book i think i think that guy is is probably one of the best um the best writers

845
01:23:15,440 --> 01:23:20,320
out there not just about drugs but also about mental health in in in general so he's a pretty

846
01:23:20,320 --> 01:23:26,240
pretty cool human being yeah absolutely yeah i actually i sat with the um the guy who

847
01:23:26,240 --> 01:23:30,720
spearheaded decriminalization in portugal we did face to face one time and then i just interviewed

848
01:23:30,720 --> 01:23:37,760
him probably eight months ago a year ago um and so it's it's it's interesting because there's been

849
01:23:37,760 --> 01:23:42,240
this evolution through the life of the podcast seven and a half years from kind of resistance

850
01:23:42,240 --> 01:23:46,880
to any talk on decriminalization through understanding now and i think the veteran

851
01:23:46,880 --> 01:23:51,440
community's success with you know ibogaine and psychedelics has really kind of opened people's

852
01:23:51,440 --> 01:23:59,680
eyes the the uh growth of cbd i mean you know the legalization of of uh thc i mean all these little

853
01:23:59,680 --> 01:24:06,480
factors but when you view an addict the way that we're supposed to look at them as someone who's

854
01:24:06,480 --> 01:24:10,400
got trauma and they're trying to fill a void and that could be drugs could be alcohol could be sex

855
01:24:10,400 --> 01:24:16,160
could be social media could be whatever then you realize well then why are we arresting these

856
01:24:16,160 --> 01:24:20,720
people they're hurting and so what portugal did is took them out of the criminal system and put

857
01:24:20,720 --> 01:24:25,920
them in the medical system but they also put the money over to actually provide the resources to

858
01:24:25,920 --> 01:24:32,240
help those people heal when you hear conversations in america and canada they just decriminalize and

859
01:24:32,240 --> 01:24:36,640
like look see it doesn't work and stuff because you didn't put anything to help these people

860
01:24:36,640 --> 01:24:41,600
you just you know just didn't arrest them but that's not the whole conversation and you only

861
01:24:41,600 --> 01:24:45,920
decriminalize this thing and this thing so all the other heroin addicts and meth addicts they're

862
01:24:45,920 --> 01:24:50,320
still in the shadows being preyed upon by the underworld because you've told them oh no no

863
01:24:50,320 --> 01:24:56,880
you're still going to be you know arrested so it's it's so important to have empathy when you're

864
01:24:56,880 --> 01:25:00,960
talking about addiction now people that are addicted commit crimes and that's a separate thing

865
01:25:00,960 --> 01:25:05,200
and you know if they beat someone up or rob someone that's another part that has to be you

866
01:25:05,200 --> 01:25:11,600
know criminalized of course but if we right off the back and funnel people that are struggling

867
01:25:11,600 --> 01:25:16,400
you know in and out of uniform because how many addicts wear uniforms i mean i've lost i've buried

868
01:25:16,400 --> 01:25:22,080
friends from opioid overdose so and show that compassion and empathy towards them we would

869
01:25:22,080 --> 01:25:28,000
absolutely revolutionize you know the addiction crisis in this country but as long as we throw

870
01:25:28,000 --> 01:25:35,760
guilt and shame at an addict all we're doing is expedite in their death dude that's the best thing

871
01:25:35,760 --> 01:25:42,080
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

872
01:25:42,080 --> 01:25:47,520
feel about it uh and if anyone can come away from this this podcast with a slightly changed mind

873
01:25:47,520 --> 01:25:52,320
you know there's just there's just there's no point in shaming an addict uh you know you wouldn't you

874
01:25:52,320 --> 01:25:58,880
wouldn't you you wouldn't go to a cancer ward and shame someone there for taking dimorphine you know

875
01:25:58,880 --> 01:26:04,000
to to alleviate their pain why the fuck are you why would you do that to someone who is you know

876
01:26:04,000 --> 01:26:10,240
who is taking the street variant you know of of dimorphine to to deal with their with you know

877
01:26:10,800 --> 01:26:15,920
with their childhood abuse or to deal with you know the trauma that they saw in their line of

878
01:26:15,920 --> 01:26:20,720
work if they're a firefighter i mean that's just a you know it's a it's a ridiculous attitude to

879
01:26:20,720 --> 01:26:25,200
pain and the only people who you know who judge pain and the people who haven't suffered from it

880
01:26:25,200 --> 01:26:29,840
you have to be really really comfortable to think that you know that you can judge another person's

881
01:26:30,560 --> 01:26:36,560
pain you know if you've worked you know like like you have you know as a you know on on on the

882
01:26:36,560 --> 01:26:42,000
ambulances you know you know the pain is just one of the weirdest and most you know most most

883
01:26:42,000 --> 01:26:47,520
you know subjective things possible and it's just it's it's impossible to judge pain really in another

884
01:26:47,520 --> 01:26:52,880
you know you and i are trying to you know we're used to to dealing with you know with medical

885
01:26:52,880 --> 01:26:58,160
pain scales to sort of you know to dealing with with dosage and it's still just a complete

886
01:26:58,160 --> 01:27:03,840
you know uh head fuck i mean trying to sort of trying to work out what a pain scale is on

887
01:27:03,840 --> 01:27:08,480
someone's you know if someone's had childhood abuse or rape or you know other kind of stuff

888
01:27:08,480 --> 01:27:16,160
it's just it's impossible to do so so so why why try and judge it that's one of the the saddest

889
01:27:16,160 --> 01:27:21,600
things i had recently happened i was watching an amazing show called dope sick which i ended up

890
01:27:21,600 --> 01:27:28,400
watching twice because it was just so damn good and the oxycontin crisis that i you know stumbled

891
01:27:28,400 --> 01:27:32,240
across when i first moved to america as we moved to broward county which was the hub of the pill

892
01:27:32,240 --> 01:27:41,200
mills so we got to see it firsthand but that smiley face scale was created by purdue that was never

893
01:27:41,200 --> 01:27:45,840
supposed to be in a medical assessment tool no it was a marketing tool for them to look at their

894
01:27:45,840 --> 01:27:52,400
patient you know and uh and then assess if they need more more opiates and you know that created

895
01:27:52,400 --> 01:27:58,320
so much addiction in the u.s but what dope sick did really well was also tell the story you know

896
01:27:58,320 --> 01:28:02,640
they a lot of times they targeted you know west virginia ohio some of these places and they had

897
01:28:02,640 --> 01:28:08,160
mining and they had a lot of injuries and they had you know the the uh the financial struggles

898
01:28:08,160 --> 01:28:14,400
so you combine someone who as we just said has already some some some trauma in their life and

899
01:28:14,400 --> 01:28:21,040
now you bring a super powerful opiate into that community it's a recipe for disaster so what is

900
01:28:21,040 --> 01:28:24,880
interesting to me though is that as you touch on the book there are a lot of people that will

901
01:28:24,880 --> 01:28:30,960
break an arm break a leg be put on opiates for a week two weeks and then successfully get off so

902
01:28:30,960 --> 01:28:36,880
that's the other side when you analyze your childhood and you know you like no it really

903
01:28:36,880 --> 01:28:43,680
was a great childhood what was it that kept you in the graphs of opioids for five years

904
01:28:43,680 --> 01:28:49,840
when other people seemingly were able to walk away from it oh i don't think so i think i think that's

905
01:28:49,840 --> 01:28:59,680
a i think that's just simply the mechanics of of um of addiction i mean i think i think that

906
01:28:59,680 --> 01:29:05,600
you know to do 28 days is to is to create it is to create your rewiring the brain at that point

907
01:29:05,600 --> 01:29:10,960
i mean that that's that's a dopamine rewiring it's nothing to do with actually the the you know the

908
01:29:10,960 --> 01:29:16,720
opiates itself i mean most most addictions whether whether it's a you know whether it's

909
01:29:19,280 --> 01:29:23,600
heroin addiction or whether it's cocaine addiction or whether it's something that you know that

910
01:29:23,600 --> 01:29:28,960
actually doesn't involve any substance at all like i mean i think radicalization i think is you know

911
01:29:28,960 --> 01:29:35,200
radicalization towards you know towards hard religion uh being an Islam radical is actually

912
01:29:35,200 --> 01:29:42,640
probably the same rewiring as any other sort of form of of uh of addiction ditto for for you know

913
01:29:42,640 --> 01:29:48,480
for eating disorders you know you can have a you can have a gambling addict you can go full

914
01:29:48,480 --> 01:29:54,640
blown cold turkey if he's taken away from you know from from the casinos for a few days it's

915
01:29:54,640 --> 01:30:00,160
not like he's snorting you know roulette balls or something and you know and needs them needs them

916
01:30:00,160 --> 01:30:12,560
in his in his system so uh no i think i mean i think if you see short term uh opiates being

917
01:30:12,560 --> 01:30:20,960
used to alleviate a specific pain uh in a medical capacity it's incredibly rare to see uh to see

918
01:30:20,960 --> 01:30:30,640
that form of you know that that uh to see addiction emerge out of it um if you see it if it's longer

919
01:30:30,640 --> 01:30:34,480
term then you know and also there's you know there's other sort of psychological things in the back

920
01:30:36,080 --> 01:30:43,600
actually let's break this down what you saw with with with with opioid addiction in my understanding

921
01:30:43,600 --> 01:30:47,840
when when you were growing up and you're right is that it's the problem isn't just that the guy's

922
01:30:47,840 --> 01:30:54,000
had a bad back from his accident at the at the auto plant and is you know and is out of work

923
01:30:54,000 --> 01:31:00,000
it's also the auto plant has shut down there's no jobs in that area you know anymore and then

924
01:31:00,000 --> 01:31:06,960
you've got impoverished areas and ready access to you know to to opioids you know in the uk if you

925
01:31:06,960 --> 01:31:14,160
look at where where heroin takes takes its grip where opiates take take its grip on on communities

926
01:31:14,160 --> 01:31:19,680
you know the opiates are causing heroin addiction causing huge amounts of problem in coal mining

927
01:31:19,680 --> 01:31:24,400
areas where there's there aren't any you know there aren't any pits open there's no sort of coal mining

928
01:31:24,400 --> 01:31:30,480
jobs it's taking it's causing huge amounts of damage in deprived fishing ports where they're

929
01:31:30,480 --> 01:31:36,560
not allowed to you know to to fish anymore it's not like heroin arrives and you know

930
01:31:36,560 --> 01:31:43,760
and you know fucks these communities and then they're too high to go dig coal or or go fish

931
01:31:43,760 --> 01:31:49,440
heroin moves in after these communities have lost all sense of you know purpose when there's not

932
01:31:49,440 --> 01:31:53,200
you know there's not enough jobs there's not enough pride there's not you know families

933
01:31:53,200 --> 01:31:59,120
families breaking down that's the point that sort of that that heroin moves in it doesn't move into

934
01:31:59,120 --> 01:32:02,640
the good neighborhoods it doesn't move into you know areas where there's you know where there's

935
01:32:02,640 --> 01:32:08,880
jobs you could have tons of you know people with with you know with them with with bad backs and

936
01:32:08,880 --> 01:32:14,000
taking taking you know opioids in a you know in a wealthy area not that they're going to be doing

937
01:32:14,000 --> 01:32:21,200
that type of work where they get they get bad backs but it's not going to get its grip into

938
01:32:21,200 --> 01:32:29,600
those kind of communities um i've gone the other bit i was gonna i was gonna answer about my

939
01:32:29,600 --> 01:32:36,400
personal self i just sort of i guess why was it five years most most heroin addictions

940
01:32:36,960 --> 01:32:45,440
mature out after about between seven to ten years so i think five years was kind of short

941
01:32:46,240 --> 01:32:51,520
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

942
01:32:51,520 --> 01:32:57,520
bad you know i lived on a lighthouse and you know i dated lots of strippers and i took lots of drugs

943
01:32:57,520 --> 01:33:02,000
i mean it wasn't you know it wasn't it wasn't the worst there were some great times as well it

944
01:33:02,000 --> 01:33:06,480
wasn't sort of there you know i didn't realize there was so many strippers living in lighthouses

945
01:33:07,520 --> 01:33:10,640
no there's not you gotta go bust them in from fucking ages away

946
01:33:12,800 --> 01:33:19,280
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

947
01:33:19,280 --> 01:33:27,520
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

948
01:33:27,520 --> 01:33:34,560
kind of just it just uh i just felt my sort of you know my identity and my soul and all that kind of

949
01:33:34,560 --> 01:33:39,920
stuff but just i guess you are you know you are what you do aren't you you are what you do daily

950
01:33:40,640 --> 01:33:43,680
and i was junkie and that's just a boring person to be

951
01:33:43,680 --> 01:33:48,960
so what changed what what was was there a lowest point and then what were the tools that you used

952
01:33:48,960 --> 01:33:53,040
because i mean it's not like you just you know decide wake up one day i'm gonna i'm gonna go

953
01:33:53,040 --> 01:33:59,680
cold turkey and have no implications from it so what would you perceive as as the low if or lows

954
01:33:59,680 --> 01:34:04,960
and then you know how were you able to gain strength to climb your way out and what were

955
01:34:04,960 --> 01:34:10,640
the tools that seemed to be successful for you okay okay now that's a really good question um

956
01:34:10,640 --> 01:34:18,240
so look there was there was no there was no kind of moment where you know i woke up covered in blood

957
01:34:18,240 --> 01:34:22,800
you know having murdered the you know the money lender and her daughter or you know or any kind

958
01:34:22,800 --> 01:34:29,520
of real sort of crime and punishment dramatic shit going on on there i simply ran out of steam

959
01:34:29,520 --> 01:34:33,040
and i guess i kind of called myself or maybe i call myself looking at my dog and just realizing

960
01:34:33,040 --> 01:34:38,000
this isn't this isn't really me any you know anymore just this isn't the life that i was

961
01:34:38,000 --> 01:34:46,400
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

962
01:34:46,400 --> 01:34:53,440
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

963
01:34:53,440 --> 01:35:00,880
wanted to keep keep fucking fighting keep going on and after five years i guess what i did was i got

964
01:35:00,880 --> 01:35:06,320
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

965
01:35:06,320 --> 01:35:15,920
like i was like i was fighting it was a tiny little kind of uh rusty rusty uh yacht uh like

966
01:35:15,920 --> 01:35:21,280
some 35 foot down in down in cornwall it was tied up on this on this muddy sort of tidal creek

967
01:35:21,920 --> 01:35:28,080
in the far depths of of west cornwall i went down there with with uh with my dog and my army

968
01:35:28,080 --> 01:35:37,440
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

969
01:35:38,720 --> 01:35:44,640
to getting out of it was was kind of was to give up to give up the struggle and that kind of that

970
01:35:44,640 --> 01:35:50,880
that that surrender uh and just kind of trust that things would be all right i mean maybe that's

971
01:35:50,880 --> 01:35:56,800
maybe that's an exaggeration uh i guess heroin can kind of only keep you in the grip

972
01:35:56,800 --> 01:36:02,640
if you keep stepping into the ring with it um and and that was that was the real kind of revelation

973
01:36:03,360 --> 01:36:09,920
to me was uh was i didn't have to kind of fight it anymore and it just felt like it felt like sort

974
01:36:09,920 --> 01:36:15,360
of you know like miniature kind of enlightenment but only because i'd put myself you know down in

975
01:36:15,360 --> 01:36:21,280
the cellar and was was you know it was kind of was was in the was in the dark um i don't

976
01:36:21,280 --> 01:36:28,960
don't i don't believe rehab is a good thing um on the whole i think rehab is is has been proved

977
01:36:28,960 --> 01:36:34,480
and i think johan harry proved this it's just as successful as staying at home and doing a few 12

978
01:36:34,480 --> 01:36:41,520
step meetings you know around around the corner uh rehab is you know is is incredibly expensive

979
01:36:41,520 --> 01:36:50,000
and often they give you drugs which might mask the uh the the symptoms of your of your withdrawal

980
01:36:50,000 --> 01:36:57,520
and i think the more painful the rebirth the more painful the withdrawal the less likely

981
01:36:57,520 --> 01:37:04,000
you are to repeat it that's that's my personal personal theory on this um if i did it all over

982
01:37:04,000 --> 01:37:09,120
again i probably would have stopped the boat with with maybe a few more protein shakes and some

983
01:37:09,120 --> 01:37:14,160
decent hydration and you know and and things like that but i didn't do any of that and i just i just

984
01:37:14,160 --> 01:37:19,760
i just did i think on water uh so it was it was pretty it was pretty horrible but

985
01:37:20,640 --> 01:37:27,520
look coming off heroin is is it's like a you know it's like a really bad flu i mean that that's

986
01:37:27,520 --> 01:37:32,640
just on the on the physical side of it psychologically it's it's pretty screwed up

987
01:37:32,640 --> 01:37:39,280
because it's called kicking the habit because your limbs they're always they're always moving

988
01:37:39,280 --> 01:37:44,720
you know every single bit of you just just just wants to move and so it's sort of it's a three to

989
01:37:44,720 --> 01:37:52,160
five day sleep deprivation torture you know uh on on top of on top of a flu so you feel you feel

990
01:37:52,160 --> 01:37:57,600
pretty pretty miserable and crap and you feel pretty stupid if it's you know if it's your clever

991
01:37:57,600 --> 01:38:02,960
experiment which you designed yourself what kept you off it

992
01:38:02,960 --> 01:38:09,440
um do you know the thing about heroin is that is that i don't know whether heroin's easier to give

993
01:38:09,440 --> 01:38:15,920
up than smoking but but no one you know i don't see lots of people jabbing up on the streets you

994
01:38:15,920 --> 01:38:21,120
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

995
01:38:21,120 --> 01:38:27,360
of that life you know and i was i was just dating quite a nice lady back uh back then who was you

996
01:38:27,360 --> 01:38:33,760
know who was on heroin too and but that was kind of that was that that was really the kind of the

997
01:38:33,760 --> 01:38:40,960
size of my heroin universe so so when i you know quit heroin and and you know avoided her calls or

998
01:38:40,960 --> 01:38:48,320
you know or didn't call her probably knowing me um uh that was that was the end of my sort of that

999
01:38:48,320 --> 01:38:54,560
was the end of my heroin world again and which made it a lot easier than than you know some of

1000
01:38:54,560 --> 01:39:01,360
my friends who've you know who grew up in families or in communities where there was a lot of heroin

1001
01:39:01,360 --> 01:39:06,880
around you know and that makes makes giving giving it up a hell of a lot trickier yeah yeah i think

1002
01:39:06,880 --> 01:39:13,200
you will mention that you know you have to change person place and people place and possessions i

1003
01:39:13,200 --> 01:39:17,920
think it was so you know whatever i think this is important even for the first respondent mental

1004
01:39:17,920 --> 01:39:22,720
health conversation you know if you're not if you're not changing things around you and and

1005
01:39:22,720 --> 01:39:28,000
and bringing your family in and hoping that they can get some some um access to therapy whatever

1006
01:39:28,000 --> 01:39:33,920
it is and improving your finances you're gonna do this beautiful little you know 30 day military or

1007
01:39:33,920 --> 01:39:37,600
first responder retreat and you're gonna start healing and then you're gonna go back to the same

1008
01:39:37,600 --> 01:39:42,400
shit show that you left so you may not be able to pack up and go live in a lighthouse but i think

1009
01:39:42,400 --> 01:39:46,400
it's a really important conversation you know cutting ties with people that were toxic that

1010
01:39:46,400 --> 01:39:52,000
were enabling whatever it was or or physically moving or whatever it was or whatever it was

1011
01:39:52,000 --> 01:39:57,520
physically moving if it's that you know bad of an issue you know just uprooting with your family and

1012
01:39:57,520 --> 01:40:02,480
trying to do a clean start but yeah that's why i think a lot of the follow-ups in these mental

1013
01:40:02,480 --> 01:40:08,000
health programs are so important because you of course you're gonna do well you know at the beach

1014
01:40:08,000 --> 01:40:12,960
surfing every day for two weeks in costa rica but at some point you got to go back to reality have

1015
01:40:12,960 --> 01:40:20,720
you fixed that part definitely and have you fixed the things which caused you heroin is just the

1016
01:40:20,720 --> 01:40:28,400
symptom you know heroin is just a painkiller what is causing that pain absolutely well speaking of

1017
01:40:28,400 --> 01:40:33,840
that we were talking before we hit record and i've talked about this and i think we kind of

1018
01:40:33,840 --> 01:40:41,840
were agreeing on on this element there is um there is undoubtedly a horrendous mental health crisis

1019
01:40:41,840 --> 01:40:46,480
in uniform you know and i just we just lost another firefighter in california a couple days

1020
01:40:46,480 --> 01:40:54,560
ago to suicide that being said the push is always we've got to remove the stigma and i feel like

1021
01:40:55,520 --> 01:41:02,000
that message has kind of run its course now um and what i see is you know some people with some

1022
01:41:02,000 --> 01:41:06,320
incredible stories who are beacons of light out there and then some other people it's almost

1023
01:41:06,320 --> 01:41:10,160
kind of like doom and gloom but well i'm just living with my ptsd now you know and it's

1024
01:41:10,720 --> 01:41:14,800
it's it's a shame because i'm not saying that everyone's gonna have this

1025
01:41:14,800 --> 01:41:23,200
you know miraculous rebirth but in general i truly believe that when you process your struggles your

1026
01:41:23,200 --> 01:41:28,560
trauma whatever you want to label them as that becomes a superpower i really believe that that

1027
01:41:28,560 --> 01:41:34,400
creates strength and growth on the other side which then infuses a beautiful message of hope

1028
01:41:34,400 --> 01:41:39,520
to the trauma story and including the performance like when you have a calm mind you are going to

1029
01:41:39,520 --> 01:41:44,800
be a better operator firefighter in a police officer whatever it is so what is your perspective

1030
01:41:44,800 --> 01:41:52,720
on that principle so i mean just to take things back to you know to absolute sort of basics um

1031
01:41:54,160 --> 01:41:59,840
let's say i mean you know you and i walking down the road and we're we're relatively well adjusted

1032
01:42:00,400 --> 01:42:06,800
human beings and some traumatic event happens to us we were in a car crash we witnessed a shooting

1033
01:42:06,800 --> 01:42:12,080
there's some some some bad shit goes down there's kind of like there's four things that can happen

1034
01:42:12,080 --> 01:42:19,840
there one is that you stay at your baseline yep you're unmarked by that trauma and the definition

1035
01:42:19,840 --> 01:42:25,040
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

1036
01:42:25,040 --> 01:42:30,000
anyone who is who is who is honestly robust and i don't i don't really want to because i think

1037
01:42:30,000 --> 01:42:37,120
they're kind of they'd probably be psychopathic uh to to be robust most people dip you know they

1038
01:42:37,120 --> 01:42:44,640
have post-traumatic stress and that'll you know go on for you know i mean it can be a week it can be

1039
01:42:44,640 --> 01:42:49,600
up to about sort of you know about about three months they're marked by by that trauma and they're

1040
01:42:49,600 --> 01:42:55,280
upset and you know cry they have sleepless nights they might have you know some sort of form of you

1041
01:42:55,280 --> 01:43:00,880
know flashbacks or or intrusive intrusive thoughts but they return to their to their baseline after

1042
01:43:00,880 --> 01:43:06,720
let's say about about three months tends to be you know when you start to worry if it's if it's if

1043
01:43:06,720 --> 01:43:13,040
it's longer than that or you're walking on the street bad shit goes down you go you go down as

1044
01:43:13,040 --> 01:43:20,160
as as because of that and you stay down you stay down longer than three months and that's post

1045
01:43:20,160 --> 01:43:28,240
traumatic stress disorder yeah the third thing you can do he bounced back you kind of you you

1046
01:43:28,240 --> 01:43:34,000
you you come back up you're sorry i'm getting confused now you go back up again and that's

1047
01:43:34,000 --> 01:43:41,040
resilience to return to your you know to your your natural your natural baseline now the other one is

1048
01:43:41,040 --> 01:43:47,120
you pop back you go down you come back up you reach your former baseline that's resilience but

1049
01:43:47,120 --> 01:43:55,120
then you go on to form new and profound and interesting insights into you know into yourself

1050
01:43:55,120 --> 01:44:02,160
and it's not it's not just how you were marked by by trauma but how you took yourself back up

1051
01:44:02,160 --> 01:44:10,160
and used actually used that adversity to you know to come to to to rebuild and to grow and to exceed

1052
01:44:10,160 --> 01:44:15,120
your your former former baseline and i think it's important that people that people know

1053
01:44:15,120 --> 01:44:21,520
that it's completely natural to to to be upset by something but just because you're upset by something

1054
01:44:21,520 --> 01:44:27,520
and you're stressed by that trauma doesn't necessarily mean you're going under in fact

1055
01:44:27,520 --> 01:44:33,440
it's actually rarer for you to for for you to go under and get pro post-traumatic stress disorder

1056
01:44:33,440 --> 01:44:40,080
than it is to be resilient or to to achieve post post-traumatic growth and so there is you know

1057
01:44:40,080 --> 01:44:46,080
there is you know that and post-traumatic growth is is a new term it was termed in the 1990s by

1058
01:44:46,800 --> 01:44:49,680
was it richard tedeschi and and and lawrence

1059
01:44:51,840 --> 01:44:56,160
calhoun you know and they interviewed lots of people who had had you know who'd lost family

1060
01:44:56,160 --> 01:45:02,560
members to you know to murder or to you know to cancer they interviewed you know prisoners

1061
01:45:02,560 --> 01:45:08,240
they interviewed people who'd lost children and they found that actually there were more

1062
01:45:08,240 --> 01:45:14,720
reports of post-traumatic growth and there were reports of post-traumatic stress disorder and so

1063
01:45:14,720 --> 01:45:21,440
it's it's a new term in terms of psychological literature but actually post-traumatic growth is

1064
01:45:21,440 --> 01:45:26,320
one of it's like this is the very sort of engine of of evolution it's certainly the foundation of

1065
01:45:26,320 --> 01:45:31,680
just about all religions who are you know that are worth anything and that there that there is

1066
01:45:31,680 --> 01:45:38,400
you know the the core message there is that there is some meaning in in suffering and it's our job

1067
01:45:38,400 --> 01:45:45,200
as people who've suffered trauma to try and to try and extract that meaning from all the

1068
01:45:45,200 --> 01:45:51,840
horror and use it to become better people better better fathers better you know better

1069
01:45:51,840 --> 01:45:58,320
colleagues better members you know members of our our community but it's inherent on us not to take

1070
01:45:58,320 --> 01:46:09,520
that trauma back into our our personal lives and I don't know I did I did a bunch of trips during

1071
01:46:10,320 --> 01:46:18,720
during COVID times to to war zones and back and forth and you know wearing having to wear masks on

1072
01:46:19,520 --> 01:46:24,880
on on airplanes and all that stuff that you know we all have to do during during the COVID times

1073
01:46:24,880 --> 01:46:31,840
but I sort of I've started to sort of think of of trauma as you know kind of like a virus

1074
01:46:31,840 --> 01:46:38,400
you know if I go off to let's say Syria and I witness something traumatic I should almost

1075
01:46:38,400 --> 01:46:45,680
sort of behave like I've got I've got COVID yeah if I should I should I should come back I should

1076
01:46:45,680 --> 01:46:52,800
isolate I should isolate myself from my community from my family members until I get over this

1077
01:46:52,800 --> 01:46:58,960
trauma instead of wearing a mask I shouldn't really speak about my my trauma unless I'm talking to a

1078
01:46:58,960 --> 01:47:04,320
medical professional who's you know who's an expert in trauma or I'm talking to my colleagues

1079
01:47:04,320 --> 01:47:09,520
who know you know who are in that sort of circle of circle of trust who can deal with you know who

1080
01:47:09,520 --> 01:47:16,960
understand the terminology of trauma but I do think I I'm slightly worried that we're just talking

1081
01:47:16,960 --> 01:47:25,200
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

1082
01:47:25,200 --> 01:47:32,160
a lot to be said in talking about it in the right way and and by that I mean talking to

1083
01:47:34,080 --> 01:47:41,520
psychologists, counselors, people who are trained to deal with trauma and talking about it within our

1084
01:47:41,520 --> 01:47:47,600
our tight kind of community of people who are used to dealing with it I don't think

1085
01:47:48,480 --> 01:47:55,680
I'm not sure what the benefit is of us talking to people in the wider community or are we kind

1086
01:47:55,680 --> 01:48:00,320
of infecting them with our trauma so this is a rough idea which I'm which I'm having at the moment

1087
01:48:00,320 --> 01:48:08,960
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

1088
01:48:08,960 --> 01:48:15,440
not solution focused it's oh my god we've got a crisis what are we gonna do 22 a day blah blah blah

1089
01:48:16,560 --> 01:48:21,440
and for example the fire service we are exposed to a shitload of trauma I mean I'm writing my second

1090
01:48:21,440 --> 01:48:25,760
book now and I'm just going through the little mental roller decks going you know and it's funny

1091
01:48:25,760 --> 01:48:30,880
because people say uh you know the worst thing you can ask a firefighter is what's the worst thing

1092
01:48:30,880 --> 01:48:36,160
that you've seen well some of these are going to be in the story so you know congratulations careful

1093
01:48:36,160 --> 01:48:42,320
what you wish for because there's going to be some horrible shit in this but for example the the

1094
01:48:42,320 --> 01:48:48,000
mental health conversation of fire service is always what we've seen well when for example we

1095
01:48:48,000 --> 01:48:55,520
have a profession that works so much is so under slept and there's a resistance to addressing the

1096
01:48:55,520 --> 01:49:01,280
shift work as a big reason why these men and women aren't able to process that so to go back to your

1097
01:49:01,280 --> 01:49:07,280
analogy you've gone in the down you're trying to get up to baseline at least but the sleep deprivation

1098
01:49:07,280 --> 01:49:11,440
is keeping you in that hole now you see another fucking horrible thing now you're even deeper now

1099
01:49:11,440 --> 01:49:15,920
you're even deeper and then you obviously factor in things that happen before you ever put on the

1100
01:49:15,920 --> 01:49:21,280
uniform organizational stress and betrayal there's layers and layers and layers so if you have a

1101
01:49:21,280 --> 01:49:28,000
nuanced intelligent conversation that then becomes solution focused because you're identifying all the

1102
01:49:28,000 --> 01:49:33,600
pieces of the pie chart that are causing you to struggle now again there's that hope you know you

1103
01:49:33,600 --> 01:49:39,120
talk about psychedelics and equine therapy and all these things outside of the you know talk therapy

1104
01:49:39,120 --> 01:49:46,320
and meds there's hope so i think that we can talk as much but we need to shift the focus on what

1105
01:49:46,320 --> 01:49:54,960
we're talking about dude i know i like that i like that a lot i also think i certainly in terms of

1106
01:49:54,960 --> 01:50:01,440
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

1107
01:50:01,440 --> 01:50:08,240
ritual to how i you know to how i deal with with any kind of stress or trauma in a war zone but look

1108
01:50:08,240 --> 01:50:16,000
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

1109
01:50:16,000 --> 01:50:22,560
a few days to prepare for it hopefully then i get on a plane and i fly off to a distant country i see

1110
01:50:22,560 --> 01:50:30,400
and do xyz over there and then afterwards i'll put in a couple of days in a hotel there to sort

1111
01:50:30,400 --> 01:50:35,840
of decompress and then maybe i'll kind of you know maybe i'll come back to you know to this place in

1112
01:50:35,840 --> 01:50:43,360
france before i go i go to go see you know go see you know family members and i have a lot of time

1113
01:50:43,360 --> 01:50:48,160
to sort of to compress and to sort of enter and to decompress and also the you know the stuff that

1114
01:50:48,160 --> 01:50:54,640
i've seen is is thousands of miles away you know so that that's a look that's very very different

1115
01:50:55,520 --> 01:51:02,800
from you know it's it's acute that i have a huge period of recovery afterwards what you're describing

1116
01:51:02,800 --> 01:51:07,040
and what you know what what why i've got so you know such a huge amount of respect for for your

1117
01:51:07,040 --> 01:51:12,240
profession is that you're doing this stuff on your doorstep that shit follows you home do you know

1118
01:51:12,240 --> 01:51:15,280
i mean and definitely follows you home if you're not you know if you're not getting the right

1119
01:51:15,280 --> 01:51:21,520
amounts of sleep you know you're much more likely to go on that's that that's chronic long-term

1120
01:51:21,520 --> 01:51:28,000
exposure to to trauma which is very very different from the stuff that you know that that i think

1121
01:51:28,800 --> 01:51:35,520
most you know myself or you know or people war correspondents or people who work in war zones

1122
01:51:35,520 --> 01:51:40,320
are you know are dealing with it's a much more complex thing that you're that you're talking

1123
01:51:40,320 --> 01:51:45,280
about yeah yeah i mean it is and i've had the military say exactly that you know we get to leave

1124
01:51:45,280 --> 01:51:50,880
it in afghanistan in iraq you know and then to make it even worse so i still have never lived

1125
01:51:51,440 --> 01:51:55,680
in the town that i worked as a firefighter it might be you know one or two towns over but never

1126
01:51:55,680 --> 01:52:00,960
right there so i'll volunteer fire service a lot of times they're running in their own neighborhoods

1127
01:52:00,960 --> 01:52:06,880
on their own friends and community so that's even another layer yeah that's my idea of a nightmare

1128
01:52:06,880 --> 01:52:13,840
to you know to to turn up to a to a call where it's someone i know all their kids yeah that's

1129
01:52:13,840 --> 01:52:22,880
that's horrible i think i don't i don't i don't necessarily know what what all this means but i'm

1130
01:52:22,880 --> 01:52:29,840
making sort of more of a research journey now into positive psychology and that that interests me

1131
01:52:29,840 --> 01:52:37,040
because you know traditional traditional psychology it it's reactive uh you know you're going on the

1132
01:52:37,040 --> 01:52:42,240
road something bad happens and and traditional psychology's job is to return you to that form

1133
01:52:42,240 --> 01:52:46,240
of baseline at that point it cuts off you know it doesn't want to it doesn't want to know anymore

1134
01:52:46,240 --> 01:52:51,200
it just wants to get you back to that that little thing positive psychology seems to be much more

1135
01:52:51,200 --> 01:52:57,920
sort of much much more proactive and you're doing the training before the traumatic you know event

1136
01:52:57,920 --> 01:53:03,120
happens and i think i think that the sort of the future of i hope that a lot of the sort of the

1137
01:53:03,120 --> 01:53:09,760
future of of how professionals like ours deal with with with trauma is actually putting in

1138
01:53:10,400 --> 01:53:18,320
really solid good daily mental health training before any of the bad stuff goes you know goes

1139
01:53:18,320 --> 01:53:24,560
down so we're much more sort of you know resilient and open to post-traumatic growth than let's say

1140
01:53:24,560 --> 01:53:30,480
previous previous generations but we've just done 20 years on the you know in in the in the

1141
01:53:31,280 --> 01:53:38,960
war on on on terror and you know if there's a good thing about you know about all of this is that is

1142
01:53:38,960 --> 01:53:47,120
that you know a very wealthy nation has subjected an entire generation several generations to to

1143
01:53:47,120 --> 01:53:53,200
trauma and when that happens generally a lot of money follows you know into working out what the

1144
01:53:53,200 --> 01:54:00,240
what the cure is you know and and i certainly know having talked to you know to to my um you know

1145
01:54:00,240 --> 01:54:07,440
friends and and former colleagues that there is a wealth of possible you know cures you know out

1146
01:54:07,440 --> 01:54:12,400
out there and also we're one of the most of a psychologically literate generations that that's

1147
01:54:12,400 --> 01:54:16,880
you know that's that there's been we're having these we're having these conversations but you

1148
01:54:16,880 --> 01:54:21,360
know there's there's incredible shit going on as you as you know with mdma therapy or ketamine

1149
01:54:21,360 --> 01:54:26,800
therapy or you know even dmt therapy and psilocybin and you know and and all of that so

1150
01:54:28,320 --> 01:54:35,680
i don't think look there's there's there's always there's always an excuse to have excuse you know

1151
01:54:35,680 --> 01:54:40,240
you said some people like to sort of nurse their ptsd it's almost sort of it's almost their

1152
01:54:40,240 --> 01:54:44,800
you know their their black dog is almost their best friend and you know and and pet but there's

1153
01:54:44,800 --> 01:54:52,000
not an excuse nowadays to not be trying to do something about about your ptsd uh because just

1154
01:54:52,000 --> 01:54:56,480
because so many so many people so many brave people have seen way more fucking shit than i

1155
01:54:56,480 --> 01:55:02,560
than than i will ever see you know are tackling it so i just i think that now is the time to be

1156
01:55:02,560 --> 01:55:08,480
fucking getting getting stuck in is that is that too harsh or no no no i think it is because there's

1157
01:55:08,480 --> 01:55:14,960
always anomalies as you know there's uh i had a firefighter on um uh pat kenney amazing beautiful

1158
01:55:14,960 --> 01:55:21,360
soul of a man um and he lost his son shawn to suicide and and they you know labeled it as

1159
01:55:21,360 --> 01:55:28,000
terminal suicide which i know it sounds like an a bizarre term but basically it's uh i think it was

1160
01:55:28,000 --> 01:55:32,560
terminal so maybe it was term but anyway the point is that's the kind of person that no matter what

1161
01:55:32,560 --> 01:55:36,720
you do the moment you turn their head you get they're going to try and do it that's not most

1162
01:55:36,720 --> 01:55:41,920
people most people you know there's that feeling of burdensome there's that wanting the pain to end

1163
01:55:41,920 --> 01:55:46,800
but it's the miswiring again 100 and obviously this is miswiring too but you know most people

1164
01:55:46,800 --> 01:55:52,000
that i think that i've heard story tell about their near suicide attempt or actual suicide

1165
01:55:52,000 --> 01:55:57,120
attempt that they they survived you know the brain has become so miswired that there's this

1166
01:55:57,120 --> 01:56:01,920
distortion of reality that they believe that they are such a burden to the world to their family to

1167
01:56:01,920 --> 01:56:07,040
their kids whoever it is that it's a selfless courageous act to just take themselves out of

1168
01:56:07,040 --> 01:56:12,000
the equation therefore their family will be happier that's the group that you can absolutely

1169
01:56:12,000 --> 01:56:18,080
help if someone has been born and maybe just for whatever horrendous reason their their you know

1170
01:56:18,080 --> 01:56:24,320
neurochemistry is just off where no matter what you do whatever therapy you've a loving relationship

1171
01:56:24,320 --> 01:56:29,440
that they can't overcome it that may be an anomaly and that is absolutely tragic but that doesn't

1172
01:56:29,440 --> 01:56:34,400
mean everyone else you know and it's the same with everything i mean every every you know

1173
01:56:36,560 --> 01:56:43,920
scenario has an exception to the rule but i 100 believe that most people once they actually have

1174
01:56:43,920 --> 01:56:50,160
the capacity to identify what the problems are and find their own individual personal toolbox i'm

1175
01:56:50,160 --> 01:56:56,080
going to use cbd i'm going to have a dog and i'm going to join this hiking group that's what works

1176
01:56:56,080 --> 01:57:02,080
for me beautiful then i think there's this it's encouraging it's exciting the hope that you can

1177
01:57:02,080 --> 01:57:09,120
grow from this and then just as a as an example i never got in a very very very low place in the

1178
01:57:09,120 --> 01:57:14,800
fire service and when i was four years old i almost died in a house fire when i was a few years older

1179
01:57:14,800 --> 01:57:20,320
than that a wall collapsed by cheddar gorge almost crushed me and i missed the car by a few feet

1180
01:57:20,320 --> 01:57:28,400
yeah yeah um and parents had a horrible divorce you know so there was trauma but as i always tell

1181
01:57:28,400 --> 01:57:35,280
people equal and opposite i grew up on a farm i ate healthy food i was outside working with my hands

1182
01:57:35,280 --> 01:57:39,680
getting muddy people came through the farmhouse because my dad was a vet and veterinary surgeon

1183
01:57:39,680 --> 01:57:45,440
everyone from gypsies to extended royal family so i got to see this diverse spectrum of people

1184
01:57:45,440 --> 01:57:53,200
and so completely by winning the lottery that was it where i was born i had the tools ingrained that

1185
01:57:53,200 --> 01:57:57,760
helped process these hard things and so to the point where i forgot i was even in a house fire

1186
01:57:57,760 --> 01:58:01,520
until i started writing my first book and i was like oh yeah that's probably why i became a fire

1187
01:58:03,520 --> 01:58:10,560
yeah thank you yeah thank you so so that's my point though is is that hope if that carried over to me

1188
01:58:10,560 --> 01:58:16,320
having resilience as a firefighter and never getting to that really really dark place then that's a

1189
01:58:16,320 --> 01:58:22,320
walking example of you can have stuff happen you can grow from it and it can become an asset you

1190
01:58:22,320 --> 01:58:27,360
can become a better version of yourself whether it's in uniform whether it's as a parent whatever

1191
01:58:27,360 --> 01:58:32,480
it is and it's an ongoing roller coaster of course i mean i've had highs and lows you know my whole

1192
01:58:32,480 --> 01:58:38,320
life but there's a difference between being depressed and being in a shitty place and sitting

1193
01:58:38,320 --> 01:58:43,040
with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol in your hand two very different scenarios and if we can

1194
01:58:43,040 --> 01:58:48,800
infuse that hope i think will really pull a lot of these men women and children away from that

1195
01:58:48,800 --> 01:58:53,520
because they will be inspired that there is this beautiful version of themselves on the other side

1196
01:58:53,520 --> 01:59:02,880
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

1197
01:59:02,880 --> 01:59:15,040
i think i think that men men on the whole only build big walls around you know around a terrible

1198
01:59:15,040 --> 01:59:21,360
emptiness they don't tend to be all my friends you know who've got kind of you know big walls

1199
01:59:21,360 --> 01:59:26,720
it's it's because it's because they haven't done something and it's not because they've got some

1200
01:59:26,720 --> 01:59:31,200
terrible secret all the ones i know who've got you know terrible secrets or terrible traumas

1201
01:59:31,200 --> 01:59:36,480
you can't shut the little fuckers up about it i mean they're just talking fucking great fucking

1202
01:59:36,480 --> 01:59:41,280
talk you know just keep keep fucking talking because because that is that is you know we

1203
01:59:41,280 --> 01:59:47,680
are going to find the solution by doing that but but but but talk amongst let's talk amongst

1204
01:59:47,680 --> 01:59:53,600
ourselves i think i think that if you know if trauma happens to you it is beholden on you

1205
01:59:54,240 --> 02:00:00,240
you know to protect your family and your community and so so you know as best you can and i know

1206
02:00:00,240 --> 02:00:05,680
there's there's horror there's terrible cases out there but but we we need to you know you need to

1207
02:00:05,680 --> 02:00:12,880
protect your your kind of your your loved ones uh and you know seek yeah just just just talk talk

1208
02:00:14,160 --> 02:00:18,720
talk amongst your peer group you know find find proper medical help find counseling find you know

1209
02:00:18,720 --> 02:00:25,440
find find all of that because you know because it's the best time uh as far as i know in human

1210
02:00:25,440 --> 02:00:32,480
history to you know to to suffer this i couldn't agree more well i want to transition to the book

1211
02:00:32,480 --> 02:00:36,000
i'd love to hear a kind of like a concept of what you're writing about for the second one but your

1212
02:00:36,000 --> 02:00:44,400
first book high risk to me the way that you really kind of help people understand ideas is through

1213
02:00:44,400 --> 02:00:50,480
storytelling something that you know humans have done for millennia um what was it that made you

1214
02:00:50,480 --> 02:00:59,120
decide to put all these emails notes journals etc together and actually write a book um well

1215
02:01:00,800 --> 02:01:05,760
i just wanted to get those stories out of my head uh and the best way i knew of doing that was to

1216
02:01:05,760 --> 02:01:14,480
get them down onto onto paper i did it just simply as a sort of as a uh a bit of free therapy you

1217
02:01:14,480 --> 02:01:19,440
know at best i sort of thought i was going to print it up for you know maybe do a hundred copies

1218
02:01:19,440 --> 02:01:25,440
and you know give it to poor uh unsuspecting friends at you know at christmas or on their on

1219
02:01:25,440 --> 02:01:30,320
their birthdays i never thought that it would you know it would turn into this book or it would be

1220
02:01:30,880 --> 02:01:36,800
as successful as it as it has been so you know people people talk about you know people talk

1221
02:01:36,800 --> 02:01:41,680
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

1222
02:01:41,680 --> 02:01:48,880
to this to this book for me it was it was you know excising a tumor uh and getting that out of my

1223
02:01:48,880 --> 02:01:54,960
out of my system and i felt i just felt lighter the more the more i wrote um because it was just a

1224
02:01:54,960 --> 02:01:59,520
way of having you know the stories that kind of kept repeating they just stopped repeating if they

1225
02:01:59,520 --> 02:02:06,720
were they were on the page um and it was an immensely powerful tool i originally originally

1226
02:02:06,720 --> 02:02:10,880
i think it was going to be called extremists that i'd known and loved because i was interested in

1227
02:02:11,600 --> 02:02:16,320
in all the sort of extreme characters which i've met along the path and also in terms of the

1228
02:02:16,320 --> 02:02:22,000
similarities that i saw between them that kind of fascinated me that you know the junkie was actually

1229
02:02:22,000 --> 02:02:26,960
slightly similar to the to the special forces guy who was quite similar to the jihadi you know

1230
02:02:26,960 --> 02:02:33,280
extremist uh so i was lucky enough that the publisher came along gave me gave me an advance

1231
02:02:33,280 --> 02:02:38,480
and then i could not only write all my stories down which was which was which was one thing

1232
02:02:38,480 --> 02:02:45,040
but i could actually dig into the into the science and look at you know at dopamine and

1233
02:02:45,040 --> 02:02:52,160
oxytocin and sort of the the neuroscience of you know of extremism and and risk taking so it was a

1234
02:02:52,160 --> 02:02:57,600
it was a joy to spend a you know a couple of years just just writing that and getting all of that

1235
02:02:57,600 --> 02:03:03,440
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

1236
02:03:03,440 --> 02:03:08,000
like i said an incredible job and you've got some some pretty powerful reviews from some you know

1237
02:03:08,000 --> 02:03:13,440
coffee or die vice times magazine so you know obviously it was extremely well received but i

1238
02:03:13,440 --> 02:03:19,120
can totally relate to that catharsis i got on the first one but actually this one this fiction that

1239
02:03:19,120 --> 02:03:23,360
i'm writing now which is based on you know obviously some real stuff that happened to me as well but

1240
02:03:23,360 --> 02:03:29,280
this is a fictional character and it goes back in time there's some real historic events but i i'm

1241
02:03:29,280 --> 02:03:34,400
there in the the burden phase still but i can feel it you know chapter by chapter just like you said

1242
02:03:34,400 --> 02:03:40,000
it kind of sloughs a little bit and i know even though this is a completely fictional story

1243
02:03:40,000 --> 02:03:44,640
that when i'm done it's going to be this huge breath of relief because it's not just like my

1244
02:03:44,640 --> 02:03:50,720
own stuff so much as the messages that i feel like people need to hear at the moment so once

1245
02:03:50,720 --> 02:03:56,160
that's kind of out into the ether then you can go okay i've done i've done that part now so

1246
02:03:56,160 --> 02:04:01,360
i totally understand what you're talking about dude good for you and no i think i think i would

1247
02:04:01,360 --> 02:04:08,080
love to have the balls to tackle to tackle fiction because i do think you can tell greater truths

1248
02:04:08,080 --> 02:04:12,720
with fiction than than you know than with non-fiction i'm just terrible at dialogue

1249
02:04:12,720 --> 02:04:17,840
as you can probably tell from the podcast so my poor editor is just gonna have an absolute

1250
02:04:17,840 --> 02:04:22,080
shit fit when she sees my first draft i kind of remember if you're supposed to do you know

1251
02:04:22,080 --> 02:04:28,080
full stop or comma within the quotation marks and you know so yeah i put the mark inside outside

1252
02:04:28,080 --> 02:04:35,040
inside outside i can't walk out you that yeah all right well just just talking about the next one

1253
02:04:35,040 --> 02:04:39,840
do you is there a kind of overview or a kind of area that you're wanting to write about with book two

1254
02:04:39,840 --> 02:04:48,800
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

1255
02:04:48,800 --> 02:04:54,960
series of a series of jobs working for different organizations but looking at archaeological sites

1256
02:04:54,960 --> 02:05:04,160
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

1257
02:05:04,160 --> 02:05:10,640
all of these places and visit some of these archaeological sites and see whether they're at risk

1258
02:05:10,640 --> 02:05:17,040
and trying to pair up local local people with some some foreign foreign money to protect these

1259
02:05:17,040 --> 02:05:24,160
these areas uh these these sites and yeah it's been you know it's been there's a lot of it has

1260
02:05:24,160 --> 02:05:29,360
been a lot of fighting in the last 20 years in in the middle east but this area is the cradle of

1261
02:05:29,360 --> 02:05:36,640
civilization we owe these people especially the iraqis you know absolutely everything they invented

1262
02:05:37,200 --> 02:05:45,120
writing farming the wheel beer you know maths and all of this and we owe it to them to you know to

1263
02:05:45,120 --> 02:05:52,880
help them protect their own their own sites so it's that it's a it's a dream job where um i travel

1264
02:05:52,880 --> 02:05:58,000
to these countries that you know that that i i love and i get to eat as many kebabs as i could

1265
02:05:58,000 --> 02:06:07,280
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

1266
02:06:08,000 --> 02:06:14,560
a series of you know a series of artifacts and and and sites which you know will will tell the

1267
02:06:14,560 --> 02:06:24,080
story of what's going on out there um yeah and also just the the local heroes and sometimes the

1268
02:06:24,080 --> 02:06:29,600
local baddies who are who are obsessed by this archaeology whether it's the you know it's the

1269
02:06:30,400 --> 02:06:36,160
it's the poor farmer who is you know who is looting a local archaeological site to you know to to pay

1270
02:06:36,160 --> 02:06:42,800
for his you know family family food or it's you know it's it's a local jihadi who's making a you

1271
02:06:42,800 --> 02:06:49,040
know a buck looting you know some sort of site in uh in in wherever these are

1272
02:06:49,040 --> 02:06:52,320
they're interesting characters they're interesting characters engaging with some of the most

1273
02:06:52,320 --> 02:06:59,120
incredible archaeology you know in in the world which is fundamental to to who we are so it has

1274
02:06:59,120 --> 02:07:03,040
it has all the kind of you know all the all the all the all the good plot dynamics there

1275
02:07:04,240 --> 02:07:10,480
so when we circle around to the indiana jones comment at the beginning yeah you found yourself

1276
02:07:10,480 --> 02:07:15,280
in a very unique position where unlike the actual archaeologists themselves there is an

1277
02:07:15,280 --> 02:07:21,440
element of protection and bad guys and good guys um i don't know definitely i mean that's the

1278
02:07:21,440 --> 02:07:26,880
sometimes i worry that i'm sort of leading this you know that i've got i've got sort of the fantasy

1279
02:07:26,880 --> 02:07:32,960
life of you know of my sort of 15 year old spotty spotty self i just wish to you know too hard when

1280
02:07:32,960 --> 02:07:38,160
i was when i was i was that age you know a few years back just after the sort of you know well

1281
02:07:38,160 --> 02:07:44,320
a few years back just after the sort of you know well when the when the battle for for mozl you

1282
02:07:44,320 --> 02:07:50,720
know was just finishing i found myself you know crawling through isis tunnels you know that and

1283
02:07:50,720 --> 02:07:57,520
you know checking out for sort of you know for for booby traps uh you know and and seeing

1284
02:07:58,080 --> 02:08:01,680
seeing stuff that basically just kind of came straight out of an indiana jones film there

1285
02:08:01,680 --> 02:08:08,880
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

1286
02:08:08,880 --> 02:08:16,000
good life and you know indiana jones wasn't a bad role model in in in the 80s he was you know he was

1287
02:08:16,000 --> 02:08:22,160
a he was a proper dude wasn't he yeah absolutely well we talked about your books then first are

1288
02:08:22,160 --> 02:08:27,200
the closing questions is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend it can be related

1289
02:08:27,200 --> 02:08:37,360
to our discussion today or completely unrelated oh man what yours obviously thank you yeah uh

1290
02:08:38,240 --> 02:08:46,320
anything by anything by our friends at the at the dead reckoning collective uh because they are they

1291
02:08:46,320 --> 02:08:53,440
are a gifted gifted bunch of of uh of writers um and also i think i think to be honest i think

1292
02:08:53,440 --> 02:09:02,880
anyone who is looking at uh looking at trauma and looking at writing about it should do one

1293
02:09:02,880 --> 02:09:08,080
of their courses they've got some very very good courses uh going on at the moment um

1294
02:09:10,000 --> 02:09:15,360
going on in the next the next year or so uh and i think writing is a great way of dealing with

1295
02:09:15,360 --> 02:09:19,440
with with trauma and you don't have to create great art or great poetry out of it

1296
02:09:19,440 --> 02:09:24,880
just simply keeping a journal and keeping up keeping a log of your recovery is is a very very

1297
02:09:24,880 --> 02:09:36,240
powerful uh tool um who else's uh sort of books can i recommend um one of my favorite books uh

1298
02:09:37,520 --> 02:09:41,680
although the author's name is going to elude me right now is a book called war is a force

1299
02:09:41,680 --> 02:09:47,840
that gives us meaning war is a force that gives us meaning that's probably one of the most

1300
02:09:47,840 --> 02:09:54,240
incredible books about why people go to war and about the sort of the addictive nature

1301
02:09:54,240 --> 02:10:02,320
of war and trauma that's pretty powerful and then look anything by sebastian junger if you're gonna

1302
02:10:02,320 --> 02:10:10,960
you know i mean he's just he's just the man tribe um freedom all of those they're just uh are some

1303
02:10:10,960 --> 02:10:15,520
of my favorite books when it comes i know you've had him on a couple of times haven't you yeah he's

1304
02:10:15,520 --> 02:10:19,840
been on three or four times but i'm gonna be getting back on hopefully because he's about

1305
02:10:19,840 --> 02:10:24,080
to release his new book on his near-death experience so he's looking at mortality really

1306
02:10:24,080 --> 02:10:33,280
i think yeah brilliant brilliant no no he's he's he's he's he's the man beautiful what about

1307
02:10:33,280 --> 02:10:41,360
documentaries and films that you love uh man you're asking the wrong person um i'm i'm not

1308
02:10:41,360 --> 02:10:49,040
particularly good at uh no i'm i'm it's very rare that i watch i watch anything which doesn't

1309
02:10:49,040 --> 02:10:58,800
involve cartoons uh what's your favorite cartoon i just watched soul on the plane um with uh with

1310
02:10:58,800 --> 02:11:06,480
jamie fox i thought that was just an absolute joy uh yeah up uh it's pretty fantastic i've cried

1311
02:11:06,480 --> 02:11:14,560
through that bloody film before yeah right yeah so so no i want to i don't want to see war and i

1312
02:11:14,560 --> 02:11:18,240
don't want to see you know i don't want to see the everyday i want to see something sort of i want

1313
02:11:18,240 --> 02:11:22,480
to see something fantastic and wonderful and uplifting and so yeah i'm afraid it's cartoons

1314
02:11:22,480 --> 02:11:27,200
on the whole brilliant love it i love them too all right well then the next question is there a

1315
02:11:27,200 --> 02:11:32,880
person you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders military

1316
02:11:32,880 --> 02:11:41,920
and associated professions of the world um i would probably recommend i'd actually recommend two of

1317
02:11:41,920 --> 02:11:48,160
my buddies and in fact you should probably get them on together um one's levenson wood uh he's

1318
02:11:48,160 --> 02:11:55,760
a writer and and an explorer and gifted photographer uh and the other one is jerry jones uh they're both

1319
02:11:55,760 --> 02:12:05,040
ex-military lads um uh and jerry does um does these incredible books about um about his

1320
02:12:05,040 --> 02:12:12,160
experiences in in afghanistan but also about uh roman uh roman history he writes these really

1321
02:12:12,160 --> 02:12:18,080
cool novels uh and they are yeah in fact they just did a did a book called escape from kabul

1322
02:12:18,720 --> 02:12:25,440
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

1323
02:12:25,440 --> 02:12:33,200
it was yeah it's a pretty spectacular uh book about the kind of the the heroism of of a few

1324
02:12:33,200 --> 02:12:39,600
people on the ground who managed to sort of snatch a bit of sort of honor um in that in that

1325
02:12:40,240 --> 02:12:45,760
clusterfuck uh that happened out out there so definitely yeah those two lads would be

1326
02:12:46,480 --> 02:12:50,960
would be very entertaining for you i think yeah let's make it happen if you can help i'd love

1327
02:12:50,960 --> 02:12:55,920
to get them on i definitely will james yeah beautiful all right well then the last question

1328
02:12:55,920 --> 02:12:59,760
before we make sure everyone knows where to find the book what do you do to decompress

1329
02:13:02,320 --> 02:13:12,960
uh i run i run and i stick my head in in absolutely as much nature as possible uh and i think i think

1330
02:13:12,960 --> 02:13:21,440
nature does have all the answers and i also think that kind of just being exposing yourself to a

1331
02:13:21,440 --> 02:13:26,800
week or two of nature where basically you can kind of observe a few of the changes is is important

1332
02:13:26,800 --> 02:13:33,920
because i think healing in ourselves at a sort of you know neural pathway level occurs at exactly

1333
02:13:33,920 --> 02:13:41,280
the same speed that you know the grass grows or the green shoots of you know of of trees and you

1334
02:13:41,280 --> 02:13:46,480
know and spring reemerge so i guess it just nature can kind of teach you to be patient with your

1335
02:13:46,480 --> 02:13:53,360
healing um and that's that's a very sort of that's that's quite a profound lesson if you can take that

1336
02:13:53,360 --> 02:13:59,040
in it's funny how many people say exactly that and my one of my decompressers i always walk my dog

1337
02:13:59,040 --> 02:14:04,400
twice a day a runner and like a local sportsplex um in the morning usually and then walk her later

1338
02:14:04,400 --> 02:14:10,960
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

1339
02:14:10,960 --> 02:14:15,360
you know our food now and i'm gonna have to go to the grocery store next day or two i'm gonna go

1340
02:14:15,360 --> 02:14:20,880
into a building i'm gonna take things off a shelf put them in a bag and take them home versus you

1341
02:14:20,880 --> 02:14:26,000
know 100 years ago you didn't have to plant the seeds in this month and then you'd finally be

1342
02:14:26,000 --> 02:14:31,280
able to get that food out in this month and we've lost we've lost any real example of patience i

1343
02:14:31,280 --> 02:14:35,440
mean even you know i want to landscape my my garden if i wanted to i just pay people and they

1344
02:14:35,440 --> 02:14:40,560
bring new flowers that already grown and they plop them in and there you go done so yeah i mean

1345
02:14:40,560 --> 02:14:48,160
it's interesting that that reminding ourselves that until very recently nothing was fast you

1346
02:14:48,160 --> 02:14:52,720
know and we've we've found ourselves in such an artificial environment where i can click on something

1347
02:14:52,720 --> 02:14:58,480
and amazon might even deliver it the same day versus i make a list and go down to the you know

1348
02:14:58,480 --> 02:15:02,960
the village and go to the baker for my bread and the butcher for my meat and you know so i think

1349
02:15:02,960 --> 02:15:08,880
that it's uh it's a valuable perspective being reminded on the fact that you know just as nature

1350
02:15:08,880 --> 02:15:13,760
is a beautiful reminder nothing nothing is supposed to come quickly we're the ones that

1351
02:15:13,760 --> 02:15:19,520
have immersed ourselves in this artificial environment yeah that's that's a much more

1352
02:15:19,520 --> 02:15:24,400
profound point than than i made and also yeah yeah i think i think you're right i think i think a dog

1353
02:15:25,760 --> 02:15:34,960
tends to be worth several psychologists on the whole just the wisdom the wisdom that a four-legged

1354
02:15:34,960 --> 02:15:40,160
friend can provide and also just their ability to spot when you're having a bad day way better than

1355
02:15:40,800 --> 02:15:48,240
you know than most therapists can so yeah they're pretty incredible uh healing buddies

1356
02:15:48,960 --> 02:15:54,080
they are indeed all right well then the book is high risk where are the best places for people

1357
02:15:54,080 --> 02:16:03,200
to find it uh you can you can get it uh on on amazon uh the paperback came out in the states

1358
02:16:03,200 --> 02:16:09,920
last year and you can download it on on audible i had to do i had to do an audition from my own

1359
02:16:09,920 --> 02:16:16,960
from my own book but i think i narrowly passed so i'm narrating it uh but please listen to it at

1360
02:16:16,960 --> 02:16:22,160
1.1 speed if you want to do that because it's uh it's for some reason they slow you down on

1361
02:16:22,160 --> 02:16:29,200
audible when when when you when you speak yeah i'm pretty slow already so yeah it's for the

1362
02:16:29,200 --> 02:16:33,520
fast talkers i actually when i did i narrated mine that's the thing about self-publishing you

1363
02:16:33,520 --> 02:16:37,680
don't have to you know no one can tell you what to do but you know it's very hard for you to

1364
02:16:37,680 --> 02:16:42,720
promote your book but um it was actually josh brolin who wrote the forward and he was telling

1365
02:16:42,720 --> 02:16:50,240
me i think it was like 0.9 or 0.85 percent speed is what i ended up doing because a lot of people

1366
02:16:50,240 --> 02:16:55,360
do just talk a little bit too fast for a listener to comprehend but i could see with you being very

1367
02:16:55,360 --> 02:17:00,720
slow and deliberate that maybe it went too far the other way it went too far the other way that

1368
02:17:00,720 --> 02:17:06,400
that forward by josh brolin by the way is absolutely beautifully written has he has he written a book

1369
02:17:06,400 --> 02:17:13,600
yet he just wrote a uh which i bought um the kind of a accompanying book for june and so we've got

1370
02:17:13,600 --> 02:17:20,640
all this you know his poetry yes but then he's also um i don't know exactly when it's going out

1371
02:17:20,640 --> 02:17:26,480
but he's going to be releasing an actual book which uh i can't wait because i mean that man

1372
02:17:26,480 --> 02:17:31,200
is just a wordsmith and obviously he's a phenomenal actor and he's a great human being but you know

1373
02:17:31,200 --> 02:17:36,240
the way he writes again we're talking again earlier about about color and description i mean

1374
02:17:36,240 --> 02:17:41,280
it's it's like he paints with words it's hard to even describe but so yeah to have someone like

1375
02:17:41,280 --> 02:17:45,920
that write the forward i mean was an honor and i always joke in the the audiobook he narrated the

1376
02:17:45,920 --> 02:17:52,080
forward in the audiobook so you know you've got this you know this known voice of hollywood and

1377
02:17:52,080 --> 02:17:59,280
then the rest of the chapters me hello chapter one it was all downhill from there exactly he's a

1378
02:17:59,280 --> 02:18:03,760
gifted gifted writer so i was just i mean just a natural so i was interested to see what um

1379
02:18:04,720 --> 02:18:09,120
yeah what he's going to produce next yeah yeah i mean i'm hopefully i'll be able to get back on

1380
02:18:09,120 --> 02:18:14,720
the show when it comes out so we can talk about it but uh we shall see um all right so are there any

1381
02:18:14,720 --> 02:18:22,080
other places for people to follow you you know social media websites etc oh i've got a i've got

1382
02:18:22,080 --> 02:18:27,200
an instagram account that i'll send if people want to see lots of pictures of kebabs and

1383
02:18:28,080 --> 02:18:34,560
middle eastern archaeological sites and they should look up ben timberlake high risk uh on

1384
02:18:34,560 --> 02:18:40,560
instagram but yeah i mean that is just a lot of archaeological sites but yeah stay tuned

1385
02:18:40,560 --> 02:18:46,880
perfect well ben i want to say thank you so much we've uh been you know so many different places

1386
02:18:46,880 --> 02:18:51,600
but rather than obviously focus in you know the kind of quote unquote war stories which you have

1387
02:18:51,600 --> 02:18:57,280
told you know so many in in the book and people can really look forward to that um your perspective

1388
02:18:57,280 --> 02:19:03,680
on this journey your perspective on addiction you know on war has been absolutely invaluable so again

1389
02:19:03,680 --> 02:19:07,680
i want to say thank you to johnny for the connection initially but i want to say thank you to you for

1390
02:19:07,680 --> 02:19:12,800
being so generous with your time and coming on the behind the shield podcast fun huge huge huge

1391
02:19:12,800 --> 02:19:16,800
pleasure and listen it's such a it's such a spectacular kind of project that you're

1392
02:19:17,360 --> 02:19:22,640
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

1393
02:19:22,640 --> 02:19:26,640
back listening to do but the ones that the ones that i've heard you know are just just brilliant

1394
02:19:26,640 --> 02:19:31,840
and you're doing an incredible service for for for people who are right out on you know on the

1395
02:19:31,840 --> 02:19:36,080
front lines even if those front lines are just in their own towns even that's properly fucking

1396
02:19:36,080 --> 02:19:38,080
braised man