 It's computer and we are recording so ladies and gentlemen welcome to episode 5 of WTAF with Jimmy James and today I'm lucky enough to have Chris Thrall joining me thank you for coming along Chris I was introduced to Chris via Sean Atwood podcast the other day I highly recommend you go over and watch it it's a great interview I must say Chris you're very cool calm and collected George livery styles very I think compared to someone like myself I'm a bit I get a bit excited I get a bit all over the shop but you were very and you were very well received I must say I'm looking through the comments and I know you probably follow as well and David Macmillan is very popular on there he's got that great delivery style and you know you've got as you do the public speaking stuff you've got that down to a teacher that's something I have to work on because it's it's good it's good and people receive it no I'd say just Jimmy you're a lovely man just be yourself you know that bless you sir bless you thank you very much I've got eight people one I Sean's podcast I was just I just wanted to stay calm mate that was it yes yeah well you got into a few things you know and as you said it was your full story as you were breaking it down and you know we only got into I think it was 2020 minutes and there was still so much more so I'm looking forward to part two and yes and as I said for anyone who would like to get we're going to chat about a few things today Chris and I if anybody would like to get a bit more of an in-depth through his background you've got Chris's book which is available eating smoke right Chris there it is beautiful beautiful um very well received book I've not had a chance to read it myself I am very um very deep into the kindle at the moment but it's on my list because like I said I enjoyed your story the other day but today can I just say Jimmy yeah my eating smoke it's the story of me basically getting addicted to crystal meth yeah while living in Hong Kong yeah having clinical psychosis for seven months yeah and I worked in a nightclub that was run by the 14k triad so that appeals to you know that's a forget the triad bit I mean unless you're 14 years old and you want to read about you know stuff that's probably unlikely you know my books it's just a real book you're not going to get stories of me killing anyone or yeah um but what I'm saying is it's quite for people interested mental health and what it's like to go mad yeah that book is written from that perspective that's why I love doing podcasts like this because I you see like the truth right yes indeed if I go to mainstream media they don't want to know that I was mentally ill no they just want to put their own spin on my story and say oh you know this guy thinks he was a Hong Kong triad and it's like no you didn't read my book did you you didn't get that all of this is while I'm in psychosis right so that's eating smoke but my second book and this is just so people know yeah like I make no money off these books it's probably cost me um hundreds of thousands in loss right by not having a job basically I'm not saying I don't get to do what I love yeah what I'm saying is this if you think I'm just trying to plug my books on your show um anybody watching you need to understand what writing a book in in the year 2019 is really about it's not making money it's not really but but if you read this and you you haven't yet achieved all your goals in life you're going to get an idea of how someone like me went from really being unwell as I said chronic addiction to without any help uh from support groups like your AA and all this kind of people without any input from the medical community how I single-handedly looked myself in the mirror one day and went things have got to change Chris and how I then went on to achieve everything that I wanted to in in this life across all these countries all these countries you see behind me yeah and and it it's so undervalued Jimmy that that I'm I'm surrounded by I'm a I'm a former Royal Marines commando um I'm surrounded by people who want to help veterans but will they pick up a freaking book that costs 99p on Kindle yeah and actually learn what some of us go through it's all done in social media now in little you know clicky memes and comments and sound bollocks and and stuff that is so superficial yeah um so yeah I just wanted to thank you yeah thank you Chris I appreciate that and um yeah off the back of what you just said there and you know having uh experienced psychosis myself for the end of 2017 um really much safe to say zero support um from the system itself friends and family have been absolutely phenomenal and that's what's gotten me through and I'm still not through by any stretch but um I'm getting it so as I said this is the start of something new and as I said you guessed five on the podcast I thought yeah I'm just gonna go for it and start getting some stuff out there and um like off the back of what what what interested me and um a lot about what you were saying the other day talking to Sean was this misunderstanding that we have as a society about addiction I mentioned to you really I'm 34 years of age now I've been battling with my demons or addiction as we call it for the best part of 20 years in one form or another and whether that's been drugs food more recently technology as a substitute for drugs and then as you know the main one alcohol you know cannabis was always my kind of go-to and um I'd stop the cannabis for you know maybe a couple of weeks at a time but then I'd slip into the alcohol and it's so easy if you felt like myself or a beautiful beautiful partner who will have a glass of wine she'll happily just have a little glass of wine after work I'll drink the rest of the bloody bottle and then maybe crack open another bottle you know and it's just just changing one for the other for the other for the other and I'm by no means out the other side this is something that we discussed just now about um hoping to work on those demons now coming up with a good friend of mine Paul who's the uh the only buddhist exorcist or trained buddhist exorcist in the UK which is quite an accolade and he's a beautiful soul hey you need at least one in the UK of course this is it and he is a special kind of guy so I'm kind of blessed to have him in my life and the opportunity to kind of do that with him so that'll be exciting to share I know um I've got a ninja who fixes my back so excellent yeah yeah awesome some amazing people in this world you know this is it there is there are and I'm very lucky to know quite a few of them and I'm more recently to have made yourself so it's an absolute pleasure to meet you Chris and I want to ask you about this like can you tell us a little bit about your experience then after coming back from Hong Kong how you've got into um specialist kind of addiction recovery work and all the rest of it please well good question so I let me talk about myself now Jim I'm sorry if I sound evasive not at all you do you brother you do you this is another phenomenon that social media is brought around is people just want short sharp shocks yeah short sharp injections of adrenaline yeah to to to pacify the addiction that that the people the social media creators over there in what is it silicon valley that silicon valley that they they purposely program into this media to get you addicted right we need to get away from that and the reason I like doing podcasts is you can just talk as you would in the pub to your mate yes and there's no editing there's no you know cutting out the bits that people might not want to hear yeah brilliant exactly so I like to talk you know I need I need to sort of talk around subjects sometimes because otherwise it's you know it if you don't give the background yes it doesn't really help people make sense right so exactly I'm just a quick interjection if I may Chris sorry to interrupt you brother but no holds barred for this one this wtaf what the actual fuck is based pardon me in the library so I should be very but it's basically what's going on in this world and there are no holds barred so I'll just say please do go on and yeah if there's a bit more background you want to give us crack on yeah cheers so I'm just in a situation now Jimmy where I I have a totally different spin on addiction and the and the relationship between addiction and let's just say drugs yeah than pretty much most other people walk in this planet certainly anyone who believes what they see in the mainstream media okay yeah I have a very positive and constructive framework around addiction and I guess that has all come from my journey so to answer your question yeah I came back from Hong Kong I was severely mentally unwell my dad didn't recognize me in the in the airport I'd lost so much weight I was just I good right yeah I imagine um and of course I was in you know I was kind of in cloud cookie land so here's the thing in a nutshell I came back I had some crystal meth that I smuggled back with me I had about you know three days worth of that don't suggest anybody smuggles drugs or one of the most no freaking stupid things you can ever do kind of but let's let's not digress and here's the thing Jimmy with my psychosis when the drugs went the psychosis followed it right it wasn't like I'd done some kind of irreparable damage to my brain so three days worth of supply when it was gone I started to get I started to come back down yeah um not not just from the high but also my mental health just came instantly came back to let's call it normality all right yeah I then hit I then thought wow that was easy that was easy to come off all that crystal meth stuff you know da da da da but of course I was in the UK it can be a pretty boring and depressing place at the best of times right when you're unemployed you're no longer a rawmarine's commando you're no longer running the for the sake of cliche the million-dollar business I was running in Hong Kong I'm no longer high as a kite and I'm no longer working in a nightclub for the Hong Kong triads right all those things are gone from my life now I'm I'm I'm living on a couch in my two bedroom rabbit hutch the place is filthy because I've got no no drive no enthusiasm um I was depressed Jimmy you know and I didn't know it because adults are so were so clueless back then about mental health nobody could tell me that I was depressed nobody knew it not the not the doctors not not my family not my friends so I've got this weird syndrome where I'm just feeling I'm flat I've got nothing to give I've got I feel rubbish I feel worthless I feel like I I mean I didn't feel worthless as a person I felt worthless to an employer because you know you don't get no qualification I mean I did some old little GCSEs in the Marines but I didn't get a trade yeah all my business I created off my own back so I had no degree in business or anything right and I couldn't even get a job in a factory because I wasn't I had no experience or anything like that right so I spent two years in what I now know was chronic depression or clinical depression you can call it all I knew is I couldn't go off the sofa yeah the only thing that would get me away from watching rubbish daytime TV which you won't get me to watch now if you pay me a million pounds yeah I mean that generally I can relate to that keep your money mate you know is is drugs and of course we don't have crystal meth is not so easily available in the UK so I get based amphetamine which is meth amphetamine so a stronger form of speed than the stuff you buy in a nightclub right yeah but nowhere near as strong as crystal meth so I would buy that I'd get it every two weeks when my dull money or my income support came which was that was like 50 pound a week right I spend most that 50 pound a week or so 100 pound of fortnight most of it went on on uh based and I'd be manic okay sorry if someone was asking for the time to come in the labor as you know I'm sorry everyone else don't be it worry on sorry brother I'll be manic for three four five days without sleep generally uh I I took to injecting it because it made a hit you know yeah a bit better and kind of made the gear last a bit longer so I'm shoving needles in my arms during that four or five days anything up to 10 15 times a day had all the needle fixation sort of stuff that we've done I read about that then I would crash Jimmy and I'd wake up 48 hours later even more depressed than I was before utterly shattered no nowhere near as shattered as meth when you can stay up for nine days easier right um not easily but nine days was the most I stayed up and I'd wake up ravenously hungry because five days I haven't eaten a single thing I haven't really drunk much more than say two glasses of water a day which we know when it when your body is you're speeding you're bringing tits off yeah all that moisture's coming out your body in two glasses of water so you can guess the state I was waking up in yeah I then had to deal with my ravenous hunger with like one pound 87 left in my pocket to feed me for nine days nice so I'd go to the supermarket I'd buy a big bag of like supermarket you know no frills horror jokes for 18p yeah I'd buy a big bag of pasta 22p I'd buy carbon margarine to get some fat in me for 27p and I'd buy four pints of milk and that would have to last oh and buy a like a 17p loaf right cheap white rice loaf the good stuff I took to shoplifting bovril right I I wasn't like a prolific fee for anything like that I've done stupid things on my past that's another story I'll make that later but I you know I wasn't like that's probably a bit of a stupid shoplifter because why didn't I shoplift more I just shoplifted a jar of um right I just shoplifted a jar of bovril to have on the toast right and that's how I lived I I'd shove four slices of bread in the toaster lay another four on top because I was always too too starving to wait to do them both I'd wall flat down I'd in between sleeping and smoking and I'd watch you know uh Jerry friggin springer or or or ready steady cook and it was those those little rubbish programs that were the only thing I I didn't really live for them but occasionally a good good old black and white film would come on and it would take my mind off the depression it would take my mind of not having any drugs left and I'd just sit and smoke rollups and watch that program and that was my life my my house was utterly smashed up not not because I was in anger or anything but because when I took the amphetamine it made me so like I wanted to achieve stuff but rather than go out and get a job I'd do stupid stuff like I I don't know I decided to turn my my couch into a corner sweep it would just seem like the right thing to do right or I'd start one time I got so high I decided to take the stairs down I was going to have a rope instead of the stairs right needless sake and nothing I ever tried got finished so I woke up in the morning and I'm I'm looking at my stairs and that I've started to take them apart I'm just thinking you idiot what were you thinking one my mate was in a wheelchair for crying out what how was he supposed to get out there you know so that was it I had I had like my one friend the guy he had in a wheelchair he had cerebral palsy he'd come around we smoked spliff that was like my only company my family couldn't deal with me you know when I came back from Hong Kong they called the police on me three times because they couldn't understand my behaviour they thought I was violent Jimmy but yeah probably well no most people suffering from only a danger to themselves I wasn't gonna hurt anybody I was just lost and confused I I didn't know why my life was like this you know I didn't know why I'd gone from being a handsome young commando with loads of money and a BMW in the driveway and a mobile phone when when people you say what's that because nobody knew what they were back then you know yeah I'm not saying this to impress you understand all that's a load of bullshit you know but that's that's this is what I'm trying to justify in my head so cut along through short I had a moment of enlightenment one day I woke up I was too ashamed to go out the house I could hear the kids playing in the street and and they loved me them kids in my street they all they didn't even call me uncle Chris they thought I was their mate because I was the only adult that I lived in a like a like a modern estate you know I was the only adult in the state would ever stop and say hello to them and they bring their bikes around and I'd fix their bikes and they knock on a door Chris you're gonna come and play football and I got to know all their you know parents and and and it was it was a it was kind of for someone I'd always made the promise I'm not going to be that adult that kids are scared of because when I was young growing up in the 70s they were a bunch of bastards mate you know most adults abuse children without even knowing it they didn't they didn't know that the way they interacted that was wrong it's been a transitional thing isn't it yeah I'm not I don't I don't talk about you know stuff close to home because as I said on Sean's podcast forgiveness is everything for me when someone has made the effort to say sorry as far as I'm concerned that that that's all they can do they can't do more and and I don't go there right but talking in general terms you could be walking down the street in the 70s an adult will come running across the road smack you around the head knock you like unconscious you'd come to like you know my mum will come up to me what's the matter with you oh that bloke just hit me mum right she's like what why didn't you tell me well I didn't tell tell you me because I didn't know that was wrong I thought that was normal behaviour right um that that was how it was in in in um school they would to punish you they humiliate you you know you've got to remember I'm a kid that's I've got a lot going on at home and you know it's a child shouldn't really have had to be going through that right and then I'm at school with a teacher that doesn't even know anything what I'm already going through and they them teach do some horrible things you know horrible things in in um um you know to to to chastise me you could say and I'm a child so what what's the worst I went on it wasn't a bad child Jimmy you know it was stupid things like what I'd talk to someone while we're putting the chairs on the tables at the end of school right teacher would just scream through here now just because I whispered something to like my body at the end of the day it's not like we're in the middle of the class or anything right that that teacher whipped me up on the desk stripped me off and then proceeded to beat me in front of the class right I can give a shit now it's it's I'm not I'm not saying this to like I don't live in the past or anything but I just say it so people who live in this modern era can understand what it was like for some of us that was wrong that that that event traumatized me I was so embarrassed Jimmy I hid under the table and I didn't want to come out I was hiding under the table making the excuse that I was cleaning the floor because we used to have to like sweep and all this right and um if you did that to a kid now right you you'd get what five years in prison easily easily you know there's sexual abuse yeah physical abuse and mental abuse yeah from a school teacher right yeah so anyway digress a bit but that's fine that's fine I promise myself I wasn't going to be that adult didn't understand kids yeah so I built this amazing relationship with all the kids um in my street and this morning when I woke up I couldn't go outside because I could hear them playing and I knew the second I went out they'd all come running up Chris come on play football you know yeah and I couldn't go out so because I was ashamed of myself Jimmy you know I was I was ashamed that like one of their parents might come uncle Chris what the fuck's up what's happened to you you're not looking right you know and and and that and in that moment I had like nervous breakdown number letting five or something I just burst out crying because like you know I talk about that little boy that was abused right or went through this childhood he didn't understand I went to I went to five schools before the age of 10 I think it was right that's five lots of people trying to bully you and then you have to stick up and smack and one to stop yourself getting bullied that's I mean it was of a good size it was five lots of girls that would take a job trying to join you as well right which was nice a man after my own act yeah it was a funny relationship the girls used to like me the boys used to want to you know yeah want to bite me they're rough and they're rough and they're smooth as they say yeah yeah I'm not I'm not arguing you know but anyway so so yes I had all all all these schools that I went to and and I'm I'm there in my house in in Plymouth and I'm thinking that little boy he's still getting abused right he's still having a rough time but you're doing it to him Chris you're struggling down his you know up his nose in injecting it in his arm you're you know you're the one that's living this lifestyle now I'm not talking about addiction here which is a mental health illness that you cannot control I'm talking about I'm coming to the end of this period of chaos now and I'm starting to see it for what it is Jimmy you know yeah and I'm starting to gain a bit of you know a bit of control over my mind and my thoughts and how I make sense of the world and I'm saying to myself like son you got to stop doing this it's not working is it when you started taking that the drugs it was because they made you happy they made you energetic I learned stuff about myself that they told me I was a failure at in school you know it's enjoyed going out dancing for hours on end used to just feel amazing I used to used to feel like this is life this is the person that I'm supposed to be right and so I had to look myself in the mirror and say Chris all that all that stuff's not working anymore is it and from that in that moment Jimmy I made a promise to myself it's never going to be an angel didn't want to give up the drugs because you know I enjoyed doing the drugs if I was honest and I wasn't going to stop slagging them off like you know becoming a new evangelist going oh that was the wrong lifestyle I've made a mistake and I'm so sorry it's like I hadn't made any mistake I was just someone on the journey trying to make sense of their life and I'd experimented you know in a few different avenues to try to and this is all subconscious I subconsciously experimented in an attempt to learn who I was why why do I have different feelings maybe to other people what you know what what is this life all about um so yeah it was just time to like start facing the music a bit and so I made a promise that I wouldn't give up the drugs but I'd cut down to when I went to my dealer instead of giving him all of my money I'd just get one bag right so a 10 pound bag of base and when it was gone it was gone because here's the thing I wasn't achieving anything on it anyway yeah so it was a waste of time but I couldn't get over that you know when you're when you're in dolphin start kicking off when you think about scoring it's called acting out right when I'd you know I'd have to somehow address this acting out just because I had to act out the process of buying and injecting drugs yeah that didn't mean I had to do the four five day thing afterwards right because I didn't achieve anything on it and I'd wake up feeling like shit yeah so I decided to buy the 10 pound bag and just do the action out thing and then when it was gone force myself to go to well I'd probably crash out any you know with tiredness anyway and then wake up and get on with my life and the central um rule that I made next to the buy in the one gram only was I was always going to smile at the morning sun and tell myself how lucky I was to be here when a lot of like for example marines I knew had died in terrible circumstances you know they died young terrible circumstances um and I wasn't dead I was here this world whether you you know if you take the human element out of it and all that head fuck it's a planet right it's no getting away from it it's life I don't even want to try to guess what it is because you don't need to to appreciate and and love it right and so at the bottom my bottom dollar is that this planet is beautiful as it is so if I if I'm not sensing that it's because I've got to sort something out up here right it's because my priorities aren't right it's because my thinking is not straight it's because I'm probably worrying about the wrong things instead of embracing the right things and that's that's what I did I'd have my binge I'd wake up but instead of feeling like shit and rolling over and going to sleep I'd get up have a shower make a cup of tea that would be my drug and I'd do the washing up simple act do the washing up I'm going to be writing about this in my um in the book I'm writing at a minute about when I last year I ran from uh Jono Groats to Land's End a thousand miles pretty much non-stop right and when people ask me Chris how can you do that isn't it easy yeah you run around a block seriously that's how I start I start all my challenges all my traveling to 80 different countries my studies what learning to be you know becoming a pilot becoming a sky all of that starts with a simple action and I call the action running around the block because very often I just run around a block yeah um and so I'm going to put all this in my next book but that's what I did and here's the thing when you reach out to the universe like that you make that little effort in the morning whatever it is the universe gives it back to you equally right yeah so the more effort you put in the more effort you're putting out the more you're getting back and it's and it really is that simple so I just kept putting out I'd also developed um well in fact I'd also stumbled upon the path to enlightenment um because I didn't think the same Jimmy as I did before I took drugs I and it's certainly before I experienced addiction I felt differently about myself I felt differently about life and I saw it for what it was I was now outside the matrix and part of the reason that that I think I was able to step outside of it and make a better sense of the world was that I saw the treatment I was subjected to going through mental health illness I saw the people that just literally shit their fucking pants and ran away from me because I was unwell couldn't deal with it couldn't handle it we're we're afraid of it and yet I wasn't going to hurt anyone I was just I was desperate Jimmy you know I was really unwell and and um it set me on a pathway to enlightenment I followed that pathway ever since and now I'm in a beautiful position where like I own my own mind and everyone you know a lot of people watching this review oh well we all do that so no do we do really most people don't I'd say probably 80% don't yeah there's probably another 10% that think they do but they probably own a part of it and then there's and then enlightenment essentially means just seeing it it it's shining a light on the world right it's shining a light you know world of darkness that's that's essentially what it means and that's the point I kind of think I'm at now I'm I'm obviously I'm only human I I um have my same stresses and and bad well I don't really have bad days because that that's a lie I I know now how to turn like a bad mood into we don't allow it to develop into a bad day yeah exactly I do the things that are next to all of it before yeah and all all of my all human angst generally the vast majority of that I should say relates the stresses society puts on you because it's so full of bullshit you know it it's just so inhumane a lot of the time right so am I making sense Jimmy sorry you are no you please do carry on it's absolutely beautiful yeah I'm relating 100% so as you were say as you were yeah and so it but being in this position it's it's interesting because you know you're quite alone there's not many um it's why I love meeting people like yourself and yeah you start to meet these enlightened individuals and we don't live in a world that most people do and it's quite funny I'm not anyone listen I'm not saying I'm special that's not not what it's meant to mean at all I'm not better than anyone with I'm literally not better than a blade of grass we're we're all exactly well what I always say is we're just carbon atoms at the end of the day you know we might be held together to look like a body but we're not I'm no different you're no different no you're you're just a cluster of carbon atoms that's held together you've got some chemical stuff going on and some electrical impulses in your brain which is holding a load of liquid together in the you know liquid and skin and body matter together which helps you form a brain yeah but we matter at the end of the day you know it this brain thing gives us the illusion we're like individual people and we're it's not we're just life experiencing itself in this form right yeah so I just say that so so people listening don't think this is a like Billy Big Bull's competition it's not I'm sure I'm sure the type of people who will be listening will certainly not be thinking that but thank you for clarifying for us yeah yeah I know exactly what you're saying Chris so that's where I'm at and off the back of it um I've got this interesting situation Jimmy where like I wouldn't the experience I tell you I told you about anyway it got really horrendous at times there was one point where I had this itching in my skin right so I went to see the doctor and he said do you take drugs I was quite I've always been quite an honest person so I said I didn't want to lie I said yes I take take amphetamine you went then you're imagining it right what he was doing is what doctors and the medical community make the big mistake and if I know you have experience of mental health it's all it can be awful that the effects of making such rash judgments can be catastrophic on an individual's life what he was doing was looking in a textbook you know yeah medical tomes reading oh when a someone takes amphetamine they imagine they've got bugs in their skin so that's what all he was doing right yeah and it wasn't his fault he just it's just here's the thing you can't imagine itching all over you're either itching or you're not right that's it you know so and what it was in hindsight like I'm putting a massive chemical into my I'm injecting this horrible bitter chemical called speed right basal amphetamine it's made in a zinc bathtub in some farmers bloody yeah stable or something right yeah you know it's it's got industrial chemicals in I'm injecting that straight into my bloodstream my body's got to get rid of it somehow right and of course it's gonna come out it's gonna come out of the skin and that skin's gonna cause you to itch right so I've got my doctor telling me I'm imagining what I've just explained to you well of course I'm not imagining it so I then spent about a year thinking that that I have bugs like like like like my house was infected or something like yeah I was calling out the the bug sprayer guy from the council to come and spray I was throwing away half my stuff the number of times I threw my food away because I thought it was infected and and I at one point I put myself in a bath of bleach right this is how low and I'm off my fucking head as well I should also get like a cup of bleach as strong as I dared and I'd pour it and I had no hot water because I couldn't afford to have the heating on so in the middle of winter I jump into a freezing cold bath of bleach and just bleach my skin trying to cure myself with these bugs right and so yeah it got dark but the point of this is I won't change that Jimmy for the world you can't pay me the same way you couldn't pay me now to watch daytime TV or watch a soap opera you couldn't pay me to get rid of that experience because off the back of it I now understand human beings as far as I can right yeah I now understand myself I now live as enlightened individual that can go out and get pretty much anything that I want in this life you know I I set a goal and I and I just go out and achieve it I have an amazing family that I wouldn't have had you know I wouldn't I wouldn't have met them if I'd been down a different pathway and yeah and I I don't want to swap them for anybody because you meet my little boy yeah but I'm probably gonna get a bit cliche saying that in podcasts but I've really been blessed by Mother Nature with the best kid ever you know he's um you know he's um uh he's just something special you know and like people want to take say that I shouldn't have gone through addiction I shouldn't have taken drugs and I don't know I wouldn't have my boy I I'm not a violent but I want to punch you in the face you know yeah so so this is what I'm saying I've lived worked and I'm not trying to say repeat myself to sound big edit no it's like all of those most of those countries you see well I've seen over half the countries in the world 80 countries yeah I've ventured to the to the Antarctica and scuba dive with icebergs I wrote a best-selling book I'm a graduate I got a degree in in youth work you know I told you I was passionate about young people it's like why do I have to explain myself for for going through addiction to anybody you know exactly exactly and yet the way society frames addicted is if like it's this bad thing that you should be you know you should be ashamed of and they come up with these names like smack head and and speed speed freak and and it's like do we call people who are experiencing cancer do we call them cancers could you imagine that you imagine if someone said to you look my mother she's she's got cancer and you went oh she's a cancer oh blimey you you you get beaten up every day right yeah yeah and yet when it comes to mental health we are we have disgusting attitude towards it in this country you know we've discussed in attitude the way we treat prisoners with mental health the way we treat them full stop the way we incarcerate people with mental health conditions yeah the way I've worked in mental health units and I've seen the relish that the the nurses have taken in I want to say beating someone up but they do this thing called um control and restraint is it yeah control and restraint right yeah when that alarm goes off they love it oh they love it the first question you go ask them why are they all wearing dog marketing boots or military boots they're working in the mental health war with people that are more likely to harm themselves than anyone else why they got boots on jack boots on like like the the gestat you know like the yeah the stormtroopers that was the first thing that that that hit came into my mind then when I saw the alarms go off because this poor old deer was having she was having a moment you know moment in between her meds working or whatever yeah I think she spat at worker he was nothing he's harmless right you know uh people are gonna say oh you can get AIDS and all that yeah a little old lady who went like that in a moment and that's not her behavior that's her her mental illness yeah you know yeah god they jumped on this lady pulled her you know pulled her trousers and underwear down this is a 55 year old woman in front of everybody started smacking her with the needle that's got the tranquilizer in yeah being there it was like something off um one through open a cookie's nest you know i'm not saying i'm not saying all workers are like no not by any stretch it's the same as everything though right chris it's the same of everything it's you know good and bad and all but yeah go on and i'm not saying that they don't face some tough you know situations but what i am saying is on occasion it's just like my god you know very apparent isn't it yeah very apparent so that's that's kind of my situation and the other side of the coin is i now see the ludicrous way that people in society have been taught that drugs is addiction that it's the same thing yeah and it's it's just i think i said this on shawnes podcast you know saying that drugs cause addiction is as stupid as saying like i bought a new car and it keeps making me have speeding tickets yeah it's it's so misunderstood the groups like n a n a a i know they were started on well meaning in evidence and i'm not dismissing that i also know that when you're in a bloody pickle and you don't understand the psychology of what what you're going through they can be a brilliant stop gap you know yeah but the what off the back of that what they've done though is they've promoted a very ill-conceived model of addiction by promoting that it's an illness that you can't get better yes it was really helpful it's not just unhelpful for the individual who then thinks they're a broken machine and they're like that for the rest of their life yeah but it also has led society to to have a lot of misconceptions around addiction and yeah there was something else i was going to say then but there's probably too much drugs over the years can't i can't oh i'm sure i do the same all the time i lose my thread all the time it's absolutely no problem i'm sure i'll come back so if it can if it can help i should probably explain right so addiction is a mental health condition okay it's not it's not a disease or not you could think of it as an illness that would be okay but what it is really in essence is what's known as a learned psychological disorder so by that what i mean is let's just take a stupid silly scenario you got marge right unhappy housewife don't know if you still have housewives anymore but let's just say that right she's got a load of trauma in her head she probably doesn't even like you know understand or appreciate it right and she one day calls her husband over and kicks him in the knackers and she's like have that right hold that one and just in that moment she gets a bit of a kick out of it right and thinks yeah yeah i've been home to her in that moment she's taken her mind of all this trauma that's sitting there in the back of her brain right just by doing this this action on a poor husband right so the next day she's like but spilt my cup of tea bring a bring bring a dishcloth in all right my loving he comes bang and she's like yeah i like that and like day three but in here right and this goes on and and before you know it she's just smacking her husband in the balls and she doesn't even know why and when her life start when it you know it's really starting to cause problems now like the kids are upset they're in tears she's fucking not doing the eye are you oh god i know you didn't know you didn't she's not fixing the car i said she was like i was eyeing all right that's that i'm not this thing uh don't mind all right she's not going to work yeah you know she's not she's not maintaining those things in life that you need to do to keep balance right instead all she wants to do is smash you know smash her husband when he found you right and before long a whole life's fallen apart what does she do to try and fix it smashes her husband again because she's learned that this is this you know this is the thing that fixes everything right so the point i'm trying to make here jimmy is stupid as it sounds is where did drugs come in that example yeah you know nothing because drugs um as i said drugs can't cause addiction and in this scenario this woman's got addicted to an action it's a same violence isn't it yeah in this case it's a stupid violent action right um it might be that she'd got addicted to sex it might be that she'd got addicted to food it might be that you know she got addicted just to drinking water whatever it is you know pingo whatever there's so many different there's more there's never been there have never been more outlets for these as you say learned behaviors misdirected kind of as you say leads on then to addiction you know it's just it's just so many different avenues there are there are recovering support groups for so many things you would never think really are you addicted to what okay like yeah it's bonkers bonkers but the reason i use that you know i'm using that example is you can see that drugs didn't even come in the equation right you know and and the notion that kicking someone in a bollocks can turn you into an addict people would laugh at it yeah this is this is to give you an idea of how a learned psychological disorder begins you've got margea she does an action yeah action makes her feel temporarily better about so she does it again she does it again she does it again in her life because she's she becomes obsessed with pursuing that action her life starts to fall apart well in order to fix everything she does the action again because she's learned that that is what makes everything better but it's gone part the fault the seesaw is turned now and it's not making things better it's making things worse right and she's in that position that i was in when i was in my sort of squalor in plymouth there and uh before i had my moment of you know my my my epiphany so um then so the not only is the notion that that the the drug causes the addiction is wrong but it's also why are we saying that addiction is such a bad experience i mean i know i'm not talking here about when people die of an overdose but that's a separate issue right i'm not talking about you know we've got to get away from confusing a mental health illness called addiction we say someone overdosing because they've taken a bad pill at a festival right you know this is this is where it all gets it's all fuzzy by the media the the media to create a bad image of substance use and mankind has been doing substances since they came out of the caves or since they lived in the caves you know what essentially are are are they well you've got a plan it develops a toxin to protect itself a horse or you know she comes along eats that plant and it and it gets really really ill but it doesn't eat that plant again does it the trouble is with mankind we've developed this overly clever brain and we've learned that if we just take a little bit of that toxin whether it's rot the rotten apples that has created alcohol yeah whether it's a you know marijuana bud we'll just take a bit we can alter our consciousness and let's be honest when you're out hunting and gathering all day long probably can get a bit boring so to go back to cave in the evening and change your consciousness a bit and get get a bit weirded out or whatever the case may be paint a few horses on the wall that was that you know that it's something that we've always done so the sheer lunacy of trying to ban it with laws is not going to happen then you've got the criminal aspect that the people making these laws are also the people that control the flow of the drugs yeah and a few if people want to find out more about that you've got to look into the the sort of Arkansas situation and the also the the contra rebels in in Central Central America over there in Nicaragua we don't even Nicaragua Nicaragua and that's all Sean's fantastic work and by all means please do check it out he's fantastic stuff but we don't even have to look that far at Chris Strange I'll just a quick interjection because I was going to bring it up anyway but you've you've segwayed into it nicely is GW Pharmaceuticals in the UK are you aware of the of the situation with GW Pharmaceuticals mate just just you saying the word pharmaceuticals just that's like a cloud of darkness is just just come over my head you know that rightly so I mean I is it the Pfizer corporation in America that no no GW Pharmaceuticals the situation is that you had Victoria Atkins who was the drug minister coming out and saying we are not going to discuss cannabis legislation it's not a thing it's it's illegal there is no medicinal value meanwhile they grant in licenses or license to cultivate to GW Pharmaceuticals who are the biggest exporters on the planet that's out there in official documents in official magazines I think this was in the I was in the last time I was in prison it was in the new scientist magazine they had UK sugar this big huge sugar plantation and next door oh they're just so convenient we're able to convert into cannabis plantation 45 acres I believe it is and they are the biggest exporters on the planet yet the rest of us not only to be get locked up for it people get locked up for cultivation at the very moment if the government are granting their friends licenses to grow and make billions off this drug then everyone else at the very moment should be being done for cultivating without a license but they're not they're getting done for cultivation so yeah you're a bit closer to home with all this stuff go on my question about the visor I might have that name wrong so I just don't I don't slander anyone unnecessarily but yeah it's the company in America that that produced oxycodone right oxycodone didn't oxycodone yeah yeah now anyone who's aware will know that the opioid epidemic in America now is rife yeah these drugs are getting these pharmaceutical medication that you get from your doctor are getting so strong that people are overdosing left right and Chelsea right yeah what a lot of people don't know is it was this uh let's just call them a rich old family yeah that developed this medication so a rich old corporate corporate owning family I think it's the Pfizer family they came up with this very strong highly when I say highly addictive it might sound contradictory to what I've just said but I understand what you mean what what I'm trying to say is physiologically and chemically yeah if you've got underlying issues then you're going to be you know addiction is driven by underlying trauma unresolved trauma right yeah so if your doctor's giving you the drugs telling you they're perfectly legal and they're fine you've got a lot of people that are getting addicted to them because they have underlying issues unresolved issues right and then not only they're addicted and they don't understand what's happening to them but then they can't go and talk to anyone because they go and talk to their doctor the doctor will stop the prescription and their desk they become you know they become dependent on this stuff right um so what the point I would just just just interject is so it's like the the drug is a catalyst for the addiction right it doesn't cause the addiction so I didn't want to sound like I was um contradicting myself I understand what you mean and so you've got this family what they did they they really invested heavily in this advertising and education campaign for medical practitioners telling them that hey this oxy codon you know it's no stronger than giving someone a an eyebrow profane or a paracetamol right already there you've got your doctors there that don't really understand all this because let's be honest you know you do five years at medical school it's not it's not enough to understand the universe right it's not enough to understand even like a tiny bit it's just enough to understand the basics of sitting in a chair and dealing with sick people all day and go into a book and now they go to they google it they don't know yeah they don't know someone um not having that gps here but no it is what it is yeah we call it obviously you know they get someone come they get someone come to them with a bad back and they go oh hang on look at my oh right oxycontin this no more harmful than giving you eyebrow profane and it's it's it's it's causing you know havoc and it's okay for me to say you know i appreciated my experience of addiction but it's um it's another thing to overdose and die isn't it you know yeah for those who haven't come out of the other side and you know include myself within that i've had slips of late and things like that you know it's an up and down roller coaster um you seem to be fully fully out of it and you know that's what we're all striving for chris endless like as you say for those who are still are still stuck right deep within it and you say it's your doctor facilitating that and as you say you can't go to the doctor and say look i can't stop taking these because you say they'll stop and then that's almost a minute end up on the street drugs and there are quite a few documentaries now i watched one quite a few years back maybe three or four years ago about a town over in you know middle middle east in america and the whole town had just ravaged ravaged by oxycodone it was just crazy yeah crazy to see yeah i'm all done by government and families uh you know these syndicate families yeah and i it's such a complex subject to talk about because everybody the trouble is everybody's different and everyone has different psychological makeup social makeup biological makeup everyone has a different history everyone has a different drug right yeah and so it's it's i mean it's it's it's real food for four i mean my experience addiction really like i say i wouldn't swap it right but then who's to say that being addicted to oxycodone isn't isn't as productive do you get what i'm saying i mean i don't i don't know i like to think of i like to frame addiction in one way as mother nature seeing an individual going in the wrong direction in life or being upset or having a downer or what whatever it might be and going wait have some of that because when you work you know chuck an addiction upon them we're introducing addiction into their life as a kind of like a learning curve to change their behavior do you get what i'm saying it's yeah it's a tough learning curve and it's harsh but you know i can't say that that that's the case for everybody right i mean you can only talk for yourself because at the end of the day you know and says the same for me i can only talk for my own experiences but i'll talk for my own experiences unashamedly and as they were because i wouldn't be where i am today i said even with recent you know slips of folds of cold problems for myself at the end of the day you as long as you can get back up again and keep going and keep trying chamber one the style you know i get knocked down i get back up again it's that's what it's about and but there's there's there's there's addiction and there's addiction like there's the difference between you know someone who is you know addicted to buying a grandma weed today or um you know having a bottle of wine every night which is an addiction whether you want to call it you know an addiction or not to someone who is out there robbing and having to um raise 500 quid a day for a crack habit you know there's there's there's levels and a spectrum to the whole thing and i think you know i've just discussed this with uh with joe and i don't joe lomax from a different podcast about them you know guys coming out of 40 year addictions to heroin and things like that these are those those pathways within the brain they are so solidly kind of cemented in it but as you say you know they say one of the arguments about change that human beings can instigate change in their own minds is that you develop this neuroplasticity yes and that's saying that your pathways have become that they harden your neural pathways so the the the messages that your brain is is receiving it becomes hardened and harder to change as you get older right which but of course this is all theory it's not saying it is and it's not saying it isn't right it's a it's a theory like like like pretty much a lot of things inside or it's what science is founded is founded upon theory right so i mean it's like gravity isn't it still it's still just a theory just a theory you know it's a theory um and what i would say there is that it don't give up hope if you you know you you just said that i seem to be on top of it wow you know you'd be surprised every day is every day isn't it each day starts afresh yeah i what i'd like to think what what i pride myself more on now i don't prime that sounds stupid i didn't go around i know you're right but what what what is a good thing is that when i get myself in that shit now i can get myself out yes you've got the tools you've got to create those tools chris you know yeah and this is the thing is that i i can start going down that route route again jimmy and i have done many times it's called lapsing or relapsing and that is absolutely fine because when you understand the cycle of change yeah uh you'll understand that lapsing and relapsing is part of your learning yeah and where does it bring you it brings you back around to the start where you realize something is wrong and you need to take action again yeah and it's it's fine that the problem that's promoted by i guess these a lot of these sort of help groups is that that's that they talk about getting clean right not only is that a disgusting word i've never done even you know i've done stupid things in my life i've never done anything unclean by taking drugs right so so the whole language we use is offensive and oppressive and stigmatizing unhelpful but secondly you're not trying to get people clean or or off drugs you're trying to help them get balance in their life okay you know if someone can do one gram of heroin a month and i've met people like this and yet they're fully functioning as a i don't know your stereotypical doctoral solicitor isn't that a good thing isn't that something's waiting for what what what's all this what's all this clean business well that that's brought about by people that have been put under the belief that they can't help themselves yeah and i would argue you always can sometimes it will seem like oh my god i've gone down the bloody that avenue again you know that unhelpful avenue again but you know don't forget every time you do you do learn and it can it can be frustrating but eventually you can get yourself in a situation where for as much as that short-term endorphins kid you into taking the drug or whatever you can build this mental infrastructure to get you out again and simply the read the you know one aspect of that is if i if i find myself going down that road i can just go stop yeah think about what's important to you yeah think about the promise you made in my case to my son i'm a dad now he comes first it's that freaking simple yeah you know think about that you know if you're doing that again it's kind of cowardly behavior because it's going to affect that little man for the rest of his life yeah and you know that because you you've experienced that so you know i'm not trying to put guilt on anyone here understand this is how i talk to myself right yeah um i think about the health aspect you know my i've got a lot of best mates i'm sure you're the same if you're a friend of mine you you probably very quickly become our best mate right but simon generally was a very old and best mate my he drunk himself to death after coming off the speed you know um it's it's a factor you can't get away from if you're putting toxins in your body you're shortening your lifespan it's just that simple you you ain't going to drink every day and live to 90 90 years old you know and i already jimmy drank you know i i drank and smoked drugs every day for like 30 best part 30 years you know certainly 25 years um so my body's already been through enough right yeah and i know that that if i go back down that alleyway that this is what i'm doing and it it this might sound like a lot of negatives but it's not these this is the cognitive behavioural therapy that i've done on myself yeah because i could be in stay in denial i could go our crisis just to drink yeah yeah but you know you 30 years of drinking drugs that look what you've learned but you know i could do all that bullshit right but but i'm not i could i could um you know say well it's my house i'm a man i work hard i'm gonna have a beer in front of my son if he doesn't you know but i know i know better than that jimmy you know and you see i'm not in denial and that was um that's kind of like one of the very sad things about addiction when you see someone in denial yeah and all you can do is use a little bit of kind of challenging technique or motivational we call it as a drug work it's called motivational interviewing right so you say to me uh oh i haven't got a problem i'll say what you're doing in a drug agency then sorry i'm confused oh that's my family i'll come here for my fun oh so your family think you've got a problem oh well well yeah yeah so what what do they think is that oh it's my drink it's my drink okay so why would they why why if you say it's not wrong why would they think it's a problem oh i smashed a car out and i've got done for drink right ah so i mean don't get me wrong jimmy that sounds like a problem you know do you know you're going to lose your job you've got a criminal record and and you smash your car up so could you sort of say that maybe it's a little bit well now you mention it yeah i suppose and yeah you know you use a bit of that kind of technique and you can maybe get people over that denial sort of phase but i guess it's the old you know it's the old cliche isn't it you're only going to change if you want to change and that is that is it and based on what just so quickly on what you were just saying there the whole when you catch yourself falling into that hole again it's how quickly can you pull yourself back out of it you know if you're coming from a 10 year addiction and then you might have six months clean and then another couple of years whereas if you can you know i recently had a full week of just full blow madness and it was just a bad place where i was able to come out the other side and i've come out with a much more positive and you see that full circle as long as you can do that and not allow yourself to fall into it and stay in it yeah as you say clearly the drugs are not the issue it's the reason that you've taken the drug that's what the issue is so what is the issue and if you don't know what it is you need to do a little bit of digging and find out and that's kind of what i found is because because i i'm i'm willing because i believe in myself and i want a good life yeah i am i don't want to be in that denial so i will highlight the bad shit about what the behavior i'm doing yeah you know if i stop by the off license on the way and when i'm picking up four cans i might still pick them up okay you know i might pick up some tobacco when i'm there and i don't smoke and i don't freaking drink right and i'm but i'm going down that avenue but i'm doing it knowing already knowing this has got to change this has got to change and what happens is when you focus on it you constantly flag up these negatives you flag up what you're doing wrong is you start to find you can't enjoy being in that place yeah yeah that's right because you always know where it's going to lead you know that it's no good it's going to come of it and you know it's going to change so so just a silly example i know that if i'm on you know drugs or alcohol my writing suffers right i also know that i always tell myself my writing's gonna it's not so much my writing's gonna say yeah it's gonna come easy and i'm gonna write loads more and da da da da and when i'm got i'm sat at the computer on a right and i kind of be there you know and i'm it's it's it's it's always the same jimmy my writing just goes to shit i i can't concentrate i never get anything done i stop going to the gym at you know getting up at five in the morning or half five and being at the gym for six or or swimming a mile before before you know i come i don't have breakfast i have a green smoothie in the morning and uh yeah that's that's that's where my life is now mate green smoothies right yeah in the dream baby in the dream you know i swam a mile before i come back and have that i've had a nice sauna i'm all showered up ready to go for the day i see all that all that goes out the window when i when i start going down those old behaviors and and it's just that in itself isn't is flags up warning signs for me and i'm like i've got to change already isn't it that behavior it's i've got to change it already it's not yeah it's not it's not gonna lead to anything good i really hope this is making sense because hundred percent hundred percent and as i say you know you know i'm going through it myself and i've been you know compared to years gone by i've been doing quite well you know but as you say no one's perfect but the the times between the slips are becoming larger and larger and that's the only thing you can work upon unless the thinking the twisted thinking when you know and it's like you said they've been just like oh my right only better father have a few tinnies on the side and then you know that's bullshit and when you know you're bullshitting yourself fast because we are the easiest the easiest person to fool and bullshit ourselves once you once you start learning to stop bullshitting yourself that's the because no one else is falling for your bullshit that's what i see when i'm saying i'm not falling for your bullshit i'll pretend i'm falling for your bullshit but you know i'm not falling for your bullshit it's like you know so yeah i'm just gonna quickly i made a little note there about um neuroplasticity and the positive side of it being um 21 days of persistent action is the key to um locking in a positive habit also a negative habit but also a positive habit and um that's something that i've kind of learned and put into practice a couple of times with a few things so you know it's like getting back into the gym i'm struggling when you're locked up in jail prison is all you have sorry when you're locked up in prison uh the gym is all you have and people then get addicted to the gym and gym is a good gym is a good club i'll say that for him hey but uh there are worse addictions in life to have as well but also it can become unhealthy as well you know anything can become unhealthy but um i'm just in the process now of wanting to get back to that place of you just can't wait to get up in the morning and get to the gym because you know afterwards as you say you're starting that day on a different kind of level you know it's um all right it's all making complete sense to me yeah they call it morning routine don't they yes in life coaching circles there's a big um there's a big sort of uh emphasis is being put on that at the moment and it's yeah it's really it's very important and my day now doesn't feel right if i don't do the routine you know yeah having a daily practice um i'm friends with a lovely lady called Shakti Cabral she does um oh i always forget it's quite an intricate kind of um advanced form she works a kooky jong and um energy heal and all this kind of stuff but it's getting that daily practice in now i gave Sean some information on i know he was big into his yoga but the five to bet and right so you're familiar with that it's essentially it's a very simple it's just five little exercises you do you do 20 you could build up to them if you're fit enough for health you can crack straight on with the 21 of each there's five different movements and it's the original it's just a very simple form of um yoga that the the old yogis do and it's what was brought back out from Tibet in the in the um originally that's why why i understand a bit i think i know it's been developed now and corporatized and turning into classes and these all different different kind of extended programs and whatnot but all you have to do is just then five to bet and right so this just people just need to google it or youtube it and it's so easy and when i when i was doing that every day i'd write them that was my beginning of my day before anything else you just get up i'm getting back into it now i've been up the flat and i've been doing it kind of as of the morning and that once you can get that locked in it's just great because you you literally hit every single muscle you you flex in every single position and even just that one single um purposeful practice of a daytime you know you can add more different things to it but even just having one can be so beneficial and as you say you know whether it's that swimming of a mile and coming back and having your green shake it's all positive stuff and having those things in place are very very helpful and productive i find i'd say the thing the place i've got myself to now jimmy is like i can't really enjoy being on drugs or being drunk because it it like life off it is too good for me now if that makes sense and that's nice it's a nice place to be i have to say it it it's also about set and setting right that's a drug workers term i never used to use it but i now hear people using it when they talk to me set and one thing i think that really helped is all the drugs went so shit in this country you know i think the government learned how to ban the chemicals needed to make for example good speed because it's all synthetic shit now right the pills very often a synthetic and it's just not a nice um feeling right it's like people that smoke this synthetic cannabis i i had a few talks on someone's joint went oh my god it sent me into such a the worst one of the worst anxiety or panic attacks i think i'd ever experienced it was horrible right i'm not saying that normal weed makes me much better but yeah but that was kind of another i'm i'm just trying to give the full picture here because yeah if it'd be different if i was sat in amsterdam now with some good quality you know good quality pills uh or if it's south america like the coke down there it's just people in this country wouldn't know what it was mate they wouldn't know ah they would not know with what you get in the clubs here that i don't know what that is but it's it's probably more dental than it is jungle if that makes sense and i'm not saying that if i was in one of those situations i might not um i mean to give an example the friend of mine buys a lot all his stuff off the dark web yeah i went out he lives in uh croatia and i went out to meet him and he had my god he had some crystal meth some pills and when you buy it it's like ebay so people rate it so if you screw people over tell them crap yeah you get a bad rating on that on on these websites right and so what you're buying is good you can buy like in um what's it called not um clinical grade cocaine yeah right so what the medical people you right you can buy it all on there right so i went over there and this is we're talking this is quite a few about five or six years ago now and we just had a night on it and it really reminded me of you know it was too good it's a bit dangerous yeah the pills reminded me of the dance era back in the day the the crystal meth was just it was the proper good stuff like in hong hong hong hong kong you know and um i'm kind of glad that it's all a bit shit in this country now because i i don't know any dealers anymore mate you know i wouldn't know who to call if i decided to um that yeah i like i wouldn't know who to call um so it's a double-edged sword now with the what you're describing there uh chris because on one hand you're saying um you wouldn't know who to call but then on on on the other on the flip side of that is there's no excuse these days to be buying shit drugs off anybody and i'm not recommending people buy drugs my point is is that it's no i have really fucked things up with drugs so i don't really don't recommend them if you can do things about drugs that would be my advised route but my point is is that anyone now as you know should have mentioned the dark web anyone can access the dark web so uh and as you say it's kind it's like amazon and on one side it's good because it's reduced violence a lot it's reduced a lot of street activity on one level because a lot of people now will just buy their own from the dark web or groups of friends will um combine or pool their cash and and do their thing so obviously there are different different threads to this train of thought like the one is on one hand i think it is a positive thing i think it is it has it has has had positive effects because it you know the the the only people now who are getting in trouble with drugs are irresponsible people because you can buy drug testing kits all the websites are out there your pill reports your bunk police your blue light um you know there's no excuse in this day and age to be buying drugs random drugs off strangers and things like this because if you're going to get in trouble doing shit like that that's what's going to cause problems you know well jimmy you've just highlighted a key area there which is education yes exactly and off the back of this government's attempt at prohibition and what do we know about prohibition we know it doesn't work right yeah yeah they've you know they've obscured all of this and so you got i mean just this weekend wasn't it two young people at a festival bought bought a pill that pill for some reason i don't ask me why but there was something in it that killed these two lads you know i'm saying lads i didn't yeah i i i glanced a headline in an arc i don't read all that tabloid stuff anymore but i could glance the headline might have been might have been boy and a girl or whatever but the point is you know we we're denying with all this kind of all drugs is illegal we're denying then the chance to learn that there's things like testing kits right yeah um we're we're denying and just everything that we're talking about now right the government wants to censor and it doesn't want people having these conversations yeah and um yeah and it's just it's it's just all unhelpful really isn't it it's disgraceful that's what it is let's us call it how we see it it's disgraceful um we know why we know they've all got shares in no the alcohol companies the pharmaceutical companies the prisons the private prison system you know all you know we you know you want to look into it none of this shit's hidden you can look at all the information there's all they're playing to see and you know you look at countries now there's um how i met a fella last saturday we were just having a conversation about similar things and he was saying i think it's in holland there is a new show i think you think he said it was called drugs lab i've not had a chance to check it out but i'll check out and i'll put a note in the comments about it um in the description box right there but apparently there's a show once a week it comes out and they just test all the all the latest shit that's out on the streets and that's what what's what most of the main supply is doing the main you know your party flock crew from the Netherlands all this kind of stuff the main because that's all that's happened over there is as you say um it banned all the chemicals so for example the embargoed um saffron or sassafras oil from the south east pacific and rightly so they were decimating beautiful large massive trees to get at the roots get the oil well that kind of mgme was something special granted the way in which it was made was not productive and you know i do disagree with it i didn't at the time but i don't jimmy i don't can you explain this to me because that comes from the saffron tree in southeast asia right that's right mainly cambo here from what i understand yeah uh and it was quite obvious when that chemical became in short demand because the pills become shit right yes they become this synthetic well it's uh pzp was the main um and that's obviously an abbreviation for the longer letter of it and i think i'll most of that was made in new zealand i think from what i know okay i just what i don't know is when someone comes rocks up at a party and they've got a bag of mandi yeah is that i mean what happened gwan i've always taken it i've always taken it the pills are shit because there's none of that saffron oil left in the world right yeah but the mdma is the real mccoy but maybe i'm maybe no you are wrong yeah what it is is that um the pills are just as good as the mdma now they're you know if anything what what what happened and um they discovered a different way to synthesize the same essential product by using a different base oil called pmk oil what that is i'm not entirely sure but it's it comes from there's a great show on netflix a really um gritty i think it's a belgian drama um about these two undercover detectives who go and infiltrate this ecstasy gang is a fantastic program i wouldn't watch you with subplot i wouldn't watch it dubbed watch your subplot because it's the dubbing is rubbish but that's an aside they discovered a way to synthesize mdma with pmk oil and what you found then was that not only was the mdma back to the back to the good old strength the other pills because it was so easy for them to manufacture they were just having pissing contests these um these dutch crews and you know they're putting pills out that were like 350 milligrams and 375 milligrams wow that's too much for even someone with a strong regular um a regular usage and you know you take a young 15 year old girl or a young 16 year old lad or whatever the first time we're taking one of these pills it and it's no wonder they're getting hospitalized but the part i don't like mdma anymore because it's not the same when it's made with sasa fry as well you get the i don't um i don't i can't remember last time i took street drugs uh yeah i mean i'm i'm i'm so much happier off all that shit i just genuinely i never i never say never because i don't want if people see me you know with a beer in mind i don't want thinking i'm like i'm a hypocrite fallen down it's like no no no i'm i'm i'm cool with it all right just i prefer like the pure life now it's just fighting so much better and i and so any young people listening you know my deal with everyone is like you live your life and i'll live mine and then then that's fine right but if you can be happy without all that shit i can go go for it right so it's kind of hard it's hard for me to make comment because i was so misguided as a young person i thought my parents generation they were really they were just really naive about life and about what was it they didn't know any they they were sold this the british equivalent of the american dream right if you're a doctor you're a good person but if you're a what we now call a refuse collector they were called dustbin men when i was a kid and that's like uh not such a good person you know that that is genuinely how i genuinely how i was brought up yeah if you drive a a big flashy car that ironically destroys the planet because it uses so much fuel that is a better way to be than someone who drives a mini that saves the planet you know all these weird constructs about what makes you happy and successful and of course it's all just that's it it's all just constructed to try to and well as we know it's constructed to suit other people's agendas but i guess it also just helped my parents generation make sense of the world right yeah but so for people listening i grew up with a weird weird sense of what what of how life was because my parents were post war so they had a certain you know it's like we if you drove down the street in the seventies and a woman's walking down a road in high heels okay it's perfectly normal for the woman in your car to go oh look at dressed up as lamb right are you really that detrimental and nasty and why do you care about how someone else lives their life why are you interested right but back then that was like normal you know i mean back then if you if if your parents were married you were called a bastard right so i would go out to play with a you know a certain kid and my mum would go are you you going out to play with Brian a bastard that was that was the label that you had to grow up with that label i'm a bastard you know this is how sort of screwed up it was and this is why for a lot of us when the ecstasy generation came around and the dance era and you suddenly find yourself sat on the floor of the sleazy nightclub we're not we're not sleazy is the wrong word but a dirty filthy nightclub and you're rolling a joint with that refuse collector that your parents kind of said was a you don't want to be like that it actually raises a really nice person and and and and you've got this mutual instant mutual respect for each other it was a real eye eye opener for you know it it wasn't just that it was an eye opener it was just so reassuring to realise that kind of like what you thought your values really were actually were like they are yeah because i'm all right never really judged anyone and and and but yeah again like i hope this kind of make make sense but for the young people listening it's it's difficult for me to speak jimmy on the subject i never i never one thing i've always tried to do in my life is i've never introduced someone to drugs ever by one person there was a norwegian friend of mine that came to stay in the uk and we went out for a dance party one night yeah and it was kind of like do i don't and that's not to say in any way i'd blame anyone that introduced me yeah because it's just the way it is it's not it's just your destiny is your kind of destiny right yeah so as far as young people go that might listen to this i don't think i know what to tell you other than just live your life you know i'm not going to recommend you do anything other than certainly try and learn about the the spiritual side of the universe and learn about good what makes good diet learn learn about the alkaline alkaline living which is at a massive effect massive a bigger effect on my life than anything else i've ever done yeah also learn about you know learn about kind of the eternal energy that runs through the universe which we're all a part of which then then that that cuts out a lot of shit that you have to learn and hear about if you just realize we're all just atoms at the end of the day vibrating at a certain frequency that holds us in this form and nothing else really matters so much you know yeah um so yeah so it's a real it's a real difficult one and um yeah it's it's kind of why it's when you hear people are don't do any of that shit anymore it's well hang on it wasn't shit when you did it was a yeah exactly for a reason you love to open your eyes to what what what you mean is is you don't want that the addiction anymore because of the turmoil it caused caused in your life right so yeah yeah no i resonate with that um christ it does make complete sense but um what you were saying makes complete sense from your side of the table and 100 percent coming from for me it's just a little bit different obviously being still like this summer i went to a few free parties you know what free party scene where they yeah yeah great you know and the vibes and the people there they're just phenomenal and you know they'll clean up after they don't leave a scrap of dirt that's that's an aside but what i've kind of observed now is that like as i said the mdma is not the same as it used to be because they make it with different chemical and what seems to be now the new wave is now ketamine and these balloons so that's what seems to be the new wave and ketamine is a whole other beast now you know really messes people up big stiley big star this is this is the line that you know there's a line no between stimulants and hallucinogens and i know ketamine is actually a tranquilizer but but you can hallucinate when you go down a kale yeah there's a few things in life that are bizarre i do not suggest i mean my another of my best friends drowned after we took lsd oh yeah you'll be coming back i'll talk about i'm sure and i believe yeah part two yeah well i mean i'm i'm i'm here to tell people the truth i don't i'm i'm not a drug advocate i'm not in anything i'm not in anything advocate i'm like you live your life jimmy and i'll live mine yeah then we'll you know you'll find a way and it's hard because this planet is massively overpopulated and sadly people are going to die right it's where do you where do you do you know i'm do you know i'm saying it's where do you try to protect everybody yeah i mean people have to die that it's a sad fact of life and this is kind of this is also another factor in this if you want to if you want to kind of look at things from a holistic point of view not everyone is going to survive not everyone's going to come through addiction because life to a certain extent is about adapting and finding you know finding the way and sadly some people they won't find that way in it it's not it's not their fault often it often it's the they're a byproduct of their upbringing they haven't had i mean i was probably quite lucky despite a lot of craziness i had a i think i'm naturally quite an intelligent person i'm a bit stupid at too many things but i do have kind of like a perception about me that maybe has helped me to to stay on this planet right i guess also other people can have trauma that is so bad that they it's really a lot harder for them to get over these coping you know these maladapted coping coping mechanisms for example drugs you know yeah so can i ask something chris you've asked away mate you've been all over the world as you say refresh me well you've been on every continent essentially right yeah do you actually believe the planet is overpopulated or do you think it's more a case of actually how things are structured rather um because you can fit apparently and i don't quote me on this because i'm not sure apparently you could fit every single human being in alaska with like a football field each or something something ridiculous like that so i'm not calling you i'm just asking if you're trying to elaborate like you said you're not you're not a stupid guy i want i want you to call me out because i don't want to live with a head full of shit you know i want i want truth jimmy you know what it's like i only tell the truth right and that's not because i'm an angel or i'm a you know again i'm not a speck no it's like learn eastern philosophy if you want to live the perfect life you can't like because that is living in the lower part of your body it's living in what they call the the the beast sense you know the beast sense is like the animal area above that you're an enlightened area i don't want to live you know your beast area is your your kind of like people who lie and cheat people who people are massive and greed and envy pornography uh gluttony it's kind of like the seven deadly sins right but but it's not so it's not like that oh god i'm such an angel it's like no it's like i like to live the good life yeah and living a living in this part of the body at that's what you get back isn't it so you know and and i like to live like this jimmy because it's just so much easier than the clusterfuck of a life i've lived before yeah it's just so much easier to be truthful some people might not like what you say and that's fine but at least i'm giving them the opportunity to make their own minds i'm not hiding or i'm not putting an agenda in you know in their way so going back to what you said about the population i don't have any issue right with like the i've heard both started the debates for global warming for example okay but my question is more like i'm not really too bothered about that what i'm more bothered about is the pollution yeah what how long do we continue to think we can destroy the planet taking any resources from it whether it's iron tin coal or whatever stick lifestyle are we that stupid we think that can go on forever because it can't we're building mountains of rubbish we're destroying the environment we're cutting down areas of natural beauty and as we now you know and as we know the rainforest gives us our oxygen and all this sort of stuff um you know my my question is that so it's not about like how many people per se live on the planet it's about how are we fueling that yeah how how are we gonna allow everybody in china to have two cars and three children yeah how are we gonna allow everybody in in in you know bot swana to go to mcdonald's three times a week and throw away all that plastic crap yeah how are we gonna support 10 billion more supermarkets on the planet in the next x amount of you you know these are more important when you come down to it you end up thinking about such random thing or such sort of extreme concepts of do we all have to go back to the hunter-gatherer thing where we didn't actually damage anything in the planet because all regrow again you know you might chop down a tree but it's gonna regrow you might pick some berries and some nuts but they're gonna grow back you know you you um you you didn't use iron tools so you didn't have to do quarrying and destroy that do you see what i'm saying yeah 100 you know how are we gonna find a happy balance between where we are now and where we were then that is sustainable yeah you know it's like people talk about wind tunnels uh sorry wind farms blah blah blah oh yeah but where's that wind mill made it's made in a factory it's made out of nestle that comes from the ground it's made out of plastic that pollutes him you know what what when it's defunct they'll rip it down and it goes in landfill yeah did you get what i'm saying so it's not really renewable energy is it it's energy at a cost and sure it might be a 80 better than what we had before i i wouldn't dispute that but you know human beings have the ability to think very very cleverly and sadly because these greedy rich elitist men control everything for their own lack of ego or their own over-inflated ego they have found very clever ways to stop us all thinking about these things and in the distractions in the form of you say netflix you know social media things that were all guilty off to a certain extent but it's because it's shoved in front of us right megan megan merkel like if that if that's two words that ever come into your life that ever come out your mouth you have a you you're seriously never gonna be happy yeah you might be you might be you might be like content you know to cruise through and you might think that your life is good but if you speak if you're seeking like the higher reward in life you've got to raise yourself above all that pop culture stuff you know because it's there to it's there to confuse the truth it's there to to brainwash you and manipulate you and yeah so you know i completely i completely relate what you're saying there chris because you say it's the system you know i just want that's what i wanted to clarify you know i thought you've you've you've said exactly what i expected you to say basically because it's nothing to do with the amount of people but it's how those people are living those lives you know and there's sure you'll be familiar with the african principle of who won't do like if it's not good for everyone and it's not good for anyone and that's the kind of that's the principle we're trying to live by and you know and and if we're doing anything it's like you know as it is at the moment it's just it's only going one way and it's going very very fast i think we're probably on the on the on the brink of a societal reset and whether that'll be um mother nature doing that to us or whether it'll be uh well who knows but i think it's it's going to go one way or the other quite soon it's hard to know where to position yourself because yeah right it's at the end of the day like i don't really value my life you know so i'm not really bothered if i do die because i just think i'm i'm it's i'm just a load of molecules it just does it really you know yeah it the reason i've got this survival instinct is because i am by definition mother nature you can call that god you can call that universe you can call that spirit whatever but i am by definition mother nature's way of experiencing herself right yeah so there's no more it's not it's not i don't believe in getting any more clever about it than that it's it's god created life because it's it's fucking boring on his own you know he was there in an infinite bloody galaxy universe it was just blackness and he sat there on his tablet you know fucking bored as fuck oh do you know what i'm gonna create something when i create that i want that thing there to chuck something back at me and then i'm gonna chuck it back and that's gonna create something and then it's and then and then you know i want this this life form that i'm created to to to develop consciousness and it's just a mad experiment isn't it really yeah it is but i'm not i'm not massively i don't know where i'm sitting it all if i'm on this i don't know if i should be as a human rights warrior that's that's against fracking and da da da or whether like it all doesn't matter because at the end of the day if it got that bad you can top yourself and then well that's you know you just go back to the dirt then don't you get what i'm saying yeah it's you know i genuinely what i'm trying to say is is that's like an extreme buddhist philosophy isn't it the extreme right of like hey man just chill out it does what will be will be let it all go and then you've got maybe the extreme left which is no we've got a fight for freedom and what's right and and and and and and it's it's kind of hard because if you spend all your life fighting you're going to burn out right yeah you know yeah and these people they they tire you out i mean they are a sick bunch of bastards aren't they this i mean they just are this these walls that they create and it's um it's pretty mad at people are just buying into this Iran stuff yeah with no memory that we've just been through literally how long ago it wasn't that long ago with it and you're like i mean are you that short sighted you can't see and it's like makes you wonder doesn't it first of all i just say to people yeah even if you are seeing a video and it alleges to show Iranian soldiers placing land mines on on west you know ships from the west or by that i mean america or britain obviously yeah right most of all have have a self-respect to to at least realize you don't know where the hell this video came from just just have you don't know who the actors are that are in this and use that word actors for a reason you don't know what this mysterious ship is but secondly even if it is Iranian soldiers and even if that is a ship from eso oil or something think who control these people yeah because you'll find they all went to the same school as your tony blair and your blooming david Cameron and your you know all your your extremely high level freemasons and by that i'm not talking about the guys that go for a beer at the lodge on a friday night i mean yeah these things go much much higher right yes you know they all went to the same schools they all they all belong to the same clubs they all speak an esoteric language that the man in the street wouldn't understand right so yeah it might if if that is soldiers doing that or if then you've got to understand that the people that are telling them to do it are the same people that went to school with david Cameron and tony blair and do you know what i'm saying yeah the same ties that they they make the same secret deals because war really suits their purpose they sell the set you know they make money off these bombs bullets and guns and they do it all and if you want to go to war then you need to look a veteran in the eye when he's lost his legs and say i'm glad about that you know and and and um you know if you really want to thank a veteran for his service and don't send him to war because it's unless the vast majority of wars that are created just you know for for very we're probably getting a bit bit deep now but i think this is what i was going to come on to actually i hope it's okay with you to come on to this stuff yeah sure i mean i'm an ex yeah i'm gonna this was gonna be my next i've literally got it written here about the military stuff because yeah yeah yeah well i didn't think in mind um because you obviously can i just say i gotta go pick my little man up i tell you what go on in about five minutes so do you want to just cover one more subject and we can take this off yeah of course of course well i tell you what then i'll i'll leave the military stuff till next time and i'll just ask if i may how old is he number one if that's not too intrusive my little one yeah four four oh no see my going on 14 we say brilliant yeah my niece my niece is around the same age a little bit younger well actually yeah i think she's slightly younger and um at that age it's just we were talking about um i'm part of a little group that meets up every second or fourth thursday called the rabbit hole and um one of our members a dear friend of mine Tracy he's talking about she's been a primary slash junior school teacher for um 20 odd years and she said you know when they come in regardless of what kind of home life they have they might have the most terrific home life but they still have that spark that light and that shine of them and it's only when they get to come towards the end 10 11 that they start to harden up and all the rest of it how do you sit with your little lad and kind of education wise and do you see what i see when we start seeing now the fuckeries within the education system we know it's not an education system an indoctrination system and how do you how do you feel about that now and how do you approach it with regards to balancing the bullshit it's not all bullshit don't get me wrong uh but there is a lot of bullshit now and they're filling these little little human beings minds with preparing them ready for the system ready for the machine just to be chewed up yeah cogs yeah how would you find do you find that balance a difficult thing or do you find you're able to kind of you know have there have been any shocking moments where he's come home and told you anything they've been taught he's probably a little bit young at the moment but well some of the stuff they're teaching in these schools now is just crazy well of course um i think my partner and i aren't our stance is just to let it ride mate because we can't afford to go for an alternative form you know where there's not many alternatives in other countries you get alternative education you like you've got this steiner ward off education which is much more focused much more focused about the individual from what i understand i've heard of it i've not looked into too much yes in scandinavia anyone can start a school right they call it folk high schools right so anyone can start like a specialist sort of school da da da so in this country we're limited it suits us that we've got him into a really nice school they've got a focus on sport um which i i really like that it's it's just quite it's everything about it is really it is about the best you'd expect from a primary school right brilliant that's good to know now yeah of course i mean there's going to be stuff that that i kind of wish they wouldn't teach them or or whatever it's it's a function it's what landmarks would call a functionalist education it's it's basically you know you've got to prepare these people to go and work in an office all their life for a call center and that's what it is in essence isn't it that's actually you know basically sacrifice all their dreams and everything to to make the ruling elite even richer than they already are and it's very cleverly set up they've been doing this since since before the time of the pyramids they know what they're doing you know and and and it's just the way it is but we would hope to have our influence on him yes to be able to get him to critical think to analyze the experience that he's going through um you know i can't see us homeschooling him although i wouldn't have any qualms taking a child out of school if they were getting bullied because i think that rex of a young that rex of person for life i would say rex that's very strong i know you mean i know you i'm sure i'm sure the people that are very uh impressively got themselves reconditioned from that that that horrible trauma but i i'm talking about the people i meet now as a 50 year old man i went to school with and like they still go on about that bullet bullying that they went through when we were 11 years old you know it's it's awful so i wouldn't have any hassle you know i'm a bit old school i want to go charging in then go right who is it yeah and but i'm also wise enough to know that person bullying is a victim as well you know yeah and yeah very often very often terrible time behind the scenes so yeah um that's kind of where i stand with it they're gonna you know they're gonna have their bloody christian what is it the service in the morning i don't mind it it'll give my boy an understanding of what religion is and then i can maybe help him to understand that actually there's a lot of theories about who jesus was and what what what he said all in good time all in good time all in good you know all in good time and yeah so i'm not too you know i want to just want him to be a happy little boy and yeah i had a really enlightening experience the other day because we went in for his they call it graduation which i'm not sure mom that sits comfortably with me but they do all that now don't they right um uh so yeah we went in for his graduation and uh where they had a break and we went we would got coffee and cake or what don't um tea and coffee rather and and the kids went outside to play and i've never seen my little boy so excited i'd never seen him like that because he's he hasn't got any brothers or sisters right okay yeah yeah below nice i think also the world we're living in now is kids don't seem to like come play with each other no this is not like that man was it no i know he's only four but even the older kids it's all it's all consoles and you know we try and reach out to the other parents at the nursery and say listen here's our phone number yeah love's your kid if you just come and it just doesn't seem to happen i i guess there's a lot of reasons for that yeah yeah well i tell you i appreciate your your response they really do a very honest and uh frank and well the thing i'm in staging is i saw him run out in the playground oh yes sorry so happy i i hadn't seen that side to him before my little boy he just looked like like the loveliest little man in a whole world he was right he just couldn't wait to kick the football and he's going he's just so excited to be and i haven't seen that and it was really a special moment it made me feel bit bad that i can't create that for him when he comes home you know i know it's something different isn't it i mean you've got you're providing something in a different way but i understand what i tried to but it makes me i do realize i have to say to him so much i'm working darling i'm working right and i hate that i know because i'll tell you now if anybody thinks like i think if anybody thinks um like people come on podcasts to make a load of money or to do like please believe me i want nothing to do with a public sphere you can keep it okay i love meeting guys like you jimmy it really makes life worth living right i'm not i'm not saying that what i'm saying is i don't want to be in it you know i just don't want to in any way be in a public i want to be with my family doing nice things that is it team the reason i'm doing all this is is that i don't even have like a stable income you know it fluctuates month to month and some months i can barely i bet you know i'm so barely get by because i'm lucky i've got a little bit of savings but so yeah i it guts me when i have to say to him darling i'm working and i or i'm on my phone and it's a work thing yeah you know yeah it's i'm not blind to this jimmy i know that will affect him yeah and it's getting to the point where i'm if i like it's fine when you're a single guy you can sit at the computer drinking smoking you know off your head if you want writing your books and doing your social media you know reaching out to your fans and da da da da that that's fine but things are just so different when you when you when when you've got responsibility of another human being you know yeah yeah yeah i'll fair play i appreciate that i would love to thank you very much christ has been awesome chat um and yeah i think uh if it's all right by you we should definitely pencil another one and next time i wonder who we can get right into the the military stuff because um i said today we've gone a lot more not more than i'd rather i've really enjoyed it but we've got a lot more into um you know the addiction stuff which has been fantastic and quite relevant for me myself i'm gonna say lately if i really appreciate that i want to say thank you yes have yourself a wonderful evening sir and i will catch up again very soon and i'll thank you again all the best brother take care nice friend turn on me see you see you soon