 and the state of my day depended on my ability to get about three bottles into me for breakfast and if I couldn't do that and often I couldn't because I'd vomit and stuff I just literally couldn't consume it anymore I would spend the day rattling. So how much time have I spent in Thailand? Well the first time I was there Paul I'd got what we call an indulgence flight in the marines it's basically a ridiculously cheap flight you can get through the military so the military can serve their bases around the world. So I flew to Hong Kong for 40 quid right very interesting time in Hong Kong. In fact the first... How was this? This was about 92. Oh. So I came out of a pub on New Year's Eve in a place called Lan Quai Phong and there was 21 people dead lying dead in the street right. You know Asia when it goes it you can't explain it to an English person you know or a Brit it's like nothing we experience it stuff goes off big time right. So basically the people had rushed outside of the pubs to count the new year in which was like a tradition there in Lan Quai Phong and as the countdown went you know 10, 9, a mass crush developed and panic set in and like I said I think it was 21 people were killed. A couple of days later it might even have been a couple of days before I'm walking down a street somewhere because if you've been in Hong Kong it's like a mad metropolis you don't even know if you're on the island or on the mainland it's because you use the underground if you're if you're new to the place is what I'm saying. And there was a gangster there called Yit Khaifun who was originally born in a small fishing village in China and he kept going on the rampage in Hong Kong with AK-47s and robbing all the the very mega plush jewellery stores. And in this particular one I think a woman was shot dead in the crossfire with the police. So that was like my second experience there but putting that to one side Hong Kong's a difficult place to get under the skin if you're a tourist and I never used to travel with a like a lonely planet or a guide book and the reason was and this sounds stupid but this is how naive I am I didn't even know they existed. So I rocked up there I remember spending some you know just going around the place and anyway getting to Thailand I rushed to the airport to fly to the Philippines right I thought right I've had five days in Hong Kong it's been great but let's keep this travel finger and let's let's go to the airport I'll have um you know five days in the Philippines and I rocked up at um was it Kai Tak airport back then and I missed the flight right which is typical of me um so I said well where else can I go they said ah we've got a flight are leaving for Bangkok in 20 minutes out with a credit card or whatever it was back in those days get me on that flight right it was an Air India flight and immediately I realized something was different in this part of the world because I went in the toilet on the airplane and there were foot marks on the seat so obviously someone who'd come from the back country used to doing the business in a hole in the ground didn't understand no you sit on this one yeah foot marks on the um so got in Thailand hopped into a taxi at I guessing it's the old Bangkok airport um I'm going yeah the guy said which hotel sir I said I don't want a hotel take me to to the bars he said no so I have to take you to a hotel and I'm like no I only had a little back by so take me to the bar and this is probably familiar with your story Paul you know I just absolutely yeah go and get down to a lot of details I my first time going to Thailand did you remember last minute dot com yes very much I used to walk I walked as a nurse and I used to be used to a week of nights and what I would do on my my last night would try to find somewhere to go to that like really really cheap and just one time I happened to be to be Bangkok but yeah back in those days yes I was very much an alcohol enthusiast so it was the bars I got my nose broken in Pat Pong I think on the um do you remember a club there it was I think it's called the pink panther I I I tended to go to the islands pretty quick I never really you know later on I did you know but but during those times I was kind of just dare to the islands they tried to pull that tourist scam on us where the bouncer come well they they pull out a bar bill and it's like 120 quid and you've had four beers right oh right yeah and then they try to tell you're paying for this sex show or whatever and I wasn't really into all that you know I'm not judging here but it I want my thing I don't need to go abroad to kiss a girl do you know what I mean yes or look or look at a girl as the case may be um and so I said to my colonist get out of here and then they came up with this trumped up bar bill this is Thailand crying out beer was like 12p and this is bills 120 quid so I went to the door and the bouncer this like I don't know what the equivalent of a Thai triad is but this spivvy guy just stepped out like that so I was traveling with South African I went Rob oh my camera he went why Chris I said because I'm going to fight this guy when I win we go outside for free right well these guys as you well know they've been kickboxing since they're two years old they not stupid and they certainly don't want to lose face to a to a drunken westerner so as I stepped up because I just went bang and broke my nose and then I got him on the floor and I was trying to hammer him and then then they split us up and I'm sorry sorry friends are my talking chrysleral story again but it's all relevant but it didn't really ruin your holiday does no but temporarily when you've got a two inch split down your nose and you're on a night out in in Bangkok it it it made me gather my thoughts a bit right as if as if it didn't get weirder the triad guy gets up then and he's like I'm so sorry I'm so sorry and he of course he's realized and then he's making me lose face by you know secondly you don't attack westerners it's not good for tourism right so he went and caught me a clump of tissues so the guy that's just broken my nose is like holding these tissues on my nose and I'm like fuck off mate then as we went um we went outside jumped in a tuk-tuk to the hospital and when I got to the hospital they they stitched my nose up I'm saying are you supposed to give me an essay when I'm drunk and they're like oh yeah you know you know what it's like no no hold bar in Thailand and um I came out and I went to sign for my all bait by my antibiotics or my penicillin whatever it was and there was a guy stood there and it's the same story the world over he said I'm awfully sorry I own the club I'm a private business manager I'm not gangster but the mafia run it and I have no choice in that right but this is not what we do in Thailand I'm so sorry um what can I do for you so I said oh you can give us a hundred quid right which is I don't know how many thousand baht that was but it was ridiculous he went no no no this this Thailand not rich here very poor but bless him he he gave me about 25 quid and he said right I'm going to give you a night out now on me because I own all these clubs in you know in was it Pat Pong so um took us in his first club went like that to these two girls and they came over and I'll be honest I think he picked the roughest looking girls in the club like so he didn't lose any business and they just chaperoned us around Bangkok for the night the first place they took us which you'll never forget was a boy bar right they looked each other and smiled and went come and I can't ever put this into words either legally or illegally or whatever that that people would ever understand but back then there was no law in Thailand like this right now it's a tourist paradise right back then it was one night in Bangkok makes the hard men tumble all of the young men and some of them were very young manning this bar were naked right let's just say all of them were was kind of doing stuff to themselves um and it was just the biggest eye opener pool that I mean it was just hilarious I don't know why they thought we wanted a boy bar but but it you know it was interesting and then um just a funny little story I'll finish off with this guy Rob I met this South African I met him in the hard rock cafe we were arm wrestling the bar staff right and we decided to travel together and and at the end of the night with these girls we were sat in a restaurant eating some noodles and um I looked on the table went so I took some noodles out of my chopstick and I fed them to this invisible dog right of course these girls just thought it was freaking hilarious and that the next day this guy Rob we're we woke up in the backpacker or the dormant or whatever it is where the room that we've got and and he's just chuckling me and I'm like what what is it he went and I'm like come on what what what he went that dog man that was so funny out of the whole night right we really got our heads kicked in it was the dog that he was anyway so that was my sec that was my first time in Thailand I think the second time um I was traveling through I'd done a world trip and I was coming up from I think I was in Vietnam Cambodia and Lao and I hopped into Thailand because my brother was teaching English there at the time uh one time I drove to India so this would have been the second time in Thailand and by the time I drove a bus to India pool well by the we were doing volunteer work so we were supposed to be journalists writing articles on people living in positive go through Iran or something to to get there yeah we went from Norway through Europe uh into Greece into Italy Greece Turkey Iran Pakistan and then finally Delhi by the time I got to Delhi we all had dysentery right the bus had broken down every single day almost right and only it was me and the other driver Lee who could fix it so we were just black from head to toe all the time covered in the mosquito bites lost about three stone in weight and when I got to um Delhi I'll be honest we only had three weeks to travel and I thought do you know what I'm going to see my brother in Thailand so that's what I did I hopped on a plane flew to Thailand um don't regret it you know family's family right and it was just wonderful and like I say the third time was after this world trip and then I came back into Thailand from Lao it was which was um yeah absolutely love the place how about how about you yeah I mean I sort of fell in love with when I came here and I I still love it it's an incredible place um because I I've seen kind of both worlds of it because when I when I came here originally I was actually came here to stop drinking but it took me a few years to be able to do that so it's kind of a you know I spent a lot of the time in the bars but for the last um nearly what's it 14 years it's been as a non-drinker and it's you know it's even better you know it's not I I associated when I first came to Thailand with this kind of real drinkers paradise and I remember going to Pattie and I wasn't interested in the in the girl stuff either you know I was just an alcohol and I remember going to Pattie for the first time and just seeing like there's thousands of bars that seem to be open all the time and to me like this is heaven yeah yeah Chang for 25 beer bottle or whatever it was and uh so I mean the idea of actually kind of this being a place where I'd finally quit alcohol it was times I was dubious but it turned out because actually before I came to Thailand I moved to Saudi Arabia with the intention of stopping drinking I trained as a nurse and I got a job and I kind of I'd been to a doctor and I told I've been told my liver was being that you know my element it's what's called elevated LFT it's and I responded this news that my liver was being damaged by going on a bender and I kind of realized that something bad was going to happen so I went to Saudi Arabia I got a job in Saudi Arabia as a nurse and it turns out it's the worst rehab in the world so there's no problem getting alcohol when I when I landed one of the first thing they showed me was the illegal the big kind of buckets full of this illegal alcohol that was much stronger than that never had before and that caused basically nothing and it was always available so it was like you know after after being in in Saudi for a few months I realized it just wasn't going to work out so I moved to Thailand I basically moved to Thailand because I realized I wouldn't survive in you know in Saudi and this is just that was the second time because I've gone there before to say with that you know last minute.com for about two weeks but this is kind of I moved over I had no idea what I was going to do that was 2002 but my plan was was to move into a temple I decided I tried so many different things to stop alcohol that by the time I arrived in Thailand I decided that the solution was me to become a monk and meditate meditate in a cave for the rest of my life because I felt like I tried everything else like I went to my first rehab when I was 20 but I would go on retreats here in Thailand I would I'd managed to stop drinking and I would go on a retreat and you know stuff would happen on the retreat but then I'd go well and I drink again and that went on for for a few years until I finally was able to stop. I'm fascinated Paul I'm fascinated to hear your story when I talk about my alcoholic past sorry shouldn't use stigmatizing words like that but but you know a lot of it is military based and it there was some fun times but of course we forget the painful times when it wasn't fun when we ended up fighting or getting hurt or hurting innocent people or making idiots of ourself and so I just want to kind of lay my table out here that I'm the biggest thing I say to people if you're unhappy and you're like you got to stop drinking even if you're having one glass of wine a night that is going to take you from your your superpower you know and rather than cruising up here and and dealing with everything and and enjoying it enjoying life you know it absolutely it dumps it dumps your connection with the universe and this is not a lecture if people want to drink I did it for 30 years you know I still occasionally you know see the thing about it is you're absolutely right you know this is not about I think it would be unfair to ask people to give something up that was working for them that was enjoyable for them and for some reason you know for some for some people maybe that's what it's doing for a lot of it just it just wasn't for me wasn't doing that and I didn't give up alcohol to deprive myself and I found out along the way that negative consequences weren't enough to get me to stop drinking because even the fear of death wasn't enough to get me to stop drinking because yeah it could get me stopped drinking for maybe a week or two but eventually I go what the hell I don't I don't actually care about living that much so you know what I realized it had to be about something else and I realized that for me and I think for a lot of people Chris they turn to alcohol for a reason they're looking for something and in the beginning and I think it's it's um it's a mistake to to label alcohol as always bad in the sense that when I first found it it was it seemed like miracles it really seemed to be offering the thing I was looking for I am I had these memories of very early childhood where I had these real real experience of joy real deep experience of joy and it wasn't about what was happening I had a very very normal childhood and just just these moments like maybe lying on my grandmother's sofa or something just these moments of intense joy but as I get older as a child I stopped that stop happening and it was a sense of really missing that and I turned to various things to get back to that actually one of the first things I turned to was meditation I go into meditation and I kind of realized there were moments in meditation where it did seem to be bringing me back to that but it was very hidden myths when I found alcohol it wasn't hidden myths at all at least in the beginning you took it job done and I remember one morning um I must have been I think I must have crashed in somebody's somebody's house so I was about 15 I remember walking back in the morning and I just felt this incredible sense of not giving a shit you know that life was okay and that's what I fell in love with and it wasn't until I was able to get that without alcohol that I could give it up and I think that's the problem I think you know is to recognize why we do these things and to get those things in a better way and once you do that there's nothing to give up you know the problem is kind of identifying what it is that's attracting us to alcohol in the first place like to to kind of really be able to be clear about that because what I've found and this is the amazing thing about those meditation retreats is there's no there's no state of mind that can't be created without drugs that you don't actually need drugs to create those states all of them yeah even even the you know the ones like hallucinogenics you can do data meditation and stuff like lucid dreaming like it's all it's all available and these incredible things that we can do with our perception you know one of the saddest things I've noticed with a lot of people is that we have this kind of very impoverished view of what's possible so if you say to somebody give up alcohol and you'll be happier they may not have the ability to really imagine what that's going to be like that they kind of have this you have this perception of what it's going to be like not to drink alcohol and yet they'll be behaving better and that's not going to really motivate them it's it's you know it's when you suddenly start to see that it's possible to you know experience a level of happiness and peace and well-being that we've never known before that that's really what's what's an offer you know who wants to give up something to be deprived yeah exactly this is the problem isn't it and and I think when when you stop drinking it it's absolutely fine when you're sort of you know you don't go out a lot it you know the number of times I sat on my sofa watching you know documentary with my my girlfriend and it's like oh my god for 30 years I would have sat here with a beer it's just what I it's what I thought if I didn't like I'm missing something and yet now I'm sat here just I'm perfectly fine in fact I'm actually better so what was that 30 years about what what what was that about but the problem is that's great around the house but for me especially been in the military it's a lot about reunions you know there's a reunion next year and there's you know 100 guys going to be there that you haven't seen for 20 years and and I've done like three if not four I think I've done three of these reunions sober two of them I've got drunk the three sober always come off better it's just the way it works say you know the outcome is always like better even just getting up in the morning better jumping the car and drive home and not have the head and not you know not have the like right now I've got to write a day off or two days or a week or whatever it might be but it's still just that thing in your head isn't it you know it's conditioning isn't it yes it's conditioning um sometimes I think you know I just don't enjoy being here not drinking I just want what but then you have the drink and you end up just not enjoying that either yeah so gosh kind of different I mean it is and that's why people often struggle and that's the things they fear but but the thing is I mean I mean that's it it is absolutely all true and it is all all um you know it's a point you know these things are going to be difficult but we we often have no problem doing it if we have the right reason to like you know say what you're ultra wanting or something you know I'm sure you there's lots of things that you've had to give up to be able to do that and you do that because of your vision and that when we have a very strong vision about something it's like you know um like say when people become vegetarians a lot of people become vegetarians and you kind of say you know it's changing now obviously but it was often an immediate eating culture yeah but these people weren't going around basically apologetic about it often they were they kind of had pride in the fact that they were in what they were doing sometimes maybe in not in lying how proud what they were about it but that sense of it you know there's something more important than you know I don't really care what everyone else is doing I don't really care that I'm going against what everyone else is doing I don't want to do that I don't want to you know to me the whole alcohol thing is ridiculous I was listening to the I listened to a few of your your previous episodes and I was listening to that guy the undercover drug guy yeah Neil fascinating but alcohol absolutely it's one of the worst drugs out there and it's so normalized and I think it's you know I'm not I'm not against anybody doing anything you know it's that's their business but I think it's something incredibly sad that for a lot of us that's all we had you know that this few points at the end of the day that's all we really had and I think it says something I don't think it says something very good and I think buying into that and supporting that I you know I I don't see the way I used to let's put it that way I don't think there's anything glorious if they're getting drunk anymore they're liquefied opposite yeah when I'm sort of doing my life coaching bit I try to get it across people everything in your life is a lie all of it yes diet your religion your your big business you know your politics your nutrition you know well lack of nutrition you know it until you see it for what it is and when you're talking you know it's it's almost quite hurtful Paul when you're talking say to a fellow serviceman and they go yeah well I've never done that drug shit you know okay yeah I mean I like a bottle of wine and it's just like you can't get it across to people unless they've experienced it that alcohol is the worst drug right I know loads of people take substances you know I've watched it for 30 years right I have I've seen some terrible accidents right but they they were accident but I've never seen anyone like die of a result what I have seen is two of my best friends drink themselves to death right you know one of them my my age one of them was about six years older than me and it's a hideous condition absolutely it could be especially with liver failure and stuff of that so horrendous that you know no you you see Paul you see people if you go to the alcohol ward in your hospital you'll see green people yes they are green because their internal organs are packed up an alcoholic induced dementia yeah they've got a belly that's you know they look like the Michelin man because they're their bodies retaining fluid because it can't be I won't even pretend I know the medical reason right and what do they say Chris you couldn't like have a word with the doctor so I can get out of here can I and they want to work as a nurse I mean we used to get a worked in a gastrointestinal ward we sometimes get in liver failure patients from drinking and I'm a member of those one guy you're absolutely convinced he was going to die because it's a sight because I decided it was so bad and his liver failure was so bad but somehow we got him back and the first this is in the Royal London in Whitechapel in London we got him back in the first thing he did when he was well enough as it was got out of his bed to go across the road to a bar and I would have I would have said that was you know bananas but I did you know when I was talking about my liver problem that's the first thing I did as well because the only thing I knew what to do but it's yeah it's horrendous and that's the thing that that alcohol can do that much to you and you'd still want to go back to it you know what amazes me as well as I you know in regards to alcohol specifically I often work with heroin addicts and an idea they have was but I'll still drink alcohol but I hold on a minute you know imagine if I had an alcohol problem and I says yeah but I'm just going to use heroin you'd probably go that's obviously a bad idea yeah so why isn't it what what it's this idea that alcohol is somehow you know okay well a lot of that is stigma right I I worked as a substance misuse specialist I've worked in a clinic for three years right and some of the stigma from the workers as well as the club you know and a lot of it comes from the old AA philosophies right and so you'll get people that it's like this they get obsessed with they hate I hate to even use the word but they use the word clean right I fucking hate that that that expression right there's nothing dirty about having mental health problems we all have them right but this stigmatising language comes from the stale 12 step program and the stale 12 step program the the basic premise of their practice is if if you've got a problem of addiction that's it you're incurable you've got it for life just just throw your hands up to God or a higher power and just it well of course the problem is addiction is a learned psychological condition right it's our brain's reward mechanism you know it's like the rat in the in the in the in the cage he hits the button he gets a food palette right hits the button gets a food palette you take the food pallets away what does the rat do he hits the button it's what he's his brain has been conditioned to do and even when he doesn't get that reward what's he do pushes the button again and this is this is addiction isn't it it's it's doing the thing to get the reward long after the reward is really a reward anymore but I think it's even more than that I think absolutely that's the physical addiction but I mean I think you've kind of alluded to it before we point into this whole way of looking at the world you know so this is what happened to me even when I would stop drinking I would go to rehab and I remember I stopped for two years I didn't stop being an alcoholic during those two years and I'm drinking I still saw the world in those terms and what finally happened for me I not only gave up alcohol I gave up being an alcoholic I gave up you know seeing the world that way yes and I never did anything afterwards to to to not drink I knew I knew when I left Tamkebop the temple where I got sobered I was never going to drink again it was like you know my everything changed about me in at least in regards to alcohol I stopped seeing the world through that lens I had a bigger vision and what really helped me was you know the meditation retreats I mean kind of all have our own way of finding a vision but that at least I saw that there was something else and that was so incredibly important and you're absolutely right the way we view addiction does make a difference I mean but I'm happy for people to view it any way that helps them yeah you know good luck to them whatever way if that you know because some people you know it's a horrendous life and and if doing whatever they do that will help them escape that you know I'm all for that but what really troubled me personally and this what what I found was I kept on being sent back to the same thing to the same resources even though I'd start to realize it didn't really work for me like say that that that particular way of doing rehab that I went through it didn't it wasn't it may have worked to me for a while but it stopped working and I remember being in Thailand and I was absolutely desperate to stop absolutely desperate to stop and I'd contact people and I'd say I want to stop and they say okay you need to join this and do this this and this and I said well I've tried that and it didn't work for me and they said oh you just need to keep drinking I said no I don't need to I need to quit drinking I need different options and thankfully I found different options that I found you know because and I kind of picked up these crumbs along the way you know I feel so you know for me and I think it's different I think this is the misunderstanding that there's one one approach for everybody I think that's a great misunderstanding yes can I just clarify Paul because I don't want to upset anybody yes if if you're drinking yourself to death it's my two best friends did right yes do what works for you get just get if you go to AA or NA whatever your problem is like it's going to get you on the road to education about what's you know it it's better than dying and it's better than you know having your family go for all that that that turmoil so it's not that wasn't really the point I'm making the point I was saying is is everyone something that grabs the culture as the answer isn't there there's there tends to be one thing that that keeps something betrayed as the as the as the answer yeah and that and and the the problem that I came across was like if you don't understand the cycle of change right you don't understand how human beings change and it's not natural I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it's not natural to just stop something one day bang as as you've said Paul it took you years took me you know I drank for 30 years as a like a daily drinker on top of all the other stuff that I would do whenever it came along and I'm not knocking it I got no regrets right I did pretty freaking stupid things at times and I apologize to anyone that I that I unreservedly that I upset but the thing was after 10 years in fact no probably after 10 days right when you've gone into an off-life since at 11 o'clock in the morning and you've bought the super strong can on its own that that's a big clue when you buy the can on its own and you get you I mean you're not even pretending anymore I still do it now if I go in and grab a unfamiliar bit the first thing I look for is how much alcohol it's got you know with what percentage is it right well what I'm trying to say is that was my warning so I'm not stupid that was a red flag that this isn't going to be really helpful behavior Chris right and from that point which like I say was probably 29 years ago it it took me 29 years to work it all out to slowly you know I I'd stop I'd stop for three months but I wouldn't really know why I was stopping I was just stopping because I knew this behavior would ultimately kill me right and then I'd go back to it and then and finally I got all the education together to at least get me in a position where I know it had to stop right had there's no there's no right it especially when you're a father you can't fuck around you know you got to have a clear plan and then you steal my lapse and relapse because it's the cycle of change that's um and my issue when working in a drug services they have this dichotomy you're either clean or you're using and I was like what about people that find balance you know I'm wondering about I mean and there are people who are just never gone to give up they you know you meet people that's that's where they're at that's it's it's I was kind of calling them these people that were quite happy to to to drink alcohol excessively and this has been going on for years and it seems almost cruel to not help them that you know there's some people that that start you know that they're see my problem wasn't that I was drinking too much in the end my problem was that I was drinking too much and didn't want to be that was my problem and I was in this horrible place where you're doing something that you don't want to be but I've got no right to you know someone who's doing something that they want to do and at the end for me this was a thing and I became so hopeless and so lost at the end with my drinking because I felt like there's this constant battle in my head of wanting to stop and not being able to and I decided now wouldn't it be great if I could just fully buy into alcohol if I could fully commit to alcohol sure it would kill me but at least that war in my head would be over we've all been there mate no yeah I mean it's the same when I was addicted to crystal math it was it was like all right I'm gonna die a bit quicker but this is the life for me there's but I was there you know getting stuffed and of course it all ends up going to ratchet had you done your had you been doing your running and stuff before that was that a later thing um I was always an awful run up pool even in the military you know the marines got some pretty tough tests there I just did it by pure grit because I you know I came from you know I think we've both probably had ups and downs in our younger years and I for me hanging in there and dying on a run was better than giving up and failing and going back you know and risking having to go back to nothing but I was never like a runner and I'm still not now you know I've just run 200 miles at Christmas yeah please don't call me a runner or you're deluded right I don't know what you call it but that's I mean so impressive yeah in fact to be honest it's it's these events pool that that I step off the wagon for yeah because I get in so much pain if I don't have a tot a run in the morning when I set off I I mean I broke when I ran the length of the country I had a shin splint in my right legs there's a stress fracture I got a broken leg right and I've got to run 500 miles and I don't suggest anyone else does this yes I'm just very very stubborn and I if I say I'm going to do something I you know I've done the failure thing most of my life right I'm at an age now where like I want to achieve things do so I'm not suggesting any anybody like follows my example but um what I will say though to talk about see a question is running has been part of that beautiful part of life that doesn't involve you know I I run 0.9 of a mile in the morning not not every morning but four or five times a week I purely do it for mental health pool that is it oh you know I it's nice to get fit you know when I when I did my 200 miler at Christmas I built up a bit more I did four 11 mile runs right all of which just killed me absolutely killed me and I'm not good at it I was the time when I checked my time it was like I've had like my half marathon time would have been really rubbish right I'm a plodder yeah yeah I'm a plodder is what I say but like I say I don't do it for the fitness although you can I do get I get faster because I lose so much weight doing it you know I I stick to my alkaline green diet I think it's my adventure because that's why I find you know so I just did my my first 100k and to me it's more about the it's just a journey it's an adventure yes 100k that's awesome it's a long way mate isn't it you know it's I mean and it's kind of considering like I didn't think I'd run again two and a half years ago because I used to take up running and stop running and take and take it up and stop but then what happened is I start to you know and for years I meditated for six hours a day so you know meditating or sitting on the computer and what happened is actually I was actually finding it hard to walk I kept on getting injuries walking and I was only my son took up running that I took it up again and I just you know and I've really I just felt this real passion for it to to you know so I won't like 10k in those days and I've kind of building up to these things but just it's just it's like my body wanted to move it needed to move yeah that and that's it and when people say to me oh Chris I don't like running I say it's because you don't know how you you don't understand it you think when I say I go running you're thinking like that running for a bus or doing the cross country at school we and then you know back when I was at school if you forgot your PE kit they made you do it in your underpants right how I think if you did that now to a child you'd be put in prison but right and you had that thing I mean we used to stop for a fag in the woods so our American friends that's a cigarette we used to just hide our cigarettes in the woods you haven't got to probably clarify that yeah yeah um but yeah what so when people say oh I don't like right it's like no you you're not you that's not running being out of breath and and I mean yeah you can get out of breath running push can but what I mean is it's it for me people it's way it's it's it's meditation absolutely ritual it's my connection being out being out you know in the fresh air I I you feel so good about yourself when you get those endorphins flushing to your brain it sets you up for the day massively I do my videos if you're people in my Facebook group or when I do my challenges I do my video every morning I run I run my 0.9 of a mile and I don't stop talking I bet they probably wish I did right it's the same boring right you know I got my basic philosophies of how to smash life it's just simple gratitude I smile at the sun every day take action I jog around the block you know turn every negative into positive why because you can you have that ability it's it's your choice you know just simple things like this and part of that is my my little run in the morning if I didn't work so much or maybe I need to start getting up earlier again I could maybe run run more but I for me it's it's the lesser of two evils it's like do something rather than nothing right so I really kind of feel like myself and the meditation that the same skills that I develop the meditation are absolutely make wonderful make running so wonderful that it that this this this ability to really inhabit my body and to create these different ways of perceiving one of the things I spent one of the things that was very important to me and a big turning point in my life happened when I was about 14 and what it was because I was down in the rural Ireland in a place called car and I met this old guy just a normal old guy but I'd never met anyone who seemed so comfortable in their own skin who this guy used friendliness and he was with his family and it was obvious his family adored him he he was um he had a party in his house that's how I met him and it was obviously all his neighbors were just drawn to him and I remember thinking that's what I'm after and I went to completely opposite the direction but it was always that was like a kind of a lighthouse this idea of developing this sense of friendliness towards towards life and towards other people and everything and as part of my my working as a nurse I did a lot of agency nursing and I did a lot with palliative care the care of the dying and I was I mean I was suicidal for him for a lot of my life but I was also terrified of dying and so I was very obsessed with what what how were some people so good at getting through that process which I think may be the most difficult thing they ever have to face especially if we have to be told we're going to die and have to go to that dying kind of thing with foreign orders and some people for some reason do it incredibly well they do it incredibly beautifully and to me that this and it wasn't about religion what there was no specific religion there was no specific um you know uh social class it was these people who were just they were friendly they had this friendliness about them and so one of the things I realized that's what I needed to develop and some people may be born with that but I wasn't but I was especially when I was drinking I was very I was never physically aggressive because I wasn't big enough and I was a coward but verbally I was a nightmare and just you know I you know looking back at my life you know I wouldn't change anything but there's so much I kind of cringe at so many times I I fell out with people for no reason whatsoever you know just just just to be nasty just for the sake of it just it and it was such the opposite of what I was actually after kind of a two-way thing though isn't it because you know I've fallen out with people but that's because they're fucking assholes you know but you know what I fell on but it's only when you're like in that it uninhibited state that you really you know that the what I'm saying I think you build up a lot of frustration about life oh absolutely I'm not trying to justify like oh no but what I realized myself was that and I did and I was like that but I can't see I misunderstood something I thought that people had to be behaving a certain way for me to feel okay with them and I realized that I don't I mean sure there's people I prefer to be with and people people that I'd rather necessarily but I don't have to have any ill will towards anybody and that when you when you kind of have the sense of friendliness towards basically everyone you're free of them you don't need anything from them that you know because otherwise we can kind of we get lost in these um you know what I see is I deal with a lot of people with trauma a lot long-term trauma and they can have a person in their heads who they think about more and they may not have seen this person in 20 years but you think about them more than they do the people they love oh that is that's a big factor of addiction isn't it yeah that's a looping you know one of the things I had to reconcile myself or get my head around was I was spending all day thinking about it was almost like an imaginary then yes you know almost like a persecution or some form of persecution complex and then and people do that you see it in people it's that well stop a second what about the five mates that are loyal to you the ones that call you what about you know the ones that come and see you or your family okay they may not be perfect very few families are but like they will try and bail you out if you and you're ignoring them and you're wasting all this precious life energy on on an imaginary where that guy might be like this or said this or it's yeah it's like we get stuck and you're right and we can't see what's in front of us because we're kind of lost with the baggage of the past and it's horrendous and so I kind of what I realized you know with myself and I was very much like that's so bitter about so many things one of the things that I've done a lot of work with dreams you know night time dreams and I was always fascinated by by why was it you know if you know if I was on a beach in a dream it somehow felt more satisfying than a beach in real real life and for ages what the hell is going on like why why would a dream beach be more satisfying than the actual beach and I kind of realized that when I was on a beach in a dream I was fully there but when I was on a beach in real life I wasn't I was only kind of half there because I'd be thinking about what I'm going to be doing after the beach I mean you might have memories of my last time on the beach I just I was never able to kind of fully give myself to that experience of being on a beach and that's what happens to a lot of us we're basically dragging all this baggage around with us from moment to moment the things that happened years ago and it's not that we choose to this it's not it's not that are we want that to be happening but it's like we get stuck in it we get stuck and no one teaches us how to get unstuck yes did you find that about alcohol as well is when you're living that life it consumes your thoughts 24-7 yes of course or certainly from the moment you wake up it's a full-time job yeah for 30 years the second I open my eyes and I'm always like what am I going to drink today where am I going to buy it when am I going to buy it how much money am I going to spend on it how soon can I start you know I mean I've never like a chronic sort of guy I just I just I just I would have said I like drinking beer and it it did me really well you know I love traveling the world most of which I've had to do on my own because it's difficult to get people to follow your you know your dreams and I said love sitting in an airport yeah I mean I never even sat in the airport lounge I'd I'd buy some tinnies from the supermarket and I'd I'd drink them before I went through to the departure lounge you know I'd sit in there you know it was just what I did for so so long I just and it's so glamorous I mean I was living in a Thai village for the last years of my drinking and I'd send pictures to people you know of this amazing you know this amazing village and in the jungle but actually my day was nothing like that you know my day very much depended on my ability I see drink these bottles of Leo this beer called Leo was cheaper than Changi even I think at the time or no maybe not but I don't I got it for some reason I knew I used to drink that one and my my the state of my day depended on my ability to get about three bottles into me for breakfast and if I couldn't do that and often I couldn't because I'd vomit and stuff I just literally couldn't consume it anymore I would spend the day rattling if I could get those first tree down then we were okay you know because I could keep keep myself topped up over the day and that was the life I was living in this kind of tropical paradise crazy isn't it yes it's just such a swanker no I'm just going to say I'm very conscious you know we've um we've talked a lot about the alcohol but your whole story is fast I mean your book is it's a quite emotional cover isn't it you are seeing that picture and so for people who are just listening who haven't seen Paul's book cover it's somebody basically lying in a semi-state of consciousness faced down on a beach surrounded by bottles of out empty bottles of alcohol with the beautiful is it the monastery in the background you know as this kind of the the I think the dead drunk one so that is that they're drunk yeah yeah so yeah it looks on the beach that is that wasn't me that was the publisher who did that photo but it really summed it up well your book cover Paul is um yeah it's it just that image conjures up or like this almost like the sad patheticness of no of that switch you know the hopelessness of that situation the desperateness um we've done well to rescue yourself mate amir well that's it and you know she's in one way alcohol giving up alcohol was a key part of my life but it's also I'd like to think the least significant in that it is about what happened after that and it is about you know this I found this incredible joy this incredible way to be with life that's you know it's been tested you know that it's not a wishy washy thing it's something yeah I this idea as I said it about living in a temple and living in a cave meditating and would have been all perfect but the real the real challenge has been able to be in life and find peace in life because that can be just another form of escapism like for a long time like my goal with meditation was to somehow slip off and do the kind of bliss cloud forever which is very similar to drug addiction yes but it's this ability to kind of to be okay with life to to to be able to fully embrace life and to see how incredible life is what an amazing I'm I'm stunned at how us humans can take it for granted everything is just like it's just you know we've got a big song in the sky it's a boring thing and we just think oh yeah but the fact that we're experiencing anything is mind blowing I saw this video a while back and it was a 90 year old philosopher I can't remember the exact details but it's a 90 year old philosopher and when he was 60 he wrote a book about dying where he said I think he kind of said something you know along the lines that wasn't that big of a deal but now he's 90 and his life has really deteriorated and you know he's his lifelong partner instead and he's basically now fully dependent on other people and now he doesn't want to die and I don't think it's you know from listening to him it's not because he's afraid of dying really it's just he's just suddenly realized how precious life is how every moment is a gift and this is the thing with alcohol this idea that we have to take a chemical to be okay with it and I'm not saying everyone does that but I did and it's just such an insult to life because it can be this incredible experience and it's not that we it's not that we you know necessarily have to do anything miraculous to see that because it's already like that I think people do get a hint of that sometimes we're in nature and you get a hint of that but it's just kind of you know we've got a pretty good deal life is you know there's a lot of stuff that we would prefer to be different but really life is an incredible deal there's an incredible amount of joy to be had the problem is again that Paul though isn't it that it's this thing I'm saying about we've been lied to from birth yes we've been told that we're ugly yeah we need to have these size blooming breasts or you know this size biceps we've been told we need to earn this amount of money that if you're not you know if you're not driving a Mercedes and got a Cartier on your wrist and you're not quite as good as this other person in life because he's got them and he's you know audit you know not knowing actually know these are the most of them associate pass and unhappy and they're just power crazy monsters because you never see a rich person with a drug problem yeah well yeah they're too that's the answer yeah it's um but it's everything unhappy unhappy rich people they they're all they're all loving they're all loving their lives aren't they well when you see these aging business I say age you know they're in there they're like 45 and and they've got red braces and they're out here because they've just sat beyond a desk all their life and moved from the desk to their liquid lunch and back again it's nothing to aspire to is it well give me someone who does kickboxing in a Thai monastery any any you know give me someone that smiles at the scientist thank thank you universe you know something a memory like George Harrison once said you know he really he said it when he beat us first became really big I think he said something along the lines he wished everyone could be rich and famous so he could see it wasn't the answer yes yes so the alcohol thing is you know we we're in a we've got a veteran suicide epidemic at the moment right I am I'm I'm I'm guessing it's always for wasn't it yeah I try and do my bit Paul you know I to be honest it's I'm just glad that I can show people if they're struggling that there is another way but but but the the issue there is like in life we have all these in programmed expectations programmed into us and they're other people's expectations when you look at them they're making other people rich they're making their dream you know these sociopaths that control us they want everyone to be as unhappy as possible because what do unhappy people do in a capitalist society they buy thinking that that is going to bring them happiness right absolutely every every advertisement is based to make us feel stressed so that we yeah yeah make us all these magazines to make young women feel ugly so they'll go and you know do do do do will all be more and there's two there's two ways of kind of dealing with that what I've kind of realized either we can try to stop it which I don't think is feasible or we can make up to it and I think the only the only feasible thing that I could do was make up to that and to also realize you know that I don't think there's any way for a human being to be in the world that doesn't involve at least some level of delusion in order to kind of get something to get things to function we kind of have to agree to things that are only like all of our laws all of our things that we take for granted somebody came up with that people people just like you and me came up with that and we all join in and we all kind of I don't buy into the fact that it's very well organized I don't believe there's a kind of malicious group that it's that well organized that it's kind of controlled I think it's just human stumbling trying to get to this thing it's got to be the ying and the yang surely um is that these these problems and these pressures are nothing new that that go it probably goes back to the point where we started thinking we started to have these the ability to think which the animals don't I mean I know animals think but you know this ability to be introspective and look at ourselves which an animal doesn't do because it just looks for food looks for a mate you know as the odd fight chills out right but but at some point from that point forward we've had all this you know this must be what the Adam and Eve story in the bible is a bit about right absolutely yeah I kind of get that as well this is because that's what it is I mean the tree of knowledge we suddenly became self-conscious we suddenly realized we're naked and absolutely there's just there's just theory I remember one theory is that you know the bronze age collapse that opens at that point that communities are very very kind of close knit but for various reasons there's this huge sense like huge change and it meant that we had to much more engage with other people with strangers and it's not engaging with strangers that made us think more because suddenly you know if you grew up in a say little village you kind of had a good idea where everything you know you know how everything was but when you're faced with strange you have to try to figure out what did they think of me what did they think about anything so you're kind of it's this whole new level of thinking and a whole new level of being self-conscious so yeah I think it kind of that's what happened and maybe the story of the garden of Eden is a wonderful way of describing that process and I've often actually used that I wouldn't consider myself a Christian but I do it's a wonderful story yeah I think going back to the the suicide epidemic pool when the the because you know we if we think of alcohol as self-medication is people medicating themselves don't put them into a state of of sort of false happiness stroke stupor yeah get over the fact that life it's not meeting their expectations right when and what I try to do my runs and and all my work is say fuck those expect that there are other peoples fuck them make your own rules you know absolutely make your own rules right so long as you've got somewhere to lay your head at night you can smile right you know if if even if something bad happens to people you love it you you can choose how you deal with that to to a degree you know you can I'll be one of these people that's just oh my god and woe is me and I'm gonna tell everybody on Facebook that my great great great great great great great great granddad Bert has just died and he was taken far too young and I will never forget it's like come on dude get the fuck over we've all got to die but did quite well right you know like if that's the worst thing in your life then you're basically I'm not from that loss here you know loving I think you know what it really looks like I'm not I'm sure you do as well it's not what happens to us that's the thing it's how we interpret what happens to us yeah so I was very very sensitive as a kid and so things that maybe other people would have brushed off like my my parents bidding off I was absolutely devastated I couldn't cope with it I was absolutely but somebody yeah yeah so it's not always what happens to us and it doesn't even have to be true you know we may have misunderstood something and it traumatizes us it's kind of very it's their interpretation of what's happening and and what I found as well if you have a certain kind of bent if we have a kind of certain level of negativity we can be much more easily kind of hurt by things and they can really kind of destroy us yes and and so you could say to somebody oh you know this happened to me and this happened to me they go that's nothing but it is today and they may need me to explain it properly how much it hurt them it's kind of it's always this kind of air interpretation you notice the idea of nature versus nurture yes very much you know that that it is bow and our kind of our nature is maybe our sensitivity things yeah yeah I don't want to talk about my history too I just don't want to talk about it it's not not I don't I'm not against it or anything I am nothing to hide it's just I don't when you do podcasts it's going to become quite boring if I always talk about and there's other stuff like I'm a great believer in forgiveness so absolutely you know if someone either says they're sorry to me or they through their actions I know that this is their way of saying as far as I'm that's done you know we're all human we make mistakes all we can do is say sorry and make and then change you know what I found with other people the hardest thing is self-forgiveness and that's the big thing with addiction you know I honestly believe for a long time that was the best that was what I deserve that I didn't deserve a better life and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy pool isn't it because the more you get drunk the more you do stupid things that you regret then you are exactly worse self-image and that's why that's what I kind of say to people about forgiveness you have to forgive yourself because you're just going to you know if you don't forgive yourself you're actually increasing the likelihood you're going to hurt people in the future you know it's not it's not a luxury item you know in order and let me kind of start to understand ourselves you know people people who are in a I watched another of your your video and I was the same video about that guy on the cover policeman he said about that woman you know you seem to get emotionally upset that that heroin you I can kind of say yeah because she had it she she felt okay at that moment she taken her fix and when people feel okay they behave better when people don't feel okay they're not able to behave better it's like they have fewer limited options to behave and that's when we tend to hurt people like happy people don't go around hurting people generally no very much you know what we like when we got hangover you know we're awful to the people around us aren't we we just become this stuff that you just ordinarily ignore that it's not worth you know like I love this person too much to worry about a plate left on the side of it and then when you've got that bad ed yes suddenly becomes like a relationship changer you know yeah you couldn't see it's like like that that's that you know sure you know we have to we have to take the consequences of our actions there's no getting out of that and and and I don't think we should escape the consequences of our actions but this this self-hatred and blaming ourselves over things that we've done it's just unfair because it's very easy when you're in a good state of mind to say what you should have done when you're in a bad state of mind but you wouldn't in that state of mind it's where the kind of the buddhist idea of emptiness is very important that we have this sense that we're always on the top of our game we're always making these very clear decisions but we're simply not some days we don't have the power to make to make even a rational decision pool just one second yeah pool let's get get into that a bit because um i read a lot right but i'm not the most well read on probably the books that i probably find fascinating so all my philosophy is just stuff like i've worked out you know i think when you listen to people um like johnson julian for example i don't know if john's still on youtube i haven't seen him for a while but he's very good at explaining the scriptures and what the esoteric story is not the physical what what this story is meant meant to meant to represent right and for example like when you hear the word prayer in the bible it's actually means meditation right it's what they called meditation so what i'm interested to ask you you say for example is it the bar gavita no that's more hinduism that's hinduism right have you read that i'm aware of things from it and i'm aware of the kind of culture around it but i've never sat down with it now yeah are you able to do any kind of synopsis on it because i i've got it on my shelf yeah do i have time to read it not not yet but i'm not because it's kind of i was kind of more drawn towards buddhism and towards dowism yeah for most of my life and which which were kind of inspired by that same culture but it maybe goes in a different direction and in regards to kind of buddhism stuff um i'm my loyalty is to well being and i will use whatever works and i'm not i'm not and i think that this is one of the nice things about i think buddhism at least my understanding of buddhism is that the you know that the buddha was very clear about that that you know his teachings were just the raft it's just the gates from A to B it's not to you know become obsessed with the teachings they're just it's a practical thing and i'm only i think a mistake i used to make is i get really i buy into something and i forget what it was actually came for and for me the only thing that matters is this thing i call well being is to be okay and yeah you know hinduism i don't care what it is the christianity i i kind of fell out with christianity as a as a as a young kid but now as i'm older i you know my grandmother used to have her have a rosary beads i i i i tend to use these mala beads i'm always like copying her you know that i don't i don't have that anger anymore i can kind of see that there's many many different paths to this thing that you know this well being and you kind of see it in people and from all different types of the different paths it does something for them and the buddhism's an easy one to i mean wow i i don't know how maybe people watching you can leave me a comment how well you understand it i don't know if it's because i've traveled a lot and i you know i've got an interest in this area that to me it just seems obvious you know you got this prince born into incredibly wealthy background he's only known privilege he literally didn't know that outside of the palace walls there was like babies dying in poverty and and and so he takes himself on this journey and i think we can now identify with and like even though we went we may not have been princes i think a lot of us we did have that idea that you know why our teenage years that would this idea that life wasn't going to cut it that the life that was being presented to us just wasn't somehow going to work for us and i think that's the exact same thing that say the buddha recognized the only difference is maybe you and me went to a bar and we went to a forest because it's the exact same thing we went to more than one bar mate all of us we should have bought one well maybe it led to the same place i mean you know where william blake the right the right man yes well he was a visionary he was a lot of things and he's an artist but he's very incredible English man he wrote that that that song jerusalem but he had this love that song that he wrote that but he had this wonderful saying the fool who follows his folly becomes wise that if you keep on doing that crazy thing long enough that you're doing eventually it will wise up yeah i mean he should have added an extra sentence on saying assuming you live that long yeah yeah when your liver starts to blow up then then you've followed your folly enough at that point yes for somebody who does keep on going but yes so what kind of um uh philosophy strategies practices did you do in this in this monastery what was it it was two main two main practices that i did in the beginning was one was the passenger and the other was what's called meta our cultivating friendliness so with epacinate you know you can kind of say the goal of epacinate is to see how our normal way of perceiving is the lunius that that basically we you know we we see things in a way that isn't how things are that our mind is all these kind of shortcuts to create this sense of things being a certain way but that's not really how things are at all and this is very important because because a lot of people they they can change the reception very very temporarily so say you know i think i might have heard you mention say and some like Anthony Roberts that somebody can watch one of his videos maybe and get really motivated but there can be this tendency to just keep on returning to their old way of looking at things and it's a problem a lot of people have it's just like it's it's easier to go back to the old way of looking at things so what we pass on it is about is seeing how that's delusional to so you can break free of it and once you're able to break free of that way of perceiving because you start to you start to understand how the mind is tricked you it's like the it's like the mind is constantly brainwashing us or hypnotizing us into seeing the world a certain way so say if we're negative it's kind of constantly we're constantly kind of talking to ourselves and talking ourselves down and we mistake that for how life actually is once we see that no that's that's not how life is that's just a way of perceiving that's become habitual we can break free and stay free and so the other thing is actually practicing other ways of perceiving and one so one example of a way of perceiving is this friendliness outside of this but there's also kind of I found this also really very very other important ways for me to perceive that I kind of once I knew that once I kind of done that I kind of developed this ability to kind of move into other perceptions and one that was important to me that you seem to kind of have already but I didn't have I was quite timid in regards to a lot of things and I could have said oh that's just the way I am but I kind of actually investigated and I found that wasn't true I I I walked as a as a freelance rider for about seven years and at one point everything I nearly lost everything I just ran out of clients and my all my timid way of seeing things was to just basically went into a downward spiral I never thought about drinking again but I did think about jumping off a cliff and I just could not think straight but I managed to kind of ground myself by focusing on on the on the body and what happened was this image came up of a warrior and I automatically got what it was but that was that was a completely different way of perceiving the situation that because a warrior would actually love this I kind of like this kind of warrior spirit our salesman spirit that they would go you know when things go to crap they go yes bring it on and that I could just suddenly flip into this completely different perception and suddenly rather than this thing you know defeating me it was just incredible it was this challenge it was this because you kind of realize you know if I had been you know if I had been a caveman I wouldn't have been leaving the cave I'd have been too afraid I had to kind of see this different way of perceiving and before that I would have said well no you're kind of out of where you are that's bullshit we can actually train ourselves to perceive in completely different ways and you know so this kind of warrior spirit that that is the stuff I've seen at you you seem to be very much about in many ways it's something maybe you're you're more gifted towards it you know from very whether that's nature and nature who knows but it may not be as it's just exclusive to you that the rest of us may have to work harder whether it's possible for anybody if we work with that particular way of proceeding and also I think we need to recognize it to a degree or even completely it's image this might be an image I give off yes but when we actually break it down I use the word warrior a lot at the moment I do it for effect more than anything you know I want young people to realize if you walk walk around with your pants halfway down your ass doing this all day right you are not helping a situation because these sociopaths that that you know they've they've got us we need people to step up to the mark now and say enough is enough right let's not mention any names of things or anything but everyone knows what we're talking about right you know if you get your information in life from the BBC news or sky right you are not being helpful you you are in effect the the enemy of of mankind right you need to stop doing that you need to start reading books warriors read books believe it or not right it's probably the biggest thing they do any warrior culture will be very well read but also keep in mind that there is no such a thing as unbiased there is only boys there does no other show in town I think it's very easy to kind of say look it's like oh that media that's that's that's obviously kind of playing us in a way it's manipulating us and that's true but to go from there to saying that this blog isn't that's me the big see we can kind of go see once we're delude once we wake up to the fact that we're deluded it's very easy to to run into a new delusion and this is one of the things that troubled me about Buddhism in the beginning you know when I was a kid I kind of recommend I recognized a problem or what I thought was a problem with Buddhism and what it was was this story of the Buddha waking up and this troubled me because obviously he woke up to the fact that he'd been deluded yeah now if you've got a history of being deluded why would you assume that you're not deluded now we're a fancier delusion but the Buddha didn't say that you know from more understanding all all ways of perceiving there that delusion is the only game in town and it's about whether it's skillful whether this helps us or not whether this particular way of looking at things enhances our life aids our life that's all that matters I mean you need to kind of you know for me and this is only for me I had to forget about what's true I don't I don't know what's true I've got no idea what's true and to be honest I don't care what's true I care about what works what's what brings well being what brings peace that's the only thing that's important to me and I don't hold out for some truth for someone that's that has the unbiased information because we're human beings we don't have any other ability to give than a biased point of view and and there's not there's not what I show in town plus the board there's no one there's no one out there telling the truth there is no truth there's only different ways of looking at things and I think that's so important and because otherwise we're just going to shout at each other forever see see like what I found as well is that if I listen to people because we all we all have our conditioning that if I listen to people I could become very offended by their views by what they were saying but if I listen to why they were saying it I didn't I found it's this real commonality that we're actually going to all on the same side we're all trying to be okay we just have different opinions about how to go about that it's complicated it absolutely is I mean I don't think we're going to get started on this I'm just I agree with you for the most part yeah people are people and everywhere I've traveled all this 87 countries we discussed earlier Paul you for the most part I met wonderful lovely people I've met some people with funny ideas the guy that gave me his pistol in Pakistan and said have a shoot of that and as I'm shooting his pistol yeah I shot my wife in the face with that one yeah oh why is that oh she wanted to divorce me you know so I watched your show I think I watched my tree your podcast I also watched one of the ones with the UDA guy the guy that was in the UDA very interesting and one of the things I don't know I don't mean to offend them or in any way but I just had this sense that if he fell into with a different crowd of lads he could have easily ended up on the other side oh my god yeah this is the whole thing but what we're talking here and what I fundamentally see is the problem Paul is I think there's an enemy in society and I think I know maybe it's us well and hopefully it's us because if it's if it's not us we can't really do very much about it well from a film I don't mean that as a weird bad but I mean that if the problem if we are the problem philosophical point of view I wish that you know I'm not saying it's not true but I wish it was I wish that the fight was in our head and the answer is in our head and to an extent you know we all know that that's true but no I when I look at my beautiful son and I look at what certain elements in society are trying to do to his future I can't accept it right yeah I cannot accept it I think it's quite clear who these individuals are it's quite simple you look at the events in the world and then you extrapolate back who created them and why and who stood you know like huntress Thompson wasn't it you if you want to understand who who gains from these events look look who look who profits from them it's it's you know and and look I'm I certainly don't profess to have all the answers but what I am seeing is a systematic destruction of my culture right and I'm all for one one full that that's fine but I've also been in countries where if they see a you know 16 year old blonde girl wearing a skirt they think that it's okay to rape her because she's asking for it right and this is a fact of life you know it's it's this is why we travel isn't it so to learn such things right instances in my city where gangs of men gang rape young kids were learning disability because there's no you know I won't get into the wise and where force but you get you know let's just say I don't know a 15 year old girl who's not not quite got it all up top that suddenly gets into one of these groom and they just do what they it's and we're not supposed to complain about this and when it goes to court it gets you know we get these like three months of spend it sentence is it's pretty clear we're under systematic attack here in the UK on on everything that you know on everything that we know Paul right we've got mass immigration whether it be legal illegal or asylum but it you know it it's coming in and and it's it's it's controlled there's these companies cropping up like the circle and the capital that is just all the stuff of bloody and all welly and nightmare we've now got basically one shot that anyone can go to with any guarantees it's called amazon right because we're all locked in our homes we're illegally locked into there's nothing wrong with us right but but it's somehow been uh skewed to the healthy people that eat alkaline diet and haven't been ill for 17 years i'm now a danger to oh it now let me put it to this way from from where i am without this i had my time of being political when i was younger and i got kind of really drawn into a whole socialist thing when i was younger very young but i kind of worked out that that wasn't what was going to help me that for me personally and then it goes back to you know and maybe this is because of who i am that i kind of personally this is for me chris for me it's more like that man i talked about and that old man i met when i was a kid it's more about me you know becoming this kind of this thing this benefit to what are people that were maybe i think it's one of the buddhist teachers i had taken that hand i think it was you talked about when you're leaving vietnam and there'd be people panicking on the boats and all it took was one person being really really calm to calm everyone else down and i think we need people like that i really do and that's from why your emphasis is and i'm not you know i'm not saying i don't i don't know i mean i i i i'm very very cynical about politics but that could be just me but i i really feel that if i can't sort myself out i maybe i don't have any business pointing outside because a lot of the stuff that's happening outside happen like we we are we can be the biggest hypocrites inside our own minds we can be the biggest self-deception and if we're you know and if we if we can't deal with our own self-deception i mean how how effective are we going to be at pointing your deception outside that way it's kind of has to be come from ourselves and that's just me and you know i could be wrong and and obviously you don't see it that way or maybe you can see it a bit a bit of that way it it's maybe that i see some of it or i understand all of it but i don't you know like personally like growing up in iron as well i got really disgusted as a kid with nationalism i found the whole thing quite disgusting and personally i i went off at someone last night and we had a with a q and a i went i went off a bit when a good friend of mine in the q and a this is with my my my youtube channel members that start to talk about the the trump and the biden and i'm like guys all the time you think along these lines that any of these sociopaths care about you you're buying into their game i i've never voted paul i i i thought it once in my life and i probably have set some of yours but i thought it once in my life and it was for labour oh sorry came in sorry i did vote once i voted green party because the guy i live with dan hello dan he put himself up as a candidate and i'm a loyal guy and when he said chris would you vote for me of course i will make you know i one vote isn't but so i don't do politics may i this you know i don't ascribe to any kind of economic system or system of control whether that's capitalism communism what whatever i i i you know i think there's probably good ways that we can go about managing our global communities in in view of you know the fact that we're ever developing in this kind of thing but but now it's unless i'm very much deluded and i'm really missing maybe the well well maybe we're all deluded maybe that's it in the world what's it in the world but not of the world well in yeah that's like a connection with a universe right is that what that refers well well to quite that that that basically to realize that the answer isn't in in the world and that that maybe it just moves from different kinds of being messed up maybe that's although ever will do and to not look for the answer there what was the one time in the bible when jesus lost his temper and he got angry and he got physical with people the money lands and i'm not i'm not i'm not an expert in christianity the money like he renders out of the temple yeah right it wasn't that they were using god's house to do that you know they're misty and look maybe people maybe there are people that need to do that and but i'm not one of them i mean and i can't i can't speak to that if we can't speak about any of us can speak to everything and i don't think any of us and this is why i can't have the same conversation and i'm i'm i don't tend to focus on the practicalities of kind of whether i should do this whether i should get back at my girlfriend or leave my girlfriend or you know leave my job i don't deal with that i deal with how we relate to all of that because i i found that peace can be there regardless of that that there's people i kind of realized that there's probably people in the middle of a war zone who are happier than i was and that that's what's important for me that the rest of it i can spend my life you know trying to to fix the world and maybe it will make a difference maybe it won't but i need to do something now and i don't think they're necessarily separate there's some people who who will find you know a deep level of peace within and go on to have an incredible positive effect on the world i've no doubt about that but we're not necessarily all called to that we're all kind of called to different things you know personally i feel called to working individuals not with societal change but i'm glad when something does pass and i'm glad there's people out there that are called to that but it just isn't my area and you may you may think well hold on when you have to get involved that you have to care well no i don't i really don't that it we can't all can i ask are you a father pool yes do you how did i mean you know how do you feel about it for the way for the future for our kids i mean well i mean all i can do for my son is show him you know i can only show him what i what i what i've done i i can't and that's all i've ever been able to do is kind of you know show show him how i relate to life i mean i get it don't you know i'm there's a massive and say here in thailand i mean there's you know you can say there's plenty there's plenty of rules and the way things are done that i wouldn't necessarily choose and there's no end of our indoctrination that i wouldn't choose but i can also recognize that you kind of have to choose your battles as well yeah my i have to work where i can be effective my battle and this is the way i see it and i know i'm not alone yeah i don't want sociopaths lying to me with false science in order to you know inject stuff into my child's body that will cause him harm and you also have a very difficult kind of choice there because it's you know it's something that's very important now it's almost we're we're increasingly moving towards where the scenario i've just said is going to become mandatory you don't have a choice in it right well that's fine if it doesn't affect you right yeah it's not fine it still means you're buying into you know a corporate was it technocratic agenda that that's that wants to can you know enslave mankind and as far as the forest goes at the moment i would i would run and take it in a second it would help you know i've been there job is there kind of rehousing clothes for the last eight months and if taking that job meant would open yes without without hesitation without hesitation what what about though is two people that you loved yeah and i know it's a difficult situation for you what what what about two people you love one of which you love more than anything else in the world had become seriously ill poor because of having that job would you still make them have another one will that be different would you make if i had that person experience well that well this is this is why we need to listen to all the voices instead of stifling the ones like myself who is now about this you know yeah and i'm not saying to i'm not saying to stifle like you know your voice but you know we shouldn't be in a situation where people go yeah i'll do it if it makes it i can travel again you know that's not a moral you know we're talking about being warriors now me that's the coward's way out it's the same as people going oh when i'm in a search and search place i just tell them i'm exact i'm like that's not helping you're supporting this system by doing that what you need to do is turn around and say sorry you know explain your explain your reasoning and probably going to be different across the board but so show me show me the science show me physically how somebody with an alkaline body can be a danger to society in the terms that you're saying show me the science that says that doing this act is going to protect me you know show me the the evidence that backs up this transmission that you're trying to to control my whole life life upon show me whereabouts in human evolution did it become necessary you know yeah when stig was chasing down the try try try try triceratops like did he wear his underpants on his face i'm i'm really going to doubt it right i don't think it's the way we're supposed to evolve i i i personally think people get ill right people say oh there's no underlying can do yes if you eat western diet you have a massive underlying in that you are toxic from the start you might not be manifesting symptoms yet but your body is fundamentally a a a blank canvas for illness right this how it oh the hospitals are over correct yes that's because we stripped the nhs rotten right we we've seen it happen for 20 years you're 30 middle managers and one person i i decide we've witnessed uh it's winter more people get you know you know it's obvious you you feel very strongly about this it's not this pool obviously you've kind of researched this and you've looked into this and and it's you know and there's good reason for what you think it's it's not this though is it it's the fact that when you've done your reading you see where all this is going to people who haven't read this book probably think i'm the biggest tosser in the world mate and and you know that's absolutely fine to every every single person that read this they're like chris knows what he's talking about right okay i might have certain elements of it slightly skew poor but my interests are at heart right for the evidence and that's i mean and that's what's i mean it's obvious that you are you know you're concerned about your kids and and your parents and i love all people you know i love all people may i i i it's part of my spiritual nature that i've developed over over for the years um i feel for people you know when i walk down the street now and a young person comes everywhere and then they jump into the hedge i think oh mate we've lied to you you know this is not how you behave you've got your pants on your face this what what at what level of deludedness do you think that's going to achieve anything other than than then demonstrate your your your uh willingness to be um you know to conform to who to the people that brought us the events in new york 20 years ago to people that genuinely want you to believe that that free men went went to another planet in a tin can right this is the level of delusion that we're operating under in society and and i'm not saying i've got any answer for it paul and i don't either and that's a thing i'm saying is count me in i'm up for the fight i don't mean to physical i'm up for doing what is right there's very few people like me left in the world most of them either they're deluded because they get their info from mainstream media or their cowards because they know that's a crocker ship but they're too scared to do anything about it and that's understandable we've been damaged our whole lives you know with whole agenda it's been to break us to break our identity to break us down to to to fracture community to put us in this home cocoon to get us to change every aspect of you know people are now bigging themselves up because they work from home you know my partner works with some seriously damaged young people in despicable the worst kind of depravity somebody right yeah our little boy's got to sit there right okay you know but in these situations the child's got to sit on the couch self learning on his tablet while his mother or father is discussing these very unpleasant you know not to mention the pressure that it puts people under that you're doing your work and you've got to keep stopping because you're trying to homeschool your child or and and it's i mean this this has been and a lot of the clients i deal with actually are suffering from it's not alcoholic people are drug people a lot of the time now i deal with people who are suffering from anxiety and depression due to COVID and absolutely there's no denying that i mean it's incredible and it's you know it's who would have thought something like this would happen in our lifetime and it seemed to almost come out of nowhere and it has been i think i'll be even appreciate how much of it's affected us again i've got to keep saying this folks i'm talking to the friends at home now paul you know if you think this came out of nowhere it's because you don't read you don't study history you know problem reaction solution it's the oldest scan the announces did it you create the problem you create the fear that's the reaction then you come in with a solution you know hey do you know what these you know what they're going to be free from the NHS do you actually believe that that it's going to be free to you what they're doing is they're going to take 80 quid at your taxpayer's money to pay to the corporate sociopaths right so you've already paid for this thing then when you go to your GP surgery you've got someone there who did five years in uni right well i've done six years in uni okay or i think i did six years in higher education at lea and i'm thick as freaking dog shit right i it's not enough i got kicked out of school at 50 and i went back in in my 20s actually i was very lucky in england that i could actually do that to my A levels of stuff i developed my correspondence i kind of realized that i'm actually crap i was crap at classrooms i think part of having an up and down young life is you sit in the classroom you don't know why you're there and it doesn't come easy to you like it does the well balanced middle class kids you know and that's definitely a way the education system is not for everybody a lot of us that it's not that we're stupid it's just that it's not our learning style but you can imagine there's a lot of people out there that you assume because of that that they were stupid yeah like well again one of these lies isn't it you know yeah of course that was the normal when we were kids you had the dunces cap yes they made you and i don't know about you chris i don't remember my first day of skill being so enthusiastic i looking forward to it and what a shit show it was like absolutely hate and i spent a lot of time in skills skipping off school i hated like i just hated it and eventually i got kicked out for stealing all the wine and a bit of vandalism but it was just so i just think of me my first day that that enthusiasm it's me it's going to be i'm going to learn a bit of stuff it's going to be so wonderful no yeah but it's kind of worse now isn't it you know you're going to learn about stuff that's going to allow you to spend the next 40 of your years of your life sat beyond a computer screen or working in a call center or you know again i mean there's there's people like you that's just foreign people wow but i'm well aware you know for the map there must be some sort of algorithm or balancing life isn't it if i inspire 100 people maybe to do something a bit mental and you know get out and travel or whatever it is that there's going to be the same proportion that are then condemned to be in the ones that you can only do your bit can't you can only have the effect you can have yeah and it's obviously do have an effect yeah well this is the thing we've gone back about the veterans thing is it i don't really take i'm one of these people i can't take compliments for it doesn't you know i just do what i do and and that's that's it i very often do rubbish stupid stuff then and it's not good right but but with respect to what we're talking about you know i don't need compliments to do what i do i just do it because it's the right way it's the i don't believe in law i believe in universal law you know you've got to do what's right not what you're told to do by the sociopaths right it's either right or it or it's wrong so as such i just do what i do like to say a lot i've got compassion for people i think because i i understand what it's like to struggle and we all struggle you know we all struggle so it gets a bit weird when people write to you like oh my god off the back of the podcast so many people wrote to me that they didn't know what they would have done in their lockdown had it not been for the bought the t-shirt podcast right fantastic job done as far as i'm concerned you know i'll do the same for anybody whenever i you know my humble little contribution you know i just try to help people make sense of life to understand what's you know to the degree that i understand but i also ask people to you know just consider it and i'm always saying this but i say again you know i've lived, worked and travelled in 87 countries across all seven continents i'm a pilot skydiver advanced scuba diver antarctic explorer polar diver i've written six books now i think i think i'm right my my my my my my my seventh i'm a graduate in the social sciences um studied social work at master's degree level i gotta say you should write a book but you've helped me you've written three already i've bought the t-shirt right yeah you bought the t-shirt my point paul is not to big myself up because none of these things mean anything to me other than great memories i i just did them because i wanted to i wanted to live this life right um but i've been to the extremes of mental health i've been absolutely mad i've been absolutely mad told up my parents told i needed to be put in a mental institution problem when i was 25 chris and i i was i ended up on the streets of london in homeless and it's very very you know horrible state i was so ill that i was you know i was blind i was really strong sliders and he weren't doing anything and it's a horrible place to be is that i kind of knew there was help for me i knew i could have even called my dad in ireland but i couldn't do anything i and i remember i wanted someone to see me and i wanted to be sectioned first i want to be put on a psychiatric ward but i couldn't do it myself i just couldn't speak to anybody else this is an incredible mental distress it was um i've never had anything like it seems thankfully it was just like completely horrendous alcohol-induced mental distress and it's like you're like it's like everything's around you but you're completely lost and some people you can imagine there's some people get stuck in that for years and and you know that's that's how you think of it horrendous everything i do is to just like maybe help trigger that one person to change you know a paradigm i mean i i i got i got the balance back in my life but i didn't go to a monastery i didn't go to a a the doctors i i they couldn't deal with me because i would yeah i i didn't feel that i felt i knew better than them about myself you know can i can ask you a question chris because the question i asked i often ask myself can i just finish this sorry no no no no no all i'm trying to say is is you know since those events in new york right which i was like everyone else i thought oh my god what we're all under attack bloody heck you spend 20 years 30 is it 20 20 years now researching that it's all out there right unless you choose not to all the architects of that event have all been exposed you know the people that put it together why who benefited you know who were the puppets that were in you know and we all know you know we all name a few puppets right so i spent 20 years on a almost like a mission mate to get to just work out what how was the world that i lived in up until i was 30 ish like not completely fabricated and false and not true so the last 20 years i've spent trying to work it out and so yeah i i guess what i'm trying to say is like if i don't know what's going on who the hell else is gonna right yes i've had to do all this stuff to just kind of get like a grasp on it right so maybe that's where we did for it i don't i've given up trying to get a grasp on it i don't believe for myself that it's possible i believe you know it's just the older i get the less i recognize that i know and see one thing i realized a long time ago is i cannot trust my sense of certainty that the fact that i'm certain something is correct or true doesn't mean that it's correct or true and once you realize that you know it makes you very very humble with your opinions because you kind of see you know god like i've been deluded in the past i've been so now now you're making me second guess myself because i completely agree you know i complete have my life gone a different way you know probably not but just for the sake of example after what happened in new york and washington back then i might have gone and joined the bloody us navy seals you know yeah had it not been for one university lecturer that said chris have you uh seen that video that's going around you know there's people saying that that incident it it couldn't have been possible you know this blood blood and then and then of course you know you you start going down that rabbit hole and your life changes so but i i get you yeah i i i i last year i remember two years ago i met this guy and um he he he believed that pa mccartney died in 1968 yeah that's a big fear and that's just another what i co-opt fiscation you know but i listen to him and you know he he had you know because before i would have just said you're fucking mad but obviously i've grown up and i don't but i listen to him and and and you know he had a well formed argument and he knew the material very very very well but i mean i don't know but it wasn't enough to convince me and i kind of realized and here's the thing as well that you know i would be very scared if i ever reach a point where i believe i can be deluded i i think that would mean i'm in deep trouble that if i start believing my own bullshit because i'm quite capable of believing in bullshit it's the one thing is the one skill i always had and so the only way i can kind of be safe is to not and to not look for me and i'm only talking about me is i can't look for my answer in that kind of stuff yeah for me you know enough yeah but you know you're you're my guest pool you know i wanted you on the show because you're you're a person i've you know got a lot of respect for and at the very least i like i know the kind of journey you've been been been on right you know i know what it takes to write a book for example you know it's it's no easy thing i i i know what like a brave venture is setting in another country um it's all good stuff and i don't in any way uh you know you're my guest you're here to speak it's it's it gets difficult because at least i can have this conversation with you yes sometimes when i'm talking to the military kind of people and they start talking about good guys and bad guys i'm just like oh yeah fucking hell mate how old are you you're you're my age and you still think like the guys that you know with the beers who live in kept there the bag can you not see the bad guys you know how about the idiot with the fucking blond moeek and that that he's in our parliament you do not and do not see how this works right i think i mean i think you're right you know i don't tell people you're wrong shut up is the answer no and it gets cut and when i have these chats with these kind of people poor i i know my audience is sat there going they know what i'm thinking because they they know me too well now right as well they subscribe what's everybody what are you on 120 shows is it how many shows yeah we're up to about 100 coming up for 140 or about 134 i think this now they probably know you more than their significant significant other yeah bad luck folks sorry but dream about you but it gets a bit hard and sometimes i just have to like chip something in just so people know no i'm not being a hypocrite i'm not sat here just taking all this it's it's but this kind of conversation is beautiful because we can tease these things out and i'm often saying paul am i focusing in the wrong area if instead of all this you know ranting and warrior talk shit what if i went and sat in the back garden amongst the daisies and just you know yeah let everything wash over me and i get it i get it this you know it's called mindfulness it's about letting all this stuff go like i completely get it i get the kind of um um spiritual aspect or biblical or universal aspect where maybe our lives is a product of our thoughts like i'm a i'm aware of these things but whether they are or not i i don't think so you're following your path obviously well i think that there are so many of us can do isn't it and yeah i think that in life human beings are generally quite good you know we all do stupid stuff but generally like quite good but i think certain people are not born like us i think they're born with a sociopathic gene and i'm not just talking about the corporate business owners who are just sociopathic by nature i mean i think there are people that are like through their DNA have no empathy right and i think that and and the reason i say it is there's a wonderful book there it's called the Babylonian whoa and it talks about how the money system which goes back to ancient Babylon it talks about how it was uh i'm going to say resurrected it's a wrong word you know how it was put into how the whole of our society has been corrupted through this very one thing it's the most powerful instrument in play in all of our lives it's the money system off the back of it all the all the perversion the corruption you know the nepotism the this the that it's it's incredible clever system we just think money's money i've got some in my pocket i've got credit card and i'll pay more you know that's the limit of what my thinking would have been up until let's say a year ago right well actually longer because i've seen the the money masters videos on on you know understand fractional reserve banking understand how that's a massive con that the the elites use to keep us all in our place and you know they basically print the money and then charge us interest for for it right um so like you know one thing that i i sometimes think about you know at some stage at some point in our history some some human must have had the balls to say this is my land this is my land yeah that they somehow said like they managed to sell it to other people that see this oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that person had must have had big balls well it's no different now they're trying to talk about selling water aren't they i don't mean watery bottles i mean the water on the planet as people try to own it this is what they're going to do it's you know the whole system is perverted it the the corruption is inherent in the financial system it breeds corruption that you know it it's everything that was ever good in life at one point there's a king or a religious leader their job is to be good to their people right they're representative it's like democracy you know i'm one of the people but i'm the spokesperson so i'm not i shouldn't have the power per se we should be equal i'm just the guy that's been elected to represent you know or or maybe you know through birthright or not birthright is the wrong word but through lineage you know i'm in this position right and and it was all gravy and then these these you know this the money system coming on and they corrupted these people's thoughts and it no longer become about how good you are for your people it became about how much gold you've got in your votes you know how many horses and heads of cattle have you got oh that is that what makes me good all right oh i thought it was looking after the people right so you're telling me if i've got a hundred head of oxen like that makes me a bit of a dude okay brilliant what about some shiny trinkets oh i've got a Rolex i'm a really good person right this this is you know this is kind of easy but could it be that you know it was almost inevitable that something like this is going to happen because as human beings we are all very fallible we're absolutely absolutely inevitable when you've got this mindset that the i call them the moneylenders if i couldn't tell you pool who they actually are i'm not that cleverer guy but i know it's happening because i see it right when you talk about i've been wrong before yet me i completely get it right but what i go on now is i don't go on if i don't go on physical the physical nature of stuff i go on the scriptures like the ancient law yeah so for example lord acton power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely yeah only Blair you know it's only Blair this this is it bush you know just absolute genocidal maniacs because they they didn't understand the power vested in them right and so now when i'm talking about like what's going on i don't need somebody to tell me what i need to put into my body to be healthy i look at my ancestral history and the evolution that got me to this point here and i know that under nature i'm a perfect being the same as a bumblebee doesn't wake up in the morning go do you know what i wonder what inoculations i need today or better do it for the kids as well because you know you know it i'm not saying that different parts of human history we didn't get ill from different things we've lived in poverty we've lived in squalor we've been through periods in our life where we thought eating meat was like a really good like you just eat meat yeah because that makes you like means you've got a bit of money to throw around means you know it's still like this in Asia i know in thailand why do the workers wear long sleeves in the fields and a big hat is because the browner you are the darker you are is symbolic of how impoverished you are because the workers in the fields traditionally have a darker skin than the people that sit in the palace under an umbrella all day right this is you know i'm talking simplistically here now right so so to to to get my understanding paul i don't go on like politics or arguing that you know buildings don't fall down all that it's not about that is to understand i think i understand human psychology yeah i think you know i think i understand how easy we are to manipulate and i understand that there's a a faction in society or group that not only have the will to want to manipulate us through whatever whether it's genetics or greed or just upbringing it's not really important but clearly it's done that's why we've all got mortgages right you know that's why our children are all studying now to go and work in call centres it's not really what i want you know i i don't think this is done for our good we're now all in a home cocoon it will soon be a time where they'll probably bring a law sorry cars are illegal now because you're going to infect someone if you drive somewhere so you stay in your home cocoon you work from home your drone is going to come from amazon at midday you know book you can change that book and if you want to two o'clock you know it's going to bring you your supermarket drone or the shuttle you know that works on electro magnet it's going to zoom pass from the supermarket at such and such and drop you've you know this is the way it's going right it is your money's on a digital chip in your wrist you got your health passport here or it's all on the same chip you know you're not allowed to even consider leaving your home cocoon unless you're all up to date you know with this the information of which is controlled by the sociopaths in nothing to do with real science or medicine it's what they've decided to you know you've got to understand friends listening you've been sort of the biggest lie in your life it's called western diet right you're never going to hear a cancer professional well you're hearing it more now because it's coming out of the you know the health services and it's and there's very kind dedicated individuals that have educated themselves enough to know what cancer is now right Thailand I know you have health centers there people can go to if they develop tumors and they'll go there and they'll detox them they'll introduce them to proper nutrition hydration you know this kind of stuff right here it's the biggest lie pool you know well in the world over this thing about the big bit of meat and the big bit of starch and the three peas on the plate or the little bit of spin it you know you can't function on that your body will become so toxic that it will start to malfunction and by malfunction I mean tumors right cancer still hardly anybody in so it knows this right this is how powerful these maniacs are that they're able to keep this basic knowledge it's not rocket science just eat what our our ancestors would have ate when they're picking nuts berries shoots roots leaves you know occasionally maybe grabbing the odd injured rabbit but you got to remember we didn't have technology for for hundreds of thousands of years it's a very very very recent in our evolution that we have things like fire and the ability to club down an animal you know this is we we develop this gap basically gatherers for them for so long right and even if I'm wrong that's not even my point my point is we don't we haven't even got the the the knowledge given to us to be able to have this conversation that we're having now right yeah I mean I know I mean I absolutely agree that we have to you don't have to but in order to kind of achieve anything well-being we need to see how easily we're deluded that that's a that that's a must and and to start to see that yes like you know that a lot of the stuff we believe is just because that's what we're told it's not necessarily how things are at all and I think you know seeing that absolutely and and it's like until we start to see that or we can kind of end up just being stuck or just moving from one delusion to another delusion but to kind of understand how we're deceived and how easily we can be deceived that's yeah absolutely because I don't know any other I don't know any other path to well-being because it so much you're right so much out there is about making us miserable even though it sells itself as making us happy you know so being constantly you know so the idea of a hedonic treadmill that we're constantly being made to one thing as if that was the answer but it's just you know I mean need to be able to see beyond that because that's never going to bring us to happiness never ever you're not gonna there's no new iPhone coming that's going to bring us the happiness that we go oh I've made it to the last iPhone and now I'm happy you know that's never going to happen and yet absolutely we have to see that and to not look for the solution in that and to kind of see that we have a hell of a lot more power than we believe we do with ourselves and and if there is I mean if there is and I don't know I'm on the fence I don't know about any of the kind of stuff you're talking about really but if it's true I mean I think we'd have to at least be complicity and I would have to be we have to be being hooked somewhere that you know that we have to there has to be somebody that yeah if someone's selling the drugs that has to be a part of us in the exchange yeah and that's how people kind of capture us because you know and I think this is what I kind of say as well to people you know when we're when we're looking for something we're very very vulnerable I'm a vulnerable to all kinds of things we're vulnerable to all the self-help stuff we're vulnerable to all of the the get rich quick scheme stuff we're vulnerable to every charlatan and some of them are very good some are actually trying to help us but because when you want something when you're you're hungry for something you're in a this very vulnerable situation and for me the the goal is to get to stop being so vulnerable to stop you know to stop being so easily hooked become less hookable and if we can do that and obviously the whole world isn't going to do that but you know for me some will and maybe it's efficient a number of people do that it can be helpful because I don't know any other way I don't know I don't know which barricade to join and I'm not that kind of I I sucked at that kind of thing Paul just one second yes yeah Paul so what I want to do now let's let's get away from the the current situation but you're you're very humble me and I I um I take solace in that that that uh maybe a few years ago you were just for this Eddie's an asshole I'm trying to think back how long ago in my life I would have said that I remember some no I was an asshole Chris you would have been right okay I remember when I got off my aircraft carrier in Germany once right we're all going on on the piss and um all down the dock in Germany with cnd campaigners of course we were a kind of shit I'm not going to say the word because I don't want the md to to be suing me for breaching the official secrets act but I think everyone knows what I'm on about and I remember this cnd campaigner came up and he handed me this leaflet and let's be honest whatever you think of this that or the person just wants a better world for our children don't they you know and I was like yeah thanks mate you know that's that's the person you can become isn't it if you're not if you don't have good guidance you know I remember once Paul up in Kent and I was with my best mate at the time and he's called Dan if you anyone who's read any of my memoirs and we joined the Marines together and we're walking down the street and there were two homeless boys on the side of the road right and they were weren't much older than boy you know teenagers whatever and um when we got alongside them Dan stopped got his wallet out pulled out you know 50 60 quid looked at these guys went yeah still there and walked right and walked on awful that was so funny thought Dan was a weird in it how deluded we you know how far from the flock we can wander with and be completely sure in our mind that we're the self-righteous ones so to that and that's what I was going to say to before you know just being cruel for no like for no good it was just like yeah I'd be cruel to people like sort of like a verbally and there was nothing in it for me it wasn't like I was like there was no I wasn't going to really benefit I it's just kind of hurting people just for the sake of it and you know it's yeah absolutely then that was a kind of big part of my thing Paul I'm just going to shut my office window because there's there's somebody hammering outside of it and I don't don't want it to come on the audio one second coming back from behind the second that was the sound bin oh very good mate excellent it's sure oh brilliant yeah better than we were before so I'm still recording um tie boxing you've done a bit of that Paul haven't you yes yes I got into it when I was 40 and it was just something I needed to get out of my system and what it was I got into martial arts as a kid and there's another thing I lost when I started drinking and I always kept on trying to go back to it so when I was 40 I said you know what I'm going to start doing Muay Thai but I actually managed to train full time for a little bit but the one thing I never got to actually fight and this kind of goes back and I'd lots of excuses for why I didn't fight but it goes back to this kind of timid thing that I kind of realized I loved martial arts training but when it would come time for sparring my heart would drop and the people around me they loved it you know you see they loved it they loved getting in there and I just did not have that and I think now I could do something about it but back then I didn't and I'd be kind of almost be I was gulk at the back of the back of the gym you know that I didn't want to be but you know you kind of can only go so far with Muay Thai when you don't really want to fight I mean I did I did have what I did have one strange if I had about a three week period where I realized I didn't mind being hit and that was incredible because I you know lived for years being terrified of being beaten I mean I'd be beaten up a few times but I kind of you know I didn't like it but then I had this strange thing happen to me that I was able I realized I could take a punch and I just went crazy virtually I was kind of walking back home with a full of bruise and this was like kind of fight club so I was kind of wonderful to see it but I just for some reason I didn't have that you know design but you can't mess around the Muay Thai and it's so intense it's such a you know you can't go in there half-hearted and I kind of realized I just wasn't I really I love the training I like watching Muay Thai but I just didn't love it to the same extent that a lot of people did and a mistake well kind of mistake I did I actually signed a book deal to write a book about my experience and I did it before I did it before I kind of got to fight and I kind of in a way I felt the time really got in the way of the experience because it became more about writing that book. Is this the a pharang's journey to become a Muay Thai fighter? Yeah which he did and I didn't choose that title I would put a different title because I don't fight. Ah okay. I don't fight. Did the training it went full time? I made a suggestion there to your publisher which they are I'm very specific in my writing it's got a great duplication it's just such a massive no-no for me and when they wrote that title I said no it should be Muay Thai fighter a pharang's journey to become a kickboxer right i.e getting the duplication of Thai you know you don't have the same word in in the tag line or the bootstrap as they call it as you're having a time it's yeah this is no slant on you it's just oh well I've only changed it completely because I didn't it didn't end up being a kickboxer well do you have to fight to well it's a discipline in a way isn't it you know and I kind of love seeing and I kind of really see when I go into martial arts as a kid I kind of I I actually love doing stuff like forms I can like kata and stuff like that in the karate they call it kata and forms and for me it was a kind of meditation it was that that I love but it took me a long time to realize that and I mean I'm really so glad I did it and I'm really you know during when I was 40 during that time I was probably the fittest I've been in my life because I did it you know for months you know really like training hardcore six hours a day so you kind of you know you do your 10 hour you do your 10 kilometer run and then you go in and do the rounds like two hours of really hard training then you come back in the afternoon and do it again and this time you skip for an hour and and doing that I mean I reach this level of kind of fitness in my 40s that was you know much harder my 20s were you a smoker when you were doing all your drinking yeah I was always a very I always felt uncomfortable with with cigarettes for some reason because I got into training and stuff so I only I would kind of start and stop I was never comfortable with it because I got into so much into martial arts and running as a kid actually as well you know remember as a young kid I thought that was disgusting and I was really disgusted with myself you know when I picked it up I kind of didn't have to I was never really comfortable with it yeah got you got you and it was never hard for me to kind of give that up so I could quite happily be a raging alcoholic and that wouldn't bother me like cigarettes or anything so going back to the fight thing Paul I find this fascinating because one of the questions I was going to ask you is like isn't it terrifying waiting to go in the ring now and you know and and you've almost answered that yeah it's terrifying going into spa you know that that was a yes I remember the first time it happened and you know to me it was unfortunate but my first sparring session was absolutely horrendous I don't know if it could be any if it could have been better but the guy I was up against was really he's this French guy who was a kind of heavyweight and he was really really good and every move I make he put me on my ass I could anything I did he just it was you know I end up being hard and I kind of realized there was no move I could make that didn't end up with him kind of quite severely hurting me and that was my kind of introduction to sparring I'm just making a note here mate so I'm not being rude that's okay this is just great chat um yeah it's funny like if I had to pick the two hardest men that I've ever met um one of them was guys in the Marines with and he did karate as a kid and he used to go to tournaments and he used to do like full contact or whatever it's called yes oh yeah something did yeah and this guy was like this guy's one of the leaders of the Manchester football you know football hooligan gangs um um and he said Chris when I was waiting to go into a bout he said I was just terrified just he said I terrified he said so when I got in there I just went in guns blazing because I was so terrified and I was and I was used to win right um and then my other mate Mal who's all around sort of martial art I think he's he's got his own dojo he just is a he just is a hard man he's like I'm not scared of anyone right yeah now I'm not scared of anyone but I am a bit scared of the beating that probably most people who know what they're doing would give me this right you know this is one thing I realized as a kid when I when I really got into martial arts I kind of realized there was people I knew who are nutcases like they were fighters and they were kind of you know and it didn't matter how much martial arts I did I was never going to have a chance with them because these are people who kill you and they wouldn't think twice about it and like are you even going to top maybe fighting them with what could even make this situation worse almost that you know there's certain things that you may not be able to train especially that kind of mental stuff especially in times of speed stuff not necessarily ring stuff the ring stuff is going different but but that you know that was kind of real people who are kind of damaged and they want to hurt people yeah yeah how do the Thai fighters manage to control their tempers oh they're fantastic well they have to because so you know with a lot of the kids a lot of them you know they're fighting every week and if they get hurt they can't make they can't make a living so they get really good and it's not like they're going easy on each other but they're just so skillful they're just incredibly skillful at you know really laying into each other but in such a way they can kind of do it again the next week oh and it's you know and I really noticed this I kept on having my ribs broke during people would kind of do a knee in the ribs but it never happened from the time it was always like a lot of it so a lot of the Westerners are coming they're like kind of pulling the you know you're sparring and they're like a bull in the china shop and it's just whack whack whack but that never happened with the toys and the toys are incredibly skilled that they basically be using you like a doll but not in a way that would lead you to any damage afterwards so incredibly you know they're just amazing I know there was some some Westerners I think that Australian guy that was out a few John Perry was or something like that there are a few Westerners that they really respect it but they are they are a fantastic when you see these bouts in the ring like in Pat Pong what we say that these are more like expedition exhibition fights these these guys do this every week they're not going to like smash the hell out of each other well I think they're even a different a different kind of fish altogether kind of in the bars thing I think they might be even a kind of different league altogether okay maybe and you got it's kind of different it's almost like different leagues I suppose but with the with the other guys are kind of going around to you know moitoy events and they are laying it in but it's just it's just it's much more it's so skilled I mean with some of the I mean I think a lot especially the bars you may not be seeing the best people and what they would do sometimes you know there's a lot of Westerners who go to Thailand for the experience of fighting and so and you kind of hear about this especially people my age that you know you kind of go there you train full time for a few months and arrange a fight for you now it might not be actually if you're a 40 year old who's a welterweight or something which is my natural weight it might not be that easy to kind of find someone so what did I often do to get someone who's retired you didn't do it anymore but say we give you some we give you some money to get in the ring with that idiot and let him just you know wear himself over for it for a few rounds yes oh the whole thing fascinates me because Marines have that got that mentality that when they're you know on their R&R in Pat Pong they'll get in the ring you know yes yes and I'm sure a lot of them probably get the shit beaten out of them I think maybe some of them have won but these locals really know what they're doing don't they they've oh that's the ones that are the most absolutely yeah yeah and and they're dedicated to it I mean that it's a lifelong thing yeah you kind of start when they're it's a life yeah for a lot of them have you seen what I was going to say have you seen the Tony Jar films I yes I saw I saw I watched I watched the first one I don't know if I've seen this because there's a two isn't there they made at least two yes yeah fantastic you know one thing but a dedication and you know with the the maintaining the way you want I remember one of the guys and what's his name Kensa Sampin on I think his name was you know something they have to do they run around you know in the middle of the the toy song wearing these silver suits to bring the weight down like a midday oh actually they have this race that you must you must do Chris I think you might love it you have a race in in Bangkok it's called propane in combat means like the crazy piece piece the crazy people's festival and what is it's a 10 hour run on a track yeah but it's at the hottest time of the year all the way through the day so it's basically just against you know don't don't die of the heat and you kind of you know many times you're ready to get the minimum if you do 70 kilometers you get a trophy but it's the thing is the heat 70 kilometers 50 40 miles yeah so the big challenge is dealing with the heat the hottest time it's really really humid but it's it's on a track so they've got loads of you know people all right you and stuff I'm hammering outside my window so I think we'd better hate to use word end it sounds so final but end this here but I love talking here you're a fascinating guy and I don't mean that you know you don't like compliments but you're a great interviewer wow I'll be honest the more I talk in a podcast is usually a reflection of how fascinating my guest is because it's just so so much a that I want to talk to you about and the thing about the podcast a lot of people don't don't get it like when I approach sort of people my age and above especially if they're sort of let's just say they used to be an upper middle class professionals or whatever they they really have a hard time understanding this isn't an interview I'm not interviewing I'm not the BBC I want to chat to you I want to chat because I would never get to meet you if I didn't start my podcast right um and uh let's just say it doesn't do you well on this channel if you write to me say Chris let your guest speak it's this isn't this isn't the channel for you right it's not why I started the channel is to interview people that's we've seen we've seen what all that mainstream media stuff does I love the information exchange pool you know and really I think it really it just kind of puts people at ease yeah yeah yeah and it's great and I mean don't get me wrong there is a balance like what what I what I hope people realise what I don't do is I don't interrupt my guests and then take them on a completely different tangent when they were trying to get to the end of an anecdote because if you see people that are new to podcasting they'll say so Paul you know tell us what's it like for your first Mu Tai fight and you'll go well you get in the ring and they go ring so Paul tell us what you know what's the ring made out and you're like well dude dude you just asked him one thing and he's trying to tell you and then you just hit him with a double whammy burger and it's all gone to shit I used to do a lot of these in the past of people I you know the ones I found really difficult there's somewhere you almost feel corralled that that basically they're kind of they you're basically not allowed the questions I put in such a way oh that you're just being corralled and you're saying you're basically saying they're script yeah kind of you're just going to leave and go what the hell was that about that I didn't really say anything yeah I had one guest once and obviously they'd been used to being like you know the centre of other people's wrath when it came to interviews because they were involved in some quite serious stuff that was in the adventure world and and let's just say people had died there was there's always controversy around those events because suddenly everyone's an armchair bloody canoeist or an armchair swimmer or armchair mountaineer or way you know and the professionals sometimes are the worst for wanting to say how it is so anyway and I just asked a very simple question at the end of the podcast I was it was just like I'd ask you now it was a genuine you know I said did you want to talk and they were like what you don't want to go and I'm like no no I'm I'm asking you did you want to talk about right wow that's nasty of you that was not and I'm like no you completely don't understand the environment you're in this is a podcast we don't have an agenda we're not out to humiliate you we don't want scandal you know if I I must be the only person that's chatted with Alex Reed he's a lovely guy my parachute regiment brother you know he was your tabloid celebrity for a number of years right big brother winner I reckon I must be the only person that's chatting with him and not asking him about Katie Price right I'm not I think she came up a couple of times in the chat but it's like I ain't got an agenda I don't need to talk about I don't that there's much more valuable stuff to be chatted about you know absolutely yeah and I have chatted quite a lot in this so folks I will I hope it hasn't been over the mark Paul I've I've thoroughly enjoyed this experience good good well actually I look through I look through uh because I look through you know your previous episodes and they they're obviously very you know interesting people I go shit I hope I hope I've got something interesting for our viewers I say this I've said this for the last couple of podcasts I'm not interested in celebrity I mean if we get someone on who's been in the media that's fine but that's not why I'm you know the chats I like are people that have a story to tell and that's all of us really absolutely um so a little bit more why I'm probably always saying to young people you know think carefully before you condemn yourself to 40 years in a call centre right playing xbox and smoking a spiff in the evening you know that's fine we've all done that for bits of our life I certainly have you know and I've done probably done it quite a lot more in my life than I would have wanted but I guess picture the day one day like do you want to be invited on a podcast to tell people your story and if all you've done is you know work in a job behind a desk and and unless you've got really good at xbox in which case come on the podcast it's you know maybe that could be the new thing you know people start by what would you say in your dead bed now we can start saying to people like everyone's going to have a podcast the day before they die and what are you going to say in yours yeah it's like that I've got friends that are gamers they've got gaming channels and they're ex-marines you know and they do very well they do better than I do at this game right because there's far more people on both sides of the Atlantic that are interested in you know call a duty than they are listened to some old fart talking about my son was showing me you know these people who do Minecraft and they're mostly sometimes multi-millionaires that are going around on tour buses like the Beatles it's it's incredible yeah but the thing with these guys is they were marines before they were gamers right or they at least did both at the same time and so they've got something on which to base their channel right um I think if you just I don't know worked in the cool center for four years and played x but I don't know how what kind of podcast host you'd be put it that way but it's not really podcast games of being in a in a color center simulation yeah I've been approached to make games about my eating smoke story you know that's my my Hong Kong story and it was it's like a bit like yeah but it's just they want to cheap you know if it was your story they'd be like Paul let's make dead drunk the arcade get you know the the video game so you know every time like you crash out on the beach if a coconut falls on your head you like you lose a life right but if you get up and running and you get in the time on a street and smash smash then you know you yes you replenish your power right and it's like yeah but it's not the can see it working not really but um on a final note how how was it right in your book yeah it was in because it's really well written yeah I am and I haven't read it in years because it was 10 years ago and it actually it happened really really quickly in because originally I actually started as a blog on a tv and a tv website here that used to have blogs on it on a website years ago so I don't even know 13 years ago and then and it just came out and see for years and years I'd wanted to be a writer but I could never I'd write stuff and I was drunk but I'd wake up and read it in the morning all fucking you know what is this shit and I'd been it so but seriously I stopped thinking it's like I kind of had this real urge to write what happened to me and so it came out kind of effortlessly and I you know I just I kind of felt like I had to say it I'm gonna sorry pull my mic down because um I'm trying to get rid of the banging that's coming oh yes it is oh nice mic the first time I've ever done a podcast with a microphone in in it so there you go there's a there's a first for you mate yes it's blue is it yeah yes it's blue yeah yeah we I've got one we've got one before but I just can't get it all probably yeah this is the USB connection so it goes straight into the computer whereas you can get the um is it XLR connection like the standard audio connection um yes and did it take you long to write well it was seen there was different versions of it because I actually rewrote it again from every house completely rewrote everything but it was kind of based so with it with the original thing I basically wrote a chapter a day and it was foil my son was being born it was it was that week at a two week period and it just kind of just it was like it was kind of them it'd been waiting and initially like the spelling and grammar was appalling but I kind of managed I was kind of learning how to I was learning how to do it as I went along yeah same with me what you what you're saying now is they're almost like my story the only the only bit of uh one upmanship I've got on you is that when I started writing mine I was still taking lots of amphetamines oh well and that probably made me write much better better than I could write not not a recommendation folks um but you know I'd read it back in the morning I fucking I wish I could be like that sober yeah so I do with you how long to take you to write um very quickly I was on and off the gear for many many many many years is as a as a like I got it I went from every day to like once once a fortnight to like once a month which I managed to get to like once a tomb you know like the urge would come over me then every two and I just couldn't and they used to say because don't be hard on yourself just go and do it but only spend a tenner right when it's gone it's gone you're not chasing it the next day you know just go to sleep wake up crack on with your life right and and so bearing in mind I could only write when I was a bit off my head um that meant that my writing would be like once a fortnight then it went to every month then it went to like once every three months and this went on for um did you have a book in mind when you started it wasn't it was a book yeah I I sat down one day and I you know I was in that weird position where I've seen an awful lot of the world a lot a lot more than my contemporaries right been in warfare or been in combat been in the elite military force and yet I can I can well I could probably just about get a job in a factory but I'd soon be sat because I'm just square pegging around a hole right and so I realized you know I'm only good at doing things I want to do yeah and that doesn't tend to work in a working environment no no and so I sat down and I and I say this a bit tongue in cheek but I thought right you know if I don't take some action I will be the guy having to work in I mean I worked in a mackerel factory once 12 hour days and we got a 20 minute lunch break right there's six hours is a long time to stand in a freezing cold you know warehouse mackerel coming down the chute and you've got to take it turn it the right way put it through this machine oh that's a horse mackerel that goes in the you know that's going for cat food or whatever I mean I'm full of admiration if you if you want a definition of a hard man someone that can do that for 12 hours a day every day of their working life you got my respect to tell you thank you because I love mackerel but I could manage that sort of thing for like three months I did salmon in Norway which is quite much much more fun chopping salmon in Norway for did that nine months but going back to the book I basically had to reconcile myself with the fact I wasn't going to be the lead singer of Oasis right couldn't play the guitar well not very well anyway it wasn't going to happen so I thought right how can I get my five minutes of fame why don't I write a book you know what shall I write about well what about that stuff that happened in Hong Kong you know all those years ago uh yeah do it Chris but make it good so I literally sat down I thought right how do you make the most sensational opening to you know what what first line and I think as I've always read it anyway Paul it I've got it in me right I think I you I've got the neural pathways in my brain to be able to make it work and I just tried to make it the like the best book ever you know all of it I edited it so many times I tried to get the jokes funnier it was really important that I you know your books got humor in it I didn't want my but I didn't want people thinking I felt sorry for myself because I didn't I was proud of my life you know I've made some stupid mistakes but like this is it look what else you're gonna be the same book today um yeah it would all be the same the other thing as well you've got to remember is when when you battle battle mental health conditions uh in my case addiction and of course that's got the stigma of having the drugs attached to it is is even if you don't become a pariah in society you feel that way right you know you feel everyone wants to change you no one will just let you be and maybe that's a good thing maybe that's a bad thing I don't know but you know you're made to feel like rather than as opposed to someone that's ill you're made to feel like a second hand citizen all right and I wanted to come back from that and just just demonstrate for us now it's not all bad because I'm gonna write a book and it'll be a best seller and you know it's probably a lot of ego talking you know ego we know we have to get over our egos don't we and I think it's there it'll probably keep on selling you know well beyond you yeah yeah that's I've thought very carefully about things in the book because I'm sure you did you know I never expected when I wrote a book about my was it 14 months in Hong Kong that was in 1995 and 96 I never expected now at 51 years old so let's say 25 years later I'm still in touch with all the characters from my book right one of them put his head in an oven and he's no longer with us when if you read my book you'll know which person it is um but uh yeah one of them so I don't have this happen to you I felt I was being incredibly fair to people in my book yeah actually I surprised how many people were offended oh that they felt that I treated them that I kind of um I was too harsh on them and I actually I felt I was doing the opposite I didn't you know because obviously people don't see things the same way we do at all and that's the one thing I learned from writing that sorry for interrupting either it's rough this is the chats that I love to have mate do you not think people are generally deluded of course some beyond that and and and it goes both ways I mean I had my take in it and it's like who's who's correct I mean because obviously I mean and this goes back to what we're saying before I was very sensitive and so things that other people might and think were as big a deal really would could help me do it I remember seeing this uh documentary years ago about mothers and daughters and what it was the mothers were saying about the something they did and they felt really guilty about in regards to their daughter you say you know uh you know I feel so bad I did this and I'd like to apologize to you usually go that was nothing but you know it really did hurt me this thing and the mother would say I don't remember that yeah yeah it's been a very fascinating experiment you know some bits of it have just been well most of it it's just been a brilliant right well all of it's been a brilliant right I've got no complaints about any of the process right it's been interesting for the most part the books was received like 99.9 percent with with gratitude from the readers right the people that haven't read it are the ones that are the most vocal about it right which I'm sure is just part of modern life like I I've had people email me and say um sorry Chris who are you because like my mate Dave he lived in Hong Kong from 1998 until 2001 and he doesn't know you all right okay I'll refrain from pointing out that Hong Kong has a population of like over a million you know I don't know how many million people and I'm sorry sorry Dave if you're out there mate that you know you know even the expat community is hey it wasn't our day right and um but it's just to me it's the audacity of writing to a complete stranger obviously with some sort of weirdly veiled aspersion that I'm probably like not the guy that I'm telling people I am like maybe I didn't live in Hong Kong uh I've had other people write to me and say why did you write why did you write a book about Hong Kong you only lived there a year and I'll say well that's that's the year that I wrote about yes you know um had that sort sort of that just weird you know it's why I say human beings are a bit fickle aren't they oh yes you know other are eccentric let's let's let's be difficult human beings are eccentric yeah but then I had the beautiful Anjali Rao she's um media host in Australia now very successful she's met I won't say the names because I'm not sure who I'm supposed to say but she's met world leaders you know all this kind of stuff she's got photos where she's interviewed then and uh in my book it's quite interesting because when I wrote it I called a Kerry because it's my Kerry at the time at least as my favorite girl's name you know it's it was a beautiful name to me so I gave the character in my book that I fancied the most the name Kerry right she was a stunner and you know there's me writing a book about like you know is it appropriate to just jump on someone or was that going to get you a rest stupid shit right right bit of military kind of humor and um like I talked about the time I went to her house she lived on the peak in Hong Kong is the most expensive square bit of square land and on the island right and uh she made some excuse to discipline she came out with just like negligee on right and I'm there my eyes are like popping out of my head and I just don't know where to put my eyes and I'm off my head as it is and it's all I try and write the humor of this like little did I know that 15 odd years later you know I get a Facebook message hiya and and and Jarl Kerry and I'm like said you popped it my friends Facebook feed and like why am I not friends of you and and of course she read the book and she was just like she was smitten with it you know she loved it she laughed she laughed at herself and my you know um it's incredible to have such a massive one thing that happened to me like people who had lost contact with did did did kind of contact me and I may not have kind of gotten back in touch with them otherwise so it's great that way but I've had people write you know um I don't like to talk about the negative poor because overwhelmingly it's an awesome book eating smoke why because I wouldn't have written a shit one sorry it's just the way it is you know it combines military experience with mental health with crystal math the world's you know one of the world's most killer drugs with my brief experience I'll highlight brief because it's not a book about Hong Kong trials but I was a doorman for the for a club run by the 14k right which was a a fascinating side of it it's a book about psychosis I was in psychosis for the second third of this book the last third of this book right it's I've never come across a book that's written from the perspective of someone who's living through madness right there's so many valuable lessons in there I'm I'm using my albeit limited knowledge of Cantonese a lot of the books in Cantonese obviously with English subtitles or English explanation um I'm talking about the the British Empire Hong Kong you know before the handover the ancient Chinese culture the superstition the amazing food the Wan Chai gangland red light clubland district that that's open all night long right it's it's just such a good rich book is what I'm trying to say and um yeah so overwhelmingly the response has just been well it's what I wanted you know yeah um you're selling but it just does make me laugh mate when people you know they write you and they just say such obscure things and to you and I we know this is a reflection of where this person is in their life they're writing to you about the book that you wrote about your year in Hong Kong because they freaking wish they wrote one but they know that they I don't know if this I'm sure this has happened to you um because it happened to me a lot after the book actually for me it still happens very occasionally but someone will write to me and say I've got this really good idea for a book but I'm not going to tell you in case you steal it oh I've had I've had that and I go no ideas are easy it's the writing the book that's hard yeah I had that I had a guy that wanted me to give him writing advice right lo and behold the first thing I got was a non-disclosure agreement that I had to sign then I tried to tell this guy there's an old pharma type that your story is it's gonna be great but your your your word uses it needs a bit of working on you know you know you don't say things like you know I I went out the back door and sat outside the back door it's you don't write like that you say I went and sat outside the back door it's just it's just the way it is you can write it the other way but it'll be a bit of a messy read for the reader right you know um oh god he didn't like that wouldn't be employing my service you know people just want to hear that your oh your work's just bloody brilliant you know um funny it's been interesting but yeah I'm in touch with all the people I took a very humble approach as in there was no malice in any more writing even with all that tough like gang leading triads is you know I understood where they're coming from they you know I understand sociology and psychology and um but I didn't want to you know I didn't want to be unnecessary I had no I had no axe to bear after Hong Kong you know the to me it was just an experience not something that I had anything to feel bad about so I think my writing reflected that but when I caught up with um old Ron as he's called in my book which I did only did fairly recently in the last year and a half um it's fascinating pool to hear his side of the story you know didn't match mine no but I tell you now that's because my memory is better I'm not I'm not bigger myself I it just is it's like no that didn't happen like that I know that you think it did me it didn't it just did it just didn't and then there was the interpretation of my behavior yeah you did this because of this and I said yeah yeah I did that you got that bit right you remembered that I didn't do it because of the reasons you just said it is a completely different place mate that was mentally unwell you know what I was experiencing wasn't your reality I was in a fake one so you know it's yeah it's been interesting interesting to write a book isn't it absolutely absolutely and just say a massive thank you this has been one of my favorite chats in my life and I'm 51 so that must mean it's a good chat I hope we get to meet in real life one day maybe on the run I think it'd be fantastic yes I'll come over there mate I've got um got my friend Denny former Royal Marine he's got a he's got a boxing gym on Gotau oh yes so I mean I'll say this one last thing to you what one of the things I am I always loved here about Thailand was the jungles yes I found the great thing about running is you can go like the trail running in the jungles it's all fantastic just have to be careful don't you you know because yes especially if you're going up volcano mountains and stuff if you take the wrong trail not so difficult when you know the place but as a as a tourist yes if you ever go in the jungle think it through because so many backpackers take the wrong trail when they're coming back down and it takes you in the opposite direction and before long you're disorientating you're in low say again you're in low yeah yeah you're in now if you're lucky enough to get anywhere other than to go in circles a lot of people are doing that don't they dangerous places it can be very dangerous place on the other hand the jungles just such a beautiful place to be just amazing all right Paul let's pick this up again shall we yes thanks thanks a million no I'm going to put the links for your books below the video so people know oh thanks me you know and any social media links you've got and maybe I don't know about the timing for you because I do a live show on Fridays at eight o'clock sometimes but that will probably be I'll be about two o'clock in the morning for you wouldn't it yes probably yeah but anyway you're more than welcome is what I'm trying to say come on the live show at some point we just take questions from our friends at home then okay yeah excellent and to our friends at home massive left you all I hope you've got as much out of this as I have um it's uh yeah it's been good please like and subscribe stay on the line Paul