 I was a nightclub dormant for the 14k, who's one of Hong Kong's biggest triad families. One day I set out in Hong Kong to climb up a crane and jump into the harbour, and one of the other prisoners went, yeah, good idea mate, let's get on the roof, and the infamous rooftop siege that was broadcast all around the world started. When you say you're injecting it, can I inject in speed? Yeah. I've never heard of that. Injecting base? Yeah. Yeah, you can inject it. Where have you injected it? Into my arm, mate. And that was just constrained to the bloodstream? Yeah, obviously I had no money in Hong Kong, I was, by this time I was heavily in psychosis, so it was basically schizophrenic for a good three, if not longer months of my life, and in my mind, like if I could do that, everything would come good. Boom, we're on. And today's guest, we've got a former Marine, Chris, for all, how are you, Chris? Good mate, good. First of all, thanks for coming on the show. You're very welcome. Yeah, I appreciate it. You've got a very interesting story here, your book, Eating Smokes, all about your life basically in the Marines, Hong Kong, you ended up addicted to crystal meth. Yeah. But we'll go right back to the start, Chris, came down where you grew up and how it all began. I was born in Bromley, in Kent, or South East London as it probably is thought of now. Lived in the South West, most of my life, when I haven't been travelling that is, and joined the Marines at 18. Why did you join the Marines? I was pretty directionless when I left school. I just didn't know what I wanted to do basically, didn't feel, didn't really feel like I could do anything either. I think school was kind of set up to fail you back then rather than spur you on. And made in mind, joined the Marines and basically bet me I couldn't, you know, couldn't follow suit. So I said, oh yes, I can. And that was it. So, how long were you in the Marines for, Chris? Excuse me, seven years, you know. Where did you go, where were you travelling from? After training, you do eight months of training at Limestone Commando, then you go to your commander unit. I was in 4-2 commando, which is based just outside Plymouth, and we went straight out to the Northern Ireland conflict. When it was at its peak? Yeah. Yeah. So you've seen a lot of bad stuff? We were there for the 20th anniversary of British troops in the province, and the RRA were kind of all out to, you know, create as much havoc as they could, or take out as many servicemails as they could, I should say. Did you see any deaths? Yeah, we lost a guy in the first two weeks, I think it was. And where did you go after Ireland? I went to Norway to do arts at training, and then I spent a year on board an aircraft carrier, HMS Invincible. And how was that then, when you went to Norway? Was there much violence over there, pretty calm? In Norway? Yeah. So... Not much there, is there? Probably one of the least violent places on the planet. Yeah, it was insane. You know, I think it was my first time to go to a proper winter place, a country that has what I would call a proper winter, and you rock up there, and obviously everything's covered in snow, but I mean everything's covered in snow, not like this country where you might get a light dust in, and then three days later it's all brown, slush, and you know, and it's all sort of left the rooftops or whatever. Over there everything gets covered round about sort of August time, and it stays that way till March, even maybe April. And yeah, it's travelling for the first time, isn't it? It's a real eye-opener. The funny thing was, or even more of an eye-opener was the first time you put a bergen on when you've got a pair of skis on your feet, a bergen being your rucksack, which can weigh anything up to, well, even over 80 pounds, plus you've got a weapon which is swinging around, and skiing's hard enough at the best of times, but this is cross-country skiing, so it's not. Your feet aren't locked into the boots like they are when you do downhill. You're just hinged in at the toe, so obviously you can ski forward, you can walk basically. So it's walking with skis? Yeah, walking with skis on, and you've got different waxes you put underneath your skis to help you grip the snow, depending on what the conditions are. And the first time you put those pretty much wonky skis anyway on your feet, and then you put an 80-pound rucksack on, and a weapon. I honestly thought it was a joke, I just couldn't see how it could be possible. But it's like anything else, you put your mind to it and you crack on and you soon see that, ah, yeah, actually it is. It can be done. Yeah, it can be done. What happened after Norway? In Norway, I bought a house in Plymouth, and I spent my last four years in the marines at a place called Stonehouse Barracks, and it was quite a mundane four years. I was doing a lot of guard duty, I was promoted to corporal, so I was partly in charge of organising the guard as it were, and this would be a 24-hour duty every three days, and it was, yeah, to say it was pretty boring would be fair, but off the back of it, those two days off that I had, I started a business, I started marketing electronic products through a networking company, and I gave it years hard work, and then my business really took off in Hong Kong of all places. So just to give you an idea, I mean I'm not probably a bit like yourself, I don't really care much for money at this stage in my life, but back then I was young, very materialistic, and my business was turning over close on 100,000 US dollars a month while I was still serving full time in the marines, so I put my notice in, in fact, not long before I left, another marine said to me, Chris, you're still doing that marketing shit, and I said, yeah, and I had my monthly bonus check in my pocket, we had to pay, you know, pay checks in the bank back then, right, and I said, yeah, and I pulled out just being a show-off, I pulled out this check and it was, my monthly check was £2,700, and this is back in the early 90s, right, so probably the same as what, £7,000 or £8,000 now, and that was in addition to my military salary, so I thought, or at least I was being heralded by the company I worked for as being the next millionaire, you'd say, had this massive business in the Asia Pacific, I had thousands of distributors over there, and yeah, and it all looked good, so I put my 18 months notice in, in the marines, and I hesitate to say, that's where it all went wrong, because I don't like to go to the negative, but that's where, you know, life... Yeah, that's what brings us sometimes, and sometimes you've got to go to a negative to find the positive, so you put in your notice, 18 months notice, has that brought us for the marines? It was then, I think it's, I think it changes all the time depending on what their recruiting levels are. Yeah, so you went to Hong Kong? Yeah, that was it, I thought, you know, go where the money is, go where my business is the biggest, go where I can obviously show my leadership to my workforce. So what was the, what was the net, is it net worth marketing? It was a company called Quorum, some of the older, some of your older listeners might, might remember it. What was it, Siran? It was consumer electronic products, so personal attack alarms, house alarms, car alarms. The problem with, the problem was, network companies can work, but a crucial element is the products that you're networking, you've got to be able to use yourself, because then at the very minimum, if you've got, say, like I had a thousand people in your network, and let's just say they've got a bar of soap, well, they can use that soap, right? So they can buy, let's say, a bar of soap every month, and you're getting, you know, 2% commission on what they're on the wholesale price of that soap, for example. Well, consumer electronics, it's a bad product to network, because you only buy it once, and once you've bought it once, that's it. And as a distributor, I mean, you're not going to buy a car alarm every month, right? And this is where the downfall was. But it's like anything, it's a bit like the, you know, the podcasting or the YouTube in or the writing, whatever it is, you have to go through this learning curve to get to the point where you can look back and go, all right, now, now I understand it. And I don't have any regrets. By the time I got out to Hong Kong, that what, you know, best part of £3,000 monthly check had just withered away to almost nothing. And I was on the train leaving Plymouth to go up to the airport to fly out there. And I'm a civilian now, or I'm almost a civilian. And yeah, it was, I kind of had that feeling in your pit of your stomach that what, what am I doing? This is that gut feeling. Yeah, I knew it was going to end in tears. But when I look back, now I understand it was all part of my journey. And you know, I wouldn't, wouldn't have changed, wouldn't have changed it for the world. You're taking drugs or drinking anything before you went? I'd done a few pills, bit of speed, nothing, you know, smoked a few joints, never had an issue. You know, what it's like this, I try to explain this a lot to people, you know, drugs and addiction are two completely separate issues. Addiction is a mental health condition. And it's driven by most often childhood trauma. Whereas a drug is a, you know, a weed that grows in the dirt, right, and always has done and always probably will do. So in essence, what I'm trying to say is that the drugs can't cause addiction. It's, it's the driver is the, the trauma behind the behavior. What, you know, why do you keep taking drugs? We want to keep feeling happy. Why do you want to keep feeling happy? Well, you, you're, you're getting this level of comfort in your, in your mind that you've never really had before. Does this, does this make? Yeah, definitely. I feel as if I feel the same, I feel as if, if you're taking something every day to kind of numb, whatever it is that you're feeling is to try and pick you up from your fears or demons or insecurities or whatever it is why people drink, take drugs. But I know some people don't agree with it. Some people think it's sociably to take maybe drugs at the weekend. And but for me, I definitely feel as if it's hiding from some sort of misery or pain that you're dealing with. You just don't know how to deal with it. So you'll try alternate, you'll try different things from outside the body. But it's, it's to our own, everybody sees it differently. I see it that way. I see it as if you're struggling, it's easy to numb it and forget by taking some sort of thing to stop. The reason I mention it is, is we, we're just so out of kilter with what the actual situation is with mental health in this country and what drives mental health conditions and what needs to be done about it. And, you know, people hear the word drugs and they panic and they think, well, drugs make you addicted. It's just not like that. And we could have such a so much more afford thinking strategy with drugs and by drugs, you know, obviously include alcohol than we currently have. And so I'm just make the point that no, I never had any, you know, they never cause me any problems until I tried crystal meth in Hong Kong. And that for me, I guess you'd say it was like the key in the lock. It was, I'd never known a feeling like that. It was just, you know, it Christmas come early, doesn't even, you know, it doesn't even begin to describe it just to feel so utterly amazing. It's like you suddenly feel the person you've always wanted to feel, you know, you feel energetic, you feel constructive, you feel, you feel great, you just feel so great, James, you know. And of course, that's a dangerous thing, because when that feeling wears off, or what do you want to do? You want to feel like that again. And this is where the pattern of addiction starts. Yeah, so it's not the drug that's causing it. It's the drug has kind of acted as a catalyst, if that makes sense. What's driving it is the fact that you've not, you know, you're feeling what you think is normal for the first time in your life. And so you want to chase that feeling and, you know, you're gonna do it the next day or the next week, and then the week after that. And before you know it's three times a week. And then it's just becomes a daily thing. And the definition of addiction, or certainly the one we work by was a substance misuse specialist for a number of years in a in a clinic. And you know, how do you define addiction? Well, addiction is when you follow a pattern of behavior, so much that the rest of your life starts to fall around to fall down around you. So you know, you're not tied in your kitchen, you're, you're not going out with your mates like you used to your car, you know, the exhaust is blown on your car whereas you would have just fixed that straight away before now that that, you know, you kind of overlook it because you're always chasing this activity. So the first time then Chris, you must have know the effects of crystal meth because it was getting spoke about quite frequently and in the 90s. No, no. Was it new to you? Back when the warehouse clubs kicked off, you buy a rapid speed, right? And you get it from some gun in dealer. And it's basically 95% glucose, right? It's been bashed so many times by the dealers coming down the chain. And you still get high off that and you're high all night, right until until the next morning. Well, crystal meth isn't even speed, it's methamphetamine. So it's already 10 times stronger than that street rap, right? On top of that, crystal meth is methamphetamine purified into its purest form. That's why they call it ice because it looks like chunks of ice. It's I mean, police in Hong Kong would would make seizures. And it would be 99.7% pure chemical and methamphetamine, right? You smoke it up? Yeah, you smoke it. So to give you an idea of the potency, one gram that you'd buy in a nightclub, you just do that, you know, it's basically a rap, isn't it? You do that and you're high for a few hours, maybe six, eight, 12 hours. One gram of crystal meth can last you anything up to a week when in the early stages when your tolerance isn't isn't huge. Yeah, really strong. So how much was it for a gram of crystal meth? It was about 500 Hong Kong dollars, which is about 5050 quid. Is it not death penalty in Hong Kong if you're caught with drugs? It wasn't a death penalty, but the sentences were really stiff, almost kind of out of touch, stiff 15, 20 years. Well, there was one lad, British lad court of an ecstasy pill at a dance party, you know, they used to hold dance parties in the basements of hotels over there. And this lad, youngish lad got caught with one pill. And the judge gave him 12 years. And obviously it went to appeal and appeal. They had to point out to this judge that, you know, ecstasy is what a lot of young people are doing. And it's not, I mean, you know, the actual words the barrister uses, it's not heroin, and it's not cocaine, right? Not that you should not that you should get 12 years for, you know, for, for, for any drug. But so, yeah, I had a few run ins with a police over there. And I was quite lucky. I always used to hide it really well. That's the meetings. Wow, it was just the fact that, you know, if you're going to get stopped and search, you just want to put it in a place they're not going to look, isn't it? I used to just put it in the lining of my boot. I had like caterpillar boots and I just put it in the lining and, you know, no one's going to really look there, are they? So when you started taking the crystal meth, you went over there with a clear mindset to build the business, to start doing well and taking it even further. You left your job in the Marines. So when you started taking the crystal meth, Chris, when did it really, did it just spiral straight away? No, like I said, I started to do it. I mean, the very first time I did it, I was working in this computer company selling DRAM chips, which is in memory chips. Again, I write all about this and eat and smoke. So I won't, I won't bore you with the details, but it was a very funny, very eccentric Chinese trading company. Very old school. The boss was just wacky, again, is a bit of an understatement. And I worked with a guy called Neil Diamond. It was a schizophrenic. Funny enough, was in strange ways. I was listening to your podcast with what was that champs name? Sam Sam as well. He's a very nice man. Yeah, yeah, really enjoyed that one. And, and yeah, just an aside. And again, this is in eating smoke. Neil Diamond, he had this was before mental health conditions were really recognized back at the time where you were ever considered a bit slow or a bit this or a bit that. And there wasn't really the provision there for you. So Neil got into it. This is what he told me. I have no idea of it, you know, the truth behind it. But he said he got a frack of a neighbor. The neighbor accused him of spying on his wife or something. And, and Neil was like, no, I'm just looking for slugs and slugs and worms, because he was like a biologist, that was his university degree. And of course, because of his like, his schizophrenia to him, that's just a completely normal thing to say. And he said the guy grabbed the tree branch, the tree branch snapped off. Neil thought he was going to hit him with it. So he hit him and broke his jaw. The judge obviously didn't know Neil had schizophrenia because it was undiagnosed. And he put him in strange ways. And he reckons this is what he told me. When the riot kicked off, the place was filling up with smoke. So Neil got a broom, and he started knocking out the the roof pan, you know, the polystyrene roof or whatever, to let the smoke out. And one of the other prisoners went, yeah, good idea, mate. Let's get on the roof. Right. And the infamous rooftop siege, you know, that was broadcast all around the world started. That's, that's what he told me. I'm not for any, Charlie, his name, even Neil Diamond. What are you suing me when I wrote the book? I thought, well, let's just be safe. I it's a really interesting thing. He came to work in this crazy company, this crazy computer company, this crazy old boss. We were only there because we were Westerners. In his old school, Chinese way of thinking. He wanted when his clients flew in from abroad to buy this DRAM and it's sold for millions of dollars, you know, you could do a like a sports bag full is like 100,000 pounds worth, right? They used to run it illegally through the airport. So he didn't have to pay the tax as hand baggage, right? Is a really fascinating period in my life. Tom came to work in that company. And one day on a break, he said, Chris, Chris, come in and he was in a toilet cubicle. And as I said to Sean, as I'm Sean's podcast, you know, so if a guy invites you into a toilet cubicle is you're only gonna get two things. You're gonna get sex and or drugs and I wasn't lucky enough to get sex. I just got a chronic addiction instead. So yeah, that was that. And but going back to the book, when I wrote it, I wasn't in touch with anybody who I knew in Hong Kong, right? It was 1996. So it's a fair time ago. I still decided, well, look, let's just cover my back because maybe people just don't want to be written about, right? Which is fair enough. So and why not? So I just use pseudonyms for everyone. I tried to use my mate's names where possible. So I could say they are that, you know, just as a sort of dedication to my friend sort of thing. Well, Neil Diamond was actually Tom Jones. And I would just when I got to someone's name, I would just think of the first name that came into my head. I thought Tom Jones, singer, 70s, 80, you know, was 70s era, wasn't he really Neil Diamond? Yeah, that would do. So he was Neil Diamond. I worked with another chap, Richard Burton. So he became David Niven, right? It was it really was that I didn't even think more than a few seconds about it. That's how it came around. But what happened is, is through the joys of Facebook, one at a time, I started to get people going. Chris, I saw a TV programme me of an I saw, you know, I saw this newspaper article, this and you've written a book. Do you remember me? I lived with you. You know, I work with you in Hong Kong. And I'm like, do I remember you? I've written a book about your your main character in my book. And it's been, it's been really nice. Really. Yeah, it's been amazing to get back in touch with people that it was like, I don't know, 15 years. I mean, it's even longer now, right? What? What? Well, my mouse is not my mouse is not good at the best of time, but a couple of decades, right? And the girl that I had a crush on in this book that that people will read about she contact to me she's a news presenter for one of the big Australian networks now and she always said she was going to do that kind of thing. And she's a lovely girl. And most recently, the kind of guy that gets the second amount of attention in my book, guy called old Ron. He got holding me through LinkedIn. And I was like, Ron, do you know how many times I've gone on to LinkedIn, Facebook, trying to I thought you were dead. You know, I thought you'd drunk yourself to death in Hong Kong. Because that was his thing back then drinking, right? And, and yeah, and he's it's just now he calls me every day is brilliant. Just amazing, really amazing. So when you started the crystal meth class, we spoke about the L about what kind of hiding from it and numbing some sort of pain. What were you what why were you doing it? What were you hiding from? Like this is completely frank, right? When you're suffering trauma, you don't know it. It's not like you wake up every day and go, Hey, I'm I'm in trauma. I'm looking for an escape. You you you you you just think you're normal, don't you? Right? And unbeknown to me, my kind of rough childhood was obviously playing, you know, I'm guessing a was the driver behind this. You know, my mom's dead now. Dad's still alive. Lovely people, Jamie. You know, they just couldn't really get it together. They met married really young, which was quite normal back then. They had all you know, trying to pick my words carefully here because I don't I don't criticize anyone. Do you know what I mean? We've all got our crosses to bear. And and and as I said to Sean, you know, sorry goes a real long way in my book. And once someone said that that's it, then it's put to bed. And and that's that's where all my sort of stuff is now. But you know, anyone listening to this, if you can't picture what a rough childhood is, then you know, read my book. I don't read my book because I don't I don't even talk about it. But to give you an idea, I mean, I went to like five schools before the age of 11. That's five lots of bullies that you've got to fight. That's you know, I mean, that's five lot of and teachers weren't, you know, most teachers were a good percentage of teachers were abusers back then, you know, in some respect, certainly, you know, they'd get physical with you and smash you around the head and thought nothing of it, right? And then even adults, you can have a stranger in the street would just come up and give you a thick ear. You know, remember it happened to me walking through Plymouth once and my mum turned around and she said, what's the matter with you and I'm holding my ear? Is this random guy just came up, bang, smacked me around the head. I said, well, that man just hit me, mum. She went, what? Why didn't you tell me? Well, I didn't tell her, James, because I thought that was normal. Well, I just thought that's what adults do. And I'm just like holding my ear and no, I was really lucky in that department because I wasn't like an angry young man as in I walked around angry every day, but it's like you don't fuck with me. Seriously, you push me once and I'm just going to ignore it. You're going to push me again and just going to ignore this is going to happen five or six times. You do it that seventh time and then, bang, I'm just going to hit you as hard as I fucking can, do you know what I mean? And then you're not, you know how it is. Once you stand up to her and and that was just my inner anger, you know. So through all the misty, your madness in Chris, when you went away to Hong Kong, when the business started going down the pan and then we were on crystal meth, how bad did it really spiral for you? Oh, I couldn't put it into words, mate. I couldn't put it into words that I think would even, I mean, I tried in the books, you know, I've written this one and also wrote a book called Forty Nights, which is more about the aftermath when I came back to the UK and I went to give you an idea. My dad bought me a ticket. Obviously, I had no no money in Hong Kong. I was by this time I was heavily in psychosis. So it was basically schizophrenic for a good three, if not longer, months of my life. And of course, it's the same thing again. When you're schizophrenic, you don't realise you're schizophrenic. You just think you're normal and, you know, things are a bit strange or people are a bit strange. But I got back to Heathrow. My dad was just there, you know, in the arrivals hall looking for his son. I walked out and I went, right, dad? He went, he thought he'd miss, you know, he thought I must be talking to someone else and he's like looking dad, it's me. His face just dropped. Never, I'll never forget it. Like he couldn't recognise me, James, you know? I mean, I was I left the Marines. I was really into bodybuilding back then. What were you? Would give you an idea. I was about nine and a half stone when I joined the Marines. I was about 14 stone at one point. And just muscle, you know, just working out in the gym. And yeah, when I came back from Hong Kong, I was back to the like back to the nine and a half stone. I mean, it really sucks it out of you. You know, your cheeks get all, all sallow. And, you know, then the medical people get involved and they're like, Steven, that's my dad. You know, your son's really not very well. He's severely psychotic and, you know, it's best you put him in an institution and he'll probably be there for the rest of his life. Of course, my parents, I mean, my parents didn't, they don't even know what drugs are, right? And they've got this shoved in their, you know, shoved in their face. It wasn't a nice time. It wasn't a nice time for any of us, you know? I was just mucking on through. It's just, for me, it's just, this is my life. And I wish everyone would just leave me alone, James, you know, and, but of course, to them, it's just too, too big a thing. And I then fell into what I now can look back and see was a depression because I've been in Hong Kong. I was a nightclub doorman for the 14K, who's one of Hong Kong's biggest triad families. So I've gone from like a period of homelessness to getting taken in by the 14K, given a job as a doorman, given money to furnish my flat. And I'm like the front man on a nightclub run by these secretive headcases. And it's, yeah, it felt amazing, right? And I'm going out in the Wanchai in Hong Kong. It's like the Red Light District, the Ganglang District and the Clubland District all rolled into one. And then I was out every night immersed in it. And of course, I was high as a kite all that time. I had to come back to England, where there was nothing, you know, I didn't have a job. I luckily, I'd let my house go. I just- What made you come back, Chris? I didn't have a choice, James. Did you know yourself that you were dying? I loved Hong Kong with a passion. Most expats love Hong Kong. That's just kind of a thing. You either get Hong Kong or you don't. And if you get it, you have a passion for it. I got on really well with the locals, which was really important to me. I could speak a fair bit of the language compared to most Westerners. As I said, I was, you know, working for the 14K, which to a lost young man was quite prestigious, if that's the right word. And there's no way I wanted to come back to you. I mean, why would I come back here? I mean, it just seems so- Were you scared to come back? I wasn't scared. It's just, I went out to Asia to make my fortune. You know, I was young, idealistic, I was driven. Used to go to all the Antony Robbins, you know, used to walk on fire and all this, you know, to get my mind straight and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I drove, I bought a BMW once, right? All my mates just looked at it and were like, is that yours? Because it's just people didn't, on my salary, didn't do that. I had a mobile phone when they were still like about that big. And I'm not saying this to like try and impress people. It's just, that's how I was, right? And of course, I went out to Hong Kong with this, you know, I'm gonna make it and business and da-da-da-da. And of course, all that frittered slowly away and left me on the street. But even then, still, why would I wanna come back? You know, when you're in that state of addiction, you're still telling yourself, I can make it good. You're still telling yourself, just get a bit more crystal meth that'll sort me out for today and you don't look further than sort of tomorrow or the next day. When I came back to the UK, there was none of that. There was no bright lights. There was no speaking of foreign language. There was no exotic food. Not that I really ate food by this stage. And, you know, England's kind of good for me now because I'm an old man and I've got a lovely partner and we've got a gorgeous little boy and I'm spiritually enlightened so I can just be happy sat on the bloody pavement, James. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter. That's a weird question, Chris, but do you miss it? Um, oh, there's massive stuff that I miss, yeah. You miss the crystal meth? That feeling it gave you? Yeah, kind of. But I'm also savvy enough now to know that... Just to talk to you. Well, it's so complex, James. You know, I'd love to give you a sound bite. Oh, yeah, I don't touch that shit, but it's not that... It's not that simple. It's probably anybody's struggle. It's really not that simple, but to go back to what you're saying, so I walked into my house in Plymouth. My dad dropped my bags and he'd taken over the mortgage for me. I was thousands of pounds in the rears, but he'd stepped in when the bank was gonna repossess it, right? Because he realized I've got to keep my son's house, right? Keep a roof over his head. So I stepped through the door. He dumped my bags and he blessed him and bought me a bag of food. And then he just burst into tears, mate, and ran out, you know, it was all just too much for him. It was horrible. You know, he was told I'm never, ever gonna recover. I just laughed at the doctors and said, you're all just, you know, you're the people who got the problem, I'll be fine. I've just taken a little witty road because everybody calmed down here, right? That was my attitude, you know? And it's still my attitude. Yeah, it wasn't nice. I'll tell you how I ended up in Hong Kong, which is just, you know, I'll tell you one of the worst points. But going back to the UK is, so I'm there. I'm basically slumped on a sofa bed and watching daytime TV. And I'm all right for a few days, you know? Then it's like, should I write my CV? Should I brush down one of my suits? You kind of know you should write, but I just didn't have the will for it. And then I thought, oh, there's an old stereo in the roof. I'll sell it, get a tenner. I'll just get a bit of bass, right? Just one rap, you know, why not? It's not gonna hurt. And of course, bang, I was just straight, not straight back into the cycle, but it initiated the slow trickleback into that cycle of, I don't wanna say cycle of addiction because addiction's something that probably takes you 30 years to work out, really. Well, that's my experience. And that was it. And then I started injecting it, which is a, if you call it a trick, it's what someone had showed me in Hong Kong one time. I thought, yeah, funnily enough, I bumped into Neil Diamond who'd come to a rehab from Hong Kong because he actually lived in Hong Kong. He was, his parents were from Hong Kong, right? Or the, but he'd been sent to a rehab in Barnstable and he phoned me up one day. So we hooked up and of course, two people that love that life meeting up, what are we gonna do, right? And I spent about 18 months on that sofa bed. And I never dealt drugs, not, not, that's not a judgment call. It's just not something I ever really knew how to do, not. And as such, so I wasn't one of these guys that always had a big bag in my pocket and I could dish a bit out here, sell a bit there and always have some for me. No, I spent my fortnightly benefit all on the gear. It would leave me £1.87 for food for a fortnight. So I'd go to the nearby co-op, buy like a value pack of porridge oats, a value pack of pasta, bag of sugar and four pints of milk and I'd mix the pasta and the porridge, pour in some milk, chuck in some cheap margarine, put in about 20 spoons of sugar, whack it in the microwave for, you know, two minutes to soften up and then I'd just eat porridge and pasta and I lived on that for 18 months because why I had no money? My treat was a shoplift bovril, you know? I didn't really think the shoplifting through. I'd shoplift bovril when I get the value range chocolate bars. I don't know why you would shoplift value range chocolate bars when you can take anything in the shop. But, you know, I wasn't out to like, you know, rob the world. I just needed a couple of bits extra because I could... I'm just glad that there wasn't you. Back on it again. Eventually everybody... Left you. Yeah. A lot of people just can't deal with it, Jamie, you know, there's so much stigma back then. There was people who had preconceived ideas. They thought, oh, he's, you know, he's doing that. He's gonna steal off me. He's a hard-never. I wouldn't, do you know what I mean? Even not my worst, I wouldn't have stolen, well, other than bovril, right? And it got, you know, those days got dark, which is good because that's what you need to have your wake-up call, right, you know? So, when you say you're injecting it, can I inject in speed? Yeah. I've never heard of that. Injecting base? Yeah. Yeah, you can inject it. Where are you injecting it? Into my arm, mate. And that's just constrained to the bloodstream. Yeah. I mean, it... Is it just base? Or in a heroin, in a cork? No, my thing was always up as, you know, I wanted to, like, live life, do you know what I mean? I didn't want to blot it out. Did you ever leave the house? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, but only when I could have, get gear, you know? The rest of the time I was just utterly depressed. And of course, this cycle of getting high and then having the crash, the come down, would just exacerbate this underlying depression. And I've never really been to see a doctor or never been to a self-help group. Everything I've done in my life has all been off my own back. So it wasn't as if a doctor could tell me, oh, Chris, you're depressed. But even then, they don't really... They didn't really recognize the sort of things back in, you know, back in the 90s. A lot of mental health, it's all... The advancements have been in recent years, right? So it wasn't, you know, anyone worth their soul could have gone, Chris, you're depressed, mate. That's what it is. You've had this life, you've been up there, you've been doing this, that, and the other. Now you're sat on a sofa bed in Plymouth, you're depressed, mate, that, you know? But nobody... Have you ever contemplated suicide or anything, Chris, at your lowest? No, I never did. And part of the reason behind that is this guy, old Ron, that I mentioned in Hong Kong, he... We were walking through Wan Chai one day. And I was kind of, like, not testing the water, but I was kind of just putting it out there, not for attention-seeking, but just... I was desperate, James, you know, I was slowly losing everything. I mean, he even had to hawk my watch to get by. There was so much weird... Everything gets so random when you're in psychosis anyway. Plus, I'm working for the triads, and that's a random situation in itself. So, I mean, I would leave work and I'd look over my shot and I'd see like one of the 14K would be following me, like reporting back, like who is... And, you know, of course they were, because they worried you're a policeman, right? So what was it like walking through the triads? Well, just to answer your suicide question, because hopefully... Well, hopefully it can help someone. Oh, Ron... I said, Ron, I'm thinking about suicide, but I wasn't really, but I just was looking for some interaction with my friend, you know. And he just looked at me and said, No, you won't, Chris. This is what he said. I'm not saying this is how it is, but this is what he said, Chris. People that commit suicide hate themselves, and you don't hate yourself. And I thought, no, I don't, do I? And that was it. I never, never thought about that again. What about the triads? What was that like walking for them? It was, it was interesting. I mean, you know, I'm just a dormant, James. Do you know what I mean? I'm not like a triad or anything. Yeah, of course. I'm just a Westerner who's ended up in Hong Kong. I've burned all my bridges with a series of jobs, either through bad luck or the drugs, right? And finally, the last job I could get was in this bar. When I was actually looking for a friend of mine, and the guy who I later found out was what they called Dilo, which means big brother, triad big brother. So that's, that's a gang leader. Triads is not like the mafia. The mafia via sort of pyramid hierarchy. Triads is more kind of spread out. And you have gangs, you know, the 14K might be the umbrella name, but these gangs are, they have a degree of autonomy, right? So this Dilo, Paul Wang, he was the gang leader of this gang, Wanchai, that ran the club that I ended up working in. And I went in to see if my mate was there, just to ask my friend, Guilo, so a Westerner. Guilo just mean foreign devil, right? Or ghost, ghost man. And I went in to see if Glenn was around, just to say, Glenn, do you know anywhere I can get a job on? Desperate mate. And he wasn't there. And I, I've got pointed to this fairly insignificant looking Chinese guy. And I said, oh, excuse me, Glenn, is Glenn here? And he said, no, Glenn gone Thailand. I said, oh, okay. He said, you can do dormant job. I said, yeah, I can do door work. He said, okay, start here tomorrow night, eight o'clock. I was like, yes. It's just, do you know, it's a dream to me. I can now stay in Hong Kong. I mean, I had no intention of leaving anyway, but now at least I've got that. You know, used to be like about a thousand pounds a month you'd earn back then in club land. And that was enough to stay in, in Hong Kong. If you, if you didn't spend a lot, right? So going through all the drugs, injecting it, taking crystal meth, what made you change? I had what I would, what you could loosely term a moment of enlightenment kind of had an epiphany. I woke up one morning and I was, I'd just had my boxer shorts on. I was lying under the, the TV stand, right? I had a screwdriver in my hand and I'm like, what? When you, when you've got a speed habit, you get used to waking up and just wondering who, who are you? I used to have to wake up and I couldn't remember who I was. I literally used to just sit there going, what's my name again? Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, you know, that's, how deep it gets into your, your brain, the top, especially the tiredness. So I'm lying under the, under the TV with a screwdriver. I'm like, why is going on? Then it hit me. I'd, I'd be, I'd got ready to go and crash and I slept in a sleeping bag on this sofa bed, right? And always because your brain's trying to be hyper, even though you're absolutely exhausted, I would only sleep when I crashed. I would only sleep when I crashed out. So that would generally be on crystal meth. You can stay awake. I stayed awake nine days once, right? On base, which is what you get in the UK, you can stay up for like three or four nights, right? And then, and then it would run out anyway, because I didn't have any more money to buy any more. And then I would just crash and I would sleep for maybe 48 hours, then get up and do the depression thing, right? And the eating pasta and porridge. And I'm trying to work out what it was. Ah, yeah. Before I crashed, I wanted to do one more thing, which was wiring the plug of the TV or something like this. What was the aerial socket was broken? And I must have gone to do that and fallen asleep underneath the TV, right? So I woke up and I'm sat there and I'm cold and I'm shivering. And I thought, right, I think I've got some coins in my wallet. I'll go to the corner shop and try and get a sandwich or something. And then I could hear the kids kicking the ball around outside my house. And the funny thing was like, they all love me, James, you know, they couldn't, they didn't, they were oblivious to like my, how can you say, they were oblivious to what I was going through. And they used to love me because I'd go out and kick a ball around with the vermin. And yeah, they're just my little mates, do you know what I mean? And they'd knock on my door and say, Chris, can I ask you something? And they'd come out with something. You could tell it's because they came from a single parent family and they didn't have a dad like to ask. And they'd come and say, you won't tell my mum, will you? It was really special, mate, you know. And when you remember the childhood I had, where I was basically scared of adults, probably still am now, if I was honest, you know. Well, not now, but you know what I'm trying to say, I still got that healthy, you know. And so I always promised I wouldn't be that adult that kids are scared of. I'd just be the, you know, be the opposite. But I couldn't go out the front door, James, because I'm, I'm so messed up, you know, I've lost all this weight. The clothes I had on was, were just old now. I haven't bought clothes for three years or something, right? And the trainers I had on were a size too big and I'd stolen them off a heroin user over a drug deal that went wrong. And, and I'm there and I'm shivering and I want to go outside and, and the thought that the kids might be like, Chris, are you okay? It's really hard to explain. But, and in that moment, I probably had nervous breakdown number three. And I never knew what I don't, to this day, you know exactly what is a nervous breakdown. But I'm guessing that's pretty much close to it, right? And I just started thinking, like, where's my life gone? You know, it wasn't that long ago. I was a young handsome marine driving a BMW. I know it's materialistic, but, but that's, you know, people would come around my house and go, is this your house? You know, and it was all, now this house is all smashed up. The car is now a fiesta super sport that's in pieces. Most of the engines in my kitchen, you know, just living in a way. You know, I'm sticking needles in my arm to chase this original crystal meth high, which I thought was happiness, right? And I can't go out the front door and see the people that I do actually love, because I'm afraid that they'll say, Chris, what's happened to you? And I started thinking about, I thought a couple of things. I thought it ain't working anymore, Chris, is it? This drug thing, it's just not working anymore. In fact, be honest, mate, it hasn't worked for quite a long time now, is it? And in that moment of truth, I could, I just suddenly saw it all, just suddenly saw it all, and I thought, oh my God, what an idiot you've been. I can see it now. I see all my behavior, you know, all the actions I did to end up in this mess and, you know, at the time you've lost everything. Now I know I had to lose everything to gain the world, right? But at the time, you've lost everything, and I could just see it. I thought, Chris, you've got to change. It's got to change, and let's not try and be an angel. I mean, my thinking then was, I'm always going to do drugs. I'm not always, but, you know, for as much as the negative side, and I know it sounds serious, there is a positive side. I learnt so much about myself through it. You know, I was a guy that was told I was a failure at school. Failure wouldn't amount to anything, kind of felt that. And then through taking Chris to math, I learnt, no, actually, I'm actually good at some stuff, you know, I can draw, I can write. And so I wasn't going to become like a new evangelist and, you know, throw my hands up to the Lord and tell everyone how wrong I'd been. And I was like, no, I haven't been wrong. I've just been through an experience, but it's got to stop now, Chris. You've got to start, you know, thinking a bit better. And the other thing is, I thought, if like all of this relates to that sort of broken little boy that you were when you were four, you know, three, four years old, it's like, you've got to start looking after that little boy now. But does this make sense? You know, it's like you can blame maybe adults for the way they treated you back then. But like, who's treating that little boy badly now? Well, you're doing it, aren't you? You're shoving drugs in his arm. You know, you're letting him live like this. And in that moment, it's like, I could just see it. And ever since I've just, I've just seen it, Jane, you know, I've just seen the way forward. And so I thought, right, what can we do? We'll take action. How about I don't spend all my money on gear? You know, I don't spend all my weekly budget on the gear and end up in this shivering mess, eating pasta, right? What about if I just buy a 10 quid wrap? And when it's gone, it's gone. And I don't chase it. You know, I'm not on the phone to the dealer or going down the pub, trying to meet one of the guys. And that's what I did. And when that first 10 quid wrap was gone, I was like, right, that's it. Tired now because go to bed, just go to bed. That's what I did. I went to bed. I woke up, felt rough as you'd, you know, speeds probably one of the worst condoms felt rough, but there was something inside. James, you know, there's that spark. I thought, go and put the kettle on. Do you washing up? And that's what I did. Put the kettle on, did the wash and had this feeling that I hadn't had for a long, long time. And it was a, it was something positive, you know. And that was it. And that was, you know, I did my one gram of Fortnite thing for a while because I was doing so much less of the gear. My, you know, your life slowly comes back to you. You know, you've got a bit of money, so you can buy some clothes. You get a bit of luck because, you know, it's all kind of universal, isn't it? You put out good stuff in the universe, it comes back to you. Friends started to come back into my life guys would say, Chris, I've got a job on Saturday. Can you come and help me? And I started smuggling some of the things I've done, but I started smuggling tobacco from Belgium. It's part of a gang, right? And I used the money that I got paid off it to save up to go and work in Africa. And I also did a charity fire walk. I set up, it was kind of the world record fire walk at the time, but by mercy of the fact, no one had ever done a world record fire walk. So I kind of semi-claimed it, but I set up this 30 foot fire walk and I got the press there and everything. And then I walked it for four times, so 120 feet across Hot Carls, made a little, not a lot of money doing that, but that all went in the pot. And then the British Legion very kindly gave me a career development grant, about £1,000. And I got this little amount of money to pay an organisation in Norway that trains you to go and work in Africa with street children. And it sounds funny, but I had friends going, what do you want to do that for? What, you're working for free? I'm like, yeah, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to get you a job and £30,000 a year Red Cross over there. I'm like, no, you don't get it. That's not what I want. I don't want to go and help people who've got nothing and have £30,000 going into them. How does that work? I don't know if this is making sense, but I had to go and work for free, James, to give back. And it's a real hard thing to explain that to someone who hasn't been there, because it was just a feeling, it took over me. I saw this advert in the newspaper, volunteers required to go and work in Africa, and I thought, I've got to do it. I've got to do it. And it turned out to be just a thoroughly unbelievable experience. Are you clean then? Yeah, of amphetamine. Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. I've never in my life made a right. That's it. Today is the day. I kind of have in recent times with things like alcohol, just because I want my life to be better. You know, you get your life really good, right? But then you want to get it to the next level. And there's certain tweaks you can do, and getting alcohol out of your life is massive. You know, I found that's been a real massive thing for keeping you at that level of happiness and sustaining it. But I never say never. It's that's not my thing, my experience. The thing I'd encourage anyone to do is you want balance in your life. You don't want doors that are locked and you're afraid to, you know, you need to work through. You know, how did I develop this psychology of addiction? What were the drivers behind it? And you need to just peel back the onion really and start dealing with them one by one. So I've never had any kind of right. That's it. I'm going to be this kind of person now and I'm never going to do that again. I just you just you modify your behavior as you as you get older, right? So when was the last thing you took drugs? God. It gets the point what I just can't remember anymore. James, like we're talking years. It's it's like spirituality sounds a bit naff, doesn't it? But that's like my drug. Now it's it's like I say I never say never. It's not it's not an issue for me. I know for some people they say you take that and you go right back in. But when you've worked through the relapses and the lapses and you understand what what they are, they're they're part of the learning curve. And then you get a lot more control. I choose not to drink for the most part, right? What where has been where I've kind of not got myself in a pickle. But it's like, you know, when you go back there again, and what's happened is I ran the length of the UK. So I flew to John O'Groats. I put on a backpack with all all my camping gear. And I decided I'm going to run an ultramarathon every day down to land's end. And I was going I made it my mission to raise awareness of this worrying rate of veteran suicide we've got. And it was quite funny. I got halfway and I broke my leg. But I'm not going to give up, right? There's there's no way people are saying, right, hospital, you know, take a hotel. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm standing my tent. I'm going to keep running. Got what we call a shin splint in the. It's where you get like a hairline fracture around around your bone. And it's really pain, really pain. It's so painful to come. The bruise comes through the surface of the skin. And so I was taking painkillers, but it was agony. I mean, it was agony is the point where I could. I was limping an ultramarathon today. And I saw a corner shop. I thought plan B. One of the things I always say is have a plan B that backs up your plan A. So I went in. I bought a bottle of whiskey, a small bottle of whiskey. And I took a glug of that. And on top of the painkillers, it was just job done, right? And so, yeah, so I was just having a nip of that every morning and run and run to land's end. But what I noticed is off the back of that, the crash was awful. Mixing painkillers with alcohol, plus the whole fun of being on the road, doing something that was pretty great. And I'd say I'd probably continue to drink for a week or so after. But it's always the same with me. It just gets to a point where I just think, why am I doing this? I'm not really... You're scared that you slurped back? No, I'm not scared. I'm not really scared of anything, James, if I was... See, when you were doing it, Chris, were you doing it alone? Like your drugs, you're injecting? Yeah, I mean, I was full on in that cycle, really. How's things now, then, with you, mentally? It's kind of funny, because now I'm starting to get into the YouTube thing. That's YouTube, Chris Thrill. Yeah, check it out. It's really starting to kick off. I've got you to thank for that and Sean, obviously. No, no problem. But it comes with its own level of stress, doesn't it? And then you've got to manage that. If you mean my mental health is related to, like, back in the day, where I completely lost it, oh, that's... I'd be completely honest, within about... I got back to the UK. I'd smuggled a little bit of ice back with me inside my shoe. And that lasted for about three days. And I was in psychosis those three days. Again, it's all in my book, 40 Nights. When I stopped that, within 48 hours, I was... My mental health was just completely back. As far as the psychosis is concerned, it was just completely gone. You're hearing voices or anything? You hear your own inner voice all the time. This was my experience. It's like you've got your normal thoughts, and then you've got these ghost thoughts, which is where your brain... It's almost like your brain's separated. It's not like what you hear on the telly. For me, at least, when you see people talking about it on the television, they say, oh, the voice told me to do it. And that makes it sound like you've got this, hey, right, you go and do... It's not like that. It's like it's your own voice. But it's a bit random, and it's telling you to do sort of quite random things. I mean, most, I think, statistically, people who are mentally unwell are more likely to hurt themselves than anybody else, right? I think that's been proven. And that certainly was my experience. One day I set out in Hong Kong to climb up a crane and jump into the harbor. And you know, these cargo cranes, they're really high. I mean, we're talking about 80 feet high or something. And in my mind, if I could do that, everything would come good. I'd understand my life, understand my purpose in it, right? I also felt really almost like persecuted, because so many people just are quick to leave your life when you've got a drug problem. And then the kind of backstabbing goes on, and that's not really helping you when you're in this situation, right? And so one night, I was on the roof of my building. I lived on the top floor of a tenement, an old tenement block. So there's about 20 floors up. So maybe, I don't know, 70 meters high. Not quite a skyscraper, but it's a little bit higher. Not quite a skyscraper, but a tall Hong Kong building. And spanning across from my building to the building on the other side of the road was a wire cable. And plastic cuff to it was a hose pipe. So you get a situation of Hong Kong, a lot of the homeless live on the rooftops, and you get all these kind of enterprising arrangements. So I'm guessing this rooftop was supplying water to this guy living over there. Something like this, right? And in my mind, my commando training, and part of your commando training is you have to be able to cross a cabin by crawling along a rope on your chest. So on your stomach in your chest, you lay down on the rope and you crawl your way across. My mind, this voice that I'm saying, all of my commando training was for this moment when I crawl across this wire, when I get to the other side, everything's going to make sense. I'm going to understand why I've been put through this. Yeah, this test, it felt like it was a gauntlet I had to run, and everyone was just kind of waiting just on the fringe to come in and go, well done, Chris, that's it. You've done it. We tested you and you've come good. That's how I felt, right? And part of being in psychosis is you read into things, stuff that was never meant to be read. So I had this letter from my cousin, and I always kept it in my briefcase, right? Because he'd written to me when I was in recruit training, and he said, dear Chris, and he joined as a boy soldier. So he joined as a 16-year-old Marine, and he rose to the ranks of Colonel or something. He left out so really high, which is a fairly unusual thing to do. And he wrote to me when I joined out, and one of the lines in the letter said, when you're marching across Dartmoor in the pouring rain at 2.30 in the morning, you'll probably be wondering, why am I doing this? But I promise you this, Chris, it will all come good in the end. When I'm up on this rooftop, I've laid my body onto this wire. This wire could snap at any minute. I mean, I don't even know who's put it up there, right? I don't even know how strong it is. But my mind's telling me, and this letter is clearly telling me, that my commander training, it's all going to come good in the end. So I'm going to crawl across this wire. It's 70 meters above the ground. People on the street just look like ants. The cars look like little matchbox toys. And I'm up there in my own world of psychosis, thinking I'm doing the right thing. And it was weird. There was like a frosted paint glass in the building opposite. And I think there was a woman brushing her hair, and she sort of did it quite regularly. But the hairbrush looked like a microphone in her hand. That's what the silhouette looked like, she was singing into a microphone. And this voice in my head is saying, it's not over until the fat lady sings. And she was a large lady, right? Large woman. And so that's just another reason I've got to crawl across this cable. It's not over until the fat, ah, right. That expression must have been in my life all this time for this moment. This is genuinely how, you know, this is how I'm thinking. So I'm starting to crawl across this wire. And I've got about five meters out, and the wire's swaying from side to side. And I suddenly think, Chris, you didn't put this wire out. You know, you don't know how it's fixed on. Look how high you are. It could snap at any given second, right? And my mind flicked to my brother back in the UK. And I'd hardly spoken to him in the year that I'd been in Hong Kong. I was so preoccupied. And it's like, I love my brother more than, you know, it's before I had a family of my own then, right? He's my little brother. We went through a lot of stuff together as kids. You know, he was my only friend at some point, going to these strange schools in the north of England, you know, 300 miles away. And I love my brother, you know, and there I am. And I'm thinking, Chris, what are you doing? If you fall, your brother's going to get a phone call in the UK and they're going to say, oh, you know, your big brother became a drug addict in Hong Kong and he threw himself off a skyscraper, right? And I'm like that, but that's not the truth. I'm not going to throw myself. Do you know what I mean? I'm not doing this because I hate myself. I'm doing it because I've got a proof. I'm like, prove what, Chris? And so who? And I thought about all these like backstabbers and people that had, you know, that I knew were talking about me and suddenly I was like, what? Why do I even fucking care? Who? They mean nothing to me. And in that moment again, like another moment of clarity and I saw it and I thought about my brother and it's how much I loved him and the bursting of tears and I'm swinging on this rope and the tears are just dropping from my eyes and they look like paratroopers jumping from the Hercules, you know, that's what my memory was. And I thought, Chris, you don't have to prove anything to anyone in this world. That's it. Except your kid brother, get off this freaking wire and I climbed off it and, you know, even that wasn't a wake-up call. I mean, that didn't, that wasn't in any, it's a wake-up call, like looking back on it, right? Now at the time it was just, that's how I lived. So now, class, have you ever had any help to us there? Anybody you've spoke to? No, no, no, no, there was one very brief period where I was at university and I was, it was a funny time in my life. My stepdad had died and he died really young. He wasn't that much older than me. He was kind of like my mum's toy boy, but he died and it was a nasty, you know, he had leukemia and it ended up, he had a stem cell transfer and it went wrong and it started to eat his body away and he died. And then my mum got poisoning, she died of asbestos poisoning. These are not necessarily in the right, you know, timeframe or order, but then I had a, not related to this, but I had a relapse on the speed and this time I was earning money so I could afford it so I could actually not do the, you know, the pasta thing and not do the shop lift, I could just actually buy enough for every day. So I had like a two month relapse or something, right? That's fun going into your university lecture off your head. So you're working on the university? No, no, I had a job, I'm not going to say what it is because I don't want to incriminate myself, but I was studying youth work, you know, wanting to work with young people when I got, that's what I got my degree in. But yeah, I had this kind of relapse and I couldn't get my essay in on time is what I'm trying to say. And so I thought I'll pull a sneaky one. I'm going to see the counselor because I'd heard if you're going to see the counselor and say you've got issues, then you get like a longer period to hand in your essay, right? So I went to see the counselor and he said, well, what's up with you? And I'd sort of told him, no, I don't take myself that seriously, James. To me, it's just, I've just lived my life, all this stuff I'm telling you, that's just been my life. I don't, you know, I don't often understand the significance of it. So I told this counselor a few things that were going on and he's like, oh, he's a really nice northern bloke. He's about 70, so he's about to retire. And he said, Chris, I've listened to your story and I'll be honest, son, I've never met anyone like you. And I've certainly haven't had any of your experiences. He said, but I tell you this, I'm willing to listen. That's a really powerful thing, James, you know? Because I went there just trying to pull a fast one, ended up meeting a really nice guy that I could talk to, and we'd just just go and have a cup of tea and have a chat. And I'll be honest, he never gave me any pearls, you know, those kind of Yoda-like pearls that you think you're going to get from a counselor, we just chatted, he actually told me, I was in my 30s then, he said I should give up running because I was too old for it, which is funny when you think I did a quadruple Ironman for my 50th birthday in September. And yeah, I can't remember the point of what I was saying is, oh yeah, so he was the only person I've ever really been to see and he didn't really provide any kind of therapy, it was just a chat we went for, and I got my extended time for my essay. Yeah, but you may find that it doesn't necessarily be in a doctor's room, it's just even speaking to a friend or a family member or some bystander that you just happened to speak to. I need to mention two things here then. Wouldn't be fair not to say it. One night I was out the back of my house, Fiesta Super Sport I told you about. The guy that sold it sold me it with a dodgy head gasket. So my drug dealer gave me the gear to grind in the valves and replace the gasket and everything, and I was out the back of the house wired for like four days without sleep, just working 24-7 on this car and I couldn't get these valves ground in, I couldn't get any compression. Every time I bolted the head block down, I'd turn the engine over and it wouldn't fire and so I'd take it all off, do it all again and I was in a real mess by this time. And it was pouring with rain some nights and I'd set up this canopy so I could just keep working on this car. This is the insanity of it, you don't see this at the time but looking back it was pretty extreme behavior. And so one night about the 4-4-5th night I'm there and I've got my torch set up or my spotlight and I'm looking in the engine bay and this porch light comes on and one of my neighbour's houses and I looked up and there's a chap I never really spoke to before. I knew he was called Ian and I knew he'd been in the navy because we had a mutual friend that went oh Ian lives in your street and he walked over and I kind of didn't know what to expect really. And he said all right Chris? It's about 11 o'clock at night right? So I'm like yeah, yeah mate, yeah I'm all right. He went fuck off. I was like huh? He said what you on? And I'm like is he putting me on the spot here? I was just like sorry what do you mean? He said don't give it that Chris. He said I used to do a few pills and potions in the navy I know the score just be honest with me and I'm like why? It's like people been saying anything you know that was like my biggest not paranoia just genuinely like you know we haven't got a good attitude to any of that stuff in this country sometimes for right reasons but quite often I mean I was harmless James you know what I mean? I wasn't going to hurt anyone I was stealing my bovrule that you know that was the limit of my criminality well actually I did try and steal a car but that's another story but you know you're very conscious of getting alienated from your community I suppose you'd say or being he's that guy you know that guy there and maybe I worried back then too much about that but you know I obviously had good kind of good reason to and so I said what people have been saying anything he said Chris he said forget about then he said if you must know yeah a couple of people had said something to me he said but he said Chris you ignore them he said they're never going to understand someone like you and I was like what do you mean he said Chris the way you deal with them kids he said it's really special mate he said and these people he's pointing to my neighbors he said they don't understand special people and he and and I'm like I'm just I'm gobsmacked and he's um so I'm just trying to recall the conversation he said something like he said Chris those kids fucking idolize you man he said when when you're not here when you go out they all sit on a curb outside your house waiting for you to come home and I was like do I do I and he's like he's he said yeah and he it's just basically saying this stuff that's it stunned me James I never like set out to be try to be any kind of person but now he's he's throwing you know he's like holding a mirror up to the kind of person I wanted to be do you know what I mean an adult that's that's good to kids not an adult that shouts good kids or hits kids or doesn't give them their time sort of thing you know and uh I wish I could it's it's in my book for 40 nights I'm not telling this very well but he's like now fuck off inside and get some sleep and that was it I went inside and I was just humbled by what he said that the fact that he'd taken the time to come out 11 o'clock at night yet his dressing going on he'd come and said something so nice to me and again it was just one of those moments the funny thing was as I walked through the door of my house my nose exploded because my blood pressure was so high from injecting so much of this this speed it just sprayed all over the room like ebb just like a fire hydrant it was almost comical and um and I just crashed and I just started sobbing but just not not even like sobbing in a bad way just just like you've got all this emotion you know yeah well years of it you know 35 odd years or whatever it is and it's all got if you haven't dealt with it it's all got to come out right and it all came out and then funny enough a friend phoned me she's like you're right lovey I'm not I'm just she's like oh and then we ended up just laughing down the phone and it was so therapeutic right and so I thank that guy that that's what you you know when people talk about angels that is what that guy was right and the next thing that happened is I'm still out there the next night right because I'm you know obsessive compulsive trying to get this car fixed and a car pulled up in the street and the next thing I know it's my old mate is looking under the bonnet at me I hadn't seen him for well since this whole thing started I hadn't seen him since I got back to the UK and I've been there a year and a half if not longer now and um I said hello mate and he's like you all right Chris I'm like yeah I'm gonna and I'm pointing the screwdriver at my car you know as if this like makes any sense and I said yeah I got a problem with their their head gasket you went yeah I can I can see that and I can you know I can sort of see where this is going and kind of long story short he's like Chris you know I've erred everything and I'm just I'm really concerned about you mate and this is a very old friend of mine right we we've known each other since we're like five years old um never had a bad moment between us right I just haven't seen him since I've been back and again kind of story short I just I knew that was my moment James I that was my moment to get out of this and I looked at him I'm I'm I'm hesitating because his name I've given him a pseudonym in my book but let's just say he's called Lee right and uh and I'm like Lee can I come and stay with you he said oh Chris I'm so happy you've asked me that I wanted to ask you to come just come to my house and I didn't want to like impinge on you he said right just just stop all that shit come now and that was it I stepped into normality for the first time in two and a half years just a proper normal tidy house it gave me a load of clothes and said put them on I was having a shower with hot water because I hadn't had a hot bath or a hot shower because I couldn't afford to put the heating on right I'm having a shower and there's bubbles everywhere and he's got all these smellies and I'm like oh you sound the wrong I try a bit of that oh look at the pack of ruban I'm gonna try a bit it's just you know I'm like blooming I don't know like a kid in a candy store literally and it just felt so amazing everything was clean he did his washing up his everything was you know it looked new he lived in this kind of um like smart little cottage down on the barbican which is the seafront in in in Plymouth and and he said to me he said he saw me looking at the food cupboard right because I'm starving you know I'm I'm really eating for two and a half years and he said Chris that's my food in there I've paid for it you help yourself to anything you want just don't fucking ask me what he's trying do you know what I mean what he's trying to say is like what's his is mine he just won't he said I just want you better Chris and you know that's a good mate James you know that was a turning point for you then well all of these are turning points but that that yeah yeah yeah that was the you know yeah so through all Chris through all the madness because that story is fucking it's nuts because you speak it you mean I don't know if you feel it or see it but it's crazy the roller coaster that you had yeah so through all you've come out it yeah you do your running you've got your book what's the plans for you know for kicking on for the future um I'd really like to get the podcast up and running proper I've been kind of putting it together at the minute putting a few sort of podcasts on YouTube but then they're all I would say they're random but I've been kind of like shooting the shotgun at the side of the barn and seeing what hits if you know what I mean it's kind of funny that the marine stuff really has taken off big time you know I can put a marine video on YouTube and and it gets like a thousand views in the first day I say it's funny it's because I'm a pacifist now and I wouldn't you know I kind of have a very different view on war to that which I did when I was 18 right when I joined up and um but at least through these videos I can have this honest conversation with what are predominantly young young men and I get a lot of emails and a lot of messages through Instagram saying Chris I'm in this situation I wanted to join the Marines for this but now I I'm kind of a bit suspect about these conflicts and this kind of thing and so yeah so but that's where I want to go but but to do something like this would be wonderful um I already ready can kind of picture some guests in my mind and I mean my one of my good friends Baz Greski to the South Pole quite recently know an amazing um another former commando Lee Spencer lost his leg in a road accident when he was trying to help a a motorist who'd broken down and that didn't stop him rowing across the Atlantic and smashing four world records um so yeah I've got these you know I know a few interesting people that I'd like to get on the podcast and finish off the books um I'm writing one at the moment it's going to be called I don't know let's just say rubbed a work in progress 999 miles how I ran an ultra marathon a day for 37 days without training something like this I didn't do any training for for that run which is um is another story again uh and then after that I want to put just the life lessons that I've realized I've learned now James from everything that I've been through and to get where I am now I mean for the benefit of anyone struggling if anyone's listened to this and you're struggling like I was where you are and now I look back at my my life since then and I've lived worked and traveled in 80 countries across all seven continents I've explored the Antarctic I've scuba dived you know on icebergs and down there I'm a qualified pilot qualified skydiver uh thousand mile ultra runner obviously quadruple iron man uh did quadruple iron man for my 50th birthday just to show people and I did two months training for it just to show people like if you want you know the power the power of the mind obviously you know I'm I'm an author I'm a graduate I'm a very proud father partner and um you know I've driven buses to india and back you know volunteer workers to india and back I've worked in post war mozambique just had an extraordinary well it's not extraordinary to me James I just I through what I went through back what I've just told you when I came out the other side it's like right let's smash this thing now you know three years in a wilderness that's okay to to find out who you are find out what's important in your life and and realign all your values and you're thinking because what society im imbues you with if that's the right word it's just a crock of shit you know everything you're taught from such a hey it's just a lie or it's the truth with a wrapper around it that suits some ruling elite you know or some banker somewhere and through my experience I've been able to just just see through that facade you know and really see the truth in life and and like I say formulate these I don't like to call them rules but let's just say that their rules that have allowed me to just achieve every single thing that I ever wanted to do and that will be the book I will write after I've written my 999 miles book yeah definitely not a biography in there as well Chris um to just for what you've came from to what you've achieved after that is phenomenal I'm proud of you another thing we'll touch on a note obviously you were you went to the army at 18 but your mindset's kind of changed now without so what's your opinion on what and armies the opinion basically since the television came around I'd say the vast majority of people get their information from it and of course you know and when we've all been a party to this at some point in our lives where you just assume that that's authority so it's all the truth right now it's all bullshit oh it's it's yeah I mean that's it's all it's like I say I I know what I'm saying now won't make sense to some people because it's a certain process you have to go through it and a way to understand it is you remember those pictures you get and they're all dots is like green dots and red dots and it just looks like a picture full of dots you look at it but someone else looks at it and goes no no no if you stare at it like this you see a spaceship and there's a little green man there and there's a crater do you know what I'm saying that's how life is for me now um you know off the back of my experience of addiction it it just it it realigned my thinking to to think in different ways and so with war it's not difficult James to you you could spend half a day using a search engine and find out that most conflicts are constructed you know funded funded yeah funded you know funded by these ultra rich banking families um and uh yeah that's it and they do it at the expense of the lives of young men and women and or the expense of the the limbs of young men and women and it's it's a very the the the actual issue of fabricating war is quite a simple thing i mean it's just been done since you know well for that i'm gonna say thousands of years right it's not a it's not a new thing but to try to explain all the intricacies of it is a bit more complex right but um but um yeah we're human beings we're very clever we've got the the biggest brain apparently of you know all the creatures and we we can come up with a much better solution than than to keep buying into this war thing all the time right yeah there's a there's a charlie chaplin speech i think it was like the 40s or 50s a film called the dictator so for anybody watching check out YouTube for it it's a powerful speech yeah that's very powerful yeah so chris acts i don't know where to begin with that mate that was and i that's when you only scratch the surface i guess but for coming on me and telling your story it's phenomenal and to having you in a good place again doing run doing your charity work it shows that you can't it can be done no matter oh definitely pain that you've definitely would you like to finish up on anything chris um just say thank you for your audience you know really appreciate it um it's i'm living now my dream life james you know it's nothing to do with fancy cars or you know money it's i'm in a position i can really support people not even people that are struggling but just people that want some direction in their life um i'd say to anybody that's going through a bad period that maybe is contemplating suicide i promise you this is this feeling is temporary you know the way you're seeing the world at the minute is not the way the world actually is it's just the way that your brain's constructing it because you don't know you know you don't know the way forward but things will get better they always do and then you'll look back and you'll think blimey can't believe what used to be like you know can't believe so yeah hanging there good stuff chris chris it's been an absolute pleasure brother wish all the best for the future all the best for your podcast new books check out his book eating smoke as well which we'll put the link in the bio so it's been a pleasure me and all the best james thank you very much cheers