March 24, 2023

Pete Garner: Heroin, Drug Culture, Trauma, The Great Binge & The Hierarchy of Drug Users.

Pete Garner: Heroin, Drug Culture, Trauma, The Great Binge & The Hierarchy of Drug Users.
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Pete Garner: Heroin, Drug Culture, Trauma, The Great Binge & The Hierarchy of Drug Users.
Pete Garner: Heroin, Drug Culture, Trauma, The Great Binge & The Hierarchy of Drug Users.
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Season 1

Matt is joined by Pete and they candidly discuss the journey throughout his addiction to heroin and his lifestyle in recovery, 

They discuss the modern history of addiction, drug culture, heroin chic and how his personal experiences led to helping others and gaining employment in the sector.

Click here to text our host, Matt, directly!

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🎵 Music: “Jonathan Tortoise” by Christopher Tait (Belle Ghoul / Electric Six)

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WEBVTT

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Hello and welcome to the Believe in People podcast.

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My name is Matthew Butler and I'm your host, or as I like to say, your facilitator.

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Today I have with me Peter and we talk about the reality of heroin withdrawal, powder power and the hierarchy within drug culture, trauma-informed care and his personal experiences leading up to employment within the sector.

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Thank you very much for coming on today.

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I'm really excited to have you on because we've had some great conversations in the past about...

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Everything and anything really, aren't we?

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Sometimes it's like, I'll meet you for about 10 minutes and then an hour later we're still gabbing about something.

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So it's nice to have you on here.

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Obviously today we're going to be talking more about you than a lot of the things we normally talk about.

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More about you and I suppose your recovery.

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The funny thing with you is even when it's like recovery, you don't necessarily accept or...

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I'm trying to think of the word to say for it.

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I'm in recovery at the moment.

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I'm in recovery from COVID.

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Okay, yeah, there you are.

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Do you consider yourself in recovery from substance abuse?

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Well, obviously I don't.

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In the sense of course, yeah.

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I just feel like often people really...

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have that badge of recovery and wear it like a badge of honour, whereas with you it seems quite secondary to a lot of who you are, really.

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Yeah, I'm glad you said that because I kind of feel a little bit that way myself.

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Yeah.

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I think it's just one of the things.

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For some people, when they achieve recovery, it becomes their entire identity.

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Yeah, yeah.

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I've never once had that with you.

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I think there's so much about you that I can, and it's part of the reason why we end up talking as much as we do.

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We can unpick things for hours, but for the purposes of today, we are going to be talking about your recovery in a traditional sense because Because you used drugs for a long time.

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I did.

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Very long time.

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How long was you using substances

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for?

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Various types, probably from the age of about 17 was the first time that I ever used anything other than alcohol.

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Right up to...

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I did my methadone detox when I was 56, I think.

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That's a long period of time.

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You see, I don't even keep a date particularly.

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No, and some people really do, don't they?

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Yeah, recovery birthdays and cooking a tattoo to them.

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I just think

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it's all part of life's rich tapestry, mate.

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I'm not one, and this is a weird thing to say in the modern world, but...

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I'm not particularly one for too readily defining myself, particularly.

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And I get all manner of labelings and stuff I detest.

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Well, this is it.

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We'll label it.

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So I think quite often people can use words to label, which in the end diminishes people, I think.

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Well, do you know what?

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I've had this conversation with you before, but I suppose for a culture of people that often hate being labelled...

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The label of recovery is something, and addiction, an addict, is something that is worn with pride and is a completely different kettle of fish, isn't it?

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There's all sorts of things that are worn with pride in the modern world that I see as ill-definition, for want of a better word.

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So you were using substances at 17.

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What was the first substance you used?

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Was it alcohol at 17?

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No,

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I think the first substance I ever used, particularly a substance, it was a...

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a completely natural phenomenon.

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It was magic mushrooms.

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That's probably

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the first thing.

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So it was hallucinogenic drugs was the first introduction to it.

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And was that when you were 17 then?

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17, yeah.

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What brought

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that on?

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At the time, it was before the sort of mass consumption of drugs amongst the working classes it was like not a thing that many people did and I think it was a lot to do with a circle of friends I hung out with were all interested in alternative types of music we all read alternative types of literature so I just think we all had sort of exploratory heads for want of a better word because it was very much that sort of, it was like we couldn't wait to explore the possibilities of bending our minds and all that sort of stuff.

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That's how it sort of started with us.

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And there was very few of us who did it.

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And we were all sort of eventually, well, we were in the sixth form at the time, so it was like people who ended up going on to university.

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I mean, like one of the lads who I used to do magic mushrooms with back in the early days is now kind of top, psychiatric nurse.

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Very few of them actually descended into what is called drug, if it is, well, you know, descended into drug addiction or anything like that.

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So it was just, I think it was like, because I mean, I remember reading recently about these days, up to 70% of young people go through a, what's the term, a rites of passage exploration of some sort of drug use.

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And I think it was just that, that, you know, we first discovered But I think there was a lot of social influence as well because of the type of music that we were listening to, the type of literature, because I was mad on things like the Beat Generation, which was an awful lot about drug use and stuff like that.

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The sort of music we listened to, our sort of pop idols were all drug users.

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So I think there was an element of social influence there.

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So obviously you're in your 50s now, so was this the 70s or the 80s?

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This would have been the 80s, yeah.

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Yeah, yeah.

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But interestingly, I can remember, because I did English later at school, and I can remember, I think I've told you this before, I remember when we were doing a practical criticism on a particular poet, one of the romantic poets, called Rachel, did a famous poem called Kubla Khan, which was basically about his vision as well under the influence of opiates.

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Like all the romantic poets was all into the opiates.

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It was at that period in history.

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And I remember real distinctly in class saying to the teacher, that sounds, I nearly swore, but that sounds amazing.

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I can't wait to have a go.

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And it was just sort of laughed off.

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And I just sometimes think to myself, if a young kid said that in a class today, that'd be like a red flag and they'd probably be talked to at the end of the class.

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Maybe, oh, you've got to go see a child psychologist or whatever.

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So I just think there was an awful lot of naivety then about...

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about drugs and stuff like that.

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It just wasn't the social phenomenon that

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it is today.

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You're the generation, I suppose, where you've got 60, 70...

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Yeah, you're a generation.

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Not your entire generation, but it was a lot more normal to use substances in your generation, wasn't it?

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I think

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we were a bit before that, to be honest.

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Was you?

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Yeah, I think...

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Like I say, when we first started using drugs, it was...

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I remember there was a little...

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Actually, I've just realised that the first time I ever used drugs was actually before that.

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Yeah.

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I remember with this...

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This was when I was in the sixth form, when I'd already turned into a bit of a hippie.

00:07:01.639 --> 00:07:05.845
I was going to ask you was you a hippie, but we've just said about labeling.

00:07:05.985 --> 00:07:06.687
Was you a hippie?

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I was more of a late 60s kind of, more of a psychedelic kind of guy.

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But I was very influenced by sort of 60s culture and stuff like that.

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So I was into early Pink Floyd and all that sort of stuff.

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So it was more...

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what they used to call psychedelic music.

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Do

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you know what I mean?

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But I remember just before that, because when I was younger, there was a lot of, with youth culture, there was a lot of tribal stuff.

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So you defined yourself by what tribe you was in.

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And I used to just switch from one thing to another, mate.

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So one minute I was a northern soul boy, then I was a mod, and I was a hippie.

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I used to change with the tide.

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But thinking about it, the first time I ever came across drugs was when I was into Novans.

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You see, this is the point.

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There was that much social influence then from youth culture.

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So the first time I think I ever came across drugs was via Novans.

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And it was sort of speed tablets, believe it or not.

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It was the period when you could still get amphetamines from the doctor for slimming and things like that.

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Do you know what I mean?

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And then when moddism came in, there was a lot of...

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barbiturates about them, which they were a very, very dangerous drug.

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I mean, you can hardly ever, I don't think you'll ever see them anymore, barbiturates.

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So I just think it was always a part of kind of youth culture, to be honest.

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Depending on what tribe you was in, that sort of influenced what sort of drug you used.

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But I'd never really, I mean, I used, I remember taking a couple of speed tablets and not liking them.

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So it never made a big deal about that.

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And when I was a mod, I remember taking a few downers.

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I can't actually remember what they were, but they were probably barbiturates.

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So it was proper dicing with that thing.

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Because I remember barbiturates, you could literally take five or six and overdose.

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And barbiturates are one of the drugs that are responsible for most of the deaths in the 27th Club, I think.

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Like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

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But the first drug I enjoyed, is what I should have said, was...

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Magic mushrooms.

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Yeah.

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It was a trick, man.

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Well, you just said about the way doctors used to prescribe, you know, amphetamines for weight loss and stuff.

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We've spoke about this before, but I think for a lot of people your age, their first introduction to drugs, and this is based on what we've spoke about before, was based on what doctors was prescribing mums.

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This is the point, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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This is why I ask

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often, especially when you look at the demographic of a lot of the...

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persistent drug users shall we call them in services at the moment a lot of them are older like certainly above 45 certainly the opiate users and a lot of them are older than 50 and I think when people start to use the notion of cannabis as a gateway drug that certainly was not my experience from my experience the first cannabis didn't come in it was just not a popular drug at all until probably weed came into well there was a lot of cannabis resin and stuff like that but Most people I know who ended up long-term drug users, their introduction to drugs was most definitely pharmaceuticals that they would pilfer from parents' medicine cabinets.

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That's genuinely my experience.

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Whether cannabis is now a gateway drug

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is a different argument.

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Yeah, of course.

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To be honest, I've had interesting conversations about gateway drugs in the past.

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You could argue alcohol.

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Most people have had alcohol before they ever had cannabis.

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I know, obviously, the legalities of it all and stuff like that.

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But if you argued anything, you'd be talking that alcohol would be your gateway drug.

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But for the most part, the people I speak to, it's been...

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often some sort of trauma that's been the gateway into using heavier substances.

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I think

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this is a phenomenon that happened kind of later on, because certainly from my early experiences with drugs, I don't...

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You see, because I think the major, major drug problems started happening when drugs entered enormously amongst the working classes.

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You know what I mean?

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But when we first started using drugs, it was much more of a...

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for want of a better expression middle class thing it was more linked with like I say things like music and literature and like we used to we used to go to spiders and silhouette places like that where there was an awful lot of drugs being used but I don't think there was so many drugs being used at Romeo's or even places like Henry's and places like that that was more alcohol driven

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I can't believe spiders you just mentioned spiders that's still going the rest of them aren't there spiders nightclub is still going it's probably they've got the same set list

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I

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imagine My

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nephew now goes to Spiders and he keeps encouraging me to go.

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I've not been there in

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like 30

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years.

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I'm thinking of going just for the nostalgia and all

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that.

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So what sort of things were people getting from the mother's medicine cabinet?

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What was mother's little helper

00:11:51.173 --> 00:11:52.154
or something?

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Mother's little helper was Valium, wasn't it?

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What's the proper name for Valium?

00:11:56.701 --> 00:11:57.241
I always forget.

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But yeah, Valium, things like that.

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Plus there were an awful lot of I think benzodiazepines sort of replaced barbiturates because they're a lot safer, for want of a better word.

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It's weird to say that now.

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It's a weird word to use.

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Because barbiturates were very, very dangerous.

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You could literally overdose taking five or six.

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It was a very, very dangerous drug.

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And I think benzodiazepines was just really, really common.

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I don't particularly want to go into this, but my parents' drug cabinet was full of a lot of drugs.

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And I remember one that we took a particular, this was sort of after the psychedelic, after the magic mushrooms phase, we discovered this drug that was called Ativan, which was, I think it's in the benzodiazepine family.

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But again, it's a drug that's now coming up.

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It's nearly completely been second off the market because it was like a hyper addictive drug.

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benzodiazepine I think so we did get a bit into the habit of taking that because they were just so freely available it's like every fifth family member you know every fifth friend would have a parent that was on some sort of

00:13:12.946 --> 00:13:13.667
you

00:13:13.687 --> 00:13:17.273
know benzo to I don't know what they were prescribing them for

00:13:17.573 --> 00:13:27.936
obviously I mean I've heard the medicine cabinet story a couple of times and I just wonder do you think Did your parents notice you was taking

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this?

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This is where I'm starving to share some of that.

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I will talk about this.

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I won't, but I feel a little bit of guilt about this because it was assumed that the particular parent that they were prescribed to was taking more of this drug than they thought they were taking.

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Okay.

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And it wasn't only me.

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I've got a few family members that ended up using a lot of drugs.

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Yeah, yeah.

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and ended up taking the responsibility for our loose behaviour,

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shall we call them.

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Because they assumed he was just taking

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more than he could remember.

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Interesting

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stuff.

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When did you move on to heroin then?

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What age was you when you first started using heroin?

00:14:17.201 --> 00:14:20.004
I was probably late 20s.

00:14:20.664 --> 00:14:22.788
And it was a question of availability, I think.

00:14:22.888 --> 00:14:24.129
It just went around before then.

00:14:24.450 --> 00:14:26.493
It was sort of like the post...

00:14:29.077 --> 00:14:42.038
I think this is right, that there's a kind of map of heroin usage across Britain, and it started off in Scotland and Liverpool, basically, and then spread across the rest of the country.

00:14:42.639 --> 00:14:44.001
So it was kind of that period.

00:14:44.842 --> 00:14:57.562
When you talk about things like social influence, I can remember in the Nancy's, There was this period in the 90s where culture was invaded by this concept called heroin chic.

00:14:58.363 --> 00:15:07.655
Now, if you ever want to look at something interesting about social influence, you'll Google heroin chic because it invaded all manner of popular culture, particularly modelling.

00:15:08.196 --> 00:15:11.480
So modelling was massively influenced by what was known as heroin chic.

00:15:11.860 --> 00:15:16.386
And it was like the age of what she called the really thin model.

00:15:16.466 --> 00:15:16.807
Twiggy?

00:15:17.148 --> 00:15:18.490
No, no, a long time after that.

00:15:18.754 --> 00:15:19.796
Kate Moss.

00:15:20.476 --> 00:15:20.777
Oh, okay.

00:15:20.797 --> 00:15:21.818
It was a sort of celebration.

00:15:21.859 --> 00:15:22.940
A long time after that, yeah.

00:15:22.960 --> 00:15:31.714
No, but if you look at some of the images from the period of heroin chic, they literally would darken people's eyes and put makeup on so they looked like they had hollow cheekbones.

00:15:31.754 --> 00:15:33.235
And it was called heroin chic.

00:15:33.996 --> 00:15:34.057
Wow.

00:15:34.076 --> 00:15:37.341
I think this was actually by the sort of...

00:15:37.730 --> 00:15:40.894
It's sort of mid-90s, this will have been, I think.

00:15:41.155 --> 00:15:44.019
And it sort of fed into the Kurt Cobain period.

00:15:44.041 --> 00:15:44.841
Yeah, yeah, like grunge and stuff.

00:15:44.881 --> 00:15:56.927
So heroin was a kind of, there was an enormous amount of social influence, I think, to encourage, whether it was, I don't think it was conscious social influence, I just think it was about People making money, basically.

00:15:56.947 --> 00:16:01.092
I don't think people particularly give a shit or recognise the fact it might have a negative impact on society.

00:16:01.133 --> 00:16:03.294
Did you know much about heroin before you started using it?

00:16:03.355 --> 00:16:04.056
Yeah, loads.

00:16:04.076 --> 00:16:04.615
Oh, did you?

00:16:04.655 --> 00:16:05.397
Absolutely loads, yeah.

00:16:05.618 --> 00:16:06.778
And it didn't put you off?

00:16:06.798 --> 00:16:07.679
It didn't scare you?

00:16:07.940 --> 00:16:08.200
Not one bit.

00:16:08.220 --> 00:16:08.961
Did it do the opposite?

00:16:08.980 --> 00:16:09.381
I've never

00:16:09.501 --> 00:16:10.482
been frightened about taking drugs.

00:16:10.523 --> 00:16:11.244
It's really weird.

00:16:11.323 --> 00:16:12.384
I've never been frightened much.

00:16:12.424 --> 00:16:13.525
Did it do the opposite, did it?

00:16:13.566 --> 00:16:15.087
Yeah, it made it seem more intriguing.

00:16:15.107 --> 00:16:15.388
More appealing.

00:16:15.408 --> 00:16:15.908
You see, because...

00:16:15.948 --> 00:16:19.592
I'll be honest with you, I couldn't wait to do heroin.

00:16:19.873 --> 00:16:20.393
It was weird.

00:16:20.614 --> 00:16:21.234
As soon as it came...

00:16:21.274 --> 00:16:24.457
Because, like I say, the beat generation...

00:16:25.282 --> 00:16:29.929
It was massively influenced by drug use.

00:16:30.129 --> 00:16:34.378
There was particular writers that was influenced by amphetamines, people like Jack Kerouac.

00:16:34.817 --> 00:16:42.951
And then there was William Burroughs, famously, was a lifelong opium user, lived into his 80s, wrote Naked Lunch or something.

00:16:43.052 --> 00:16:46.118
Anyway, so I knew all about it.

00:16:46.238 --> 00:16:48.181
There was a famous...

00:16:49.666 --> 00:16:53.735
Because a lot of the Beat Generation celebrated the underworld of America.

00:16:54.197 --> 00:16:58.168
So there was famous characters called Hook, who was a heroin addict.

00:16:58.729 --> 00:17:02.578
And he was a major character in most of the literature of the Beat Generation.

00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:04.825
So yeah, I knew an awful lot about it.

00:17:05.165 --> 00:17:05.246
Yeah.

00:17:05.665 --> 00:17:09.051
I think a lot of the people who got into heroin at the same time as me didn't.

00:17:09.332 --> 00:17:11.596
But yeah, I knew a lot about it.

00:17:11.737 --> 00:17:13.098
I knew about the fact you got addicted.

00:17:13.179 --> 00:17:14.401
I knew it caused withdrawal.

00:17:14.801 --> 00:17:16.305
I knew how difficult it was to get off.

00:17:17.246 --> 00:17:19.009
At the time, I was obsessed with William Burroughs.

00:17:19.089 --> 00:17:22.836
And I knew he was still using opiates into his 80s.

00:17:23.436 --> 00:17:25.661
So yeah, I knew.

00:17:25.701 --> 00:17:27.884
I was intellectually aware about it, shall we say.

00:17:28.205 --> 00:17:28.286
Yeah.

00:17:28.738 --> 00:17:30.580
Obviously, I didn't know about its physical effects.

00:17:30.980 --> 00:17:32.423
I didn't know about its emotional effects.

00:17:32.824 --> 00:17:35.047
I certainly knew intellectually all

00:17:35.107 --> 00:17:35.468
about it.

00:17:35.627 --> 00:17:37.791
How long into using heroin?

00:17:38.291 --> 00:17:40.596
Obviously, at first, not first bite at all.

00:17:41.297 --> 00:17:42.659
You knew the dangers, you went into it anyway.

00:17:43.119 --> 00:17:54.076
At what point did you think, hang about here, this is hard to get off, I don't want to be using this anymore, but now I've got a physical dependency, I've got to go on a methadone program.

00:17:54.215 --> 00:17:57.780
At what point was all this sort of coming into your head?

00:17:58.082 --> 00:17:58.142
Erm...

00:17:58.498 --> 00:18:00.141
Because do you know what's funny?

00:18:00.201 --> 00:18:03.807
Everyone always says, nobody chooses to be an addict.

00:18:03.906 --> 00:18:04.508
No one chooses it.

00:18:04.528 --> 00:18:07.373
But your story kind of says that.

00:18:07.573 --> 00:18:08.894
I don't think I chose to be an

00:18:08.914 --> 00:18:09.296
addict.

00:18:09.355 --> 00:18:13.702
I think I made choices to use substances without a shadow of a doubt.

00:18:13.863 --> 00:18:15.105
Yeah.

00:18:15.164 --> 00:18:17.328
But even knowing the dangers of the addictiveness.

00:18:17.548 --> 00:18:19.472
I think that was part of the appeal, to be honest.

00:18:19.512 --> 00:18:20.114
That's what I mean.

00:18:20.213 --> 00:18:22.217
So they're saying nobody chooses to be an addict.

00:18:22.597 --> 00:18:25.021
This is, in light, almost...

00:18:25.857 --> 00:18:31.566
completely change in that narrative again nobody's

00:18:31.586 --> 00:18:57.470
beyond social influence I think and I also think that you become what your culture makes you to an awful lot so I was kind of fooled to a certain extent by a lot of popular culture and a lot of the notion of creative people because I regarded myself as a creative person I used to write and draw and paint and dabble with making music and stuff like that.

00:18:57.891 --> 00:19:01.019
And the notion that, as a matter of course, creative people take drugs.

00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:02.883
This was just like, well, of course they do.

00:19:02.942 --> 00:19:03.744
I'm a creative person.

00:19:03.785 --> 00:19:08.355
All the other creative people take drugs, so I'm going to...

00:19:08.517 --> 00:19:12.005
Plus, I also think I didn't care very much, to be honest.

00:19:12.486 --> 00:19:13.307
Which, again, I think is...

00:19:14.114 --> 00:19:18.298
You see, I've thought about the reasons why people take drugs.

00:19:19.019 --> 00:19:20.981
I've thought of the impacts of drugs on culture.

00:19:21.021 --> 00:19:22.584
This is something I've thought about all my life.

00:19:22.703 --> 00:19:24.567
I've had first-hand experience of it.

00:19:24.626 --> 00:19:26.749
I've thought about it and read about it all my life.

00:19:27.210 --> 00:19:30.073
And I still haven't come to any real definite conclusion.

00:19:30.133 --> 00:19:35.500
So when people ask me about why people do drugs, my answer is usually quite trite.

00:19:35.519 --> 00:19:37.321
Like, well, if I was on QI...

00:19:37.602 --> 00:19:59.758
someone asked me that question I have to hold up the nobody knows paddle because I genuinely think nobody knows why human beings take drugs you know I just think it's because they always have I don't think I don't think there's been a human culture that's ever existed where some sort of mood or mind altering substance isn't taken.

00:20:00.019 --> 00:20:02.986
Alcohol, as an example, has been used for

00:20:03.366 --> 00:20:04.569
thousands of years.

00:20:05.070 --> 00:20:17.517
When they discover a tribe in the middle of the Amazon that's got absolutely no contact with the rest of any civilization at all, you'll find that they will use some sort of indigenous hallucinogen or some sort of indigenous drug.

00:20:17.817 --> 00:20:21.401
I just think it's in human beings to do it.

00:20:21.601 --> 00:20:22.182
What can you say?

00:20:22.241 --> 00:20:29.808
I just think you'll get a bunch of human beings and something that will alter their mood or their consciousness and they'll use it.

00:20:29.989 --> 00:20:31.770
And it's one of them things.

00:20:33.231 --> 00:20:37.276
Whether they have to become as dangerous as they have become in our culture is a different thing.

00:20:37.797 --> 00:20:39.818
And I think the burden of that is more...

00:20:40.538 --> 00:20:43.422
You see, when people ask me about the drug problem, I think...

00:20:44.577 --> 00:20:52.450
You're taking a real small part of human behavior when you're talking about the drug problem.

00:20:52.730 --> 00:21:00.983
And it becomes a finger-pointing exercise to kind of almost judge people.

00:21:01.644 --> 00:21:04.249
Because I think there's not a real such thing as the drug problem.

00:21:04.288 --> 00:21:06.192
I think we've got a chemistry problem.

00:21:06.932 --> 00:21:07.634
Do you know what I mean?

00:21:07.653 --> 00:21:09.857
So I think the real drug problem started...

00:21:11.041 --> 00:21:18.531
The problems that ended up leading to the social drug problems we've got at the moment started with the birth of chemistry, really.

00:21:19.093 --> 00:21:21.876
I don't know if you've heard about the Great Binge.

00:21:22.076 --> 00:21:23.097
Enlightened me.

00:21:23.117 --> 00:21:30.127
Well, there's a historical period lasted from about 1870, roughly until the drug laws were first introduced in 1918.

00:21:30.949 --> 00:21:32.851
And it's known as the Great Binge.

00:21:33.511 --> 00:21:37.758
And the reason it's called that is because chemistry was like a kind of new phenomenon.

00:21:38.721 --> 00:21:50.063
science and there was all sorts of chemicals being manufactured and loads of synthetic opiates and all the rest of it and they were literally in everything everyone knows the the the story of coca-cola

00:21:50.182 --> 00:21:52.146
of course they had real cocaine yeah

00:21:53.008 --> 00:22:13.925
and uh this period is known as the great binge and they were literally everyone was taking all manner of substances for all manner of things even things like heroin You can fact check this one, but I'm pretty sure heroin is called heroin because it was originally marketed as a drug to help with women's problems, period pains or whatever.

00:22:14.166 --> 00:22:15.929
And that's why it's called heroin, female hero.

00:22:16.630 --> 00:22:18.090
So that's why heroin got the name heroin.

00:22:18.731 --> 00:22:23.637
The drugs were just taken for all manner of things and the chemistry had gone literally mad.

00:22:24.578 --> 00:22:33.048
And I often tell people this as well, that when people think about drug laws and they think, oh, the drug laws was introduced to combat illegal drugs on the street.

00:22:33.634 --> 00:22:34.194
Nonsense.

00:22:34.455 --> 00:22:44.596
The drug laws was introduced to legislate chemistry because of the Great Binge and the fact that chemistry had gone mad and was flooding the world with all these chemicals that were in everything.

00:22:45.699 --> 00:22:54.998
And the fact of the matter is they made things like opiate and cocaine illegal because they couldn't make all the synthetic versions of that illegal without making...

00:22:55.809 --> 00:23:06.163
So really, the drug laws were introduced to legislate chemistry, not to combat some pernicious drug use.

00:23:06.463 --> 00:23:09.567
The kind of illegal drug use we've got now didn't really start until the 1960s.

00:23:10.308 --> 00:23:17.438
So people have really weird notions about why drugs were made illegal, why the drug laws were introduced.

00:23:18.720 --> 00:23:21.423
The real reason was to legislate chemistry, which had gone mad.

00:23:21.963 --> 00:23:23.165
You've talked about, obviously...

00:23:24.066 --> 00:23:25.914
enjoying substances for a while.

00:23:26.257 --> 00:23:29.191
You used them for many, many years.

00:23:30.882 --> 00:23:35.747
What was the lowest point in that where you thought, I need to stop using substances?

00:23:35.866 --> 00:23:44.916
I mean, I ask this question to a lot of participants about a rock bottom and a low moment, and was there something where something clicked and you thought, right, I've got to get off the drugs now?

00:23:45.577 --> 00:23:47.519
Did you experience anything like

00:23:47.900 --> 00:23:48.381
that?

00:23:48.441 --> 00:23:48.881
Yeah, a lot.

00:23:48.941 --> 00:23:55.167
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to paint a picture that drugs are by any means nice or a good thing to do or anything like that.

00:23:56.890 --> 00:24:06.288
Because, yeah, the fact of the matter is I just think because of drugs, I think when I was younger, I could have kind of done anything, anything I wanted to do.

00:24:06.368 --> 00:24:10.035
I was, I had a lot of skills, a lot of talents and stuff like that.

00:24:10.455 --> 00:24:25.015
And instead of utilizing all those, I ended up the cliche drug user alone in his bed, alone in his house, isolated, not really, you know, not, No relationship, no kids, no career.

00:24:25.736 --> 00:24:27.880
So I don't think you can get much lower than that, really.

00:24:27.921 --> 00:24:30.345
This is the thing about rock bottom.

00:24:30.384 --> 00:24:31.647
I think it's a subjective thing.

00:24:32.148 --> 00:24:35.494
One person's rock bottom is lunatic asylum, prison.

00:24:36.376 --> 00:24:36.877
Mine was...

00:24:37.857 --> 00:24:44.868
Just absolutely not doing anything with my life, just not doing anything with my own potential and stuff like that.

00:24:45.169 --> 00:24:48.054
Letting myself down, really, I suppose, was my rock bomb.

00:24:48.634 --> 00:24:54.002
Yeah, because we've known each other years now and I've always said you're a really intelligent bloke and stuff like that.

00:24:54.042 --> 00:25:03.417
And it is interesting to talk about this because, and even now talking about it now, I feel like we talk a lot about your youth and a lot about where you are now.

00:25:04.865 --> 00:25:08.672
And even now with how long I've known you, there seems to just be this massive blank part.

00:25:08.692 --> 00:25:09.874
Yeah, because the camera is.

00:25:09.973 --> 00:25:10.255
Yeah.

00:25:10.755 --> 00:25:13.839
And I guess this is what I'm kind of getting at.

00:25:13.859 --> 00:25:18.728
We've spoke about family life and having children and things like that, which are, again, things you said.

00:25:20.230 --> 00:25:26.981
For someone who, I'll use your words, you told me you're not someone who holds any real regrets, but you do regret.

00:25:27.021 --> 00:25:28.263
It's not that I don't hold regrets.

00:25:28.825 --> 00:25:33.776
I just think the fact of the matter is, I am what I am.

00:25:33.916 --> 00:25:33.997
Yeah.

00:25:34.156 --> 00:25:35.439
Do you know what I mean?

00:25:35.479 --> 00:25:56.094
So it'd be self-defeating to be too negative about how I've ended up where I am because at the same time as not having a career, not particularly having kids, not having a lovely wife that I've known all my life and all that sort of thing that I think I missed out on because of drugs, I am where I am.

00:25:56.481 --> 00:25:58.605
Do you know what I mean?

00:25:58.625 --> 00:25:59.887
So it'd be pointless to dwell on it.

00:25:59.928 --> 00:26:01.529
Yeah, it'd just be further self-destruction, I think.

00:26:01.691 --> 00:26:02.672
Yeah, absolutely.

00:26:02.811 --> 00:26:04.255
To wallow too much on the negativity.

00:26:04.654 --> 00:26:08.000
Because I try and be positive about it, me, and I think...

00:26:09.083 --> 00:26:19.380
And I don't particularly like doing this, but when you compare yourself with a lot of people that I've journeyed through drugs with, I didn't suffer too much.

00:26:19.660 --> 00:26:20.942
I've got to be realistic about it.

00:26:21.041 --> 00:26:22.704
And it'd be...

00:26:24.481 --> 00:26:30.871
almost offensive of me to not acknowledge the fact that I never ended up in a mental institution.

00:26:30.891 --> 00:26:32.753
I never did any time in prison.

00:26:32.773 --> 00:26:38.080
I never destroyed my relationship with most of my family members.

00:26:38.121 --> 00:26:41.445
I've still got my sanity.

00:26:41.486 --> 00:26:44.170
And also, even though I...

00:26:45.730 --> 00:27:22.556
didn't achieve anything but you know no pieces of paper or no big car or all the normal trappings that people call success i don't think i was ever particularly lazy when i was a drug user because i would like i was obsessive reader i you know i used to always engage in the old adage about the devil finding work for idle hands i don't ever think i kept my hands idle because i used to do a lot of painting and I did have a lot of journals and poetry I'd written and all that sort of thing.

00:27:22.895 --> 00:27:25.078
So I don't think I was ever particularly lazy.

00:27:25.180 --> 00:27:27.182
And again, I'm going to repeat this.

00:27:27.201 --> 00:27:29.645
I don't like to compare myself with everybody else.

00:27:29.665 --> 00:27:34.712
But when I do, I think I didn't come out too badly in the end.

00:27:34.752 --> 00:27:34.792
No.

00:27:35.554 --> 00:27:36.335
What can you say?

00:27:36.355 --> 00:27:38.277
I mean, everyone gets a life, don't they?

00:27:38.297 --> 00:27:41.559
You've got to be realistic

00:27:41.599 --> 00:27:41.779
about it.

00:27:41.819 --> 00:27:43.142
Well, I'll tell you what.

00:27:44.143 --> 00:27:45.084
No, carry on.

00:27:45.104 --> 00:27:46.885
I was going to go wandering off somewhere.

00:27:46.965 --> 00:27:47.405
No, no.

00:27:47.445 --> 00:27:48.847
Are you sure?

00:27:49.087 --> 00:27:49.567
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:27:49.588 --> 00:27:56.816
Okay, so I met you a few years ago and you started to do some training with me to work as a peer mentor to help other people.

00:27:57.817 --> 00:28:02.301
And then you lapsed, relapsed, disappeared for a few years.

00:28:03.394 --> 00:28:08.980
you've been back now when did you so how long you well again you said you don't have a definitive date it

00:28:09.980 --> 00:28:23.717
was roughly about i'd say getting on for about 20 only about 20 wait a minute about 21 months ago yeah that i did my last methadone detox

00:28:24.116 --> 00:28:31.349
what was different to that methadone detox to the ones you've done previous because like i said when i met you you know disappeared and you'd gone back to it for a while.

00:28:31.410 --> 00:28:33.393
What was different on that last one then?

00:28:34.315 --> 00:28:36.538
Because 21 months is a long

00:28:36.699 --> 00:28:36.939
time.

00:28:36.979 --> 00:28:39.903
I just think it was the final chord in a particular symphony, shall we call it.

00:28:40.424 --> 00:28:41.205
It was just time.

00:28:41.866 --> 00:28:43.269
Time was just right.

00:28:43.288 --> 00:28:49.499
To be honest, as a younger person, I don't think I particularly fitted my skin very much.

00:28:49.980 --> 00:28:50.540
Do you know what I mean?

00:28:50.601 --> 00:29:02.878
But I don't know if this is self-delusion or not, but I sometimes fool myself into thinking I was just designed to be someone in the late middle age because I just feel now like I fit my skin much more than I ever did in my life.

00:29:03.099 --> 00:29:15.796
Whether that was because of the drug use and I would have found myself as a younger person if it weren't for the drug use, I can never tell because I've only got the life I've had, so I couldn't possibly speculate.

00:29:19.009 --> 00:29:20.792
Yeah, I just think it's my own personal journey.

00:29:20.813 --> 00:29:21.534
That's the way that I look

00:29:22.454 --> 00:29:22.955
at it.

00:29:22.996 --> 00:29:25.720
Was there anything particular that made you want to do it then?

00:29:25.839 --> 00:29:27.122
Not just timing.

00:29:27.182 --> 00:29:31.528
Was there external factors where you thought, right, I'm doing it this time.

00:29:31.568 --> 00:29:32.349
I think the

00:29:32.390 --> 00:29:35.233
death of my father played an enormous part in it, to be honest.

00:29:35.595 --> 00:29:41.063
Because I think a lot of my long-term jugular use was wrapped up in that.

00:29:41.123 --> 00:29:47.432
Because I remember when we were chatting in the car, I was saying I didn't want to share this, but I've changed my mind.

00:29:47.551 --> 00:29:48.733
I think I'm going to.

00:29:48.865 --> 00:30:56.445
because I don't think my dad got a fair crack in life for various reasons largely a lot to do with it's funny when you look at the pattern of your life I think and certain things keep cropping up and one of the things that keeps cropping up in my life is the burden of responsibility that pharmaceuticals and chemistry and bad social decisions about how pharmaceuticals he used crop up quite a lot in my life I mean I think my father was like a victim of bad doctoring for want of a better word he had mental health problems again for want of a better expression and was a victim of bad doctoring I think so I think there's an awful lot of that that's tied in with my drug use And so when my dad finally passed, for whatever reason, I don't want to lay any blame on my father one bit, because I don't think it was anything to do with him at all.

00:30:56.506 --> 00:30:59.569
That's when I started to free myself, I think.

00:31:01.471 --> 00:31:06.978
Because when I was a drug user, I spent a lot of time, because I wasn't doing very much else.

00:31:06.998 --> 00:31:08.299
I didn't have a career or anything like that.

00:31:08.740 --> 00:31:12.064
So I carried the burden of caring, because my dad was rather ill.

00:31:12.304 --> 00:31:13.586
My mother was bed and with...

00:31:14.465 --> 00:31:15.228
looking after him.

00:31:15.567 --> 00:31:17.291
And I carried a bit of that responsibility myself.

00:31:17.311 --> 00:31:29.275
So even though I was never in an official capacity as carer, I used to do an awful lot of caring for both parents, really, making sure they was all right and stuff.

00:31:29.395 --> 00:31:30.377
Kind of a funny story.

00:31:31.617 --> 00:31:35.383
Funny-ish, funny peculiar and funny ha-ha, depending on which way you look at it.

00:31:36.244 --> 00:31:47.401
Even when I was at my worst as an opiate user, I used to be one of the designated people to pick up my dad's prescriptions and my mother's prescriptions.

00:31:47.780 --> 00:31:52.086
Now, there was an awful lot of opiate substances, like Orimoth.

00:31:52.508 --> 00:31:57.295
The first time I ever had a fentanyl was when my father got given fentanyl patches.

00:31:57.734 --> 00:31:58.936
So I used to pick up their...

00:31:59.778 --> 00:32:24.167
opiate medications like super strong much stronger than the opiates i was using on the street probably and i used to really responsibly pick them up all the time never once nicked any of them or dabbled with any of them just real responsibly used to go you know like there's some days when i'd literally be on the verge of rattling but still responsibly pick up my mom and dad's before I went and scraped

00:32:24.367 --> 00:32:25.348
for myself and stuff like that.

00:32:25.368 --> 00:32:27.231
You're still a good person, aren't you?

00:32:27.251 --> 00:32:27.593
Well, this is it.

00:32:27.613 --> 00:32:28.934
Addicts aren't bad people.

00:32:28.954 --> 00:32:29.234
Well, this

00:32:29.315 --> 00:32:29.375
is

00:32:29.414 --> 00:32:29.776
the point.

00:32:29.836 --> 00:32:41.112
Another thing, especially in the early days of treatment, I remember the burden of the notion of drug addiction as moral deficiency and all this other sort of nonsense.

00:32:41.192 --> 00:32:50.286
I used to quite enjoy, not in a public sense, but in my own personal sense, I used to think, well, I know I'm a decent person, so I know that's a load of...

00:32:50.498 --> 00:33:05.282
fucking bollocks you know so but yeah i just think my father's death played a massive part in i don't want to use the word free in me because that sounds like i'm holding him responsible in

00:33:05.303 --> 00:33:24.067
some way i don't think i i don't well it's not the impression that i'm getting but i think it's it's the end of the day this is your individual life and your individual story no matter how much we talk about it over the course of this podcast I, or nobody listening to it, is really going to grasp every detail of how you have lived your life, no matter how much we talk about it over this time.

00:33:24.086 --> 00:33:27.311
So to understand that situation is completely

00:33:27.352 --> 00:33:27.712
different.

00:33:27.792 --> 00:33:29.855
I'm just aware of the fact that I don't want...

00:33:29.997 --> 00:33:33.342
I loved my old man, even though we had no differences.

00:33:33.903 --> 00:33:39.873
And he had problems because of his mental health, so some of his behaviours were quite challenging.

00:33:40.113 --> 00:33:40.413
Yeah.

00:33:40.834 --> 00:33:43.195
But you've understood that and so many people don't.

00:33:43.215 --> 00:33:45.137
I very, very much did understand it.

00:33:45.598 --> 00:33:53.807
And as a younger person, I will admit, I was burdened by it and I did hold resentments when I was younger and I couldn't understand why, you know, anyway.

00:33:53.826 --> 00:33:53.846
A

00:33:54.086 --> 00:33:54.627
lot of us...

00:33:55.067 --> 00:34:00.534
I very soon came to the realisation that he was not responsible one tiny bit for any of it.

00:34:00.594 --> 00:34:01.154
Well, that's

00:34:01.494 --> 00:34:01.535
it.

00:34:01.555 --> 00:34:08.302
I think we look at, not everybody by any means, but, you know, we often look at our parents as, I suppose...

00:34:08.865 --> 00:34:19.579
hear us that nothing bothers them or like we don't understand we just don't It's not until you get older where you realise, hang on, they're human beings like everybody else and they will have their own troubles.

00:34:19.759 --> 00:34:21.041
I think about that a lot with my parents.

00:34:21.161 --> 00:34:21.380
In

00:34:21.402 --> 00:34:30.275
retrospect, I sometimes think I had a kind of unconscious bitterness about the world in as much as my early memories of my dad are that Superman sort of thing.

00:34:30.335 --> 00:34:30.797
And he was.

00:34:30.836 --> 00:34:35.043
He was a kind of spectacular young man and spectacular young adult when I think about it.

00:34:35.063 --> 00:34:36.646
I mean, he looked like Elvis for a start.

00:34:36.666 --> 00:34:37.728
Yeah, well, there you are.

00:34:37.748 --> 00:34:39.871
He was like a bit of a local celebrity for that reason.

00:34:41.134 --> 00:34:41.213
Yeah.

00:34:42.081 --> 00:35:33.362
I can remember he was an itinerant when he was younger he was like a really bad flair and he used to flirt with all the women and I used to love watching him and then to see his descent and I think I subconsciously at the time realised that it it was kind of bad doctoring you know like it was back in the period like I can remember my dad getting sectioned and stuff and this was the time when they could literally strap people down and give them electric shock treatments and he was on a drug called Ligactyl that became known as a liquid kosh or a liquid straitjacket and we went to visit him in Delapole and I've got a real early which I suppose is quite traumatic really even though I've never really acknowledged it as trauma but But it was just not this stranger, this strange geezer that wasn't my dad.

00:35:33.963 --> 00:35:41.659
And I met this analogy that the bigger my dad's medicine box got, the more removed he became.

00:35:41.679 --> 00:35:42.742
Do you know what I mean?

00:35:42.762 --> 00:35:45.809
The less of a father he became and all stuff like that.

00:35:46.208 --> 00:35:48.293
And I think unconsciously I became quite bitter.

00:35:48.898 --> 00:35:49.918
about the world.

00:35:50.119 --> 00:35:51.541
How old was he when this was happening?

00:35:52.342 --> 00:35:53.384
It happened when I was quite young.

00:35:53.885 --> 00:35:56.789
My dad first, because he had a major traumatic incident.

00:35:57.009 --> 00:36:00.994
I'm sharing a lot about my dad, aren't I?

00:36:01.215 --> 00:36:02.297
No, it's fine.

00:36:02.396 --> 00:36:05.121
I'm just aware of the fact he's not here to defend himself.

00:36:05.320 --> 00:36:06.882
I don't think you're saying anything that's...

00:36:07.063 --> 00:36:08.105
I'm just

00:36:08.985 --> 00:36:14.454
aware of the fact I might be saying things that he might not want to share himself with the world.

00:36:15.315 --> 00:36:16.697
I get what you're saying.

00:36:16.757 --> 00:36:17.217
Where was I?

00:36:18.626 --> 00:36:29.400
So what I was going to say basically was, is there a, obviously the age that you're saying, you know, you said you never really acknowledged it as a trauma and, you know, you said the medication cabinet got bigger, he got further away.

00:36:30.583 --> 00:36:30.922
But you don't,

00:36:30.943 --> 00:36:33.106
when you're young, you don't acknowledge it as trauma, it's just a life decision.

00:36:33.126 --> 00:36:34.467
Well, it's just normal, isn't it?

00:36:34.487 --> 00:36:35.088
Yeah, that's it.

00:36:35.108 --> 00:36:37.452
I always, you know, I've said this so many times in this

00:36:37.572 --> 00:36:37.773
podcast.

00:36:37.793 --> 00:36:42.639
My dad had a specific traumatic incident that kind of, this is the unusual thing.

00:36:44.461 --> 00:36:44.541
Yeah.

00:36:45.762 --> 00:36:49.632
As a young man, he was like proper working class bloke.

00:36:49.652 --> 00:36:52.360
He used to go out and do a proper tough guy, working class job.

00:36:53.463 --> 00:36:58.577
And he witnessed his best friend dying in a work incident.

00:36:59.170 --> 00:36:59.650
he'd

00:36:59.670 --> 00:37:35.141
burnt to death literally burnt to death because my dad used to work with cutting up old ships and things like that with an oxy-settling torch that's what his job was through a big scrap metal and again thinking back as your dad as a hero he used to bring back all manner of stuff that he'd found off old ships like huge magnifying glasses off the radar systems and these massive magnets so he was like kind of an ideal dad I remember him as a particularly young man but he witnessed his best friend die burnt to death And at the time, the popular wisdom was if you threw water over someone that was burning to their death, they'd die of shock.

00:37:35.561 --> 00:37:38.304
Now, my dad had a water hose in his hand at the time.

00:37:38.364 --> 00:37:44.452
His mate was dying, but he was discouraged from hosing him down and putting him out because he'd die of shock.

00:37:44.733 --> 00:37:46.514
So we did the drop and rolls kind of thing.

00:37:46.534 --> 00:37:49.737
And then he spent a few days in hospital and ended up dying.

00:37:50.318 --> 00:37:56.226
And that was a traumatic incident that led to my dad's long-term mental health.

00:37:56.545 --> 00:37:59.090
Diagnoses and all that.

00:37:59.451 --> 00:38:03.077
Now, when my dad finally passed, we asked for his medical records to be released.

00:38:03.458 --> 00:38:05.240
And we read through them and all this sort of stuff.

00:38:05.661 --> 00:38:10.951
And he was kind of acknowledged in his medical records that if that had happened today, he'd be treated as PTSD.

00:38:10.990 --> 00:38:13.034
And there'd be these very effective treatments.

00:38:13.556 --> 00:38:19.485
But the way that it did end up being, it was called schizophrenic.

00:38:19.713 --> 00:38:42.028
at certain points, clinical depression, and these were, again, it was kind of acknowledged in his medical records that it was, I don't want to repeat the word bad doctoring because I feel like I've used it so often, but it was misguided treatments in the 70s and 80s, and now it just would simply not be treated like that.

00:38:42.670 --> 00:38:47.518
And it was the treatments that led to the long-term condition rather than the actual trauma itself.

00:38:47.842 --> 00:38:49.887
Because now it'd be like PTSD.

00:38:50.146 --> 00:38:51.931
You'd get treatment as for PTSD.

00:38:54.277 --> 00:38:57.222
And I think I had an underlying bitterness about that, so I didn't care.

00:38:57.242 --> 00:38:59.307
I simply didn't care about it.

00:39:01.666 --> 00:39:03.827
I kind of hated the world because of

00:39:04.048 --> 00:39:04.228
it.

00:39:04.349 --> 00:39:07.112
I think, do you know what, but I completely understand.

00:39:07.132 --> 00:39:10.456
I don't mean in a conscious sense, I just mean thinking back.

00:39:10.476 --> 00:39:12.717
Yeah, in the unconscious, yeah.

00:39:13.099 --> 00:39:14.019
No, I completely get it.

00:39:14.079 --> 00:39:18.184
I think the thing, like I said, you know, our parents at the end of the day, do you know what I mean?

00:39:18.204 --> 00:39:19.565
Again, you put them on pedestals.

00:39:19.626 --> 00:39:28.936
I think it's weird when, and that's the weird thing about getting older when you see them, like even my dad now, do you know, getting in his 50s, it's just weird seeing him like he was Superman growing up.

00:39:28.956 --> 00:39:29.317
Yeah, yeah.

00:39:29.416 --> 00:39:36.251
And now I'm just seeing him He's approaching 60 now, and he's had a manual labour job for most of his life.

00:39:36.291 --> 00:39:37.733
You're starting to see the effects of it.

00:39:38.655 --> 00:39:40.139
His bad back and things like that.

00:39:40.159 --> 00:39:46.009
It's weird seeing him just go in that way, which is what is, I suppose, normal.

00:39:47.251 --> 00:39:50.557
But bring it back to your recovery then.

00:39:51.521 --> 00:39:53.465
You never followed a 12-step program?

00:39:53.644 --> 00:39:53.684
No.

00:39:53.704 --> 00:39:55.507
You've never followed smart

00:39:55.628 --> 00:39:56.389
recovery?

00:39:56.489 --> 00:40:05.443
Well, when I first was in recovery, and I was suddenly in a world where all my old habits were using drugs and all that sort of stuff, so I thought, I've got to do new stuff.

00:40:06.043 --> 00:40:12.833
If I don't do something to fill my time, I'll drift back into the reviews, quite obviously.

00:40:12.873 --> 00:40:13.815
That's obviously what happened.

00:40:14.295 --> 00:40:18.041
So when I first recovered, I accessed NA quite a bit, to be honest.

00:40:18.242 --> 00:40:18.302
Wow.

00:40:19.074 --> 00:40:20.114
But it's just what my way.

00:40:20.695 --> 00:40:22.018
What didn't you like?

00:40:22.038 --> 00:40:24.862
Because a lot of people, you know, go to an inn, it's like...

00:40:25.862 --> 00:40:26.644
Well, this is it, man.

00:40:26.704 --> 00:40:27.204
I don't like...

00:40:27.304 --> 00:40:29.168
I really...

00:40:30.108 --> 00:40:34.434
I don't want to say anything against an inn because I think when it works, it really, really works.

00:40:34.695 --> 00:40:37.599
No, it's just talking about personal experience, why it's not worked for you.

00:40:37.619 --> 00:40:38.420
It wasn't my way.

00:40:38.541 --> 00:40:39.822
I just think it wasn't my way.

00:40:40.143 --> 00:40:43.807
I think it's got a lot to do with individuality, I think.

00:40:43.849 --> 00:40:47.693
I think for whatever reason, I think I'm...

00:40:48.514 --> 00:40:50.541
This is a self-assessment, how accurate it is.

00:40:50.641 --> 00:40:51.947
I'll just let everybody else decide.

00:40:51.987 --> 00:40:54.416
But I just think I'm a bit more individual than most.

00:40:54.717 --> 00:40:56.824
And I think that NA suits...

00:40:58.369 --> 00:41:04.599
Again, I don't want to sound like a criticism, but I think it suits group mentality a little bit more.

00:41:04.858 --> 00:41:06.021
Yeah, do you know what?

00:41:06.041 --> 00:41:11.168
I'm the sort of person where if I'm in a group of people and they're all saying the same thing, I'll immediately want to say the opposite.

00:41:11.268 --> 00:41:11.668
Yeah, yeah.

00:41:11.688 --> 00:41:14.413
That's just in my nature.

00:41:14.512 --> 00:41:20.541
It's not like you speak to one person and you speak to them all, but meeting the people I have met in it, it is this...

00:41:21.762 --> 00:41:24.184
I don't want to call it parroting as such.

00:41:24.204 --> 00:41:24.925
It's a group thing.

00:41:25.065 --> 00:41:26.166
It's a group thing, isn't it?

00:41:26.246 --> 00:41:28.708
Everyone seems to have, it's almost like a collective conscious.

00:41:29.228 --> 00:41:37.335
Sometimes I think it's easy to be negative about that sort of thing, but I just think some people need that sort of group support, the idea of we're all on the same page.

00:41:37.695 --> 00:41:39.056
We're all saying the same thing.

00:41:39.277 --> 00:41:39.657
I've said it.

00:41:39.677 --> 00:41:41.659
Just because I personally act like that.

00:41:42.460 --> 00:41:48.824
Because when I first started to go into it, I liked it, and then I ended up hating it.

00:41:49.025 --> 00:41:54.353
And I found myself becoming and vociferously anti-NA.

00:41:54.693 --> 00:41:56.036
And I thought, that's not right.

00:41:56.335 --> 00:41:57.257
That's not right.

00:41:57.617 --> 00:41:57.818
Why though?

00:41:58.300 --> 00:41:58.360
Why?

00:41:58.380 --> 00:42:01.766
Because we're all after getting people off drugs.

00:42:01.985 --> 00:42:02.786
This is the point.

00:42:03.148 --> 00:42:09.860
So if people just need a different thing than I need, I can't be critical about that.

00:42:10.059 --> 00:42:10.721
I've just got to...

00:42:11.329 --> 00:42:32.327
be open and acknowledge the fact that it works for some and all power to it is the way I look at it now and now I've got quite a positive view of NA so like I'm beginning I'm just going to start working at Renew I'm a peer mentor and I always say to people now give NA a chance give it a go because if it works it fucking works I've seen it transform people's lives

00:42:32.568 --> 00:42:33.909
yeah absolutely my

00:42:33.989 --> 00:42:48.965
only major criticism of NA which I don't know I feel like I've got to say this I think sometimes people hang on too long so when you get people who are 20 years clean and they're still going to a meeting every night, I sometimes think, man, you've just changed your addiction there, mate.

00:42:49.146 --> 00:42:51.329
I had this conversation before.

00:42:51.389 --> 00:42:55.753
I always say it's a healthier addiction to have if you attend an agent 14 times a week.

00:42:55.773 --> 00:42:56.175
Well, this is

00:42:56.295 --> 00:42:56.574
the point.

00:42:56.594 --> 00:42:59.539
Again, maybe I'm being a bit disingenuous because if somebody needs that, they need that.

00:42:59.559 --> 00:42:59.958
They need that, yeah.

00:42:59.978 --> 00:43:00.960
And if it's keeping them off drugs,

00:43:01.021 --> 00:43:01.782
it's keeping them off drugs.

00:43:01.802 --> 00:43:05.106
This is the conversation I had in terms of when does recovery...

00:43:05.378 --> 00:43:13.125
become recovered does it ever get to that point or are you constantly 20 years later do you still say I'm in recovery do you

00:43:13.164 --> 00:44:07.297
still need that support I'm a horses for courses kind of guy these days I just think whatever's necessary if someone needs that they need that you know what I mean so I'm trying not to judge to me it'd be a horror to think in 20 years time I'm still I'm still sat at a meeting saying I am Pete I'm an addict that would be a horror to me because I would not want to self label like that I wouldn't want to well I won't be around in 20 years more than likely I'm getting old a bit but uh if i am around i'll be on i'll probably be on drugs for a different entirely different reason delivered by a doctor but um no i just think it's horses for courses these days and i try and be as open and as as generous as possible and it's just people just need this is the way i look at it is everyone wants to get to the same place there's just different we don't all start from the same place so why would we all take the same route some people just have a different route to get to the

00:44:07.336 --> 00:44:08.137
place we all want

00:44:08.157 --> 00:44:08.297
to get

00:44:08.318 --> 00:44:23.371
to I always say about the support network that comes with the fellowship I'm almost envious of it to see how they embrace people and how they really support each other and I get what you're saying but I've said I'd love that in my life to be honest

00:44:23.550 --> 00:44:36.202
that's why I used to love it at the beginning the sense of camaraderie and that kind of fellowship concept is it's a great concept so I don't want to sound like I'm knocking it but I just don't think it's just not my

00:44:36.222 --> 00:44:52.621
way so how did you do it then so you've gone to a few NA meetings it's not for you but rather than go back to the drugs which is what some people do they might try and it's not working so go back to square one you didn't you've obviously found a different way I

00:44:53.541 --> 00:44:55.503
think working at Renewal was a big part of it to be

00:44:55.523 --> 00:44:58.427
honest so being in that recovery environment I love the

00:44:58.447 --> 00:45:00.530
feeling of responsibility Yeah, yeah.

00:45:00.550 --> 00:45:01.130
It's like I think...

00:45:04.096 --> 00:45:05.838
I just love that feeling of responsibility.

00:45:05.898 --> 00:45:08.623
And having that feeling of responsibility helps me not...

00:45:09.784 --> 00:45:10.626
Well, to be honest, I've never...

00:45:10.706 --> 00:45:14.170
I just think I was so ready to stop using drugs.

00:45:14.190 --> 00:45:15.413
It was just the next chapter.

00:45:15.432 --> 00:45:17.175
It was like that page has turned on.

00:45:17.195 --> 00:45:17.476
Yeah,

00:45:17.496 --> 00:45:17.576
yeah.

00:45:17.976 --> 00:45:18.177
So

00:45:18.197 --> 00:45:22.804
I've not had any cravings or any real desire to use drugs, even when bad things have happened.

00:45:23.485 --> 00:45:24.186
You know, I just...

00:45:24.867 --> 00:45:26.030
I mean, I was in...

00:45:26.753 --> 00:45:35.163
Because I've managed to go right through my entire drug addiction without ever spending, when I spent one night in hospital to have a minor operation on my finger.

00:45:35.503 --> 00:45:36.784
But other than that, absolutely.

00:45:36.903 --> 00:45:38.505
But that wasn't drug-related, was it?

00:45:39.045 --> 00:45:39.467
No,

00:45:39.527 --> 00:45:39.847
no, no.

00:45:39.867 --> 00:45:41.048
That's what I mean.

00:45:41.168 --> 00:45:42.090
I snapped a tendon in my

00:45:42.309 --> 00:45:42.429
finger.

00:45:42.449 --> 00:45:43.130
Oh, there you are then.

00:45:43.150 --> 00:45:43.530
So you've gone

00:45:43.570 --> 00:45:44.231
through an, yeah.

00:45:44.672 --> 00:45:45.652
Because you've always had this.

00:45:45.672 --> 00:45:49.757
No, but what I'm saying is I've not had any ill health, which I thank the Lord for.

00:45:50.597 --> 00:45:52.119
But I genuinely thank the Lord.

00:45:53.081 --> 00:45:53.681
But anyway...

00:45:57.121 --> 00:46:07.291
But earlier this year, 2022 is my year of illness, by the way, because right away from addiction, I didn't have any illnesses whatsoever.

00:46:07.331 --> 00:46:11.664
And yet since I've got clean, I've had surgery for the first time ever.

00:46:12.898 --> 00:46:14.139
umpteen colds.

00:46:14.179 --> 00:46:18.864
I mean, I think it was a lot was a mask in, but I can't remember suffering with colds and things like that.

00:46:19.025 --> 00:46:21.186
You probably wouldn't have realised you had one.

00:46:21.206 --> 00:46:23.168
Yeah, you probably wouldn't have realised

00:46:23.608 --> 00:46:24.110
you had a cold.

00:46:24.289 --> 00:46:34.922
But I'd never spent any time in hospital and I ended up with having a, not just an ordinary appendectomy, I ended up with a necrotic appendix.

00:46:34.961 --> 00:46:39.827
So they literally had to do a big, I think it's about 11 inches long, the scar I've got.

00:46:40.327 --> 00:46:41.688
So they literally had to cut me open.

00:46:41.809 --> 00:47:11.472
I remember waking up from the operation because when I had the operation on my finger I was middle of my addiction so the woman sat there with the opiate painkillers whether to inject I was like I didn't do that because it had hurt my hand but I was so ready for it and I remember she put the full syringe and I was saying oh it's still throbbing it still hurts and then I can remember as well getting back to my hospital bed and Those medical opiates, again, they weren't good enough, so I nipped into the bog to have a nip.

00:47:11.972 --> 00:47:13.655
Oh, Christ, yeah.

00:47:13.675 --> 00:47:14.876
That's how mad things go.

00:47:15.137 --> 00:47:22.766
Anyway, when I woke up from the appendectomy, the woman sat there with this syringe, and I said, if that's an opiate, I don't want it.

00:47:23.427 --> 00:47:28.074
And I literally, I was still groggy, and I was turning down an opiate to it.

00:47:28.313 --> 00:47:35.222
And then post-operation, they were offering me codeine, And stuff like that.

00:47:35.242 --> 00:47:36.963
And I was turning all that down.

00:47:36.983 --> 00:47:38.525
Yeah, I remember you saying about this.

00:47:38.545 --> 00:47:39.507
I was quite surprised.

00:47:39.527 --> 00:47:42.769
I did it with just paracetamol and ibuprofen.

00:47:43.951 --> 00:47:44.030
Yeah.

00:47:44.050 --> 00:47:45.972
And I was volunteering two days after I got all

00:47:46.012 --> 00:47:46.112
this.

00:47:46.132 --> 00:47:46.293
I know.

00:47:46.452 --> 00:47:49.635
I couldn't believe it when you came back and you said, I was like, how long have you

00:47:49.655 --> 00:47:50.056
been doing this?

00:47:50.077 --> 00:47:50.197
It's

00:47:50.376 --> 00:47:50.617
a test.

00:47:50.637 --> 00:47:51.697
I love testing myself, mate.

00:47:51.938 --> 00:47:52.918
I don't know that I'm clean.

00:47:52.978 --> 00:47:53.420
I love

00:47:53.820 --> 00:47:53.860
it.

00:47:53.880 --> 00:47:54.541
Yeah, pushing yourself.

00:47:55.621 --> 00:47:55.702
Yeah.

00:47:55.722 --> 00:48:14.496
So for someone watching this, maybe going through heroin addiction now, can you talk us through what, Actually, I'll tell you what, for someone who doesn't know what withdrawal is like, because there's a lot of misconceptions as to what withdrawal is like, and we've spoke about this before, some people are liking it to the flu.

00:48:14.516 --> 00:48:18.079
Do you know, what is heroin withdrawal really like?

00:48:19.862 --> 00:48:24.086
Well, I think there's two aspects of heroin withdrawal.

00:48:24.246 --> 00:48:29.612
There's the physical withdrawal side to it, which is really quite similar to the flu, I think.

00:48:29.693 --> 00:48:41.371
It's aches and pains, lack of appetite, And, you know, those sort of things that I think people do have quite an understanding about.

00:48:41.751 --> 00:48:48.726
But then when you think about the, it's the emotional side of giving up opiates, I think, or opiate withdrawal that's the most difficult to deal with.

00:48:49.166 --> 00:48:54.757
And people underestimate, I think, things like the insomnia that it brings.

00:48:54.838 --> 00:48:58.485
Everyone's familiar with having a sleepless night.

00:48:59.713 --> 00:49:06.163
And even if you're not poorly, just tossing and turning all night is a very horrible and uncomfortable experience.

00:49:06.202 --> 00:49:09.186
I don't know if you've ever experienced it yourself, but it's not great if you can't get sleep.

00:49:09.728 --> 00:49:17.818
Now, if you're in opiate withdrawal, you can literally go six, seven days without getting a single wink of sleep.

00:49:18.860 --> 00:49:22.525
But you're also, at the same time, suffering with the physical pain.

00:49:22.978 --> 00:49:25.039
Is that just because of the discomfort that you're in?

00:49:25.139 --> 00:49:28.764
I think it's just part of opiate withdrawal is you just cannot sleep.

00:49:29.023 --> 00:49:30.525
Sleep is just an alien.

00:49:30.726 --> 00:49:32.407
It's just impossible to sleep.

00:49:32.969 --> 00:49:41.117
It seems strange when you talk about it to anyone who hasn't experienced it, just exactly how much insomnia you get in opiate withdrawal.

00:49:42.157 --> 00:49:45.981
You can literally go seven days, eight days.

00:49:46.001 --> 00:49:49.405
I broke the world record for not sleeping.

00:49:49.570 --> 00:49:52.815
But it would not stand as a world record because it would be regarded as chemically assisted.

00:49:52.835 --> 00:49:57.463
But I've gone more than eight days without a single wink of sleep.

00:49:57.663 --> 00:49:58.864
Now, you give up even trying.

00:49:59.507 --> 00:50:01.650
Like on the safe day, night three, you think, oh, I feel...

00:50:01.829 --> 00:50:03.152
And you feel like you can sleep.

00:50:03.193 --> 00:50:04.315
This is the weird thing about it.

00:50:04.335 --> 00:50:05.076
You're that tired.

00:50:05.617 --> 00:50:07.860
Your body knows it needs to sleep.

00:50:07.880 --> 00:50:10.664
So you go to bed and then you're just tossing and turning.

00:50:11.521 --> 00:50:26.960
But added to that as well, and something that people underestimate about, because I think that one of the major symptoms of opiate withdrawal is anxiety, the levels of anxiety that you feel, which aren't necessarily delivered by anything that you should.

00:50:27.501 --> 00:50:29.583
It's like free-floating anxiety.

00:50:30.384 --> 00:50:33.208
There's nothing you can pinpoint that anxiety on.

00:50:33.467 --> 00:50:38.132
It's literally like having a little man in your stomach trying to scratch his way out like 24-7.

00:50:38.786 --> 00:50:40.608
And you literally can't get any rest.

00:50:40.688 --> 00:50:42.231
It's like normally when people put...

00:50:42.311 --> 00:50:50.322
I think normally people who have never experienced opioid withdrawal, what they do is they compare it with their own sufferings when they're ill, a little bit ill.

00:50:50.824 --> 00:51:03.262
Now, the fact of the matter is, no matter how ill you are with flu, you can get nice and warm under a duvet and derive some kind of comfort, even though you're...

00:51:03.842 --> 00:51:08.789
you're feeling really poorly, you do get moments of respite where you feel a little bit uncomfortable.

00:51:08.849 --> 00:51:10.331
All I do is sleep, and all I do is sleep.

00:51:10.371 --> 00:51:11.594
Yeah, well, this is the point.

00:51:11.614 --> 00:51:15.099
This is your person's defence mechanism for feeling ill is often falling asleep.

00:51:15.119 --> 00:51:16.159
Now, you can't.

00:51:16.541 --> 00:51:21.829
So the fact of the matter is opium withdrawal is absolutely unremitting in its discomfort.

00:51:22.750 --> 00:51:24.974
The way I often describe it is it's like...

00:51:25.666 --> 00:51:28.309
the absolute absence of anything that you could call comfort.

00:51:29.050 --> 00:51:31.052
The comfort is not even on the agenda.

00:51:31.411 --> 00:51:36.978
So you're feeling absolutely physically as uncomfortable as you could possibly imagine.

00:51:37.018 --> 00:51:41.342
You're feeling the highest levels of anxiety that you could possibly imagine.

00:51:41.362 --> 00:51:44.547
And also a mind that just will not stop.

00:51:45.007 --> 00:51:45.047
Do

00:51:45.067 --> 00:51:45.547
you know what I mean?

00:51:45.588 --> 00:51:46.128
So you've got that...

00:51:46.228 --> 00:51:52.054
There's just no area possible where you can get any respite from the discomfort.

00:51:52.456 --> 00:51:53.637
Do you know what I mean?

00:51:53.657 --> 00:51:54.557
So it's almost the...

00:51:54.882 --> 00:51:58.672
The absolute discomfort.

00:51:58.913 --> 00:52:00.096
I couldn't imagine

00:52:00.157 --> 00:52:01.922
a more uncomfortable experience.

00:52:02.161 --> 00:52:10.512
The double side of that and why it is such a battle as well is because if you know what is causing it, all that discomfort is just a lack

00:52:10.572 --> 00:52:11.032
of opiate.

00:52:11.052 --> 00:52:11.672
Yeah, that's it.

00:52:11.833 --> 00:52:13.394
It's always, your comfort's fat.

00:52:13.594 --> 00:52:18.159
You see, it's an absence of discomfort where your comfort is only five minutes away, a phone call away.

00:52:19.119 --> 00:52:19.760
Yeah.

00:52:19.840 --> 00:52:21.181
So that's another one of the battles.

00:52:21.742 --> 00:52:22.262
Yeah, that's it.

00:52:22.362 --> 00:52:23.083
That quickly, yeah.

00:52:23.143 --> 00:52:39.336
I mean, can you imagine if you had the real serious flow and you're laying in bed with a serious flow feeling absolutely terrible, you feel absolutely shit and you know all you have to do is make that normal phone call that you've made so many million times and within 10 minutes Your relief is there.

00:52:40.458 --> 00:52:41.880
Who could resist that?

00:52:41.900 --> 00:52:45.264
I completely understand that.

00:52:45.324 --> 00:52:48.927
That's another one of the reasons that makes opioid withdrawal so difficult.

00:52:48.967 --> 00:52:53.934
The fact that the comfort is so close and yet the withdrawal

00:52:53.994 --> 00:52:54.514
itself is

00:52:54.894 --> 00:52:55.034
just

00:52:55.215 --> 00:52:55.596
absent.

00:52:55.795 --> 00:53:00.742
On that subject as well, you just said it's such a phone call that you make a thousand times before.

00:53:02.143 --> 00:53:07.148
Before I started working in substance misuse services, I always thought heroin was something that was really hard to come by.

00:53:08.577 --> 00:53:09.539
Nah.

00:53:09.559 --> 00:53:11.202
It's so easy, isn't it?

00:53:11.262 --> 00:53:12.284
That's the scary thing.

00:53:12.423 --> 00:53:14.106
It's as easy as getting a bottle of milk.

00:53:15.730 --> 00:53:16.871
The thing is, it depends on your...

00:53:18.554 --> 00:53:20.396
This is a weird one.

00:53:20.637 --> 00:53:24.543
It depends on the relationship you've got with your dealer and the type of dealer that you know and stuff like that.

00:53:25.023 --> 00:53:28.550
It's like I had two distinct periods in my opiate use.

00:53:28.851 --> 00:53:33.338
In the early days, it was your classic scratching money together to get...

00:53:33.634 --> 00:53:43.929
a tenner bag and waiting under an underpass for some arsehole who would maybe leave you waiting three or four hours, literally at the mercy of, we used to call it powder power.

00:53:44.329 --> 00:53:54.385
So you'd get really low level dealers who would, you know, buying an eighth basically to fund their own habit and chopping up so many bags so they could buy the next eighth, bloody, bloody.

00:53:54.806 --> 00:54:02.878
And that you'd get an awful lot of weird, we used to call it powder power, where your dealer would say, I'll meet you under the underpass at half past eight.

00:54:04.898 --> 00:54:24.164
in the morning by midday you're still there you and 50 other people that are wounding you fucking up since you're rattling and there's all these irritating people that you wouldn't have nothing to do with the only thing you've got in common is the fact that you all want heroin so I had that period where and that was quite a nightmare

00:54:24.465 --> 00:54:32.556
it's quite the stereotypical view of a drug user as well isn't it I guess that sort of image so what's the second part then

00:54:32.735 --> 00:54:54.967
well basically when I learned to grow weed basically all the time I was an opiate user I was also a weed user they were my two choices so it was opiates and weed opiates first of course but then any other money by resin and then later on weed and I started growing weed Only on a low level.

00:54:55.146 --> 00:54:57.090
I'm not saying I was greedy or anything like that.

00:54:57.391 --> 00:54:58.592
Like a greenhouse full of...

00:54:58.632 --> 00:55:00.235
No, it was basically to fund the Abbey.

00:55:00.255 --> 00:55:00.715
It was like

00:55:00.896 --> 00:55:06.503
six plants maximum, 600 watt, which you can still turn around quite a lot of money.

00:55:06.543 --> 00:55:07.164
And plus if you get...

00:55:08.065 --> 00:55:12.192
I don't want to give too many secrets away here, but there's a way of growing weeds.

00:55:12.211 --> 00:55:14.376
So you're literally cropping every eight weeks.

00:55:15.157 --> 00:55:18.481
So literally every eight weeks, I'd have a crop that raised me...

00:55:18.882 --> 00:55:23.567
I won't go specifics into money, but enough money so I could be really, really comfortable.

00:55:23.626 --> 00:55:24.728
And so money became no...

00:55:25.670 --> 00:55:31.275
Plus, part of the disguise of being a heroin user is the fact you're still getting your benefits, of course.

00:55:31.335 --> 00:55:37.382
So my rent was paid for, getting my benefits every four weeks, as well as growing weed on the side.

00:55:37.782 --> 00:55:42.068
So the cost-prohibitive side of weed kind of disappeared.

00:55:42.108 --> 00:55:47.773
And then also, once you've got enough money to start buying weed...

00:55:48.193 --> 00:55:51.717
then it's a totally different process because you're dealing in larger amounts of money.

00:55:52.018 --> 00:55:54.882
So it's not waiting for some powder-powered scumbag under an underpass.

00:55:55.322 --> 00:56:01.811
You're talking about someone who's making serious money, who's usually quite an efficient businessman.

00:56:02.532 --> 00:56:06.076
So when you make that phone call, it's literally, I'll be at your house in 10 minutes.

00:56:06.896 --> 00:56:09.599
I'll be at your house in 20 minutes, delivered.

00:56:09.641 --> 00:56:10.541
Delivery services.

00:56:10.561 --> 00:56:14.045
Yeah, it's like, you know, what do they call these places that deliver food?

00:56:14.242 --> 00:56:15.766
Just eat, deliver room.

00:56:15.786 --> 00:56:17.449
Just eat, go for heroin.

00:56:17.931 --> 00:56:19.114
So it just became a complete...

00:56:19.235 --> 00:56:20.177
There's

00:56:20.237 --> 00:56:22.041
like a hierarchy of drug use, isn't there?

00:56:22.061 --> 00:56:23.726
There is, absolutely, there is.

00:56:23.827 --> 00:56:25.190
I've never thought about it like

00:56:25.210 --> 00:56:25.331
that.

00:56:25.351 --> 00:56:30.606
People use the word drug culture real flippantly without realising It's a fucking...

00:56:31.148 --> 00:56:32.590
It's a culture.

00:56:32.610 --> 00:56:38.759
So it's got its lords, it's got its kings, it's got its serfs and its minions and all the rest of it.

00:56:38.778 --> 00:56:41.043
It's a culture in every sense of the word.

00:56:41.362 --> 00:56:45.590
And of course, exactly like in big culture, money talks.

00:56:46.371 --> 00:56:52.760
So if you've got money to buy big away, all the negotiating...

00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:56.766
Plus, the fact of the matter is the more money you've got, the easier it is to source money.

00:56:57.922 --> 00:57:05.873
less tampered with stepped on we used to call it less tampered with heroin so the product gets better less harmful

00:57:05.913 --> 00:57:16.206
people don't understand the quality and you know someone said to me before it that it was quite a flippant call and told the heroin they're dealing it's probably like 2% heroin the rest is just well

00:57:16.467 --> 00:57:28.842
it depends where you this is the point I think because I used to say this all the time but I think that's because when people do the drug analysis on bits of powder that they get, they'll get low-level stuff.

00:57:28.862 --> 00:57:32.251
The stuff that the average person's buying.

00:57:32.271 --> 00:57:33.815
Do you know what I mean?

00:57:34.115 --> 00:57:34.516
But it's not...

00:57:34.577 --> 00:57:39.650
As well, I've got to say that things change as soon as drugs became available on the internet.

00:57:39.905 --> 00:57:46.094
Because then you can get stuff direct from bloody Mexico or direct from Portugal.

00:57:46.556 --> 00:57:46.996
It's mental.

00:57:47.336 --> 00:57:48.378
It actually gets through.

00:57:48.398 --> 00:57:49.119
Yeah, yeah.

00:57:49.139 --> 00:57:53.025
And for the last few years, the guy I used to get it off used to get it directly off the internet.

00:57:53.045 --> 00:57:53.126
Yeah.

00:57:53.686 --> 00:57:54.248
You know what I mean?

00:57:54.268 --> 00:58:00.197
So it wasn't even what you'd call imported street heroin by any stretch of the imagination.

00:58:00.777 --> 00:58:01.978
You know what I mean?

00:58:02.360 --> 00:58:04.702
Before I finally...

00:58:04.742 --> 00:58:05.684
Well, before...

00:58:07.047 --> 00:58:08.949
When I did my detox that led to my first...

00:58:09.505 --> 00:58:10.996
PMNs, of course, when we met.

00:58:11.338 --> 00:58:13.009
Some of the last heroin I ever did was...

00:58:15.074 --> 00:58:15.894
what was it called?

00:58:16.476 --> 00:58:21.242
Black tar heroin from Mexico, which was some of the strongest I've ever used in my life.

00:58:21.523 --> 00:58:30.534
And this was a period when everyone was saying, heroin on the streets is rubbish, it's only 2%, people are psychologically addicted, not physically addicted, all this sort of stuff.

00:58:30.554 --> 00:58:33.139
That was some of the strongest heroin I've ever got in my life.

00:58:33.980 --> 00:58:37.244
And it was also water-soluble, by the way, so you didn't need citric with it as well.

00:58:37.905 --> 00:58:40.409
So it was a completely different stuff.

00:58:40.628 --> 00:58:41.329
Yeah.

00:58:41.389 --> 00:58:41.469
Yeah.

00:58:41.826 --> 00:58:44.088
Ah, bizarre, that is mind-blowing as well.

00:58:44.248 --> 00:58:53.637
Do you know what, talking about culture, talk to me more about the culture in substance abuse, because we've had some good conversations about this in the past.

00:58:54.318 --> 00:59:07.231
There was a comment you made before about, we talk about stigma, and again, you're a stereotypical substance misuser, heroin addict, under the underpass.

00:59:09.152 --> 00:59:11.615
They looked at like, like shit, basically.

00:59:12.137 --> 00:59:15.501
Whereas we've talked about these people at one point being salt of the earth.

00:59:16.181 --> 00:59:16.202
I

00:59:18.445 --> 00:59:20.668
don't remember what we were talking about.

00:59:21.048 --> 00:59:22.231
I think we were talking about the world.

00:59:22.251 --> 00:59:24.373
We were talking about World War II.

00:59:24.934 --> 00:59:25.195
This is

00:59:25.335 --> 00:59:26.617
it with the culture of it.

00:59:26.657 --> 00:59:33.447
Sometimes I think that in drug treatment, the burden and responsibility being on the individual is somehow a flawed individual.

00:59:33.626 --> 00:59:35.250
They take drugs because they're a flawed individual.

00:59:35.510 --> 00:59:41.766
Whether you call it moral dysfunction or educationally challenged or whatever reason.

00:59:41.827 --> 00:59:45.293
Sometimes the burden of responsibility is put on the individual.

00:59:45.793 --> 00:59:52.887
Whereas to me, I just think it's much more of a social problem than people give it credit for.

00:59:52.927 --> 00:59:54.690
And if you look at the...

00:59:57.295 --> 01:00:00.260
When you think about the clichéd under the underpass...

01:00:02.050 --> 01:00:05.833
Heroin user, that's basically working class users you're talking about.

01:00:06.114 --> 01:00:15.143
Because there wasn't so much that kind of stigma in the 60s when heroin users were much more likely to come from universities, college students and be middle class.

01:00:15.764 --> 01:00:45.516
It wasn't until after the dance music revolution, whatever period of history it was when it happened, that it ended the working classes, that you got this kind of scumbag, chavvy, heroine user concept and I just think it's purely I'm trying to think about what the argument was while I was comparing them with Salt of the Air because I think we're talking about the demographic being the sort of lowest earners in society

01:00:45.556 --> 01:00:52.286
the people who are lowest in society there's not just lower class now there's almost like another class below lower

01:00:52.347 --> 01:01:07.728
class it's like a subclass isn't it now but when you think about it the Again, the reasons that there's subclasses because of changes in demographic, like the industries that used to give these people employment have all disappeared and all this sort of thing.

01:01:07.969 --> 01:01:10.396
But I think the specific thing we were talking about was...

01:01:12.097 --> 01:01:17.965
The idea of the poorest people in Britain at the moment are now regarded as chavvy scumbags.

01:01:18.106 --> 01:01:21.990
Vilified by tabloid journalism.

01:01:22.010 --> 01:01:24.173
I mean, that's what we're talking about.

01:01:24.193 --> 01:01:24.815
But then if you think

01:01:24.855 --> 01:01:35.349
about the same demographic 100 years ago, these were the brave lads that were going over the top to face a hail of German bullets and actually saved us from

01:01:35.369 --> 01:01:36.570
the

01:01:37.391 --> 01:01:38.413
First World War and stuff.

01:01:38.432 --> 01:01:43.373
So I just think I don't think I've put that point across as well as I did the first time we argued.

01:01:43.432 --> 01:01:44.635
No, no, but you're right.

01:01:44.976 --> 01:01:46.701
I just think that, you know, the idea of...

01:01:46.721 --> 01:01:53.577
I just think a lot of attitudes about people that are socially driven.

01:01:53.597 --> 01:01:55.963
I mean, everybody knows about chav culture.

01:01:55.983 --> 01:01:56.465
Of course, yeah.

01:01:56.726 --> 01:01:58.289
And I remember in the early noughties...

01:01:59.362 --> 01:02:05.869
Every single TV channel had programmes on about 15 kids and counting.

01:02:06.090 --> 01:02:07.552
Teenage pregnancies.

01:02:07.572 --> 01:02:09.894
16 and pregnant.

01:02:09.914 --> 01:02:12.317
Finger pointing.

01:02:12.478 --> 01:02:13.278
That word chav.

01:02:14.380 --> 01:02:18.003
It's vilifying and turning everybody against

01:02:18.304 --> 01:02:19.166
each other.

01:02:19.266 --> 01:02:39.693
One of the facts about human beings is for whatever reason I think human beings can't help putting each other into casts and as human beings we seem to need this this looking down this this group of people that we can look down on because

01:02:39.733 --> 01:02:42.516
if we look down then we're not looking up are we looking down

01:02:42.597 --> 01:03:10.809
you're not looking at yourself basically also it's a way of not facing your own flaws because you can say i'm at least i'm better than him yeah or whatever so i don't i think there's there seems to me to be a real social need to cast a certain group as as somebody you can point your finger at and i say that all the time in drug use i think I think an awful lot of the problems or the inability to deal with drug use is because of that finger-pointing exercise and the idea that it's their fault.

01:03:10.869 --> 01:03:11.630
They're just scumbags.

01:03:11.891 --> 01:03:12.992
Yeah.

01:03:13.012 --> 01:03:13.753
Do you know what I mean?

01:03:13.914 --> 01:03:15.414
Then you don't have to look at it any deeper.

01:03:15.956 --> 01:03:18.197
They're just nasty people, just horrible people.

01:03:18.898 --> 01:03:18.978
Yeah.

01:03:18.998 --> 01:03:19.460
Do you know what I mean?

01:03:19.500 --> 01:03:20.360
As if it's that simple.

01:03:20.681 --> 01:03:21.181
Well, yeah.

01:03:21.282 --> 01:03:21.942
No, exactly.

01:03:22.862 --> 01:03:23.023
Right.

01:03:23.304 --> 01:03:23.824
Do you know what?

01:03:23.985 --> 01:03:27.869
I'm going to finish on this because obviously you started your pre-mental training.

01:03:28.630 --> 01:03:29.369
You had a lapse.

01:03:29.469 --> 01:03:30.512
You disappeared for a while.

01:03:30.552 --> 01:03:31.713
Then your name popped up again.

01:03:31.753 --> 01:03:32.733
It was like, oh.

01:03:33.570 --> 01:03:35.574
He's back, and he was doing really well.

01:03:36.237 --> 01:03:40.067
So I brought you back on as a peer mentor, and now you've got employment.

01:03:40.588 --> 01:03:47.648
So you're going to be working with Renew as well, which is, as a volunteer leader, it's one of my favourite parts of the job, is seeing people go from...

01:03:48.737 --> 01:03:55.224
the peer mentor training into you know a volunteer opportunities to developing skills and I've

01:03:55.244 --> 01:04:02.730
taken your lead in that respect Sam I always encourage you I was there was another fellow today that I've said I've a word with your case manager about getting on the next peer mentoring course

01:04:02.769 --> 01:04:20.686
well actually I've got a date for it now so I'll talk about that with you afterwards because there'll be a few people that you can probably get from me but so the employment what made you want to get into paid because you've said yourself you've spent years without having a career do you know what made you want to move in because obviously volunteering is different people volunteer and not just to move into employment.

01:04:20.865 --> 01:04:24.289
Sometimes it is a case of just giving back, filling the time.

01:04:24.791 --> 01:04:25.831
And that was you for a while.

01:04:25.851 --> 01:04:30.637
Then I think something clicked with you where you were saying, you know what, I'm going to turn these skills that I've got into a job.

01:04:30.657 --> 01:04:34.282
What was it that made you want to get paid employment with a service?

01:04:35.943 --> 01:04:40.068
Well, I think there's selfish reasons in as much as...

01:04:40.088 --> 01:04:44.193
Because I think it's a really responsible job.

01:04:44.213 --> 01:04:54.188
And I also think you can end up engaging a job that's on a kind of level that I couldn't get in any other way.

01:04:54.369 --> 01:04:57.152
Because I've got such a sketchy work history and stuff like that.

01:04:57.673 --> 01:05:06.746
If it weren't for working at Renew, there's very few places that even look at my CV without tearing it up and throwing it in the bin.

01:05:07.327 --> 01:05:09.208
So there's that selfish reason, I'll be honest.

01:05:09.550 --> 01:05:11.913
It's a way of getting a good, rewarding job.

01:05:11.972 --> 01:05:13.394
Yeah, yeah.

01:05:13.414 --> 01:05:14.175
Based on your experience.

01:05:14.195 --> 01:05:15.498
I haven't got that many options.

01:05:15.777 --> 01:05:54.342
to be honest but also my entire life I've had a fascination with the concept of drug use that's what I got into in the first place the concept of drug use in society has always fascinated me so a lot of it's just to do my own as it were personal interests so it's almost like a proxy way of still keeping in the drugs world without having to do the nastiness of the drugs you've said this before but also I think I can you know I think think I'm good at it yeah you've said this before but I think I've got an awful lot of understanding about drug use homeless

01:05:54.684 --> 01:05:56.164
people they're your people

01:05:57.246 --> 01:05:58.347
not so much homeless people

01:05:58.726 --> 01:05:58.947
but

01:05:59.088 --> 01:06:52.385
substance misuse it's not so much that I just think it's my demographic it's like I come from that same environment do you know what I mean I was brought up on Bransholm which I suppose is one of the major areas of drug use it's like the housing estate is a hotbed of drug use and dysfunctional behaviours these days isn't it so and to a certain extent they do they feel like my people it's just a strange thing to say yeah and again it goes back to what I was saying earlier on about loving the feeling the responsibility you know yeah I remember when I was younger all the old fellas used to fix stuff you know what I mean it's just what old blokes did they potted in the shed fixing stuff Every owl bloke, potted in his shed, fixing something, whether it be the TV, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, or they always med stuff.

01:06:52.405 --> 01:06:54.929
They fiddled about, potted about in the shed, fixing stuff.

01:06:55.650 --> 01:07:00.836
These days we live in like a throwaway culture where nothing gets fixed.

01:07:00.896 --> 01:07:02.378
If something's broke, throw it away.

01:07:02.838 --> 01:07:07.105
So the only thing that people think they can fix anymore is other people, I think.

01:07:08.306 --> 01:07:09.307
Which is weird.

01:07:09.347 --> 01:07:10.369
Sometimes it annoys me.

01:07:10.409 --> 01:07:12.512
The only thing we can fix now is other people.

01:07:12.833 --> 01:07:16.143
And it can be that You can't even fix yourself, mate.

01:07:16.202 --> 01:07:16.664
Yeah.

01:07:17.023 --> 01:07:17.804
You can't even fix somebody else.

01:07:18.585 --> 01:07:19.686
But there is that.

01:07:19.706 --> 01:07:19.927
I just...

01:07:20.809 --> 01:07:22.250
I'm not saying I love broken things.

01:07:22.630 --> 01:07:22.771
Yeah.

01:07:24.351 --> 01:07:24.992
But I kind of do.

01:07:25.293 --> 01:07:25.693
Yeah.

01:07:25.713 --> 01:07:26.614
Do you know what I mean?

01:07:26.635 --> 01:07:27.436
Because I know the reasons that...

01:07:27.576 --> 01:07:29.277
I kind of think I know the reasons that they're broken.

01:07:30.018 --> 01:07:31.260
You can really learn.

01:07:31.280 --> 01:07:31.360
Yeah.

01:07:31.380 --> 01:07:36.746
So if I can help fix them, then it's just such a rewarding job to do.

01:07:37.126 --> 01:07:40.150
Not that there's been that much evidence so far of fixing that many.

01:07:40.289 --> 01:07:40.369
Yeah.

01:07:40.389 --> 01:07:41.911
But at the same time, I just love...

01:07:44.161 --> 01:07:46.025
I love presenting a space where people can feel

01:07:46.125 --> 01:07:46.525
safe.

01:07:46.545 --> 01:07:52.014
Well, I've had service users tell me how much you've been helpful to them and how much they've appreciated the time you've given them.

01:07:52.074 --> 01:07:53.335
I often get feedback like that.

01:07:53.356 --> 01:07:58.463
So it shows that you can build connections with people and do and help people, which is what you want to do.

01:07:59.224 --> 01:08:04.492
All right, I'm going to finish off with a set of 10 random questions, actually, not in relation to anything that we've spoken about so far.

01:08:05.693 --> 01:08:10.019
And these are a series of questions that I ask everybody at the end of our podcast.

01:08:10.059 --> 01:08:13.445
But for you in particular, Peter, what is your favourite word?

01:08:14.849 --> 01:08:15.431
I haven't got one.

01:08:15.811 --> 01:08:15.992
You

01:08:16.171 --> 01:08:16.512
haven't got one?

01:08:16.533 --> 01:08:17.132
No, I love words.

01:08:17.613 --> 01:08:19.697
I just love words, so I don't have that many.

01:08:19.716 --> 01:08:20.878
Do you have a least?

01:08:21.038 --> 01:08:21.420
Do you know what?

01:08:21.619 --> 01:08:23.783
It'd be churlish to pick one.

01:08:23.984 --> 01:08:24.465
Churlish?

01:08:25.024 --> 01:08:25.286
I like that.

01:08:25.326 --> 01:08:26.247
That's ungentlemanly.

01:08:27.469 --> 01:08:28.791
What is your least favourite word?

01:08:31.194 --> 01:08:43.453
Again, I haven't particularly got one, but I think this is quite a trite answer, but any word that diminishes other human beings, I suppose, would be a good answer.

01:08:44.130 --> 01:08:45.431
Tell me something that excites you.

01:08:48.697 --> 01:08:49.257
Show me beans.

01:08:50.019 --> 01:08:51.400
Tell me something that doesn't excite you.

01:08:52.762 --> 01:08:53.323
Show me beans.

01:08:54.345 --> 01:08:56.609
What sound or noise do you love?

01:08:57.010 --> 01:08:57.751
I love music.

01:08:58.091 --> 01:08:58.252
That's

01:08:58.452 --> 01:08:59.393
the answer I give to that.

01:09:00.314 --> 01:09:01.957
You said you went through a lot of phases of music.

01:09:02.597 --> 01:09:03.840
Do you still got a broad

01:09:03.859 --> 01:09:04.480
range?

01:09:05.061 --> 01:09:07.565
Yeah, I absolutely love music.

01:09:07.626 --> 01:09:09.368
A good way to me is finding some new music.

01:09:09.809 --> 01:09:12.894
Something I noticed since I've been doing this music group.

01:09:12.993 --> 01:09:17.961
is most people's enjoyment of music is dependent on the familiarity of that music.

01:09:18.462 --> 01:09:29.719
And I think people go through a period between the age of about 15 and 20 where the music they like then, they listen to for the rest of their life and never change that musical taste one bit.

01:09:30.059 --> 01:09:32.082
To me, I just love finding new music.

01:09:32.122 --> 01:09:33.625
I love unusual music.

01:09:34.225 --> 01:09:36.368
So to me, any music that's...

01:09:37.250 --> 01:09:39.453
I've got a feeling I'm going to pre-empt your next question.

01:09:39.673 --> 01:09:39.934
Go on.

01:09:40.289 --> 01:09:42.394
You're going to ask me now what noise that I don't like, aren't you?

01:09:42.634 --> 01:09:42.814
Yeah, yeah.

01:09:43.135 --> 01:09:44.658
Well, I'll answer that question now then.

01:09:45.498 --> 01:09:50.148
I don't like cliched commercial music, the music that everybody else listens to.

01:09:50.347 --> 01:09:51.930
Like pop culture music, chat music?

01:09:51.951 --> 01:09:52.572
No, not necessarily

01:09:52.612 --> 01:09:52.953
pop music.

01:09:52.972 --> 01:09:55.997
I love an awful lot of pop culture music, but I hate...

01:09:56.354 --> 01:10:00.279
I've got an aversion to listening to the same music that everybody else listens to.

01:10:00.298 --> 01:10:00.838
I really

01:10:00.880 --> 01:10:01.060
have.

01:10:01.079 --> 01:10:07.988
To be honest, I've found with some like chart music, I appreciate years later when it's not being played on the radio over and over and over again.

01:10:08.007 --> 01:10:09.329
I can come back to a song and say, I like that.

01:10:09.810 --> 01:10:13.073
By the time I hear it, because it was just constantly battered into me.

01:10:14.416 --> 01:10:15.436
What's your favourite curse word?

01:10:17.579 --> 01:10:17.840
Nice.

01:10:18.501 --> 01:10:19.622
I like that one.

01:10:19.681 --> 01:10:21.224
What profession other than your own...

01:10:21.243 --> 01:10:22.666
Do you want me to tell you why it's my favourite?

01:10:22.706 --> 01:10:24.287
Go on, actually, yeah.

01:10:24.307 --> 01:10:24.448
Tell me.

01:10:24.467 --> 01:10:25.869
The reason it's my favourite...

01:10:26.177 --> 01:10:26.958
I

01:10:27.019 --> 01:10:30.882
might have to pass this out, but we're going to

01:10:31.644 --> 01:10:31.884
go.

01:10:32.944 --> 01:10:51.024
No, the reason is because I just think it's a really strange phenomenon, I think, that that beautiful thing that we all came out of, that we're all chasing all the time, that does nothing but create all these human beings that I love.

01:10:51.405 --> 01:10:51.485
Yeah.

01:10:51.938 --> 01:10:57.828
is the word that everyone hates and is regarded as the most offensive word.

01:10:58.068 --> 01:11:05.301
And yet, if you think of it, this is going to sound a bit toxic masculinity and it's not particularly mental, but let's face it, most of the horrors of the world do come from men.

01:11:06.743 --> 01:11:15.534
And when you think of the words for the male genitalia like prick and knob, These are really inoffensive words, and yet it's the blokes that mech all the bombs.

01:11:15.815 --> 01:11:26.368
And even the fact that bomb isn't an offensive word and gun isn't an offensive word, but the source of all creation is the most offensive word for everybody.

01:11:26.408 --> 01:11:28.930
And people usually say, oh, it's because it sounds horrible.

01:11:29.452 --> 01:11:31.675
It's because it's that guttural, horrible, guttural sound.

01:11:32.034 --> 01:11:36.100
But then when you think about having a whole accent, we say things like, Well, I couldn't do that if I tried.

01:11:36.461 --> 01:11:37.341
Exactly.

01:11:37.362 --> 01:11:40.447
So we use that noise all the time with that way of being offensive and guttural.

01:11:40.466 --> 01:11:41.809
So I think that's just an excuse.

01:11:42.449 --> 01:11:46.055
So it's always intrigued me, the fact that that beautiful thing...

01:11:46.636 --> 01:11:48.880
It's not half as offensive as it used to be.

01:11:48.899 --> 01:11:50.523
Do you know what?

01:11:50.542 --> 01:11:52.685
It often seems to be an older generation that's offended by it.

01:11:52.725 --> 01:11:55.010
But, yeah, I don't think any word...

01:11:55.649 --> 01:11:58.733
is offensive until you apply context.

01:11:58.912 --> 01:11:59.974
Yeah, that's it, that's it.

01:12:00.314 --> 01:12:04.779
So the offensive words are really the words that are delivered aggressively and with meanness of spirit.

01:12:04.819 --> 01:12:09.622
Yeah, yeah, and it's the intentions of how those words are used to make people feel, I guess, yeah.

01:12:11.824 --> 01:12:14.247
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

01:12:15.969 --> 01:12:15.988
I

01:12:19.292 --> 01:12:21.675
think I will one day, the answer I'm going to give.

01:12:22.114 --> 01:12:25.078
I've always harboured an ambition to write a really good book.

01:12:25.377 --> 01:12:28.101
So I suppose writer would be the obvious answer to that.

01:12:28.122 --> 01:12:28.802
It's a bit lofty.

01:12:29.042 --> 01:12:32.207
No, no, I like the fact that you said you're going to do it one day as well.

01:12:32.226 --> 01:12:33.609
Tell me something that you'd not like to do,

01:12:34.229 --> 01:12:35.712
professional-wise, work-wise.

01:12:37.314 --> 01:12:38.676
I nearly said return to drug use.

01:12:39.396 --> 01:12:43.141
But something I'd not like to do, practically most professions, I just think...

01:12:44.743 --> 01:12:45.664
I think you'd make a great

01:12:45.725 --> 01:12:46.265
accountant.

01:12:46.529 --> 01:12:48.212
I can't, yeah, I can't think about worse.

01:12:50.015 --> 01:12:50.757
We'll go over counter.

01:12:50.778 --> 01:13:01.516
This is the point, when I talk about the fact that I never really wanted to do anything and nothing really appealed to

01:13:01.557 --> 01:13:02.037
me

01:13:02.479 --> 01:13:07.828
and I think it's, so I don't think it's very much that I'd want to do.

01:13:08.270 --> 01:13:08.350
Fair.

01:13:08.641 --> 01:13:12.529
I'm really happy with what I'm just about to set about doing, to be honest.

01:13:12.649 --> 01:13:14.873
I'm really looking forward to becoming a worker at Renewal.

01:13:14.894 --> 01:13:16.195
I'm looking forward to having you on there.

01:13:17.217 --> 01:13:20.864
If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

01:13:21.246 --> 01:13:25.474
I think it's an absolute nonsense to suggest God uses anything that would resemble words.

01:13:26.175 --> 01:13:27.278
What do you think he'd use?

01:13:28.641 --> 01:13:39.766
No idea, but this nonsensical idea that because the Bible says in one part that we're made in God's image means that he must be in our image then is a nonsense.

01:13:39.867 --> 01:13:43.916
I wouldn't have such a small view of what

01:13:43.996 --> 01:13:44.396
God is.

01:13:44.577 --> 01:13:47.823
What if when you get there, God just opens his gates and calls you a c***?

01:13:47.844 --> 01:13:48.605
Would you be happy with that?

01:13:48.833 --> 01:13:49.635
I'd wink.

01:13:51.217 --> 01:13:52.019
Lovely to meet you, mate.

01:13:52.038 --> 01:13:52.859
We'll leave it there.

01:13:52.920 --> 01:13:54.762
Lovely to meet you.

01:13:54.922 --> 01:13:55.304
Brilliant.

01:13:55.384 --> 01:13:56.746
Thank you very much for coming on, Peter.

01:13:56.765 --> 01:13:57.186
Much appreciated.

01:13:57.306 --> 01:13:57.546
Thank you.

01:13:57.847 --> 01:14:03.716
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