In short
Ted Shirley, a former British Army sniper, discusses his Afghanistan deployments (2009–2010), training to become a sniper, combat roles (overwatch), specific missions and firefights, and how killing and “moral injury” affected him afterward (PTSD-like symptoms, paranoia, alcohol, difficulty reintegrating). He also promotes his book Afghanistan Sniper: Trauma on the Front Line and Beyond (out Nov 30; pre-sale with 20% off).
Guest background
Ted Shirley grew up on the North Wales coast, joined the Army at 16, trained for sniper selection (fitness/shooting/aptitude), completed a six-month course (Scotland; then Brecon Beacons), deployed to Afghanistan as a rifleman then sniper, and later sought special forces. He describes being medically evacuated after escalating mental strain.
Key claims
Sniper success depends on intuition and “combat indicators,” not just marksmanship. He describes dehumanizing targets as an early coping method, later “humanizing” them, and says killing became addictive. He argues snipers need team support to share psychological load.
Notable examples
First mission with Afghan special forces snipers; being targeted by an enemy sniper/hired rebel sniper; a compound assault where rounds whistled inches from his head; a long roof position (13 hours) during a fight where Taliban surrounded snipers; a mile-shot engagement; and later paranoia/violence at home, plus refusal of lucrative private-security offers.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroduction to Ted Shirley
1:28 to 2:52
Discussion about Ted's background, childhood, and military inspiration.
“It comes out November 30th this year Which is rapidly approaching mate To be honest There's so much getting done behind the scenes It's great Is there going to be a pre-sale?”
Joining the Military
2:52 to 4:40
Ted shares his experience of enlisting at a young age and his early military life.
“True family, friends, anyone else serving the army?”
First Tour in Afghanistan
4:40 to 6:04
Ted discusses his first tour in Afghanistan and the emotions he experienced.
Becoming a Sniper
6:04 to 8:10
Ted explains the path to becoming a sniper and the appeal of that role.
“And you couldn't keep a smile off my face, mate.”
Sniper Training Insights
8:10 to 11:18
Detailed insights into the sniper training process and the challenges involved.
“I wanted the stories and I wanted the violence.”
Combat Indicators and Responsibilities
11:18 to 14:00
Discussion on the responsibilities of snipers and their role in combat situations.
“FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles.”
Insights on Sniper Intuition and Combat Experience
14:00 to 22:00
Learn about the intuition required for snipers and real combat experiences.
“We were just on our own as snipers, which that's a whole different bloody conversation and a different kettle of fish that leads to all sorts.”
First Missions and Encounters in Combat
22:40 to 28:00
Explore the challenges and adrenaline of first combat missions as a sniper.
“Getting woke up in the morning, stupid o 'clock, and being told there was a bunch of British troops that were stuck in the middle of nowhere and they'd been stuck there for a long time.”
The Adrenaline of Combat
28:00 to 32:47
Ted shares his intense experiences during a firefight, detailing the chaos and emotional toll of combat.
“This was the most action and the most adrenaline that I'd felt, to be fair.”
Mental Toll of Combat
33:39 to 36:58
Ted discusses the psychological impact of his actions in combat and the importance of mental health awareness.
“They had no chance but I had to keep that inside and I had to keep this space even though I knew it was happening.”
Show all 33 chapters
Reflections on Sniper Duty
36:58 to 42:01
Ted reflects on his time as a sniper, the challenges he faced, and the internal battles that followed.
“You know, I wanted to have a good career in the military and I wanted to sort of elevate.”
Sniper Techniques and Strategies
42:01 to 43:31
Learn about the strategic planning and execution involved in long-range sniper shots.
“They didn't know the trigger had been pulled until it was too late.”
The Paranoia of a Trained Killer
45:03 to 47:48
Explore the psychological impact of being a trained sniper and feelings of paranoia.
“and they'll compromise your position and you could get one in a nut.”
Struggles with Violence and Morality
47:49 to 49:55
Understand the internal conflict between violence experienced in war and civilian life.
“I don't think no drug or activity or anything could ever compare to that.”
Coping with Trauma and Guilt
49:56 to 52:58
Learn about the ways trauma and guilt affected the speaker after returning home.
“You know, it was that hero to zero feeling.”
Flashbacks and Mental Breakdown
52:59 to 56:10
Hear about the experience of flashbacks and emotional breakdowns post-service.
“and I just give myself the hardest of times, hardest of times.”
Confronting PTSD: A Soldier's Flashback
56:16 to 57:46
Ted Shirley shares his experiences of PTSD and the impact of war on mental health.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
The Weight of War: Reflecting on Choices
57:47 to 1:01:50
A deep discussion on the moral complexities of war and personal accountability.
“I had nightmares about fucking killing everyone I knew.”
Dealing with Trauma: Healing Journey
1:01:51 to 1:10:02
Ted discusses his journey to healing from trauma and the methods that helped him.
Confronting PTSD and Despair
1:10:02 to 1:13:21
Ted Shirley shares his battles with PTSD and thoughts of suicide.
“it was sort of like a fucking highlight reel of bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, one after the other, just going over and over and over, and it wouldn't fucking stop.”
From Darkness to Healing
1:13:21 to 1:15:56
Ted discusses his journey toward recovery and the role of therapy.
The Catalyst for Change
1:15:56 to 1:18:35
The moment Ted realized he needed to change for himself and his wife.
“now I'm a different human being I am positivity I that's I have to be positive because I've been into the, like you said before, the depths of hell, mate.”
The Support Systems and Their Failures
1:18:35 to 1:22:18
Ted reflects on the support he received from the NHS and the military's shortcomings.
“I could see the influence I was having on the people around me and I love my life to bits and I wanted to be the person I know I am and the person I am today.”
Advocating for Veterans' Mental Health
1:22:18 to 1:24:00
Ted emphasizes the need for systemic changes to support veterans.
Struggles of Veterans and Mental Health
1:24:00 to 1:25:00
Discussion on the mental health struggles faced by veterans and the societal neglect around it.
“It's very easy to go undetected when you've got problems.”
The Importance of Sharing Stories
1:25:00 to 1:26:40
Highlighting the need for open discussions about mental health in the military community.
“And, like, I was at a funeral two days ago of another one of the blokes from the regiment.”
Reflections on Self-Value and Music
1:26:40 to 1:28:20
Reflecting on the value of life, music, and the impact of seeking help.
“There's someone in the army should be saying, some sergeant should be saying, you got locked.”
Experiences in Mental Health Facilities
1:28:20 to 1:30:00
Sharing personal experiences with mental health facilities and the feelings of hopelessness.
“It was eye-opening, but it was also the first time I was like, whoa, this is fucking serious.”
Finding Hope and Tools for Recovery
1:30:00 to 1:31:40
Discussing the tools for recovery and the importance of hope in overcoming struggles.
“Once you switch those lights off, there's no coming back from that, you know?”
Daily Practices for Positive Change
1:31:40 to 1:33:20
Advice on daily practices that can foster positivity and improve mental health.
Handling Bad Days and Self-Acceptance
1:33:20 to 1:35:00
Exploring the concept of bad days and the importance of self-acceptance in mental health.
“Oh, I've got a clean towel I washed yesterday.”
Breathing Techniques for Mental Clarity
1:35:00 to 1:36:20
Introducing breathing techniques to help manage mood and stress.
“And now I know that if I feel a funny one go on, I'll tell you the dog down on the beach and it might just be 10 minutes on the beach.”
Reflection and Gratitude
1:38:34 to 1:39:56
Ted Shirley expresses gratitude and discusses reaching out for support.
“to a lot of people will be rooting for you.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:06You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be. And don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live.
0:33You fell in love at first crunch, and now the crispy chicken crunch wrap slider is back at Taco Bell. But with a twist, it's crispy all-white meat chicken nuggets inside a slider-sized crunch wrap. But now you can enjoy them with the kick of Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch. Or try the tortilla chip-coated nuggets on their own. They're waiting for you. The crispy chicken crunch wrap slider, a brand-new classic, is back. Only at Taco Bell. FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise.
1:19FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu. boom we're on and today's guest we've got ted shirley ted how are we yes very good bro thank you for having me mate thanks for coming on my pleasure afghanistan sniper done a lot of damage a lot of ups and downs yes a lot of mad stories you've got a new book coming out which will promote straight away what's the book about and where can people buy it yes everywhere absolutely everywhere mate so yeah it's called afghanistan sniper trauma on the front line and beyond Catchy When's this book out? It comes out November 30th this year Which is rapidly approaching mate To be honest There's so much getting done behind the scenes It's great Is there going to be a pre-sale?
2:06Yeah it's on pre-sale now Yeah 20 % off actually at the minute That's what it's all about Everybody loves a little bar name bro Before we get into all the madness though I always like to go back to the start with my guests Get more of a bit of understanding about you Ted Where you grew up and how it all began Yeah, so I'm from North Wales, North Wales coast, very dainty little town, once used to be thriving but not so much anymore. Childhood was great mate, I was a very happy little kid, as you can see I've always got a smile on my face. Family life was great, everything was good and my entire childhood was geared up to live a life in the military.
2:47so as soon as I could at 16 I joined up and off I went True family, friends, anyone else serving the army? My dad had been in the Falklands War, yeah, in the Navy so hearing stories of him, that inspired me because he had some of the most amazing stories and I wanted them, I wanted to live those things and meet those people and see these places out in the world So he was over in Argentina when, was that 1982? Yeah, yeah, yeah time only reason i know that because i interviewed a sniper just a couple of days oh i interviewed somebody yesterday we were talking about it i knew it was the 80s oh yeah listen i'm not that noisy well bro i'm just gonna say that was well yeah there was a bit of damage done then yeah so yeah it's not so much on my first tour my second tour of afghan not in argentina with your dad was there many war stories or there i'm not so much no he always kept it quite close to his chest to be fair it was something that um i don't know whether he did that on purpose or not but i i heard about the good stuff it wasn't until sort of i was in already that he sort of opened up a little bit about it but not too much you know yeah i don't think he wanted to put me off i think that was the way it was back then with me and they just bottled everything up absolutely you really get many interviews from people who served in the army nowadays it's all trained everybody wants to tell their story which is not a bad thing yeah that's it yeah i think it's important now yeah i think i think a lot of lads sort of my age have have been inspired by that kind of generation of like i saw you had chris ryan on and he was one of my mega inspirations he was everything bravo to zero i was like i mean i want to hear that so yeah i think back then people were sort of i wouldn't say naive but i certainly didn't realize what the extent of things i was getting into you know until until really my second tour the first tour even in afghan was uh it was okay you know it never left me with any scars um but then i wasn't a sniper uh until until that second tour that's when it started getting a bit tasty so you joined at 16 yeah i joined at 16 yeah um and then i was 20 on my first tour 21 on my second tour uh delicate yeah that's it yeah i didn't think I was I thought I was macho man at the time you know I thought I knew everything uh but in hindsight yeah I knew nothing what was basic training like I loved it absolutely loved it it was uh like I was fit and healthy and so that was a big part of it you know the fitter you are the better you're gonna get on so I really enjoyed I learned so much stuff and met so many good lads I was just I was buzzing to get this life started you know I was excited for it all I was excited for meeting all these people that come from all over britain you know at such a young age that was amazing for me all these different accents and stuff i thought oh this is fucking brilliant get me in here after your past training what happened then uh straight away i was off to uh cyprus the regiment i was with uh we're based over there which was again amazing for me i couldn't believe it just down the road from ayahnappar in between ayahnappar and path off so every weekend it was one or the other and life was incredible you know i was i was there for four weeks and And then, bam, straight to Afghan, straight away.
6:03So, again, for me, I loved it. I was super keen. And you couldn't keep a smile off my face, mate. You really couldn't. As mental as that might sound, I was living what I'd worked so hard to do. What was it like going to Afghanistan for the FOSS team? First time was a mix of nerves and excitement. I say more excitement, though, to be honest. um there was you know the more senior blokes in the regiment had been there beforehand so i'd have little stories from them and little tips and stuff i i fitted straight in right really quickly and everyone was everyone's dead nice mate all the lads were so sound that it was easy to do and it was like a group of mates just going just going on an adventure it was uh it was crazy was the name of being you then yeah yeah those kinetic stuff those kickoffs and stuff like my first first contact first time being shot at that was a weird experience it was very surreal it was a I fucking pissed myself laughing.
6:59I don't know why. I just couldn't help myself. I don't know if it was a nervous laugh or what, but training takes over. And it's a weird thing to see as sort of like dusts flying around and bullets are incoming and you sort of go, fucking hell. Yeah, everyone knows what they're doing here. Yeah. Well, this is all right, actually. This is what I've signed up for until it got a bit too close. What were you doing then? I was just a rifleman then. So our job at the time was to look after key places like radio towers and things like that um in a place called musakala which the time's quite a bit of a hot spot um but it was a very slow-paced kind of tour it was you know it wasn't as active as i'd have liked it to have been to be honest i was very keen to get back there um which again sounds mad all this stuff coming out my mouth but it's true you know it was uh it was a very exciting time and then you know once i'd done it once then i was sort of like right i'm in now i'm seasoned let's let's actually go to what i want to do and hence being a sniper that's that's really what i wanted out of it all you know was that the plan from the get go or is it just kind of progress when you went in there that you wanted to be a sniper since being a kid yeah i'd always wanted to be a sniper i'd always wanted that sort of element of individuality i I didn't want to just be a bloke in a rifle platoon forever and just go through the motions.
8:28I wanted the excitement. I wanted the stories and I wanted the violence. Yeah, I did. Yeah, which is weird. Yeah. I had a sniper on there. He was in the Marines. They used to have groups of four. Yes. That's what he says. Listen, I signed up for war. He signed up after 9-11. He wanted violence. He wanted the madness. 9-11 was a big, big factor. Yeah, you're not going to sign up and just... you don't want to do anything you say I'm not for that he's not going to be a chef or a driver I wanted to the way I saw it was and the way I try and explain it um whenever I get into these sort of conversations is if you were in school and someone's having a hard time would you confront the bully or not and for me the answer for that is yes and it's always going to be a yes so for me I saw especially after 9-11 happened it it made me realize that people needed help out especially in afghanistan and i was capable of doing it and i was more than willing to do it so yeah becoming a sniper was the sort the ultimate really it was the goal how do you become a sniper what's the steps oh so you start off um the whole battalion so say about a thousand men would whoever wants to go through you do like a pre-selection that's sort of in the regiment so it mainly fitness tests shooting tests that sort of thing aptitude tests and once you sort of rise through that then you then selected and you and off you go for the for the six month course which starts in scotland actually for me it did so all the night bastards are brother oh yeah just off from dundee it was yeah fun night in the piss there's many people go for sniper there was so say the thousand blokes in our battalion uh there was multiple battalions so i'm not sure how many it would have been but I think there was probably 10 regiments worth of blokes that were there.
10:20So yeah, there's probably about 10 ,000. And then I think at the end of the course, at the end of the six months, I think there was eight of us left. So just do it. Yeah, yeah. It's a pretty, it's the learning curve. The learning curve is so steep that if you fall behind, you've got no time to catch up. You know, you're either going to be at that standard or you're not on it. So you're off you go again. because British knives are held to a standard and that's not going to get lowered for anybody. It doesn't matter how nice you are or how keen you are. What's the thrilling like? So it starts off three months of shooting and learning.
10:57You fell in love at first crunch and now the crispy chicken crunch wrap slider is back at Taco Bell. But with a twist, it's crispy all white meat chicken nuggets inside a slider sized crunch wrap. But now you can enjoy them with the kick of Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch or try the tortilla chip-coated nuggets on their own. They're waiting for you. The Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider, a brand new classic, is back. Only at Taco Bell. FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise.
11:43FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu.
11:53About ballistics, basically, and the weapon systems and the theoretical side of it, you know, where, you know, wind and elevation, temperature, and you learn all these factors that affect how a round flies through the air. So it's three months of classrooms and shooting ranges, which was, you know, I was well keen for that, to be fair. As soon as I got behind this night, I thought, yeah, this is a bit of me, this. And then once you've passed that phase, which a lot of people don't pass, you then move on where you go. For us in particular, it was Brecon Beacons. We were down in Brecon for three months.
12:28Fucking rain that gets you wet from the bottom up. and that's when it starts getting into the sort of tactical side of it, so like the stalking, camouflage and concealment, your map reading and stuff, but it's all on your own. Everything is individual, so you can't rely on anyone to sort of get you through it. It's all down to you, how hard you work and the effort that you put in and how much you want it, really. How many tests do you actually get put through to be a sniper? Oh, God. Constant. It's constant. from as soon as you've been taught something, you're getting tested on it. And then that all culminates then at the end of the sixth month where you have like test week.
13:08So you'll then do things like your observation test where you might be, you'll lie down and then 20 metres away, there might be a bullet casing in the grass and you've got to spot it and you know, a bit of string hanging in the tree and all these sort of things that your eyes are now tuned into. And it's all about this gradual honing in on everything around you you know so you sort of become one with your environment and once you you're at test week you you go into the stalks and night navigation exercises and stuff on your own which in the book i talk about one fucking hell i made a right book up so when you're doing these night naps you've got a little glow stick in the back of your head and just just for like sort of safety things i know i thought one of the lads was was next to me on a night naps i'm going hey who's that it was a fucking firefly i'm following this thing off me until i realize oh shit i'm lost now and then all this anyway i won't go into too much because you won't buy the book what's the most important thing about being a sniper is that i say is it touch feeling what's the most important part of being a sniper i think it's your intuition i think the ability to sort of read a battlefield is is important so for me i found that once i was on my second tour and and sort of well into it i was i was honed into things that you would call like combat indicators for instance so say there's no kids in playing in the street where there used to be kids playing in the street or you know no one's about and then all of a sudden there's a guy on top of the roof looking you're spotting out constantly you're looking out for these sort of things because And our main role at the time, because there wasn't enough of us, we weren't even working in pairs.
14:48We were just on our own as snipers, which that's a whole different bloody conversation and a different kettle of fish that leads to all sorts. But our main role would be to overwatch ground troops. So as they were going in and they were coming under contact, it would be us sort of angels from above just sort of clearing the path for them, really. JT, who I had on, who was a marine sniper, they worked in packs of four, two of them, four. so they would get their mission kind of suss out the place they would have to go through doors sometimes not be through doors, chapter doors families, kids sitting eating their dinner and they would be in that house for maybe two and three days yeah, he loved it he spoke about his first kill he says that's what I loved, that's what I wanted and he says am I crazy and I says yeah probably I want to be tapped no to do that in a way I interviewed Peter McAleese he was a Scotsman who got offered one while he didn't kill Escobar I've been talking about him recently he passed away God rest his soul but with Peter he owned what he'd done he never had any regrets and I think that's important I was doing a job I was getting tasks I was getting missions and I'd done that to the best of my ability I signed up to do that to fight for my country to kill to do what I wanted and I hold no regrets but he all had the twinker in his eye I think a lot of people come back broken everybody struggles with PTSD not just soldiers but everybody in life but I just feel sometimes we can really let it sink us and I think it's just about owning what you've done and owning your misery as well it is yeah so for a long time after I'd come back I struggled with the idea of am I a fucking psycho?
16:32am I a serial killer? my therapist had got sick of hearing it but you're right you have to have this thing in your mind where you've for us i can only talk from me and the other sniper platoon lads that we'd work so hard and constantly that was in our mind that we're doing this so that we can take out these targets you know we want to be the best and and our instructors one in particular i talk about it used to take us to the ranges for weeks on end and we'd be a thousand yards whopping 10 pieces and we'd just be going ding ding ding all day long so we we had the abilities and we knew that each of us had the confidence to be able to do it.
17:09So once we got there, there was only one more thing to do, and that was find those targets and pull that trigger, you know? And it was adrenaline-filled. It was everything, like, you know, I know, like you're saying, you've just spoke to a lot of people that have done it, and they'll have all felt that same thing, where almost for a split second there's a disconnect for me where pulling the trigger wasn't a human being. it was a target and that's kind of how i dealt with it until i didn't deal with that and i humanized the targets and i started to make things personal so friends who'd been killed or injured before i'd arrived that then became a driving factor for me to sort of almost get a revenge um which wasn't in hindsight wasn't a healthy way to do it um but it allowed me to unleash the fucking beast it allowed me to do what i needed to do and get through it which is yeah most important when i interviewed jayte he was saying that just before he pulled the trigger sometimes he would think about would i go on with them if if we went for a beer would that do they have kids like i have like i think you can go down the hole it's not healthy for you yeah what was it like when passed it was it was very quick to be honest it was sort of like right that's done uh and now it's off to medical training vehicles getting all these tickets and stuff because we were already about to sort of deploy to afghan with um we finished the sniper course and then went to kenya for two months which was our like pre-deployment training which is a fucking amazing experience the uh you know from the wildlife and and just the local people and seeing africa for the first time was incredible to the the massive level of training where we've got helicopters and fucking artillery blowing fuck out of villages and stuff and i was taken back i couldn't believe it so at this point you you're gagging for it you there's yeah you hit the nail on the head before to be honest you are out there to pull that trigger you've worked hard for it and and you want it it's all you want it is all you want you want the worst of humanity so that you You can be the monster that keeps the monsters at bay.
19:26You know, which is something that is a bit of a recurring theme throughout Snipers that, unfortunately, sometimes that monster comes back with you. And it did with me. I was a bit of a bastard for a while, but I didn't realise it was. But what was your first mission, Luke? First one. um it was we'd we'd been out uh on a patrol and we were with some afghan special forces guys and we were either side of the road they took this side and we took this side and there was a massive muddy field um probably it was about probably a mile square this huge field and it was coming over the radios that our interpreters were listening to taliban radio chat and they were sort of saying right wait till they get in the middle of this field we'll look nice and stuck and then we'll open up on them so i was thinking fucking hell and i instantly felt the pressure because and and those two other snipers with with the patrol at the time and we all felt this pressure of they're watching us and we don't know where they are we should fucking know where they are you know um and then once it all erupted it was a bit of a blessing to be honest because it It was hard walking through that mod.
20:39It was well hard. So as soon as it kicked off and became kinetic, that's when we all snapped in. And that was the first time that all of us snipers were together and we weren't able to shine. And it very quickly ended with three of us making a shot at the same time through a wall and taking out this guy. And it just ended everything, which was something that we started to realize happened a lot. once the enemy found out that there were snipers involved shit stopped we had almost the same power as an apache helicopter coming over and it became at the time this is 2009 through into 2010 there was a lot of enemy sniper activity as well which the following day after this happened we got right into um and we were the hunted ones which felt very uncomfortable to say the least uh that was mad it was uh turned down to be a hired rebel fighter so like you know that paid someone who was a sniper to come in and try and take us out and he did manage to take out a few british troops um which ended up with us you fell in love at first crunch and now the crispy chicken crunch wrap slider is back at taco bell but with a twist it's crispy all-white meat chicken nuggets inside a slider-sized crunch wrap but now you can enjoy them with the kick of hidden valley diablo ranch or try the tortilla chip coated nuggets on their own they're waiting for you the crispy chicken crunch wrap slider a brand new classic is back only at taco bell fx's american horror story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles.
22:29Light your candles, draw your pentagrams and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu.
22:45Getting woke up in the morning, stupid o 'clock, and being told there was a bunch of British troops that were stuck in the middle of nowhere and they'd been stuck there for a long time. They'd lost troops. They couldn't get ammunition, water, food. So we were to go. And the aim was for us four snipers to go and try and take out this one. And fuck it all. I mean, what goes now even thinking about it? It was hectic. We'd climbed. We'd go into their compound. There's two towers. And we'd climbed into these towers, me and one lad in the other and two in the other one. And I popped my head up. As soon as I popped my head up, we'd been there for two minutes.
23:21So bang, this round flew over my head. I'm like, fucking hell. That was a bit close, huh? Jesus. And we were used to this sort of stuff, you know. The amount of videos I've got of lads pissing themselves, laughing, getting shot at. I don't know what it is, but it's funny. So we did it. And then I've bent down and we've gone, right, how are we going to sort of do this? So the land in front of us looked like something out of a World War II movie. It was blown up buildings and sort of bits of vehicle. and like it'd obviously been a scene for the other law fighting so we'd not even managed to get our weapons up onto the top to have a look for our scope jet we're just sort of peeking up and trying to have a little look and then the lad next to me he peeked up and bang this round it was when a round's coming in you hear a sort of crack and a whistle and a thug but he hears this sound which is it's inches from your head you know and we were all that that's even closer of that so on the ground our commanders and the other lads are sort of dishing out water and ammunition and whatnot to these guys have been stranded there and they're kind of looking up what the fuck are we going to do here so someone got a helmet on a stick like seen in their films on you you know where they stuck it up which distracted them enough we thought where the other team of snipers popped their head up and then whack again now we don't know what they were that this guy was firing we never heard anything like it it was powerful and it managed to a Hesco Baskin is it's uh like two meter by two meter filled with gravel basket that all these compounds and fobs and stuff are made out of it gone through one of them through a tin of ammunition and through a railway sleeper and kept on going into the distances round and we're going fuck mate and it was even closer so we were like this he's not going to miss again this the next person that bottoms the red up there they're going to get the good news here so we need to do something so then it was decided that the the building we were in here there was another one over here about 100 meters away which sort of gives a bit of a better angle and then one at a time we had to go for a chicken run no no smoke grenades or anything it was just cigarettes getting passed down the line you'll go mate off we go bang and run for it while this sniper's trying to take us and he didn't get any of us luckily he touched wood um but the story ended quite shit with two apache helicopters coming and taking now and not us snipers which pissed us off got a never being up on it about that one it still annoys me today but uh it was just another sort of another day do you know what i mean the following day happened again the same sort of stuff and it went on and on and on until the point where the i don't know i suppose the civilized version of us started to get lost and we started becoming war dogs and and that's what we wanted we wanted a contact every day and if we didn't get it we were fucking pissed off like we were there for a reason we wanted to do as much as we could what was it like for your first kill was that because all your training that does it actually prepare you for doing the damage when you know you're signing up or is it a different feeling yeah not at all i don't know if anything could prepare you for it to be honest i think things like calling people or calling a person a target things like dehumanizing it and that does bring an element of a disconnect um but for me especially um i used to sort of go into what i'd call my bubble in the book which is all it'd be like a meditative state almost where i had to be calm because the slightest jitter or and you're gonna miss so if things are wrong you're breathing heavy you're not going to make that shot and you just inevitably you're or me i was the number one target if i have target would be what in my direction as soon as they saw a sniper rifle because it was important for them to you know try and take us out to the point where bounties were put on people's heads and and things like that but the first the first one i could really see was we'd gone into an area about four o 'clock in the morning and a few days before American Delta Special Forces had gone into this place and they took a hiding.
27:33A few of them had been killed, including the chopper pilot. And what we assumed was that they didn't have the right intel and that there was more Taliban there than what they were aware of. So it was our job to go and kick the Hornet's nest and find out how many there were. turned out it was hundreds of them um so as snipers were split into three different groups we all got into various choppers and uh it was like fucking hell as we landed on the target or approached the target it was you know the beginning of uh saving private ryan when the fucking back end of the boat's going down it was like that mate this chopper the back the tailgate went down and round stock went all over the place we're fucking banking dodging rpgs and I'm going, fuck it.
28:19This is real. This was the most action and the most adrenaline that I'd felt, to be fair. And then we all sort of jumped off. Very quickly dealt with the initial firefight, but we moved off into various compounds that were in the middle of like a labyrinth of 15-foot high walls with little alleyways and holes going through everywhere. So I've took up my position on this roof, which I ended up staying there for 13 hours, a distant bloody move off this roof. and I've seen this guy on a motorbike, and he's currently about 800 metres away. He's gone this way, he's come back, and he's gone this way again, but there was two guys on it.
28:57I kept doing it, and then I saw a minibus with a driver driving further away now. Just a driver, comes back full of blokes. Comes back again, only him. So I figured out very quickly they're dropping people off, and all the snipers were seeing the same thing all around us. Very quickly, we'd been surrounded by hundreds. So it was a case of, right, for the first time it felt like we're fighting for our lives this is this is going to be a bit of a tasty day um so i called down to the boss who's uh on the ground and said right i'm gonna let this guy on the bike know that i've fucking seen him and i know what he's doing so i'm gonna let off a uh warning shot just in front of his tire as i did a crescendo of shit kicked off everywhere just machine guns rpgs everything i thought fucking hell well done ted nice one but then i seen this guy run out from uh behind the building so about 650 700 meters away so you know a fair distance but for a sniper it's your your average or shooting range so i knew it was going to be all right and just as this guy sort of popped out from behind the trees got his ak-47 and it looked to me like he was aiming directly at me and I took it fucking personally and it pissed me off and then this is where it all changed for me then because I'd made it personal I then started to think of mates that had been killed and I started to hold this one young guy who was my age maybe a little bit younger so maybe in his late teens early 20s I started to hold him personally responsible and this fucking rage built up in me and it was the first time I I'd fired with anger and fucking hell.
30:43I knew from mentioning early on about 10 pence pinches, we could fucking put around wherever we wanted to. And I wanted to put it in his throat. So I fucking did. And the reaction that happened afterwards was something that stuck with me a long, long time. For years, I'd see this guy dropping his weapon and holding his fucking throat together. and sort of, he was a human being all of a sudden. He was no longer a target. He was some young lad that was dying. And what I figured out was he was calling out to his friend behind a different building, who then came out, let off a few shots, and I fucking got him.
31:19And then another one came, and I got him, and I got another one. And before long, I've got a fucking pile, and I'm going, fuck, hell, this is mad as fuck. This is mental. I was still calm. I was still calm and ready for more, but very soon I wasn't aware that the other snipers had been doing the same and we'd been fucking kicking ass. It turned out these hundreds of Taliban, there were no match for us and they very quickly retreated. We got back on choppers later that evening and as we've landed back in Bastion, the main camp there, I got off the chopper and his Land Rover's turned up and some female officers said, come with me Ted where are we going?
32:03she was like oh I'm going to introduce you to a reporter from the Telegraph I'm like right okay yeah they're going to interview you what are they interviewing me about? what a day? fuck me right okay I had no idea mate I was in a world of I don't even know what I don't know what so I'm sat there 45 minutes after taking the last life talking to a reporter I go, oh yeah, just don't mention casualties or helicopters. I'm going, okay, yeah, yeah, smashing. And I look back at this report. Jesus. You can see from what I'm saying that I'd already started to lose my mind. I'd already started to become this fucking animal that...
32:44You fell in love at first crunch. And now the crispy chicken crunch wrap slider is back at Taco Bell. But with a twist, it's crispy all white meat chicken nuggets inside a slider sized crunch wrap. But now you can enjoy them with the kick of Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch. Or try the tortilla chip-coated nuggets on their own. They're waiting for you. The Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider, a brand new classic, is back. Only at Taco Bell. FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment. With the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles. light your candles draw your pentagrams and prepare for a supreme surprise FX's American Horror Story 13 now streaming on Hulu that thrived on killing which later became an addiction which was a very very fucking scary time very scary but in that job was a very useful one to have yeah I think it's important to disconnect though because as soon as you start giving feelings and emotions and overthinking it the normal natural human mind doesn't want to harm anybody naturally instantly yeah you're born with goodness yeah you know so i think to desensitize yourself it's important same as doctors nurses it's all different jobs but you kind of not to show emotion and grow a connection because as soon as you do that the mind goes yeah i'll use seeing that straight away after all the killings straight straight away after after that day in particular um i started to i don't know why i started it was a mixture of thinking because i i could see their faces so well and i could see this young lad i started to think these things of fucking poor fucker he must have been terrified and the guys who were running out there and watching everyone that comes near this earlier get killed they must have been terrified and their families are going to be devastated and these are these are people who've been given a narrative or live like live a certain lifestyle that's led them to this point just as i have and it was a case of it's either me or them and for a long time that sufficed but it very quickly became it wasn't me or them i was a lot better than what they were and the reality was they probably weren't unless they got a very lucky shot they weren't going to get me and I started to feel bad then about what I'd done almost like stealing from a kid.
35:22They had no chance but I had to keep that inside and I had to keep this space even though I knew it was happening. I started writing poems and I've always been a creative person so I've always written music, drawn, you know all these sort of things and it started to come out in these little notebooks I was hiding from everyone but my mind was unraveling it and I was I was becoming fucking dangerous. But again, it was handy. And then these days kept coming, and kills kept coming, and contacts kept coming all the way until probably about three quarters of the way of the tour, where I ended up getting medically evacuated back to Camp Bastian because I was a fucking man possessed.
36:08I had a constant thousand-yard stare, and I didn't give a fuck. Nothing had my attention until it was pull-out trigger time. I didn't give a fuck about anything. I started to not give a fuck about the hearts and minds bit, which is why I was there in the first place. There's why. I wanted to help. And then this fucking thing had took over, which is another massively important reason why snipers need to be in teams. Because you can share that load. I don't know if a spotter is seeing the same things as you. You can decompress together, whereas on your own, you can't. And I couldn't share these.
36:48I was scared to share what my thoughts were because at the time, I'd never heard of PTSD. I'd never heard the term mental health or anything at then. I just knew that if you start talking like that, your career is at an end. So keep your mouth shut and keep going. You know, I wanted to have a good career in the military and I wanted to sort of elevate. you know i had plans special forces plans that was my ultimate dream so keep your mouth shut and you might get your dream fucking hell it snowballed massively um well the second to last contact before i got took off the ground was uh when i made three shots at a mile away which is fucking i'm proud i'm proud of that because that is it it was a goal i wanted to achieve was you making a shot at you know when you see shooter and stuff and there's only a handful of people in the world that can make a shot like that i was like yeah me me but i did that it turned out one of them was a celibane commander which again kicked up a hornet's nest that ended up with a lot of stuff going on in the area um which i felt bad for because then i got withdrew from the front lines and left the lads there left my mates to deal with it ended up within a week of me coming back to bastion and being told by a psychiatric nurse that you're all right you might have you know you're a bit overtired which was the main thing go and have a couple of couple of weeks rest go and work in the stores and you'll be all right you'll be fine then fucking one of my best mates got blown up another one of the lads from the regiments got killed all the casualties kept coming in and that made me feel like dog shit then because I'd let everyone down my mental health would let me down I'd let everyone down and then I just gave myself the hardest of times mate I was so close to crying you know they've been so frustrated that you just cry I just kept doing it but I wouldn't cry in front of anyone so it just kept boiling up inside of me until there was about 10 days left on the tour and uh one of the commanders like this this is shit but i need a small team to go out and do a job everyone else is coming back in i was like fucking yeah me and i was allowed back out on the condition that i didn't take my sniper rifle and i thought that's fucking this is bullshit but i'm glad they did because i had a fucking i had spent that 10 days hunting without a shadow of a doubt and then that 10 days came to an end with a couple of taliban digging in an IED on the road where we were, which was meant for us on a predator drone myself.
39:26Turned him into pink mist. Two days later, I'm in my local pub. Fucking stark ballot naked. Stunning the table. Trying to act normal. My mum and dad here, all my friends, aunties and uncles. I'm fucking drinking blue wickets. We shot a vodka in. It's fucking anything I can get my hand on. And I thought that was normal. I thought, yeah, well done, Ted. You're doing a fucking great job of being normal here, mate. were you doing it yourself then with the snipers out and daily yourself yeah yeah always on always yeah yeah so it was a lot how long would you go hunting for how long would you be in the same position for um it it sort of depend on what was happening at the time so that was that 13 hour contact that was probably the longest i ever stayed in one in one position constantly doing something the rest of the time it would be with our forward operating bases and we would then that these would be on the on like the very front lines of the green zone where we were on the Taliban's front doors and it was a constant battle of pushing them backwards and backwards and backwards and so it became quite the norm then for me to stay and not go on patrols because I could see everything so I was quite lucky in that way because being on a foot patrol as a sniper is fucking daunting you've got this massive weapon i might sidearm you know you might have a hat like a 9-0 pistol or something but it's a scary feeling walking through in like close confined areas where anything could happen at any moment and you can only shoot far away you're sort of in this world of fucking hell you've got me here which i knew they did because they had you know under times beforehand there'd be stuff going on behind me and i had to be in the zone looking down my scope and again be calm as fuck to be able to do what what i had to do so there's a lot of trust there what rifle did you use i had a 338 so you sort of you got a 50 cow and then the next one down basically so he's talking rounds about this big you could you could if you missed someone close enough it probably ripped the skin off your body you know these weapons these uh snipers were designed for shooting engine blocks they were designed for being in a helicopter and shooting an engine block to stop a car so there was no worries about you know you didn't have to shoot anyone twice that's by the way how far can they go how far can you actually shoot with those so it on the pamphlet i'll tell you 1500 meters as harassing fire which means sort of in and around the area um but that was mainly down to the abilities of the scope so for instance those shots that i made from a mile away i wasn't actually looking at the targets i was sort of look so that's where they are and then i'd be up in the air and do what a lot of people call lobbing it in so being and it lands on top um In the book, I talk about this in particular day with the mile shots and just how pulling the trigger and being that far away that they didn't know.
42:27They didn't know the trigger had been pulled until it was too late. And especially that day, the sort of the animal in me devised a plan where these three guys, the commander in the middle, were walking away from just attacking my mates down the road. And they very nearly got some of them. I designed this plan to take out the rear bloke at the patrol, which I knew being far enough away, like I just said they wouldn't have heard the crack until it was too late and it worked perfectly the two front guys, well the front and centre guy turned around to see one of the backs dead, the commander turned around to the one at the front next minute he's dead, the commander's on his own he gave it legs and the rest was history but it was a very strange strange feeling to be that far away i'm completely out of a contact i'm actually pulling the trigger as a sniper that was that was probably the biggest sniper day that i had where or i think it was like 11 calculations i had to make in the end to to get this round over to where they needed to be what's the most you killed in one day five you fell in love at first crunch and now the crispy chicken crunch wrap slider is back at taco bell but with a twist It's crispy all-white meat chicken nuggets inside a slider-sized crunch wrap.
43:47But now you can enjoy them with the kick of Hidden Valley Diablo Ranch. Or try the tortilla chip-coated nuggets on their own. They're waiting for you. The Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider, a brand new classic, is back. Only at Taco Bell. FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment. with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an all-star cast reprising fan-favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX's American Horror Story 13. Now streaming on Hulu.
44:32I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other. FX is the bear. The final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+. See, when you become so good at your craft, do you not get paranoid that somebody's just as good and they'll compromise your position and you could get one in a nut. Absolutely, yeah. Especially with the hired gun that I talk about in the book. We knew he was good because of how he was acting. We didn't see him, for starters.
45:21We did not see him. All we knew was that if you probably had it for more than a millisecond, he was going to get you. Could they hire people from Britain or America or certain other places who are highly trained to kill for them? I'd never heard of that, no. It was a lot of Chechnyans at the time. that was the sort of that was going around on the nod vine of who it was um i don't know to be honest i think that's a bit above my pay grade um very very likely i imagine i imagine there's people out there who would do it like i know there's people from britain that were arrested over there with you know legionite tattoos and things like that so they were there which again I fucking fed into my PTSD massively where I never felt safe when I came up.
46:04I constantly felt under threat. Paranoid? Very. Very. Yeah. Paranoid and violent. The slightest wrong look to me once I'd come back was just a fucking instigate because it's go time. What the fuck are you looking at? Who are you? Why are you looking at me? What the fuck? Because a lot of people do go rogue you know when they're doing so much killing in certain countries did you ever feel that there could have been a point where you just went on a killing spree here or was that just a bit too far-fetched? Yeah where you completely lose your mind and you're not in control No I think because because of who I am at my court and this leads into something I talked about in the book called the moral injury which I was diagnosed which again I'd never heard of you know you were saying you're born with good in you I was a good guy and I am again now which I'm very fucking happy about like I'm back to normal I'm Ted you know I'm not Ted the sniper anymore so much I've separated myself from that but there was this narrative in my head the internal monologue was these people don't know who I am I could do this I could do that never would have but knowing that I had the ability to do these things.
47:28And then things, you know, like getting job offers and things in like private security sectors and stuff like that. That was always tempting. But I knew that would have been it. That would have been the end of me. I think that would have been how I died. Because it was so tempting. And the money is so tempting. And it was an opportunity. It would have been an opportunity to pull that trigger again. And probably with not as much scrutiny. so it was a very dangerous offer but one I had to refuse So it was more about the killing fuck the money innit but I think once you get to that level of violence that's the ultimate you know I think it's to how do you replace that Craig Harrison who's a good friend Sniper done amazing work and he really battles he's still doing his thing but yeah I'm sitting down a couple of weeks great guy but he was the same he felt more at peace killing in the war zone than he did actual in peace so it's hard to then how do you then separate real life from being a sniper where you're just getting off for jobs you don't really want them when i just want to kill again yeah it must do some adrenaline it yeah jumping up and down in the dump after it it must yeah it must be the ultimate feeling you know of what's going on it must take you to the depths of hell it does you you experience extremes the most extremes you know like i've jumped out of planes and stuff and it's nothing nothing compared to that.
48:50I don't think no drug or activity or anything could ever compare to that. Not necessarily saying it was a good thing and something that I enjoyed, but the, the satisfaction of it and the knowing that fucking hell, I've read stories or seen films about these snipers. And then the realization of going, fucking hell, yeah, I'm one of them now. And it quickly led to a fucking, I don't know, a bit of an ego thing, to be honest, where I thought I was the bollocks and I thought I was invincible. But all I wanted to do was get back there. I would often be crying my fucking eyes out after being home through frustration and sadness that I wouldn't be going back until the following year, which isn't a long time, but it was too far away for me.
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49:43I started looking at transferring to different regiments that were about to deploy there and doing all this stuff because I was happy there. And back home, I was miserable. I was sad and I was fucking useless. I felt like a world-class footballer who's had an injury and then you're nothing. You know, it was that hero to zero feeling. We came home, we'd have like cities with fucking thousands of people on the side of the roads cheering as we marched through. and the British public was very on side and that fed into it. That was like, fucking hell, I need to do this. There's a war that needs to be won and finished and done with.
50:21And I'm very capable of fucking helping that happen. And yeah, just like, yeah, just like Greg, it was definitely something that I was more happier. Is that difficult being a hero and being around your comrades who know what you're about, who know you're an expertise of what you do to then coming home, nobody really knows you and you're thinking, you don't know how dangerous I am. where somebody's giving you a slight look because looks can be deceiving. You're a trained killer at the end of the day, and you're thinking, listen, I could fucking end you like that. Is that trying to separate the trained killer to the normal civilian?
50:56Yeah, that was a big, big struggle for me. Violence became a fucking weekly occurrence, and trying to numb myself with alcohol, and then obviously being a pissed-up fucking idiot looking for violence. I'd go to the roughest pubs and look for the angriest, stardust looking cunt because I wanted a kicking and there'd be times where I'd fight back and there'd be times where I wouldn't and I just wanted to fucking feel something but the the moral injury side of things which is what I you know when you're young you very quickly decide what's right and wrong it was wrong on a core level inside I knew what I'd done was wrong I'd taken loads of lives and fucking enjoyed it and I really had to wrestle with my consciousness to to get through that and it took many many years because every time I've put like say a funny look or even an alpha male sort of figure walking into a room you would fucking set me off where you've got no idea you have no idea and sometimes I would enjoy that sometimes I would hate it because I was scared that someone would upset me and that guy had fucking come out again and that guy on civvy street doesn't that's not gonna fucking end well that's gonna end in me in jail and or someone hurt and that petrified me i don't i never ever ever want to throw a punch again in my life i never want to be a part of anything violent or angry i avoid things like the news because it fucking pisses me off and i can't afford to get pissed off life's too short and I'm so grateful that I'm here.
52:35I attempted suicide multiple occasions after this, but I just couldn't fucking live with, one, a tedious life that wasn't war. Two, on the flip side of that coin, I couldn't fucking handle what I'd done. I couldn't, I just kept thinking about the people I killed, families, and fucking how shit that must have been, knowing how shit it is for us, having friends been killed, and knowing their parents, and, you know, these sort of things. and I just give myself the hardest of times, hardest of times. I was in a fucking nut house for three months and with nothing to do except for see other people who seemed to me like in a way worse condition.
53:15I didn't belong there. I didn't deserve the help. Thank fuck that the NHS was full of incredible nurses that cast all that, cast everything I said to one side about me being horrible and who it was. they just saw, they saw who I was inside, and they nurtured me, literally 24-7 nurtured me back to a point where I could speak again, I was fucking seeing the young lad that I shot in the throat, I was seeing him in the fucking streets, you know, he wasn't there, and I'd turn my head and he'd be there, he was in my nightmares, he was ripping me from my bed every single night, where I'd have these nightmares, where his mouth would be stitched shut, and his eyes would be stitched shut, and this fucking gaping hole in his neck that drove me mad with sadness which is a horrible fucking horrible feeling of being so sad that you just don't know what to do which ended up with me ended i think i learned about 14 or 15 tablets a day to just keep me in a sedated state where i wasn't violent and i wasn't trying to fucking do something stupid how long were your sleeper for it was fucking very short mate it was um i become did the course a few months later deployed on that tour that tour was six months come back and as soon as i was back it was over um i'd i realized it was over when my company went into the armories to get all the weapons and clean them all after the tour get all the shit off them and i've not touched my sniper rifle since and on my sniper rifle i've drawn skull and crossbones with the distances for every kill and which had become a bit of a talking point around camp bastion people had heard of it and seen it and i'm like yeah that's me mate yeah fucking like a celebrity bastard
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56:36But as soon as I saw that, I lifted my weapon up and I started throwing up. I fucking dropped on my knees. I couldn't see. And my eyes just went black. It's ringing in my ears. I could smell dust. And what was happening? I was having a flashback for the first ever time. I didn't know what had happened. I thought I was dying. I had no idea what was going on. And everyone around me was like, fucking hell, bro. You all right? I was like, yeah, yeah. So, mate, I just fucking had a few too many drinks. Just cast it off. Because I knew if I say anything, it's the end of my career. a couple of weeks later I had an incident at home I was living with my parents and a very quick version I fucking flew across the table in a blackout rage and ended up fighting with my dad on the floor and I come around and realised what I was doing and I was disgusted in myself and that was the changing point then because I thought right not too asked about filling in people I don't know alright it's not very nice but I don't know yet and fucking anyone that watches this I'm very very fucking sorry I'm sorry if I was a dickhead to these people I hope that they can forgive me I was going through some shit which is a big lesson I've learned your problem is your fucking problem not anyone else's and it should never have been but once this happened I then spoke up got back, spoke to the Toon Sergeant and said look, this is what's been going on I think I need some help and that took a lot took a lot it was basically saying yeah I'm going to have to face the fact this is going to be in end of my career but i can't go on i can't can't keep doing this um within an hour i was in front of a psychiatric nurse um who couldn't diagnose me but said yeah i think you've got post-traumatic stress disorder um you're probably going to get therapy some medication and there was no talk about like getting military uh medical discharge or anything like that um it was very much sort of fighting one step at a time um the system failed me then um which is quite shit to say but the medical the military medical staff at the time i think there was an influx from the afghan conflict and they were learning from pamphlets that were fucking older than i was and and the people who were trying to help people like myself hadn't been to these places they'd not been shot at they'd not they'd not experienced this stuff and they just fucking infuriated me and i couldn't open up and you know to be in therapy you have to be honest you have to be completely bluntly honest and i couldn't do it i didn't for many reasons but one was i didn't want this person going home tonight sitting in front of the telly and thinking fucking hell about the thing that i just told them about all my thoughts that were going on, you know, especially about my nightmares.
59:25I had nightmares about fucking killing everyone I knew. And even though what you're talking about then about was there potential I could do these things? No, but it was definitely running around in my consciousness somewhere. How many kills did you have on your gun? How many did you put on your gun? On there, there was 12. They were the ones that I was happy to confirm. I believe it's more than that. I'm not sure I am anymore. But one day, is that sniper's enough for you to lose your mind? Yeah. You know? And to be the hero and to be around the brothers to doing the same job where you don't question it because you're in that bubble like you says, but when you come out that bubble, you've got gangsters here and maybe slash someone or hit someone with a bottle and you're thinking, I've killed people.
1:00:11Yeah. I could end your life. So you can't separate reality from war because it's all the same. That bubble can eventually pop even just a little hole in it to let some air in yeah it's enough for the the negativity and the conscience because like i say anybody i know it's been a war struggle anybody i know it does it's totally it's not this totally different but porn or who do drugs or who do bad we know what we're doing is wrong yeah but in our mind we try and make things out that it's okay you know we try and justify yeah which is important but then again we can't like i would never slate any service men or anybody whose grandparents thought it was.
1:00:51I loved them to bits. Obviously, now we've got things where we can question things. We've got social media that maybe doesn't paint a certain picture that we believed in, that we think we were doing the right thing. So it can be difficult to be patriotic. Fight for your country is the best thing ever. But then when you come back, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, what happened there? You start questioning it. Are they bad dictators? Look at the damage Britain's caused, America. Why are we fighting these people? Are they just protecting themselves? hopefully you must have all these unanswered questions god yeah constantly that was a big one i didn't know what the fuck we were i knew why i was there and i knew why the lads were there and it became a thing right we went we weren't fighting a war for the government it we you know we signed up and we went there because that was our orders but i was fighting for him and he was fighting for me you know the guys next to you that's that's why we fought so hard because we didn't want to fucking come home with any of us in a box but you know unfortunately that that did happen what was it like losing friends fucking shit mate especially when you know those that sort of line of of thinking comes through like what was it for why why are we doing that it's that still don't really know don't think anyone will ever know the actual definite you know definite truth I'm not sure but it felt like a waste and then seeing lads who've you know had catastrophic life-changing injuries oh fucking hell man I remember seeing like coming home and one of the lads had lost two of his legs and his eyesight and half his hand and he was he was in a real bad way mate and oh fucking hell this this made me cry so much I remember sitting on his bed feeding him with a spoon i'm just sort of thinking why am i even 19 and i was like why is this why why have done this and that's when so as soon as i started questioning why it was like was it worth it was it fucking this was it that and then you know when we find out that taliban have taken over control again took all this land back the people that we know have fucking died for that puts you in a very sticky position of what a fucking waste of time or you can look at us we did our best we did it while it was there it was safe while we were there there's just so many so many avenues you can go down thinking i don't think i've ever spoken to any ex-squads who who have the answers for that really i'm not sure you've interviewed plenty of them i'm sure you've got you can put a lot of it into context there's so many questions unanswered but at that moment you're doing the right thing you're being patriotic you want to save your own people that's the best thing you can ever do like i say i don't want wars i don't want violets but it doesn't stop them happening yeah and like i say i've got many brothers who have fought in wars who've killed people who've died who've been suicidal i still love them that was the decisions they made there was decisions i used to just sniff gear and drink alcohol when i thought it was normal i don't agree with it now yeah but there's just certain things in life that lead you down those paths and at those moments it's not a bad thing to say not and fight for your country no it's just obviously when you do all the damage and nothing really changes and the government don't really give a fuck about you yeah majority of veterans who are homeless on the homeless are veterans where's their help that makes me angry that's our brothers and sisters they're willing to die for you give you a secure place but yet nobody fights for them and yeah there's like i said you can just keep spinning around in that yeah you can't really start being on it you're gonna get the the sweet spot to make you feel better yeah no there isn't there isn't one and what i ended up doing was sort of just putting things into context why i did that why i did this you know when you're living on half-time rations because choppers can't come and get enough water to you or you know you've you're living on three four hours sleep a night it's fucking it's easy to see why you know you can sort of lose your mind and become this callous fucking i keep saying the word animal but it's the only it's just it's how we were it's how we had to be because if you weren't you're fucking you're gonna die you're gonna die you're in a war zone it's very hard to sort of be there'd be times where you'd just be playing cards with the lads or something and for a minute you're just you and the you and the mates having a moment you know and then it would kick on you.
1:05:23Oh, fucking hell, yeah. Fuck me. You sort of forget where you are for a minute and then you're back into it. And then after a while, you stop forgetting and you can't come down from that 100. You're living on 99 constantly. And I was at 99 for years, years. I'd think cars were following me. Fucking hell, I have no idea. The weirdest things have sort of... I'd then have to get away and I'd fucking zipping through places and making sure that if I was behind a car that was at traffic lights I'd leave space and my curtains would be closed all the time in the house and doing all these certain things that became really deconstructive to be honest they were they were they were learnt behaviours that kept my PTSD alive and it wasn't until I sort of went and traveled the world and put myself completely out of my comfort zone that I was able to actually let this kind of thing go with a lot of therapy.
1:06:22I was in therapy once a week for three years. I had a spiritual mentor as well, which was some, this was all new stuff to me. And that really helped a lot of meditation and sort of alternative methods, like cannabis, for instance. I get it prescribed now. A lot of people have got funny views on it. Me personally, The first time I smoked it, that was the first night I didn't have a nightmare. And I tried it the second night, didn't have a nightmare. I'd find myself fucking furious. And I'd fucking smoke cannabis and it'd stop. It would all sort of go away, which then led me into sort of things like microdosing, psilocybin, mushrooms and DMT, which DMT was a world changer for me.
1:07:05That was a big, big eye opener. And it allowed me to sort of forgive myself a lot. I felt a lot of forgiveness, which I talk about this story completely in the book. It's a funny one. What's the worst thing that sticks out in your mind? What's the worst thing you've seen?
1:07:26I think... It's hard on that. I think it was a young lad that shot in the throat. I think because I meant to shoot him in the throat. It was like... When you're a kid and you kick a football and you go, fuck, that's going to hit that glass, it's going to smash. And then you go, oh, fuck. it felt like that it felt like oh fuck me whoa and then i was fixated on just watching him die and then for years all day every day all i could see was this fucking guy dying over and over and over again and holding his hand down and just his last moments on earth were he was petrified you know he was a young lad and i felt really bad for that why the neck why not the head i thought they went for the head because i've seen the charlie cook fucking my fistio then when he get shot in the throat is that a proper target then for snipers it wasn't a thing no it was so being being i found out we all found out that being a sniper was a very creative job um at all elements of it and for me the shot in the throat this is hard to say i wanted him to suffer because at the time i was holding that one guy personally responsible for the death of my fans, which was the demise of me.
1:08:41It was the end of it. Whether I'd just gone for a headshot probably would have been different, to be honest, because those few seconds afterwards, they were fucking horrific. They were, yeah, that was the worst thing I've ever fucking seen in my life. So do you think you're suffering for that more by making him suffer? Yeah, big time. I regretted it. I regretted it, I wish. Yeah, I wish I didn't do it. I do wish I didn't do it, but on the other hand, I had to do it because he was fucking trying to kill me. That's it, brother. Like I said, I don't have the answers for you and I've certainly never been there, but you were doing the right thing in your mind at that time.
1:09:21Yeah. You know, you both are signing up to do that. Yeah. Yeah, no issues with it. So, like I say, thank you for your service, for what you've done. Again, I don't want wars. I don't want them, but certain media and certain outlets can portray us that we need to do it. We need to do it. That's just the way the world does. When was the first time you tried to kill yourself? It was 2012. It was cold and rainy and fucking miserable in North Wales. And it all just got too much.
1:09:58This film reel kept playing over and over and over in my head of all the shots. it was sort of like a fucking highlight reel of bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, one after the other, just going over and over and over, and it wouldn't fucking stop. And then the anger and the sadness just became too much, to the point where I had this fucking doctor who told me that your PTSD is going to be for life, you're going to have to learn to live with your symptoms, and you know, you'll be able to get by. I thought, fuck that, I'm not, bullshit and if anyone's heard that tell them to fuck off because it's not true it goes i now live a ptsd free life it's gone it's completely gone um but i'll come into that but i kept hearing this thing and thinking i'm not being like this forever i'm like fuck like it's a matter of time until i do something stupid and i end up in prison or i fucking hurt someone really badly or you know i lose everybody around me because everyone had to be on eggshells around me and i hated that I really hated that.
1:11:00And I thought, the best thing I can do right now is end it. I can kill myself. And yes, everyone will be sad. But a few years' time, they'll, you know, move on. But they won't have to fucking be scared of what I'm going to do. Or, you know, my parents, I was still living with my parents at this time. And, you know, they would come home and my dad would check on me in the morning. And fucking all the time, I'd wake up with my face stuck to the pillow, covered in cuts and bruises. and oh I've done it again I've fucking done it again and there'd be bottles of whiskey all over the floor and it was a fucking shit life I hated every day I hated myself I hated my life I hated what I'd done so picked up the car keys in my bedroom went into my kit bag I always used to have this fucking bug out bag on a bed loads of the blokes you didn't need to do the same thing there's this fucking bag and I've got rid of it because my wife was like fucking get rid of that you're not going anywhere you pick it's all not right so years a few years ago i got rid of it but i went in my bag and i got my army issued knife and i was like right yeah this is it i went downstairs and mum and dad were watching the telly i was like right guys i'm just gonna pop out for a little bit a little smile on my face love you both loads see in a bit i got in the car and i knew where i was going went to this little quiet spot just on the edge of the village i live like this just in in front of this church and the castle there and nice river in front it's beautiful spot for the first time i realized how beautiful this little village was i'd never noticed it before I sat there and I had the same fucking songs playing.
1:12:27Johnny Cash, Hurt. I was on repeat constantly. There was a band called The National. It was in a Tom Hardy film, The Warrior. You know where he's fighting his brother in the cage fighting? There's a song on there. It's called About Today. These two songs. Every time they played, I was getting sadder and sadder and trying to fucking get myself to actually do it. And I just thought, what the fuck are you doing, mate? You're wasting time. Bang. And I got the knife straight into the wrist and I started going. and I was crying my eyes out and I just kept saying, fucking sorry, mate. I'm so fucking sorry.
1:13:00And I was so sorry. I didn't want to fucking die. And as this blood was pissing out all over me, I was thinking, I'm fucked up here. I don't want to die. Fuck no. And a mate of mine, years later, gave me a good analogy. He was like, did you want to press pause or press stop? You know, and I was like, I just want to fucking press pause, mate. I didn't want to turn it all off. But I had no other option. it was the master switch was the only thing I was in control of and it and it became a very dangerous temptation and luckily I'd I'd started to bleed out quite a bit but I got on the phone and rung one of the mates and I was like mate I've done something very stupid where are you and she's like I'm at home come around fucking not bad so uh I went around you know she didn't know what I'd done I said right I need I need loads of sugary cups of tea and some bandages and I bandaged myself up and I managed to fall asleep in the living room um she caught me later that night they were trying to sneak out and do it like finish the job but the very next day i had an appointment in donnington which was a two-hour drive away from me i used to do it every week on my own medicated up to fuck it was fucking ridiculous but i was there and i tried my best to hide these bandages under my jumper sleeve and the docs seen it and then from there it was like right for your own good we're gonna have to section you and that was it then i got sent off to peterborough fucking other side of the country um very quickly spoke to my parents on the phone said look i'm i'm getting sent away we thought this was going to happen anyway i packed the bag ready uh and then and that was me mate three months of
1:14:37three months of her of not just my own but seeing other people hurt and it was a very very sad thing to see like seeing people had loads of people that killed like trying to kill themselves and fucking cut bits of themselves off and oh some nasty stuff and i just thought fucking hell man i don't belong here i want to die and i still want to die until nurses and doctors and psychiatric teams sort of got me to a point where i didn't want to die anymore they literally had to check on me every 15 minutes to make sure i hadn't fucking tried to make stupid because i said which yeah i planned it i planned it and they put me in this room so those rooms do work you can't hurt yourself in them you can't do it but it made me sort of yeah sad but one day about three or four weeks in maybe one of the nurses was like dad do you want to go into town just just me and you we'll we'll go and i was like i'm so grateful for him for for offering so we got a bus went into town I bought a guitar oh that was my saving grace that was it I started writing all these songs that was like therapy to myself and songs that I still listen to back like today every now and then if I have a funny day I can look back and go you were in a terrible state there and right now I'm a different human being I am positivity I that's I have to be positive because I've been into the, like you said before, the depths of hell, mate.
1:16:07I've had the shittest time. So I appreciate every day now. I appreciate it. Like this just coming here and you saying like, yeah, you're like, get your own. You see me jumping around the house, mate. Oh my God. I couldn't believe it. And now this book's coming out and I'm just, I can't believe it. It feels like everything was worth it because this book's going to help people that were in my position. And I found that when I tried to help people in the past, I had the detriment of effect on me. it would it would pull me in so i couldn't really do it anymore which i want to do i want to help people and i want hopefully people will listen to this and go right fucking hell from the from this brief sort of chat that we've had that if they're in a town like you don't have to be a fucking sniper to be having a shit time that was a mega thing that i realized people would always go oh it's nothing compared to you i'm like it's not a competition if you're having a bad time you feel bad there's there's no point system stuff but there is there is ways that you can get that but the one thing is positivity you've got to wake up and be positive yeah it's a lot of people will be rooting for you you can tell you're a good guy you can tell you've got a lot of listen you you're a war hero no matter what you're a hero for such a thing you know for what you've done so you can't take that away because you've done what you've done at that time and a lot of people will be supporting you like i say it's when because you've done the worst of the worst as well you sometimes compare it you've only been maybe punched or knocked down why are you struggling with ptsd but everybody handles life differently you know obviously you know your mind was slipping you know what you've done and you knew that you needed help you wanted to take your life but when was the when did the penny drop when you realized i need to really work at this here to make changes it was it was when me and my wife first got together um i'd come back from years of traveling abroad and like living in doing the year in australia and you know doing the circuit as you do and i thought i was okay i thought i was just a bit sad and i was doing all these amazing things but it was still there i came home um me and my wife we got together and i very quickly realized that fucking hell, this hasn't gone anywhere.
1:18:20I've just hidden it with distractions and alcohol and blaming things like, oh, fucking Sonny punched him and fuck, I was pissed. Or, you know, blaming him on that sort of shit. And I wanted to change, not, I wanted to change for me because I wanted my life back, but I also, I could see the influence with a bit of hindsight now. I could see the influence I was having on the people around me and I love my life to bits and I wanted to be the person I know I am and the person I am today. I wanted to be that for her. And that sort of made me go, right, I'm going to get back into therapy, which was like a 12-month waiting list.
1:18:57This NHS Veterans Wales, it's called. They are such an underfunded godsend. They're saving lives and they're doing it in like spare rooms, spare office rooms of hospitals and stuff, you know, the life-changing people. But that 12 months, that's when I started to get into the sort of spirituality side of things and meditation and that mindfulness sort of mindset I suppose of just being grateful and it took a long time and it stuck and meditation I've been meditating for years but it was the first time I really took like took it serious and did it with a bit of an intent uh so I got a lot of help with that there's a lady from Austria of all places, I met her online and she offered her help and every day we would have these phone calls and she was amazing, absolutely amazing.
1:19:52She understood that compassion was what I needed. I didn't need fucking man up or you'll be all right or, you know, I didn't need these things or one that would wind me up was, well, it was you or them, wasn't it? And it fucking pissed me off at the time because I'd be like, well, no, it wasn't because one, it fucking cost over a million pounds to train me. didn't cuss tads if i can say them they had no chance and it started to make me turn in on myself a little bit more until i started doing these things like i've heard like the inner child yeah that kind of thing fucking what a what an experience what having a meditation with that sort of thing in mind and forgiveness meditations i'd meditate and sort of just put it out into the ether that like i'm not delusional no no but i do these these things that that i put put it out that the people I'd killed I'd apologized to them and I genuinely genuinely meant it um and this one day I was meditating and just all this forgiveness like washed over me and it just felt weird it was I don't know what it was I don't know what happened but the first time I thought I've made moves here I'm no longer on that bottom rung of the ladder I've I've elevated myself to a point where I can actually get a bit of control of this and soon as I did that it changed that's when I started microdosing psilocybin i did it only did it for a few months but fucking hell what a difference you know and people have their opinions on these things but people have been doing it for thousands of years you know all this sort of stuff and like ayahuasca and dmt and stuff when i did that fucking hell i'm not gonna ask you if you've done it you have done it oh there you go then fair one so you get it yeah yeah of course it's uh because as humans we're always searching we always want answers every single human we deflect it through our work ethic or being a better mum or whatever we put that in there we're always trying to figure it out when really sometimes life's not to be figured out as well just getting on with it but when you go through different levels but you were a man who was willing to kill willing to die for his country do you feel as if the system supported you when you come back or have they failed you oh that's hard the NHS yes saved me one guy in particular um he'll talk about a lot in the book he doesn't know i'm doing this he doesn't know a book exists i don't know if he'll ever hear about this but one guy in particular my therapist he he changed my life everything else was i felt like a hindrance i felt like i didn't want to get in touch with the army because i got medically discharged so i was on the scrap heap to them and you know the big green machine is going to keep moving forward whether you're on it or not it's going forward and very quickly they were off on the next tour and I'm still fucking out of my mind and lads are dying again so I felt like I couldn't get in touch with anyone because of either they thought I was weak before I was playing on it to try and just get out of the army or try and get like a payout or you know one of those sort of things or I didn't want to bring their mental health down so the system i do believe has fucking let me down a bit i'm not pissed off about it anymore i was there's just not like a 12 month waiting list for instance if i if that happened when i was at my worst i'd have been dead definitely there's no way i'd have been allowed to last 12 months no fucking way and that like there's a lad from the regiment who only a few weeks ago has killed himself you know and it's still happening it's happening fucking regularly it's a few years ago i've had a thing like six i'm sure it was six british soldiers had done themselves in in a week and that was the point where i started to write this book and go fuck this isn't right this what what is going on i don't know whether it's fear of or at the time i don't know how much things have changed in the military now but i don't know whether it's fear of don't talk about it don't talk about it don't talk about it it'll be all right just shut up have a drink from crack on and you know when in in the military drinking and anger and violence are fucking encouraged.
1:23:59It's a lifestyle. It's very easy to go undetected when you've got problems. There was blokes who were alcoholics that kept in the morning going parades and everyone would be fine. Everyone knew, but it was like, don't say anything, don't be fine. Don't crack on. He didn't. He didn't. It just seems too blasé that a veteran or a serving soldier can kill themselves and there'll be a little thing in the paper and then nothing really gets done about it this should be in government regularly this needs to be fucking spoke about because these suits that sent us over there to do their bidding they fucking not owe us but i treat us at least like fucking human beings not just a veteran who is going through some struggles and oh we'll put a little bit of fun towards that and then and that'll do it fuck no, something massive needs to happen.
1:24:54Otherwise, you're going to have an epidemic on your bloody hands of fucking suicidal squabbies. And, like, I was at a funeral two days ago of another one of the blokes from the regiment. And the general consensus was the young lads need to hear these stories. They need to be aware of it, and they need to... I'm not sure, again, how it's dealt with, but they need to be aware of how you can protect yourself. And if you become vulnerable or you start losing your way, how you get it back. And I think there's just massive conversations that need to be had, which I intend very much on doing. So I'll be doing a tour around Waterstones bookstores and army camps around Britain, doing this talk of how you can fucking look after yourself or how you can come back from the brink, you know and the idea that there is light at the end of the tunnel it isn't forever so fuck those guys why do you think you're still here fucking hell do you question it and think about if you did danger leave how would it affected your parents it would have ruined so many people if i did ruined so many people it would have wouldn't have been right all the music that i've done there's so much music that i've made with area of bands and stuff that wouldn't be there and like just yesterday i was listening to it all and just go fucking hell i'm so grateful for these opportunities so i don't really i don't really ever think oh maybe if i wasn't here but i do think about maybe if i didn't get help how things would have been um and yeah they've probably been dead to be honest probably i was too sad but another story in the book why am i still here i went to jump off a cliff first that was the first one I'm fucking terrified of eggs mate I couldn't do it couldn't do it shit myself and I was like oh what that what was it like being when you got sectioned as well because what you were doing if anything you should be sectioned in Afghanistan when you're killing people yeah like when you actually break it down because we're we've broke it down as different borders the world is just one big place but because it's certain borders people are telling you to hit these targets it's normalized, which is okay, I guess, because you're still doing a job, but when you're actually being a mass murderer, when you're being a killer, you should be fucking sectioned off.
1:27:25There's someone in the army should be saying, some sergeant should be saying, you got locked. He likes this a bit too much. It's mad because of, we've got these borders in our mind that we can accept it there, but as soon as you come back then, what, everything disappears? No. What was it like with, what was it like with when you were locked up? How was that feeling? I felt hopeless. Like, I literally felt like, unless these people are watching me, I'm going to kill myself. So you better fucking keep watching. Like, I hope you keep, please don't let me do it, but I'm going to fucking do it. I'm going to kill myself.
1:28:01Because I just could, I couldn't, I couldn't keep on being so sad and so angry and so exhausted all the time and seeing this fucking guy that wasn't there and having all these things. Like, me, I cried so much. I used to sit there in my Afghanistan tour hoodie with the hood up, and I'd just be fucking sobbing. Oh, that was just so, so, so sad. I don't know, mate. It was eye-opening, but it was also the first time I was like, whoa, this is fucking serious. Like, I'm a patient now. And there'd be times where, like, really unwell people would kick off, and I'd go to sort of restrain them, and I'd be told off.
1:28:44like and i just had to capture it into my head that i was a patient i'm not that i'm not i wasn't me at all i was not i wasn't a sniper anymore i wasn't the same mindset as what i was i wasn't as resilient as what i used to be and i look back at pictures now and it used to make me sad that i'd go fucking hell he used to be able to do anything and but um now i think this guy can do anything because he's fucking been through loads worse shit than that and that spurs me on mate it really really does that having been to the very end to the point where you want to kill yourself and you are like attempting to do it that's the end it's horrible but i now know that it's only up from here because i'm never gonna end up like that again no chance i've got the tools now i'm doing i don't want to share the tools that's the most important thing that there is tools out there no matter how dark if you think you're on your last legs there's no way out how dark the clouds are what you've been through what you've done there is always a silver lining there is the vents have you there are people to understand but it's just trying to see that just trying to have that inner belief that there is going to be better because when the mind is so dumbed down and so frustrated and so full of static and noise sometimes people think it's the best option because they don't want to burden anybody else that's it so again it's in those positions in life we're not in control of how everybody else reacts, but if you are feeling like shit, there is help, there is better options, there is a better future, you are.
1:30:18Once you switch those lights off, there's no coming back from that, you know? There's no written music, there's no more laughs with your partner, or Christmas days with your family, that's it, it's gone. So anybody listening or watching, you are good enough, you can improve, you can make better decisions, but just because you can make better decisions, it doesn't stop you from fucking up either, that doesn't stop you from having negative thoughts, you know, no matter how well you think your life goes and just understand you're not alone. You're not the only person who feels like shit, you know?
1:30:47Yeah. That really helped me that, that, that Craig Allison, for instance, you know, for anyone who doesn't know, he's wrote the book, the longest kill. He, I've only spoke to him a few days ago for the very first time. He had no idea I existed, but I knew he existed because he was public about his mental health problems and he didn't hide away. Like, you know, there's many a time you've seen him, on camera crying and i was so inspired by him that i just thought i need to i need to do that i need to be i need to be on this journey with him where everyone can see that no matter what like you can be the tough guy sniper but you can also be very very vulnerable so it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what you've been through there's always there's always hope and it's hard like people say oh you just got to do the work doing the work comes in so many forms doing the work could be getting up and actually having a shower for the first time in a week or doing the pots or or the hard work is ringing someone you know ringing a helpline ringing a friend a great one me and snipers do and this is i go on about it all the time it's just sending a dog shit emoji like it means i feel like dog shit but i can't get the words out but i feel like shit help me you know and it's worked so many times so many times it's just so much easier than hello mate i'm fucking sat on the toilet crying so i mean it's just it's hard to do that but everyone's capable of getting over these things i think self-love is a massive one because that that's where it started with me i love myself enough to to want to help myself which took a long time it took a long time to to actually fucking love myself because i hated myself i was fucking and a lot of people in bad situations with mental health issues and stuff they probably hate themselves and say it to themselves all the time but reality is in context you're going through something really fucking hard that makes you make decisions that aren't ideal decisions and not decisions you'd really make give yourself that bit of fucking give a bit slack you know don't take things so hard and just make even if it's the smallest positive change just do it waking up in the morning for instance like gratitude journals and stuff it's really popular now in it you know you hear people talking about this sort of thing a lot but it works even if if you know even if the first thing you're grateful for is the cup of tea you had in the morning was good a good brew perfect amount of sugar that'll do me that's a positive already I'm like, right, okay, win.
1:33:23Oh, I've got a clean towel I washed yesterday. I'll have that for the wash. That's another win, you know, and it can be all these. I mean, you go for a day and you've got 20, 30 of those. You can't not be fucking happy. Do you know what I'm saying? I'm buzzing with myself. Watch me do the parts. What's your daily routine like now then when you started overcoming, like the fears and anxiety and the feeling down about yourself and questioning everything? What was it when you started pushing through and how is it now? How do you handle things now? Now, I'm on a plateau of everything's good. Everyone, which is another important thing, everyone has bad days.
1:34:03The person that's never had a mental health issue in their life, there's constantly ebbs and flows. You know, there's dips in everybody's life. And it's important, one thing is not to hone in, which is something I used to do, hone in constantly. Oh, I feel a bit shit. And as soon as I feel shit, fuck it now. That day would turn into a dog shit day. and that week I turned him in dog shit so at first I had to dedicate my life to change um I was I quit my job um which you know made things really hard but there wasn't really a choice to it it was I would do this or continue as I am and the inevitable death will happen to me um so I dedicated everything to things like meditation, positivity.
1:34:50I'm just genuinely, I struggled with motivation for like fitness and stuff. Like everyone would always be like, go for a run. It'll make you feel so much better. I couldn't, I couldn't motivate myself. A little five, 10 minute walk could just change in my environment. And now I know that if I feel a funny one go on, I'll tell you the dog down on the beach and it might just be 10 minutes on the beach. I'll luckily live right next to it, but it'll change everything. It's all about, you can either, you know, when you're like, when you were going in a shit mood so you have a shit mood and you or you've got a shit thought going on and you you sort of lean into it and and before long bang it's got you and you're in a shit mood it takes practice to not lean into that and not be hooked by it which is something so uh one of my mentors said to me imagine that these thoughts these intrusive thoughts and things like that are like clouds you're on a mountaintop and they're blowing in the wind just fucking let them blow past you grabbing clouds and holding onto them just let them go you know it's okay to feel bad but you know 10 minutes later you might feel fucking great so don't give yourself a hard time for fucking not being on form because you don't have like like today I've still not had days like on the train I was like hope I'm in a good mood when I get down there with James luckily I am that's what you think bro brother listen I could have spoke to you for hours and hours But I want to leave a lot of the The kind of good bits for your book as well For people to buy I can guarantee a lot of people will be rooting for you For your story, for your honesty For what you've overcome, which is so important Again, thank you for your service But most importantly for anybody that's listening Or watching, who's maybe struggling right now What advice would you have for them?
1:36:34What advice I would say The biggest, best, most Practical bit of advice Is breathing we don't breathe properly if you see it in these films you know breathe in hold it before let it out that shit works you can be in a furious mood and 10 minutes later just have a quick google of that you know dragon's best there's loads of different breathing techniques we are breathing for five seconds hold it for seven out for eight that's a great one five seven eight breathing a few minutes of that it will change your mindset so i think one bit of advice would I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the bear.
1:37:16The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other. FX is the bear. The final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+. And we're back. Streaming on Peacock. May I present to you the award-winning staff of the Toledo Truth Teller. Slap me. Let's jar something loose. Ay, yes! I like that. The certified fresh series returns. Your boss. You always like this? Or is this just an act? Oh no, this is mad. Oysters, everybody! There's a certain satisfaction when you work with someone. Maybe we could be a family. You sadistic pig!
1:38:00The Paper. New season streaming September 9th, only on Peacock. This show gives me a reason to laugh. Who says Halloween only lasts one day? With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting, to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Like I said, you're a very likable character.
1:38:35to a lot of people will be rooting for you. Watch your social media links for people to maybe come forward and ask questions. Because you're a man who's overcome his own adversity. Yeah, and I'm more than happy to do that as well. You seem in a good place. You seem very light. You seem very bubbly. Listen, the laughter as well is just a good deflection because the ones who laugh the most are struggling the most. It gets us through. I am the same, but for anybody that's maybe want to reach out, how do they do so? Yeah, so Instagram is my main one. Instagram and TikTok. It's Ted Shirley, author, on both of them everywhere.
1:39:04if you know if people want to email me ted shirley offer at hotmail.com any of that so you know i'm i'm here to help people but the book like please make the book the first point of call well when it'll go through the roof brother and i'm happy i honestly also we can get into much more detail yeah skimmed over a lot but again i want to leave for people to go and buy your book which is yeah you know and it shows that what you've done and you've got big things planned for the future brother yeah teddy boy would you like to finish up on anything else I would I'd just like to say thank you actually to everyone listening and watching because I know the the influence that you've got this is going to reach such a wider audience and I'm just really fucking grateful mate really great like thank you so much I appreciate it bro listen it's my pleasure and again thank you for your service thank you for what you're doing and it's good to see you in a good place brother you should be proud of yourself thank you so much god bless and take care you too mate thank you
From the publisher
Anything Goes with James English Ep 507
Afghanistan Sniper: The Killer Behind the Scope - Ted Shirley Opens Up
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