Ruby Wax

0:00Hello and welcome to Happy Place. I'm Fern Cotton and this is the show that acknowledges that we're all always a work in progress. Today I'm chatting to Ruby Wax. When I was in TV I would insult them not my guests like people behind the scenes and then I'd smile and they'd go did she just try to hurt my feelings but I'd smile and then they'd think okay I'm safe and then I'd whack them again and then I'd smile and it was like playing with a mouse if you were a cat and I realized because they say the way you treat other people is the way you think to yourself and I knew I was doing something but when they say certain things at this 30-day retreat and your mind is pretty blank stuff comes home.

0:44Ruby is a comedian and best-selling author she also happens to be a good friend oh my god I met Ruby years and years ago through comic relief I didn't see her for many years after that but I think because we've had a sort of similar journey of not really working in mainstream media so much these days preferring to kind of do our own thing we've reconnected over the years and shared a lot of really fun chats about mental health and just general wellness and mindfulness which she is quite frankly an expert in. Ruby is just hilarious as I'm sure you all know and this chat will definitely deliver some laughs along the way.

1:24I've been obsessed with Ruby's work for a very long time. Growing up as a kid of the 80s and 90s watching Ruby's incredible interviews on TV was not only formative and hugely inspirational, but massively entertaining. Still to this day, I'll watch back Ruby's interviews, her interviewing Madonna on a bed, chasing Jim Carrey around a hotel room, just incredible, lively and high Octane interviews. She is just the absolute best and has inspired me so massively. We actually begin this chat talking about that era of her career, which she also recently discussed on Louis Theroux's podcast. She had always kind of felt that Louis previously had sort of stolen her thunder in terms of that interview type show but having that chat with Louis seemed to be quite healing for her I think you'll hear her talk about that in just a moment Ruby's latest book I'm not as well as I thought I was recounts her time in a mental health clinic last year I'll let her tell the story of how she came to write the book in a moment because she can tell stories like no one else on this planet the way that she describes things is out of this world but suffice to say it's a phenomenally powerful read.

2:51Oh and before we start I'm going to say there's some very colourful language in this chat and quite frankly I'd expect nothing less from the one and only Ruby Wax. For those of you joining us at the Happy Place Festival this weekend don't forget to check out our festival area on the Happy Place app. It contains all you need for your visit in one place. You've got schedules, a map and some exclusive discounts from our festival shopping partners. To access this area, simply download the app and register for free. And if you can't make the festival, never fear. If you sign up to the Happy Place app today for full access, you can get 40 % off our annual subscription as part of our limited time summer offer.

3:36Head to the Happy Place website for more details. Summer of self-love offer ends 10th of September. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, let's do it. Here's the show.

4:09Ruby Wax. Hi. Hi, Ruby. Again. Here I am for you to... What is it when you kind of artificially get an erection? Pump up my career. No. I'm not having you be self-deprecating. That's my... I know. Okay. We're here today. Take it out. Whenever we see each other, I think we meet heart to heart, head to head, and we have a good old chat about everything. Everything. Literally everything. The last time we did this was May 2019. No. Yes. No, no, no. It was. I checked. I checked the date. I scrolled back. Oh, then it was frazzled. I know. It was May 2019. I came to your house. You weren't there. Why should I be?

4:51It's only you. I know I had to be let in by your husband. I thought you were a trick-or-treater. I hid. But we had a really lovely chat. But there's so much more to cover because it's been a wild time. I know. The next time you interview me, I'll be dead. Then you will open the door and not see me either. Like last time. Yeah. Well, we have a lot to catch up on. I very much enjoyed your show, looking back at your interviews from the 90s. I was a huge fan back then of what was going on, but it was wonderful to watch you viewing all of those old interviews. How was that experience? Well, you know, Louis Theroux interviewed me, and he said he wanted me to be, I guess, what he thought I was.

5:36And I forbade my kids to ever use his name because in my mind, he took the food out of my children's mouth because he imitated what I did. That's what I thought. I'd never seen his show. But if you said the word, I would get indigestion, if not vomit. So I'm doing it now. But anyway, Louis called, and I said I do a podcast. But you know how you go, yeah, yeah, next year, and then next year comes. But I thought, I'm going to be really honest with them, right? So I had two people putting their hands on me to calm me down so I wouldn't go into, you know, have a panic attack. So there were two people, but obviously you can't see that, holding me.

6:15Healers, because I was in Fintorn, and they're only healers. And they said, my stomach's going. It can grow. You're a human. I'm going to throw up. i'm having a flashback is it the thought of louis no and he ended up like my best friend you really get on now we really get on so i said um louis i had some problems i just you know it was maybe giving you the two baftas and in my mind you cut me dead and i've never forgiven you so i i didn't want to do any bs kind of interview where i smile and i pretend everything's i said so can we just talk about it and he was taken back thinking this is going to be a fun and zappy interview And so I was real with him and he was real back.

6:58And it went on for three hours. It was like a real interview instead of thinking, oh, I got to do shtick. I think I talked about that, you know, always being put down by men, you know, starting with my dad who thought I was an idiot. And I would always be replaced almost as a daughter. And so that was an experience, again, of being put down and like you weren't good enough and crawling and begging and saying, please let me. I didn't. Because I can't do those reality shows. You know, I could have said, you know, at the end of your career, when you really want to humiliate yourself, you go ice skating on an island and eat your young.

7:35Or one of those. I can't do it. Fine if you can. You know, if you want to take the money and run. To me, it's just, you know, I had such great, I had such a great time doing the documentaries. The celebrity wasn't that interesting. But I thought, oh, they'll let me go back to. I did the AA. I wasn't the people that come and fix your tire. I did the Ku Klux Klan. I've got dyslexia. KKK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they made me a wizard, which is one of the first times they made a Jewish woman a wizard. But, you know, I get on with everybody, and I pretend, oh, it's totally normal what you're doing, and they play into your hands.

8:16And then Louis did it, but I never saw it. And then that morning I watched Louis, and I thought, you're really talented, and his career is going to last forever. But that's a lovely full circle. So I think those things can haunt you when you build up a narrative around, he stole my job, I can't bear this. But actually, you're not there anymore. You're in a good place with him and you like what he does. No, it was the first time I saw it and I thought, I get what you're doing. And you're holding backwards. I did like I was showing off and I was a little girl trying to appeal to the audience and going, love me, love me.

8:50And that's disgusting. I know like you say this in the book obviously as well and that being sort of you know something that obviously came from childhood like you say with your dad as a viewer as a young person watching at that point to me the only female doing that in the 90s I was just in awe I didn't see someone trying to get anyone's approval I just thought like you're I've watched your interview with Madonna so many times now and she is not an easy person to interview as we I've interviewed you know, only once, but not easy. No. And you not only held her concentration, you kept her on her toes.

9:25I don't think many people have done that. Well, the thing that I had, which, you know, to be fair, is, well, not so much with her, but I'd have a week with everybody. Those were the days where they'd say you have five minutes, but then you'd start flirting with them and you'd show them a good time. And you after would say, okay, move into the Playboy Mansion. Because that's why I was talking so fast and trying to be funny. So they'd go, wait a minute, PR, go to hell. Let her come in. But when it didn't work, like with men like my dad, like Trump. Yeah. It's very similar. And Bill Cosby, who tried to choke me to death.

9:56That was awful. I mean, he made OJ Simpson seem like, you know, the nicest guy you've ever met. I didn't know how to handle it. I'm just talking about those because some of the interviews I did make, Carrie Fisher, you know, it was my best friend for 35 years. That's so beautiful. So that's worth a whole career. That's worth a whole career. It is. It is. And it's, you know, for someone like me who wanted to work in TV at that point and wanted to do something that felt exciting and fun. You know, you were it. You were doing it and you paved the way for so many of us. I mean, massively. It was fun.

10:27And I'm not being stupid. I did have a good time. It was like the unpopular girl suddenly meets prom queen. You know, you're with Sharon Stone and you're going, I don't, I'm not worthy. But we did have a good time. The thing is, what I meant was, if you're playing a personality, that's only got a limited time. Whereas Louis is playing Louis. That's not me at all. it kind of is when I'm having a good time but people get tired of a caricature sorry I'm choking you this has never happened in my life it's never happened in my life I've never made these noises maybe you're sort of exercising something it's coming out through your throat chakra I've never made that noise in my life this is deep healing it's not even my stomach it's coming out of my vulva not my vulva what's that you little It's in the back of your throat.

11:18You, Lulu, Lulu. I hope your vulva's not there. No, but you know that little thing that hangs there in the back? You know, it's near your larynx. I don't know what it's called, but that thing there. But I do think there's something in talking about stuff. Yeah. Because actually, not long after I interviewed you in 2019, I had a massive cyst on my vocal cords. They wouldn't shut. It was like a pee. And it was just air coming out when I was speaking, which is obviously disastrous in what I do. and it was all due to like not saying stuff. Wow. And then I got rid of it naturally. So it wasn't, it was benign.

11:54Yeah, it was benign, thank God. But I was going to have to have an operation. I was going to have to learn how to speak again. And it went away. Yeah, I went away. I wrote a book about it called Speak Your Truth because I wasn't and it went. Wow. And it's quite unusual. You mean when you started saying the truth about things, it went away? It went. Isn't that funny that we've all, I've always feel like we meet at peculiar times in my life and we discuss. Now I didn't know you had a tumor. I'm getting one. Please drink it away with tea immediately. Let's talk about your brilliant book. I'm not as well as I thought I was, which I loved reading for all the reasons that I love you.

12:32That's brilliant and incredibly clever and very funny and extremely honest. And it starts off with you in a mental institution yeah and this was something that you had not seen coming because you hadn't experienced a big depression in 12 years at this point I stayed clean so so tell me about this you were in a Christian community in Leeds well let me back it up yeah I pitched uh to do some kind of book you know I mama needed new shoes so I said I'm going to do a book about going on these extraordinary journeys especially after lockdown and find meaning. And they paid. I kind of half-assed. So I started doing these journeys, like a 30-day silent retreat, swimming with whales, going to try to get people out of Afghanistan.

13:19I was going to do a heroic, is it what it's called? A heroic dose of psilocybin, but I got COVID. And thank God, because I must have had that mental illness bubbling away. I did get off of medication six months earlier, because you can't take antidepressants. And psilocybin at the same time. That may have been it. But people go, oh, is it from going on all these journeys, you ended up in a mental ward? P.S. No, because you can be winning an Oscar and still want to kill yourself and have depression. So it isn't situation appropriate. But I did get off medication to do that psilocybin, which I never did.

13:56Too bad or too good. But anyway, that was what my book was about. And so I wrote about all these journeys. And a friend of mine I said, this book is crap. Like, it just looks like a travelogue about, you know, why not go to a health spa? It's just crap. And then after the Christian monastery, because I was still doing them, I ended up something. I thought, do I have jet lag? Because you never remember what it is. It's like when women have their periods. They think, why do I want to go to McDonald's and kill people with a bow and arrow? And then you think, oh, yeah, that happened last time I had my period.

14:30So you really forget when you have depression. So what was coming on at this point when you were like, shit, something's not right? I was in the Christian monastery. I rolled up like a ball where you go, I can't move my arm. And everything went into kind of glue. And clocks are jumping around, you know, so you can't tell. Is it a minute? Is it an hour? And I really thought somebody slipped me one of those date rape drugs, which would be weird in a Christian monastery. That would be off-brand. It'd be weird, but it could happen. So I started pretending everything was okay, but I couldn't figure it out.

15:05And I was singing along in their services, Ham 409 about Jesus and living and loving and being with Jesus. But I knew something was really wrong. And then I called a shrink and he said, you're about to hit the wall, get on a train. And so I had to go to father, whatever his name is, and say, I know you think I'm a wanker, which I said, I'm either possessed by the devil. And I don't want to bother you with an exorcism because I'm a guest here. But please, could you take me to a train station? Yeah. So I did end up in a mental ward. And then from there, and it wasn't funny. No. Right. But from a mental ward, I wrote about a woman, me, who was going on all these journeys to find meaning and wouldn't find wouldn't know meaning if it kicked her in the ass because I was really.

15:54Something had happened in my childhood, which I never faced, so I didn't have a tumor in my throat, but I did something was wrong. And only because they wouldn't give me new medication unless I saw a therapist who does EMDR, which I thought, OK, we're in Holcomb land. but I said if you change my drugs I'll do it and she did take me down and down and down so it's sort of a journey going in and another journey going out yes she did reveal something that I mean if you want me to be a horrible uh kind of saleswoman it made a good plot it made a great plot because as you say you've got both things running in tandem you've got these you know journeys of such a way.

16:36Wonderful journeys, which are brilliant. And then you've got the really gritty stuff that, you know, you're being, again, incredibly generous in sort of sharing that side of it. And so let's talk about the psychiatry, because you were faced with things like the word trauma, which you thought was an Oprah word, which I love. EMDR, these new therapies, ideas of looking into childhood. You didn't want to look at, as you call them, the horror shows. They asked me when I remembered the horrible things, And I said, I don't tell anybody my age. And finally, I admitted I was four. They had just discovered the wheel, but I was four.

17:11And then she took me to four. And I just was sarcastic the whole time. And she said, cut the comedy. And I said, I can't, because this is how I made friends. And not to name drop, but Alan Rickman was my mentor. When I first met him, I was really young. And I wanted to make him laugh. So I turned my childhood into comedy, which he said, I'll direct this because my parents were their word is there's no word but Carrie Fisher said your parents are almost as crazy as mine I think I wrote that and so I thought I'm on to something and so I used to imitate them um and Rickman said this is brilliant I was better at that than I was at Shakespeare that's where I met him in the RSC don't ask okay I played like a piece of furniture and a plastic bag, but it's still the RSC.

18:00Well, correct. And I did not go there. So that is one brilliant thing. Yep. Then I spoke and people were horrified. Because, you know, I didn't really have... I had the accent down a little bit, but people go, is there somebody from Chicago in Love's Labour's Lost? There is now. But I was fun. So they kept me in there. So going into your childhood and the stuff that you didn't want to look at without humour, how was that? And how has it helped? It was almost because I'm so used to covering that she kept having to peel it back. I mean, how was it? It was an eye-opener to me. You know, sometimes you know something's wrong, but because it's your normal.

18:38I didn't think it was. It's like if you were beaten a lot, you think, oh, everybody is. You don't compare notes when you're an only child. I knew they were crazy because my dad, I wrote about it, chased me into my girlfriend's house. Actually, not my girlfriend, a really popular girl, which made it even worse. who lived across the street and was trying to kick me, but all the girls crowded around. So it was like I called him an igloo of humans. And he was trying to get me between their legs. And being unpopular and that happening is even more humiliating. So then they really treated me like, oh, hi.

19:12You know, really vicious. So he didn't have to do that. And I thought, I got that it wasn't normal eventually. And then I never understood why I never saw a night and never went on a date. I just didn't get it. Sometimes they'd let me, but they'd drive me and watch me. And then I realized until I was 18, I wasn't allowed out. I thought that was normal. I thought, I didn't even know kids were going on dates. I mean, don't feel sorry for me. I just didn't know. I don't mean don't feel sorry for me. I just, if you don't know, it's normal. And it's normal not to have a key to get back in. So when you get back in, it's like the Gestapo.

19:51Well, and they were, they escaped from Germany, and then they brought it to Evanston. So my dad would dump out the ashtray and say, what is this? This is a gum wrapper. Is this Giovanna Mary? Which is his way of saying marijuana. And I, you know, everything was watched. Everything was watched, even in my bedroom. And I have nightmares about it. They burst in to see what I was doing. And so I have to now, still to this day, live in small rooms that are about five feet by eight feet so I can watch the doorknob and that when I was in the bathroom I'd hear her breathing and then she'd get in I have dreams that I can't lock the door and I couldn't lock the door or find the lights because they lived in darkness and then she'd sneak in like like liquid and wash my underpants over and over again it was weird and it's interesting weird this is not there's nothing I've stopped choking though yeah you stop choking and also there is no such thing as too weird we cover everything and we look at everything and we as much as you're happy to but I guess in Appalachia they do weirder stuff yeah they do where there's weirder stuff everywhere and I think the interesting thing is it's one thing to recognize that you had a childhood that felt unusual there was bits of it that you're still unpicking and trying to figure out but it's another thing to then realize how much of that is driving you still today and there's a part of the book where you're looking at you aged eight and the shrink as you call her in the book is saying even your success has been driven partly by that eight-year-old wanting approval and wanting to keep moving all the time how much would you she says a really interesting it's not her poem but there's a great poem about a fairy coming in it's beautiful she didn't write it coming in and seeing a child that's so frozen and saying I'm going to stiffen your neck I'm going to harden your heart I'm going to take this all away until someday when you're an adult I can melt you down and you can take this but in the meantime I'm going to make you dead and walking and so that's sort of what happened is I shut down I shut down but I could do a personality but shut down do you see that the eight-year-old is still driving you still sometimes now and you have to kind of well that was good therapy I mean it did work so when she starts rearing her head I do have images of saying it's okay it's over the battle's done you know what I mean I did learn yeah she may rise and the other thing is I'm not cocky I will have depression again it's in my blood it's like herpes it will come back it will come back it will come back um I mean we we talked about this before we came into the studio upstairs we've both had a similar relationship with the tv industry you can't even say it i see it as a toxic ex-boyfriend that sometimes i go back to and i know i shouldn't and i'm like why am i doing this he won't call me again and he won't text and he'll treat me like shit even though i'm going back but there's that horrible temptation to do it anyway and i sort of dip in out of it very rarely these days because I know I don't fare well in that world and that is very much part of you know I don't know what bit of my childhood but there's certainly a child like someone driving that show so how do you feel about the tv world now and you'll know this it's the disease of fame yeah you remember the days your body and you take anybody off the street and give them that treatment they're going to get it too you know it's if somebody has std you're going to catch it.

23:24So the same thing with fame where they infantilize you. Would you like a cup? What about a bicky? And eventually you can't use your fingers anymore because everybody's getting you a lovely bicky and they're driving you places and people are laughing at you even when you don't see anything funny. So you start to think, oh my God, I'm so talented. Maybe I am this interesting. And then it's suddenly taken away and you're left with an inability to get your own cup of tea and call a restaurant and you'll get a table try it when you're not famous and that smack in the face it's no big deal but it is you were on heroin um it hurts your heart because you have attention and no human can take that much attention and then have it ripped away that's why that way is madness for all those soap stars yeah I think the whole thing's madness and they're still it's still the myth isn't it that it means something it's going to make you feel better inside whereas it does absolutely nothing you tread water I mean when you're in it you don't have to think about aging or death or um you don't have to think about it's the ultimate distraction it's the ultimate you might as well just hit the drink or take coke it's the same addiction I mean we talked about this last time you came on but you you made a complete u-turn you know your pivot I'm a whore I'm a whore if you pay me I'll do almost anything No I'm talking about the fact that you went off and you went and you studied and you got your degree and you're an expert in mindfulness like you decided to do something you know a complete rebellion in the face of fame and the TV industry you went for the other end of the scale Yeah in a way I thank Louis and a few other people that fired me because you wouldn't if I was this age and I was still trying to get getting on ice, going to an island and eating your young, I would probably take to the sleeping pill a lot.

25:22So in a way, I'm glad I did the jump like you are, because when you're, you know, when you're not 20, you need dignity. That's something people don't take into consideration. Or you need self-respect. Maybe some people don't even know what that means. But a lot of people want to hold their head up so that when people come over and they say things like, you know, my brother almost killed himself, but he read your book. You know, they don't always say that, but they say something. Dawn French was next to me when somebody said something like, I was really about to get quite ill, but you know, it's something, you know, something to do with me.

25:56And then people were taking lots of selfies of her, like hundreds and not, and she said, I'll trade you that for the one person coming over. She didn't say it like that, but she got it. Yeah. She, you know, I mean, I don't have that, that yearning for people taking a lot of selfies. And somebody once told me John Cleese walked into a supermarket and somebody had a heart attack and he was trying to help him and everybody was standing around laughing. And you know what I mean? That's his, and I think he's gone a little, you know, because he wanted some respect, but he was, he left his career being a funny man and he isn't he's probably pretty intellectual and it drives you mad yeah when you're not when you're being treated as somebody you're not yeah and it's just as much of you know I like that I like I made them laugh but it's even better to say you saved their life yeah it's an amazing but it is an amazing thing you're doing with the frazzled cafes I'm not saying I saved their life you know what I mean but you gave them something well you more than likely have though I think you know you can't underestimate writing a book that's very honest about mental health or doing the amazing Frazzle Cafe to actually be in community with other people and these are my people yeah yeah and I hope you know this I'm not as well as I thought of was people go yeah that's me too and they won't feel ashamed because if you make somebody laugh who's in your tribe and I've written it so it's not a whine I mean it's funny and it's not funny and it's fun you know I can make when I'm in the mental institution when I say to the cutters what pattern were you going after I can say that and they just are shining at me or one woman coming up and saying these foxes came in my house and stole my frozen prawns so what did you do and she tells you what she did she got some vegan food and put it out so that the foxes didn't want that so and you know I don't go are you fucking nuts no I go that's a great story yeah and you make them go on and they love it and they know you're not taking the piss because you're them too yeah they see it in your eyes yeah yeah I mean when you were in there there was several things going on so you had you had new types of therapy you had EMDR I've done that I found it quite transformative actually I couldn't drive on the motorway at one point at all for like five years and I did EMDR and over about the course of two months I was I can do it now I can just jump on the motorway and I'm fine it does create new neural pathways they don't know they don't know how it works it's a it's magic nobody knows how that one works but you found that that helped yeah but I was very resistant because I got my you know I'd studied therapy EMDR was never mentioned really never mentioned because it's a new kind of you know mindfulness wasn't mentioned much either but everything changes why shouldn't that get advanced like your iPhone yeah absolutely I thought okay I'll go along with this you know because i gotta get out of here but then they gave me rtms so tell us about this another bunch of letters they put something like a a hair dryer looks like a 50s hair dryer on your head and it goes ah then it waits it's 18 zaps a second 55 times i can't do the math but i say i think i say in my book it's like woody woodpecker and his cartoon pals are gangbang in your head so and i thought this is ridiculous but they say if you do 21 20 in succession there's a 65 chance of recovering okay n-e-m-d-r bullshit well 20 sessions later i was in the 65 you don't get out of a mental hospital in three weeks it takes months before you know they can see if the drugs work so i'm a big fan of that one and so what is it actually doing to your brain That recount, you know, there was something called deep brain stimulation, transcranial stimulation.

29:45It's been going on for years in America where they, you know, they don't use electricity because I'll save my lines from this, is that that has side effects like you can't remember your planet of origin. This one uses magnets, so there are no side effects. But if you wham it enough, you know, on the left side, the neurons supposedly, and forgive me if any neuroscientists are listening, they've gotten a little sluggish. That's why you can't move or think of, because, you know, they're getting a little sluggish. So this jacks it up, you know, the way electricity does. So it's like skipping a record, you know, when you go and get it into the groove.

30:27it starts to connect the neurons of the 180 trillion billion excuse me connect to ones that are more active and so it starts to you know get back into the speed it should be at and so you've since you stopped that therapy you've been feeling okay yeah wow but they say you know if you need to do it again a couple more I did do a couple more because I will get it again but at least I know all these tools and boy am I lucky this is the privileged one somebody who hasn't got any uh insurance good luck well this is it this is why we're in such a hellhole because so many people out there are they should be offering they should be on every other corner yeah p.s in America it is yeah yeah I mean I know we we did a I again I text you about this the other week we did a really cool episode with Professor David Nutt all about psychedelics and all the incredible data and research leading to helping with depression anxiety ocd yeah but here's the bitch because i know he said you're on antidepressants you can't take it so what's the but you know we're the ones that probably are going to benefit from it can't take it so while they're still in the dark ages yeah well they need more funding so they can really ramp up they always need more funding to know what the brain does but you get more funding for every other disease except the one thing that the mothership yeah this is like the main you know board to connect to every other organ and nobody gives it money go figure that it's like are we ashamed of our brains i know well i think it's still that weird stigma because it's invisible what so is your kidney well correct so is your diabetes yeah i know it's absolutely mad people commit suicide not because they had a knee injury so uh think about it not you but yeah yeah how do you feel knowing that it would it could or will probably come back do you feel accepting of it were you no no no I mean it's like the monster yeah comes back but I don't live in fear because in my mind I never had it I wrote this book let's do some cuts of my just the noises and then cut me talking out so it just And here's my guest, Ruby Wax.

32:47That'd be so good. Wouldn't that be good? To say she couldn't speak, but she had... We'll do that as like a little YouTube special, I think. Just... The ball movement. And I just say thank you. Oh, I hope it's not coming out of that end. It's not. But what you were going to say... Acceptance of depression. Oh, yeah. I mean, I know it's going to come. Yeah. Like we talked about. But I can't live in fear of it. But usually the reason I hadn't had it, I think, for 12 years is from the mindfulness, you can spot it early. And it's always about, you know, early warnings. Then I knew to shut down social media.

33:21You don't take more jobs, which I used to do when I got it, when I'd feel it. Because you go, come on, snap out of it. You know, you stigmatize yourself more than anybody else. Taking on jobs, going to learn scuba diving in December, going to things, anything to show up to go, hey, I'm fine. And then you get really ill. So this time I could feel it. You could feel your saliva goes and start. And then your hair gets a different texture. And the voices in your head that usually the normal ones, I'm just an asshole. They start getting faster and faster. And then I go, whoops, let's shut it down. And then you bite your tongue and it passes after a few days rather than five months.

34:04In the lead up to this book, were you not doing as many kind of mindfulness activities, meditation? You were. I was, but it'll always override everything. Just because you do mindfulness doesn't mean you're not going to get depression. You got a disease. Whatever you do, you know, you can get your hair done. It's still going to hit. And when it hits, you don't do mindfulness because you haven't got a mind. Yeah. But interestingly, you can always write. No, you can't write. I wrote afterwards. Okay. You cannot write. You can't read. You can't write. You wouldn't know what a pen is for. If you could write, you haven't got depression.

34:39It's when everything goes dead. So when it was better, when I got out, and that's a miracle, getting out in three weeks. I think I made it six in the book, but it was three. Then you can write. And if it's gone, it's gone. That's the thing. It's not your imagination. It's gone. And you're just, you're fine. And then people go, oh, how do you do shows when you have depression? You go, because I don't now. Yeah. I don't. It's unbelievable. How can a body where you hear the person going, I can't live anymore, suddenly be the body that says, yeah, I am touring in September. How could I do that? You know, when you see yourself in a bed with the sheets over your head, not understanding friends, not understanding the plot was too complicated.

35:27And I thought Joey was really the devil. I got scared. And then you're on tour. Yeah. Wow. How does a body do that? Yeah. Well, we don't know. We don't know enough, clearly. Looking at these journeys that you took yourself off on, one of them, and you talked about this on Instagram as well afterwards, was the 30 day silent retreat. What did you learn from that? When did the brain chatter start to subside to leave some sort of clarity? I think you call it awakeness in the book. The first week, I wouldn't put on your dog. Not your dog, like, you know, an animal, your boyfriend that dumped you. Nobody should go through that because when they take your phone and they tell you you can't email, read, or kill, which was upsetting because that's what I went for.

36:20Except, you know, they meant bugs. Right. But I didn't know that. When you see a bug, you're supposed to get, there's a bug scooper. I wrote about it in a book that you go, you suck it up and then you're supposed to tiptoe to not upset it or traumatize it. Bugs can get traumatized. And then you blow it out the exit and give it a namaste bow. They meant that. I thought killing. Okay, they meant bugs. But then hilarious stuff happened. You know, we have to do an hour of volunteer work. So I signed up to do the dishwashing team. And it was a young girl and me and an older guy. and she called us elders.

36:58When you two elders, I'll do the hard work and you two elders. So I wanted to get that bitch. So when we were silent, she was showing us how evolved she was. So she was doing the dishes and the hard stuff. She was doing the soaping. Yeah. And I was doing, I thought hard too, taking the plates from her and putting it in a slot. You think that's not hard? And then shoving it to the old guy. But she was drying really slowly to show us that she was very evolved. And so I went even slower just to fuck with her. And it was after midnight when we finished. And we were one with the plates. Because I said, Thich Nhat Khan talks about when you do an action or a thought in the sunlight of awareness, it becomes sacred.

37:48So we were doing sacred washing. And the old guy never caught up. He was going as fast as he could. But by the end, I broke her. But there were funny things that are going on. And then halfway through or, I don't know, eight days in, suddenly your mind gives up. It's like you were arm wrestling. And it just goes, I'm exhausted. I can't abuse you anymore. I'm too tired. And so you still get thoughts. It's not like you're empty. But they'll shoot through like a kind of, you know, you asshole. And then another thing, you know, your parents were right. It doesn't finish. so you start to get more and more peace your body declares peace and you start to really food is delicious because you're there you're present you're present I was good and then I wrote in the book I was going to call Eckhart Tolle to say Eckhart I'm present and then I go it's Ruby Ruby what are you oh fuck you it's so brilliant because then you do you do get peace but you realize i mean i certainly realized reading that oh my god when have i how many moments have i felt like that where there isn't that constant brain chatter it's so rare it's rare but you got to work it is it sustainable when you come home i could have been a little bit but i went back to my you know something was wrong with me yeah so i killed it you know it's like you don't deserve it i took a job for potato crisps 24 hours later i had to sell my book and the running started but it I wasn't completely out of whack is that something does happen I didn't go off to a spa and get some alternative thing I did 30 days which has been going on 2 ,500 years for people to find peace it wasn't invented last week yeah yeah it's incredible whilst you were there you're not just doing silence by the way and then getting a pedicure no no you've got your Yeah, mindfulness for 13 hours a day.

39:44Yeah, so it's tricky. What I wanted to mention specifically was something one of the teachers said to you at the silent retreat, which was a thread of harm runs through all of us, and we need to identify what it is before we can rid ourselves of it. And this seemed like a bit of a revelation for you, because it was related to your dad and how he would use cutting remarks to sort of cut people down. And so did I. So this is something that you noticed in yourself. was this was a revelation that you could see that you were doing a similar thing to your dad who you found challenging yeah I mean I maybe I knew it before but you know all these things you know before but again they don't rise up and yeah you in the face is that I used to play when I was in tv because then you're desperate to make sure you never lose it lose that job so I would treat people I would insult them not my guests like people behind the scenes and then I'd smile and they'd go, did she just try to hurt my feelings?

40:40But I'd smile and then they'd think, okay, I'm safe. And then I'd whack them again and then I'd smile and it was like playing with a mouse if you were a cat. And I realized I was the same cruelty I got because they say the way you treat other people is the way you think to yourself. And I didn't, I knew I was doing something, but when they say certain things at this 30-day retreat and your mind is pretty blank, not no thoughts but it's got some space in it stuff comes home you learn lessons fast yeah and that's a big one because we've all got that we've all got these threads of pain and the cruelty every single person and the ability to declare war yeah and you know until you face it yourself it'll continue in the world you'll continue polluting because you haven't faced you are the enemy yeah it's ultimate self-awareness which is humbling and horrendous But you can only do it when your mind starts to calm down.

41:36Yeah. If it's too busy, and I know busy, you won't even be aware that when you're fighting for the environment, you're doing more damage. You have to be really steady. I always say fix yourself and then go save the world. I'm not saying don't do it, but what's your motive? You want to get more busy? Do you want to get more angry? You have to do it out of love. you know but but I can't be in that state unless I have to do certain exercises it's not natural to me one of the other parts of the book I've really loved reading about which you touched on is you say your happy place is is it 80 meters or feet 80 feet underwater not 80 meters what is it you love about being so deep in the water what makes you so happy down well it's safe my parents can't get to they have never gone 80 feet and you got that stillness so if you don't want to do mindful i like when the sound cuts out so i can't go to raves and things because i it's there's too much noise in my head and then there's even more yeah so when it's deadly silent that's when i'm well it's deadly silent down there not all the time i mean you you die of nitrogen poisoning but i like that when it goes that's what happened at the um retreat is I started getting a big four in the morning let alone five just so I could hear nothing just nothing it's my favorite yeah I think there are people that love lots of noise and they love the bars and the distraction maybe they're feeding off it I'm exactly the same as you I feel het up riled when lots of people are talking at me and there's a bus going past and the radios are in the background i'm i'm not good with all of that noise silence which is so impossible to find it's impossible is heavenly yeah that's why they say nature's good right i'm not you know from that school but when it's when you're there it's not barking you know it knows how to be respectful and quiet yeah but i don't have it much.

43:42But when I do have it, I'm too, my brain is too screwed here. You know, do I call, it's not even for work, you know, work I understood, but it's about, do I call this person? Am I nice to this person? Do I buy them a candle? Are they just helping my career? Oh, what if I piss them off? Then there'll be repercussions there. You know, you know who you like, but you get so confused. The people I like, I can't even get to. I'm with assholes most of the time or I was in the past yeah you know because you think oh I better be friends with them because they've got some they could pull some strings well you're a whore you're just a whore now I really like being around like I went to this thing called caneret what's that it was something I'd never heard of before my friend brought me you have to be invited and it was like geniuses in AI and in science and in neuroscience, and they all meet in France.

44:37And I thought, oh, it's going to be a bunch of wankers. And I went and you're sitting at a table and there's somebody who tells you that one woman just happened to mention that she has a company where they get rats from Tanzania to deactivate landmines. So everybody's interesting. Another person just created Alexa. Okay, you might not be into it. Another person was a space doctor. And he told me what can go wrong in outer space with the astronauts. So they invite these kind of people. And I thought this is as good as silence. Yes, this is as good as silence. I don't want to know about your acting career.

45:15I really don't care what happened in the play and the fact that they couldn't get your wig on straight. I really don't give a shit. But give me somebody who's reinvented the wheel and I'm an idiot I know every 100th word they're talking about but you go wow when human brains are that good oh beautiful yeah absolutely stunning out of all these things that you learned whether it was from the trips that you went on or from the teachers or the shrink or doing the EMDR or whatever therapies you were doing how much of it would you say has stuck for you to continue your life and to feel as balanced as possible?

45:52I don't know what balance feels like but since I've written my book I have gone on one trip to the next to the next to the next this is my first day here and unfortunately or fortunately and I have the privilege of doing it is that I like not having a home and that was really disturbed me before is that I was driven and out of my home but I didn't know why and I mean here home with the kids I was around when well I wasn't even around when they were young I have to keep moving um but I don't feel haunted by it and I'm not punishing myself I'm a lucky bitch and I get to go bicycling in Italy you know I don't ask for five-star hotels but if you gave it to me I wouldn't throw it out the thing or going to Canary and I was in a bed and air I had to sleep on it you know what I mean I can sleep on the floor you just don't want to be in one place I just don't want to be in a no match and this was discovered is that bad no well I mean but do you think that the therapy has helped in that way because this was almost another discovery that you didn't want to be at home and I would go from one thing to another yeah you know the point was I didn't get depression but it was you thought what's wrong with her it was too fast so um I I did find those things pleasurable I just felt so guilty about him and so judgmental and saying what are you running from and then I found out what I was running from I was locked in okay now I know I was locked in but I like I'm a nomad so the kind of show ends you know where you say home is wherever I'm standing and none of my friends may be like that I mean I was a freak as a kid and maybe I'm a freak now but that's what I like that's what I like I think having you know the knowledge and acceptance this is who I am this is what I like that's peace that's peace right there I like going to the airport I like being in a room that's five feet by eight feet that's what I like if you put me sometimes you there you go we've given you a bigger room no I want a smaller room I want to know if my parents are moving that doorknob and I know it now rather than thinking that's weird how come I keep going in monk cells i know i like a monk cell and i know why so it's all about you know things will stay the same it's not like suddenly you have a revelation and i've decided i'm going to get into flower arranging you know and just potter in the country i'll never do it i'll be dead first but it's so good knowing that's where the piece is knowing having the self-awareness and not being not having that internal battle of i shouldn't be like this i shouldn't be doing this i am and my My kids know that now that they've left the house, good luck seeing mommy.

48:39You're off. But I'll be there if they want it, but I'm off. Otherwise, you're cycling in Italy. Or something else. Or something else. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that we pinned you down for one day to get this chat done, because otherwise I would be on a tandem bike with you trying to chat. No, you could go off with me. Oh, I would love to next time. I want to do an adventure with you. Well, swimming with Wills was no walk in the park. Any of them, I'm up for. It's when you go, oh my God, I can't believe what I'm seeing. And I know you could do that gardening, but I just haven't got the secret. Yeah.

49:11To plant a petunia just doesn't do it. You need to go big. I need to go big and it can be hitchhiking with no money. I don't care. I've got to be out there. Yeah, I love it. Well, it's just the most brilliant book. I adored reading it. And thank you. Thank you.

49:30oh ruby this is why i love the show i love being able to oscillate between the extremes of darkness and humor within literally a few words it's kind of just what being humans about isn't it having all these feelings co-existing at once absolutely gorgeous stuff the biggest thanks ever for your time ruby i love hanging out with you ruby's brilliant book i'm not as well as i thought I Was is out now. Oh, and we mentioned wonderful Professor David Nutt. If you want to hear more about his groundbreaking work looking at how psychedelics can treat numerous mental health conditions, you only have to scroll back a little way in your podcast feed.

50:11We had him on the show just a few weeks ago. All right, back here next week. In the meantime, you can always come and say hello on Instagram. We're at happyplaceofficial. Massive thanks again to Ruby, to the producers of this episode Anushka Tate and Matt Hill at Rethink Audio and to you lovely lot I love you

50:53Thank you.