DJ Fat Tony: From Drug & Sex Addiction to “I’d Live This Life Again”

0:00I was maybe one of the first people to interview you for your last book and I had probably 150 messages. All of those catch lines, I spent a million pound on drugs or Freddie Mercury gave me my first line of coke. They were almost like boasts and they weren't boasts. I'm not proud of any of that stuff. How do you feel now all these years later? Talk to me about your GLP-1 journey. Because I nearly didn't recognise you when I was on that plane. You know, I blocked arteries in my legs and I couldn't walk 100 yards. My addiction to sugar was so sky high. But as an addict, of course, you know, like six months ago, I took it too far.

0:34And I was like, skin and bones. You're on social media and everyone's like, dude, you look really frail. That's when I would have seen you. There was many very different faces of Tony and masks. And I hate that terminology, but it's true. I didn't love myself. I was all right with being all right. Do you know why? I learned behavior of how to get through being abused as a 10-year-old child for four years. Those learned behaviors that I learned from that, I found that sex could be transactional because I took the past to every relationship. I took all of the worst things about myself to every relationship.

1:05And your HIV journey hit a lot of people. I have no shame about talking about it because why would I? I didn't go out and find it. It found me and people don't like to talk about it because people don't understand it. People are far more at ease with using one hand to throw a stone than they are using both to applaud. And that's a really sad world. 2024. Do you know what I'm going to bring up? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. In the DJ booth. Busted eye socket. And you had a broken cheekbone as well. And you said old Tony kicked in. Yeah, that's the old Tony. What do you think triggered that?

1:50Guys, we have hit 100k on YouTube. Can you see this epic plaque that is behind me? Thank you to every single one of you that has subscribed and helped grow the show. It means an absolute massive amount to me and everyone who works on this show. And if you haven't, if I could please kindly ask you to press subscribe, it would mean the absolute world. Thank you. Tony. Hi. How are you? I'm good. I'm tired, but good. It's been a long couple of weeks of nonstop work and traveling. but I love it. You're good, right? Yeah, I love it. And now, as soon as I got home last night, it kind of crashed. So I'm really good with travel and work and stuff like that.

2:32I moan a bit, but I get on with it and I achieve it. And then when I get home, it's kind of like, do you know what I mean? So that happened last night. I was in bed by like 10 o 'clock last night. So we first did an interview. I don't know if I was maybe one of the first people to interview for your last book back in 2021. I came to your house. Yeah. And we went on a journey on that podcast. We genuinely did. And I think there was parts that I asked you that I don't even know if you'd spoken about much before. And it was a really heartwarming interview. I mean, I saw so many different sides of you.

3:06Because I think people see this like, you know, loud, vagacious, you know, loving, fun guy. I think I let people see what I want them to see, depending on who it is and what the situation is. that was the way I went through life yeah and now I don't have skeletons in the closet I had nothing to hide so you kind of get what you get yeah I mean but there's no fakeness or masks to any of it anymore well we went on like this amazing journey for like we basically we spoke for two and a half hours that's how long that podcast was Jesus Christ we both cried in it we both laughed in it but we hit some really big moments I left and I've had that podcast with me quite a lot ever since and people still go back five years ago and listen to me and say that was a really touching podcast still that's good that makes me happy but you know that was your first book and I think for you and you can tell me if I'm wrong that was like a therapeutic journey in itself and then you went to put it out in the world and I know from writing a book that was nowhere near as in depth as yours in your personal story that it's like exposing like you put your life story into a book and then you put it out and it's like am I ready to put that out into the world yet how do you feel now all these years later I mean at the time I was not ready to put that stuff out into the world that's why it took so long to write because it kept changing in the sense of it wasn't the book that it started out to be but it ended up the book it was meant to be and I think that when you write that personal stuff and you and you pull it out there and it it becomes more real.

4:39I wasn't ready for that. The day that I handed it in, I wanted it back. And I was like, okay, you've done it now. Your life is all right. But all right, up to that point, I was all right with all right. But now I'm not. All right doesn't cut it. And so those stories in that book, my stories, it wasn't a walk in the park. There was quite a lot of walking in the park. at some point at night. Yeah. But, you know, it wasn't a walk in the park. And there was an awful lot of shame and an awful lot of heartache attached to most of those stories. And I really felt that when talking about them, I was dealing with them.

5:21And I never really dealt with anything until after the book. And that book, being that honest in that book just changed my life forever. It was the biggest self-help book for me. for anyone that hasn't listened i'm going to link our first episode right into the show because i actually really want people to go back and listen to it plus how much this show has changed and that's what i find really amazing today right how much you've changed since then and even like the growth of this entire podcast but you know you went into the abuse as a child that you had your hiv diagnosis which for me i think was probably the biggest touching part um the pulling out of your teeth because of meth mouth the sex addiction um I mean there was just a lot in there and we went through two and a half hours of that how have you now processed that since it like what's been the biggest outcome from everything you went through so it came out it hit the shelves you started speaking about all of this just talk to me about that journey I think the the biggest part of it all is the acceptance there's such a difference between being tolerated and being accepted and I've gone from wanting to be liked wanting to be loved I found love I therefore I I I'm accepting of love because I love myself and I think when I was writing that book I was in one of the darkest places I'd been in a very long time I was in the end of a very toxic relationship and you know up until that point and the end of that relationship I used relationships like I used drugs they were always self-seeking self-serving um they were always every relationship that I'd been into don't get me wrong they always started off wonderful but they always ended up exactly the same like being locked in a room using and it was it was so painful and I was in such an awful place and I think that when you put you put out honesty into the world right there's no going back you can't suddenly start lying about it or you know it's like thinking I really thought that people weren't going to accept the stuff that was in that book I thought that I I thought people would find it really uh uncomfortable and I think uncomfortable is a good word because there's a lot of stuff in there that I was uncomfortable with I mean it you know most people when they write an autobiography just put in the nice stuff I kind of just put everything in You put the pain.

7:51Yeah, and there were so many reviews where it was like, the only person that comes out of this unvarnished is Tony. And that's what was endearing about it. Because I didn't want to write, oh, look at me. It was not a book of ego. Do you know what I mean? The reason I wrote the book was because of ego. You wouldn't break your ego writing that book. Well, yeah. And, you know, there'd been so many points in time where I'd done interviews. And, like, I did this Mixmag film in just, like, in 2020. And it had, like, 7 million views. and it was like, in it, they'd taken parts of the conversation, like sentences, and made it into almost like clickbait.

8:28Like, I spent a million pounds on drugs, or Freddie Mercury gave me my first line of code. All of those catch lines, like, those became, like, they were almost like boasts, and they weren't boasts. There was no boasting in that at all. They were parts of a story and a part of a conversation. So that was one of the main reasons I wanted to do I don't take requests because I want you to set the record straight that I wasn't boasting I'm not proud of spending money on drugs I'm not proud of any of that stuff yeah why would I be well I have to say if you listen to our podcast there is no proudness in there you know there was yeah there's moments where you struggling to answer the question and then you kind of took a breath and then you went really really really deep I mean and I was also quite shocked like hearing a lot of the stuff that you were saying like it really hit it really did hit me and I had probably 150 messages after that podcast and we were small back then yeah we weren't where we are now right and your hiv journey hit a lot of people yeah um because people don't talk about there's too much shame and stigma attached to it how have you like i don't want to say how have you got rid of that shame because i think there will it doesn't exist in my life anymore what was the process of like moving past that obviously you wrote about it and you spoke about it was he was it the love from others of the acceptance of others i think the acceptance and the love of myself took it way beyond anyone else's because I'd been I'd had love and acceptance from other people but it was never warranted in yourself for me personally I didn't feel like I deserved it I felt that someone always wanted something and that's because that's where I was at and then when I came through that and I came on the other side of it after a lot of trauma therapy and a lot of work and I found that self-acceptance that that stuff no longer has a hold over me I have you know HIV is something you know that I have no shame about talking about because why would I I didn't go out and find it it found me and you know being diagnosed with something especially at that point in time in 2002 there was still so much stigma attached to it and there still is today people don't like to talk about it because people don't understand it yeah they're not aware of it yeah and you know like everything in life if there's something we're not we don't understand we want to destroy it look what's going on in the world right now you know people are far more at ease with using one hand to throw a stone than they are using both to applaud and that's a really sad world yeah so talk to me about so this next book's come out right so basically how this came about which i find really funny we sat next to each other on a plane yeah and i was like we both had books coming out within four weeks of one another right so we've both gone on this like big book writing journey we're sharing our stories and i was like you need to come back on the pod like you need to come back on and talk about it this is when you're off to richard franson's island yeah i remember that conversation yeah we're on a plane to miami i'm going to miami oh i'm going to richard branson's i was like oh shut up trying to trump me not donald trumping

11:42um and you were like this is called recover me and it was interesting because so my book's based and self-compassion which is really interesting because you just said the reason why you think your shame disappeared is because you started to basically accept yourself and have compassion for yourself which is the exact journey we've had very different lives but that was also my journey right building self-compassion which i've struggled with my entire life you were like well i've written this book around cover me and it's with my therapist tara now for many people getting into therapy is the hardest thing exactly sharing their therapy journey with their closest friends you've gone to the next extreme and shared it with the entire world how how and why how and why yeah because how did you get to this point where you as you just said people can't a lot of people can't experience therapy a because they won't allow themselves to but b they can't afford it we let you know paying that kind of money a week for therapy when you're you have children or you have rent to pay or mortgage all of these things life in general is expensive and the last thing you really want to spend it on is sitting telling someone your problems when you have whatsapp groups you know whatsapp group is not going to change your life right but you know work really deep trauma therapy and i just wanted people to understand the process of trauma therapy and therapy full stop so what i wanted to do with this book with we've recovered me was to allow people to access that world and see it for what it is and not that it's like this big clinical no-no it's acceptance of okay i've got a problem it's best just to deal with this and talk to it to someone to a professional not to your next door neighbor over tea or you know you think your husband's having an affair so you think he's a sex addict all of these things that we kind of like put on our friends and our friend groups or we carry shame so we tell that one friend and the one friend will go and tell everyone else and then we're even in a darker place of shame so with recover me I just wanted to put it out there just because it's a big thing when you write a book an autobiography and you come out of it at the end in recovery where people are it's amazing you've turned your life around and then you come back with a second book and you say hang on a minute I actually didn't turn my life around at that point it's not till now five years later that my life has changed I wanted people to understand why and how it changed so how did it change I I as I say I was in a really extremely dark place and it got very, very painful yet again in recovery, being that I am the face of recovery.

14:28And I took a step back and I realised that recovery and recover me are two different things, right? So we go into recovery and it's 12 steps that work for everyone if you want them to work. It's a format that works for a lot of people. It changed my life. but I was literally working to that whole plan. You know, you've got to remember everyone in there is exactly the same as you in those rooms. They work in the same 12 steps for various reasons but they're doing what they've been taught. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a hand down process and being sober and being clean, right, from any substance misuse is a remarkable thing.

15:18But the substance and whatever it is you're using aren't the problem. We're the problem. And when you put that stuff down, you're left without a crutch. You're left without that excuse for being the way you are. So it shifts. It shifts into sex, shopping, food. And all of these learnt behaviours don't go away until you treat them. And that's what Recover Me is about. It's about learning the learnt behaviours and realising that they no longer serve us. We no longer need to go to that place of deceit. We no longer need to act out, to destroy our lives internally. And also, we no longer need to be in the worst kind of relationships because they serve us to be the way we are.

16:06You know, I've been in relationships where I've been the most unhappiest I've ever been. but, and it is a but, they always allowed me to act out. Okay, well, he's doing this or I feel this way. And it was always an excuse and I no longer have to be that person. I attended TED earlier this year and I found myself in conversations with the founders of NoWatch. You've probably seen me wear something on my wrist and lots of you have messaged me asking me what this is. It looks like a classic watch but it's actually quietly tracking something much more meaningful. your autonomic nervous system. This is the system that governs everything from how you respond, from excitement to anxiety, calm to overwhelm.

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17:42Talk to me about that, because I think relationships is probably the biggest topic on this podcast, right? Whenever we put out anything, whether we did Alan de Botton or we did Arthur Brooks the other week, they just go, everyone goes viral, right? Because everyone universally connects to love, heartbreak, relationships. Yeah. Talk me through like your journey with relationships to this point. Well, I've always gone through life wanting to be liked because I didn't know who I was. I knew the many faces. There was many very different faces of Tony and masks. And I hate that terminology. Oh, I'm swearing.

18:15It's a mask. But it's true. There was so many different versions of me that I had got lost in the versions. I'd got lost of who I was and what I really wanted. You know, I was either recovery Tony, I was junky Tony. I was, you know, either talking about the past or reliving the past. And all of these different factors that were making that Tony, right? And that Tony wasn't enough. You know, I just, I didn't love myself. I was all right with being all right. Do you know why? Because I was, you know, it was a learned behavior. Everything that I went through from the age of 10, even before that, when I was a child, I learned to get what I wanted by either being ill or manipulating or lying and then suddenly I got you know people prey on that and they see that vulnerability and then suddenly I've got a learnt behaviour of how to get through being abused as a 10 year old child for four years right those learnt behaviours that I learnt from that I found that sex could be transactional I found out sex was meaningless because there was no passion in it I went through life with no passion right there was never any passion it was always like the most stagnant water when it came to any form of relationship because I took the past to every relationship I took all of the worst things about myself to every relationship and then I learned that relationships were just like using.

19:52They started off with the most beautiful list of people, but I always went for the same type of person. Which was? That had problems, that had this or was wounded or needed nurturing. I was, you know, I was like, I should have been working for the RSPCA, the amount of animals I tried to save. You know, it was insane. And I got to that point yet again where I was coming out of this relationship in 2001 um and all hell broke loose and then suddenly in comes a piece of light from my someone I'd met 10 years prior um and they came back into my life at the very wrong time oh it's so it seemed and I was in in deep trauma therapy and I I was like stabby came into my life and I was like I can't bring this person into my life I can't bring them into this this chaos but the miracle of it was was the book was coming out a month later and there was no skeletons so he knew everything there was to know about me and because we'd met 10 years earlier I didn't have to explain anything yeah and it was all done for me and it changed my life because someone came into my world not wanting anything not wanting to find out what it was that was making me tick they already knew and he showed me how to love myself he taught me how to to be who i am today and that's a person that actually has self-respect in every meaning of the word isn't it interesting that so many people say like oh you need to heal yourself before you meet someone else and actually what you're saying is i was in the darkest part of my life i was self-aware enough i was in the darkest part of my life and i was actively working on it but i was nowhere near healed no i thought i was healed i thought i thought i think a lot of things in life right you know i mean it's kind of like you know it's like that we get a little cold when covid was around we all had cold oh my god i've got covid you know that full process and it's every relationship i fooled myself into thinking that i was happy and it i was all right it was always all right do you know what i'm saying don't get something wrong there was always moments of happiness or forced happiness it wasn't until I'd done that work on myself and got to the point where I thought you know like that I I could tell myself it's all right Tony it's all right open up that you can lift that barrier and let someone in and I kind of with staffs that's my husband now you know he brought that to the table he came in he didn't come in like okay I'm over here I'm really well and blah blah blah he had his own problems and we dealt with them together instead of me trying to fix him it was a different a whole different scenario and you know tara at the time was like you you can't bring another third party into this and i was like you're right i can't so we kind of like played it down and kept it a secret for a very long time that we were seeing each other and you know we uh suddenly covid was over and we could start traveling again.

23:07So I'd take him away with me and we'd go to work and stuff and he'd come with me on trips and people would take photos and I'd be like, cut him out, don't let me. Because there was so much of the past still hanging around and I had to overcome that stuff to move on. And, you know, as I say, now I'm no longer acting out in sex addiction. I'm no longer in that place of destruct. I'm in a place of happiness well you're in a place of abundance yeah I really am and it's a remarkable thing to actually realise I am worth it you are? yeah do you know what I mean? is that L 'Oreal? totally in the words of Davina McCall yeah you're worth it you're worth it it's true I mean I was watching Scissor Sisters this weekend at Wilderness yeah and when their Filthy Gorgeous song came on amazing I was like it is actually just one of the best confidence songs that you can bring yeah I guess I've gone through that and then I was actually singing the lyrics and it was the first time I connected to it.

24:07And I was like, I think everyone should be singing this song. You're filthy gorgeous. And it's like, it's so true. Yeah, it is. I think that, you know, it's amazing. It's the power of music, right? When we find and we actually feel a song, right? There's a difference between listening and feeling. And when you suddenly feel something and you know the words, they're not necessarily the actual words, they're your words, which is what makes it so important. You know, there's nothing more greater than singing the wrong words to somebody else's song but making it your own. And I think that's what life's about, making it about us and making it our own.

24:46Do you know what I mean? Has your music changed since you've changed? I think that the way I see music and I feel music and I actually see music. What do you explain to me? Well, sometimes because of the way my head is, there's certain tunes I can, I just see it, like certain waves it's kind of weird without sounding like a nutcase again you know like i when i feel music i like there's three bars of a song can make every hair in my body stand on end uh that's that feeling have you ever done gong bath yeah i love so you know vibration and it goes through you it can make you so emotional and that's because you're feeling it right and that's the same with music and the energy on a dance floor uh yesterday i did uh camp festival at the weekend I was in Croatia doing defective played thousands of people and the energy and love within that crowd is so overwhelming right but whereas before I would think oh my god I can't do this like but now I'm so accepting of it and I give it back and and all it takes is for me to shift slightly to the right or to the left and not be in that zone and be in this zone and I go into my head and I want to do everyone's thinking for them but you know when when I'm playing music to a crowd or taking on that energy and relaying it back I could be anywhere in the world it doesn't really it doesn't really matter how many people are out there that energy coming back is it's a flow between the two it's an energy frequency yeah and I've opened those energies up I've opened that up to my to for acceptance self self-acceptance i love that i think energy is the most healing thing i guess for me maybe it is that's how i would like anecdotally say and when arthur brooks came on he said one of the three things to get the heartbreak is to listen to music because it connects to a part of your brain what actually helps your emotional processing of course and and the thing about is i get to do it for a living that's what i mean i get to travel the world and do what i love is is is is incredible It's incredible.

26:56And I never take it for granted. You know, it's like, as I said, I've just gone through the busiest couple of weeks this year where I've been travelling so much and so many people and then getting up after three hours' sleep and going to the next and seeing the same amount of people in different countries. And it's been remarkable. Remarkable. And, yeah, I get tired, but I'm never tired of what I do. How do you kind of come down off that high though? Because I think that's a really hard thing as a DJ when you are so high from an up level, from the energy frequency and like playing, doing your passion, right?

27:37And also music gives you energy. And then you've got to get home and sleep. How do you do? Well, I'm normally asleep in the car. I crash out. As soon as I get in the car, I'm like out like a light. So you can just go high to low? Yeah, totally. A hundred percent because I exhaust myself. Like the other day in Croatia, I was on a boat for three hours and normally you know i was pre-planning in my head oh well i'll take them in slowly take them on that journey like you know because it was it was a three-hour boat trip with me the only dj and i just went straight in and like so i had to maintain that energy for three hours by the time i came off i'd taken on all of that uh and i just literally was like i've got to go home and sleep because it exhausts me giving it back do you know what i mean it's kind of like Like, you know, but as I always say, like at the end of the summer season, like the end of September, early October, I always get ill.

28:35I always come down with some like mysterious bug and I always blame it on air conditioning. It's your nervous system. Well, yeah, it is exactly that. It's that part of me like saying, right, okay, we've got through this. You've run on adrenaline for the last eight months. Now it's time to rest. And as soon as I rest, I crash. yeah you know there's a week where i'm like unacceptable you know like of anything and then i'm all right i come back from it i try to stay off social media as much as i can because i go to that place of like oh my god i've taken two days off my career's over my world's ended do you know what i mean it's like well how do you keep up with social media right because you came to fame i guess through posting crazy funny memes on social media and and you were like oh i just started doing this for the lulls of it and then all of a sudden it became like this big old thing yeah we were living in fear weren't we we're living in fear someone had to do but are you just constantly scrolling social media oh my god most people call it doom doom scrolling i don't there's no doom in it whatsoever it you know for me i love social media i love the aspects of the fun side of social media i don't like clickbait i hate rage I hate the algorithm.

29:51Because if I'm having a conversation about thuggery, for instance. About what? Thuggery, not buggery. Thuggery. You know, like people fighting. If I look at one video of a fight or shoplifting, my algorithm will, that's it. I will see nothing but fighting on my phone. And then it makes you realise the really awful side of social media, the way that it's changed. because back in COVID, we weren't having that. Those algorithms didn't exist in the way that they do now. So, you know, if you talk, your phone really wasn't listening to you as much as we thought it was back then. And now you mention something, it's on your phone.

30:30Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's listening. Literally, because it's always listening. But, you know, the thing about it is the world of social media has changed. And so if I'm on certain platforms and that stuff will just keep showing and keep showing, I have to come off of it and go, I'll go back to an old school app that I haven't been on for ages. Do you know what I mean? Just to get the respite from it. So how do you keep up with all the memes then? Oh, I just screenshot all the time. I'm the biggest thief in the world. So it's like, I do a lot of traveling. Right. You know, Wi-Fi on planes is my new favorite thing.

31:08Really? See, I'm the opposite. I don't want Wi-Fi on a plane. Oh, I do. It's the only time when I have respite. Well, I don't listen to music on planes or podcasts or anything. Because for me, as soon as I start to listen to anything, I'm unconscious anyway. If I want to watch a TV program or a film, the plane is probably the only place I can actually watch a whole film. You've got nothing else to do. Yeah. And if I'm at home and I want to watch a film, I'll watch three minutes and I'm unconscious. I wake up at the end. Yep. Because I crash. My brain is so charging all the time. Right. and the voices as soon as I sit down to watch something of interest gone really yeah I've never you know I sit and watch RuPaul's Drag Race I've never ever ever watched a whole episode ever I could tell you exactly what they did in the first challenge and that's it done I forever like who won who won that season is this the ADHD yeah we have had so many guests on the show to discuss the importance of the vagus nerve and actually devices that can support your nervous system health.

32:12As someone with ADHD, I've learned that supporting your nervous system is foundational to your overall wellbeing. And vagus nerve stimulators like Pulsetto can genuinely be beneficial, similar to somatic bodywork. Now over the past year, I've seen the biggest shift in my health personally hasn't come from adding more to my routine and overwhelming myself, but actually creating moments where my body feels safe enough to genuinely slow down, which I think we all need reminding of. So that's why I wanted to share what's genuinely been helping me and that is this vagus nerve stimulator, Pulsetto. Now it's become a small ritual that I turn to when my mind feels really busy or during moments of meditation because it helps connect me more to my body and feel grounded.

32:59It supports what I'm already building rather than adding pressure. So what I do is I pop it on my net, I turn it on and I use it for 4 to 10 minutes every single day and it connects to my vagus nerve which puts me from the stress response into more rest and digest and if you're someone that really likes touch and body work this might be genuinely really helpful so if you're serious about connecting more to your nervous system pulsetto can be genuinely transformative if you're looking to support your wellness routine i'd recommend giving it a try and what's amazing is that you can discover pulsetto using my code sarahann at checkout there is also a 30-day money-back guarantee so if you see that it works or it doesn't work you can send it back as always i only share products that i genuinely have used and enjoyed and believe in and i think could help you too it's important that pulsetto is a wellness device designed to only support relaxation and well-being individual experiences may vary It's not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

34:09So if it sounds interesting, give it a go and let me know what you think. And do you medicate with it for ADHD? I do like lion's mane and I do a few other mushrooms. And that's it really. That's the level of it. NAD I take, NMM and stuff like that. But you're not on medication for ADHD? No, why would I want to medicate? I've gone through life this far. It's a big conversation. Yeah, and I mean, I used to self-medicate all the time with other substances, you know, and I no longer need to do that. I don't find the need to self-medicate. Yes, I've been offered medication for ADHD, but you know what?

34:51I've managed this long in life without it, and I don't see the point in having a forced sense of reality. It's not where I want to be. I quite like my ADHD. Some days it's a superpower. Well, I agree. Yeah, it's a total superpower. I met a kid yesterday who was 17, and he wants to be a DJ, and he's like, you know, I'm a DJ, I've got really bad ADHD, and I used it as a superpower. Well, that's why you see music, Tony. Yeah, it's exactly that reason. It's the only reason. Yeah, and it's why the way I feel it. You know, I can cry during a set on stage. Certain tracks that I play will get me. I could have played it a million times, but there'd be that one moment where it gets me and I cry.

35:34What is your relationship to crying? I'm all right with it. Have you always been all right with that? Was it only since the therapy that you've got better? I think that I used to be able to cry on command when I wanted something, and I used to use it as a tool for manipulation. I'd never do it again, I promise. Oh, I'm so sorry. I promise I'm going to get help. Oh, yeah, all of that stuff. Victim. But I was so dehydrated, no tears ever came out anyway. You know what I mean? Literally, they'd be like, you're crying, but there's no tears. It's like, because I haven't drank water in 28 years. What do you expect?

36:08But, you know, now I'm crying. I'm okay with it because, you know, it's an emotion. It's a part of my emotions. And it's, you know, I learned in therapy that anger is a good emotion. Yeah. It's not good when you leave it untreated or you ignore it and it becomes rage. Rage is no good for anyone. It's really good to be angry. I'm not saying it's great to be angry, but it's good to acknowledge anger. Recognise that you're angry. Totally. And when I get angry now, I very rarely go to rage. If I recognise the anger, I deal with it and I do something about it. So talk me through what would happen. Well, normally if someone pisses me off or a situation pisses me off and I don't say anything about it and that situation continues or it gets worse or it gets bigger and then I hate myself for not dealing with it in the first place.

37:11And then it will get to a point where I just burst. And then, you know, I normally tend to throw my phone across the room or just, I can't do this. And it goes to those places. and then it's a really dangerous place to be. Rage is awful. Awful, awful, awful. But when I used to go to Tara, I used to always be raging. And she was like, how are you feeling today? I was like, I'll... Seven. You told me that when you walked in. Yeah, no, but no, today I'm being a cunt today. Because I woke up this morning just like really happy to be in bed and it was like at home. And then as the morning progressed, I was like Jo I've got to go out I've just got my dog back I haven't seen her for weeks do you get what I mean and then I had two coffees and then people started pissing me off because I was allowing them to I was looking for another avenue because as we said before the crashing and the getting home bit you know when I say I'm being a cunt today I'm not really being a cunt do you get what I mean because I wouldn't recognise it when I'm being a cunt Yeah, yeah, yeah.

38:21Do you know what I mean? I get that. But because I recognise it and I say it, it kind of takes the power out of it. How did you fight that resistance with Tara? Because I read in your book that you basically stopped going to therapy because you felt like it was so confronting and you were like, no, no, no, no, this is too much. And I actually think that is one of the most relatable lines in your book. Yeah. Because the amount of people that will say, I'm going to go to therapy, they're there for five sessions. Yeah, always. And they're out the door. Always. And then they go back. Yeah. And they always go.

38:50And also, here's something that I open up about, which I've never done. But my therapist would always say to me, you only come to see me in the bad times. The work is in the good times. Yeah, 100%. And so that's something that I've had to work on is that not just going, okay, I'm going to go see someone for a crisis moment. You stick with it after. I think that when you go to therapy and it starts to open up those bits that you've shut down and the things that you don't want to talk about, it becomes really uncomfortable and really unnatural and that's when we kind of rebelled oh fuck her she knows nothing I'm not going there anymore she's too bossy how dare she tell me this how dare she tell me that you know it was like one of the that the one of the biggest things I talk about now from Tara is when she asked me how clean I was and I said 15 years she's like but when did you last have a drink and I said 15 years ago and then she was like what about drug and I said 15 years ago and she was like and then she didn't say anything and i was like she's asking that stupid question for you i've been paying you for months and months and months surely you should know that and then she's at the end of the session she said uh i said why did you ask that i said she went we just want to know why do you still go to meetings and i was like well i said because i need to still go to meetings it's where i need to be to stay clean and she was like okay well i can see like four or five really big problems here that are going on that you're ignoring and won't deal with because you're still doing something you haven't going you're still dealing with something you haven't done for 15 years and I was like whoa you would say that because you're not in recovery and like you know then I left and I just thought why am I going to this woman she really doesn't understand but you know because it was challenging and it was like that learned behavior of having to go to meetings to stay clean was a learnt behaviour that I really no longer served me because I was raging from every meeting I was taking all the wrong aspects of those meetings and channeling them to hate myself like what like just people what the same person talking about the same stuff every morning or this one talking about his daughter's GCEs or whatever it was just anything and it would like infuriate me and I would take it on and I would leave the meeting thinking I hate these people and but really what it was was it was just like it was no longer serving me in the way that it should have served me and uh I was full of ego and because I was veered up and then so I stepped back from doing so many meetings I went back to Tara and start a step back and my life changed so dramatically in the sense of I was no longer being the face of recovery I was actually in recovery in a sense that it wasn't a pre-scripted manual anymore i was working the the steps to my own ability best of my ability not somebody else's so i guess like the way i interpret that right is that you have these like 12 steps that kind of get you clean yeah but then the underlying thing of getting the next stage is actually working on the reasons why you got there originally and unraveling that yeah i mean we we we go through the 12 steps and each step with your sponsor you write certain there's like certain writing aspects to it you know you write lists of people you need to make amends to you write lists of uh you know people you heart so many situations but it's always the same it's always pre-scripted so yeah not everybody suffers with the same illness it's not a one-stop shop and you know so it's about finding your people and about finding the right people that relate to okay addiction is such a a massive thing in the sense of i i have so many friends that say oh i've never struggled with addiction i'm like okay right how many hours a week do you work you know do you drink every night all of these different factors and people see addiction as one thing and it's not you know it manifests in relationships it manifests in the way we treat us it's so many different ways we become accepting of being a bad person yeah or or why does this keep happening to me why oh why you know why have I got no friends and all of these things that we we we use as tools to self-harm is and so the you know with the 12 steps I was doing exactly that I was never moving forward and I still I listen I work my program to the best of my ability but I'm more connected to the program than I am meetings so I was the I had to make myself the face of everything yeah because I was living in ego I no longer live in that ego ego is like doesn't serve me well what was it that Tara did that kind of helped unlayer those masks and make you feel more accepted like what do you have a defining moment when you were in these meetings with her and being like that was a real epiphany yeah there was lots of them you know like I would sit on the floor colouring in and doing drawing stick men basically with her?

44:14yeah during a timeline of my life and certain situations that I remembered and I would have to draw them out and there were so many situations where people all ended up having blonde hair and I was like and she was like why are they all blonde and I was like I don't know it's just the color of the felt tip pen and it wasn't the color of the felt tip pen because I actually made a conscious effort to get the yellow and make them blonde and then it was like about a month later that it suddenly dawned on me that everybody that had been in my life that was abusive were blonde but yeah I always went for blondes and and you know that I always thought that blondes were my thing I'm now married to a Greek I know I've seen yeah there's definitely not blonde there's absolutely no blonde there and you know I would always go for this type of person that was unlovable because I was unlovable so I always went for that for that that type you know um and yeah so working through that stuff and looking at the reasons why I was the way I was the drama triangle living my life you know mind mapping revolutionary talk to me about that no I'm not going to go into that we'll be here for two hours no you know just like the whole process of sitting down and actually instead of you know most people go to therapy they rant and they they go on and the therapist sits there ask six questions and off you leave that's not like that with with with tara she would challenge you on everything and she'd be like why um let's go back to that i'd be like no let's not and she'd be like no we're going to go back to that and she'll ask me questions you know i'd realized that i'd spent the first 15 years of my recovery firmly on a drama triangle on every side the victim the persecutor all of it that was me uh and because it's it was self-seeking it was self-serving and i got to this point in my life where i was so addicted to drama i still can be but i i i i think a lot of people are addicted to drama of course because it's it's it's a way of channeling energy that we we don't have any other way and we when we grow up coming from a place of drama it stays with us it's another learned behavior you know well talk to me about the big dick energy well you know the thing about is with big dick energy is like when you meet someone and you fancy them you think oh i'm gonna have a chat with that person and you go up and you give them this version of yourself like all right how you know on all of this stuff and then you walk away and you think you wanker.

46:57And they must think you're a wanker too because of the way you're like talking, you know, giving it like, running on ego. And my ego will take me to places that I do not need to go to to try and get what I want. And walking away from it, you just think, if the only, you gave them the version, the real version of you, the vulnerable, the scared, lonely. Because that's got rejection. Of course it has. But you know what? they just might relate to that do you get what I mean instead of like giving them this big dick energy of bravado walking in the room thinking right well no one in here is going to challenge me I'm going to challenge them all before they before they even say hello that's what I went through life being like you know um and I was known for it I was known to be that bitchy the the sharpest tongue in the room and that was all that was all a you know character assassination yeah guys it's taken me eight years but I finally wrote a book and it's called healthy shouldn't be this hard and actually became bestseller this may very exciting now if you want more self-compassion in your life and you want to know the reasons on why that is so important I tell you all in this book and i give you a lot of tools to help you get there it's definitely been a lifesaver for me and i know many people that have read it it has for them too so if you want to check it out head to my bio or the show notes below you'll find the link to the book and so that's what tara helped you yeah release was the big down all of that stuff and we realized that it no longer works for for this version of me the real version of me because this isn't another made-up character this is like the the one that cries at coronation street the one the one that well you know it's on in the background i find it numbing uh i haven't watched it in ages but you know i'm using it as like uh the kind of thing that i would actually sit and watch because i find it mind-numbing in the sense of like uh i just i i will cry at adverts i cry at dogs in the street you know i I see things like baby penguins and it makes me cry.

49:12I would just so many. I'd cry at baby penguins. Yeah, of course. Who wouldn't, right? Unless you've got no heart. You know, and I'm all right. You know, I love that version of me. And I think Stabby loves that version of me. I get sent so many dog things every day. You know, this weekend when we were away, the dogs were with our, like the dog sitters, and they went to the beach for two days and Stabby was so upset because we didn't wasn't doing it with the dogs and the dogs were gonna have that memory of being with Max who works with us and he's his girlfriend who runs a puppy school like puppy uh sitting and they went down to the beach and Raph our other dog was surfing oh my god it broke Stabby's heart and for me I just was like oh my god look but he broke his heart because it wasn't him doing it yeah and i couldn't get my head around it at first i was like be happy that the dogs are not just sitting at home they're out surfing you know that's a clip they were actually really surfing i'll show you in a minute you'll be like what and uh and then last night i was i was in the car with max and stabby sent through because Max was sending us videos of himself with the dogs and they were like amazing pictures Stabby had superimposed his own face on Max's body to make it look like it was it and he was like yeah that was that day that we went to the beach I was just like oh stop it we'll take them ourselves but do you know what I mean it's like that kind of thing just makes me so happy I know but that also just sounds like you're living the basics of life you know like there's nothing basic about my life anymore just so you know like you know you're finding joy in the in the things that aren't these like addictive pleasures you're finding joy in watching your dog it's real it's real happy real happiness the simplest of happiness you know it's it's uh it's not about expense it's not about design it's not about anything that is you know is is self-seeking self-serving in that sense you know like oh i have to yes i love clothes i i have a shopping problem it's only a problem to other people because they make it a problem but it's not a problem to me i don't but i i for me my expensive tastes these days are making sure that my dog's got food and making sure that my husband's looked after and and we're in a place of happiness those are the expensive needs which cost nothing most of the time yeah so there's this whole kind of interesting area right of self-development which i feel like you all really understand yeah but do you think we can like over intellectualize therapy and self-development to the point where we're like trying to fix ourselves and we can't fix ourselves anymore because there's always there's always a point where you have to stop and take a breath and breathe and actually live as that person like watching your dog surfing totally 100 you know it's about stepping back like anything you know as i said i stepped back from 12 step pro 12 step meetings because i wanted to live those 12 steps i stepped back from therapy because i wanted to live as the person that i've now become because i've dealt with the wreckage of the past the wreckage of the past no longer dictates my future i talk a lot about the past in past tense now not reliving it i don't relive that stuff uh yesterday i was asked um by uh the guy interviewing me at wilderness uh not wilderness camp festival uh do i have regrets and i said yeah i do of course i do but they don't dictate who i am today i live in yet not regrets talk to me about well i can't yet to come you woulda shoulda coulda doesn't doesn't it's done oh yeah i should have done this yeah i should have done that no no i'm doing this and i'm doing that that is what's important and i think that the yetts are jumping out of a plane parachuting going sliding down the mountain on a chevoggan doing all of these things that i would never allow myself to do before yeah and it's not no you know people get to these points in their lives and they go oh he's having a midlife crisis he's bought a lamborghini there are no lamborghinis there's happiness fresh air going on long walks doing all of these like simple things about also oh i've never been there or i've never done that i'm gonna do it do you know what i mean and it's like well it sounds like you're just excited for the future which i think is actually maybe a mindset you weren't because you were dwelling on the past before i don't say that you're dwelling on the past but you're processing a lot of stuff that was within you but it held me back exactly all of it was holding me back that's why I always ended up in the most darkest of places even in recovery I always still end up in those places uh of despair and now I don't go to those places because that wreckage has all been dealt with and I you know today it's kind of like okay I'm tired do I want to go and do a podcast it's boiling hot outside no i don't but you know what i agreed to do it so i'm going to do it and now i'm here and i'm loving it yeah that's a yeah because before it'd be like oh i'm cancelling and cancelling anything is not the one yeah it's not a good value to know it's not and i always say you know values are people's actions yeah people say like these are my values and i'm like but they're not because you don't act in the same way your actions is what your values are yeah that's the way that you live your life right yeah and i i'm learning now like to put my phone down and actually spend more time with my dog because my dog sits on the other sofa and looks at me like and and then suddenly i've been on social media for two hours and i'm like i should just i've not taken the dog to the batsy park or to high park where i should be going or she hasn't been surfing today do you know i mean my dog's not going to get jealous that it's not been surfing madness it's actually down with my parents at the beach right now so maybe i need to make sure there you go on a surfboard so when i wrote my book there's different chapters in there that i resonated with more deeply that felt more like personal to me and that may be a whole closer to my heart what's the one from your new book that you feel that has the most like resonance and connection to you from my book um for you well i think just that the the final chapter were about marriage and being going from i to us it's a remarkable thing because i've always made my life about me wherever how bad it was it was always yeah like i used to say it's my shit however bad my life is and however shit is it's my shit and there's something comfortable about that wallowing in your own misery and i think that the discovery of making it about us instead instead of I is a really, really big thing for me.