DJ Fat Tony: The Truth About Addiction, Abuse & A-List Stars

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1:20DJ Fat Tony:tonight we feast an offer you can feast on sell your car today on Carvana pick up fees may apply this episode contains discussions of abuse sexual abuse, drug abuse and addiction some listeners may find these topics distressing please take care while listening viewer discretion is advised I went online onto my Instagram live I just called her out f*** you, there's a reason you've been cancelled You jumped straight in the beginning into childhood trauma. Within 10 minutes of talking about it, I was projectile vomiting. Jesus. I mean, you were expelled from school for sleeping with a teacher. Yeah.

2:00I mean, that is wild. At that time, was that recognised as you were being abused? Were you 14? Absolutely not.

2:07DJ Fat Tony:I know a really good bush on the heath. So off we went to Hampstead Heath. So you shagged in a bush on Hampstead Heath. Yeah, shagged in a bush. Because your boy George had come home early. Yeah. Like you pulled out your own teeth. What would you have wanted to hear when you were in the depths of addiction? If someone asks you for help, right, they say to you, I can't do this anymore. Jump on them. Because that's your entry point. That's it. Do you know how much strength it takes for someone to tell you they've got a problem? The rooms of 12-step fellowship saved my life beyond anything.

2:45Hi dolls, welcome back to Olivia's house. Today I have got a very exciting guest. I've wanted you on for a while. It is one of the biggest DJs in the world with more stories than we could possibly fit into this one now, but we'll give it a go. It's DJ Fat Tony. Nice house. Do you like my house?

3:06DJ Fat Tony:Yeah, I do like your house. I bet you've been in some clubhouses in your time. Bet you've seen a few members clubs. Some, yeah. Yeah, some. Some nicer than others. I've seen a lot of members as well.

3:20Right, Tony, before we get into it, we have a little format here at Olivia's house where I ask my guests if there's something they'd like to leave at the door. Something that you're sick or bored of, a trend, a person. I'm excited to know what you want to leave at the door.

3:35DJ Fat Tony:It's simple for me right now. Clickbait. clickbait clickbait fuck off clickbait seriously you know the way it's used whatever you do in the world right they will do a negative spin on any situation you know my god i just put a book out about overcoming trauma yes right and learning how to overcome insanity and yet every interview i did they managed to turn it into clickbait by using certain words that had nothing to do with that article or that book just to draw people in so they can get that one pound subscription and it's like are you that desperate i think obviously they are yeah and then when you complain to any editor of a magazine or to a paper or to a tv program oh you know i'm not doing it's clickbait oh well that's the world we live in and it's like why are we living in that world there's so much going on in this world right now that needs our attention we do not need clickbait to draw us away from that attention and it's so sad that it's true negativity does draw so many more eyes than positivity 100 i'd rather not do the interview i know there was a tv program recently which i will talk about yeah vanessa vanessa there's a reason it's been axed and i told her on the phone as well she rang me and she's yeah she was crying on the phone and she was like because I was due to go on there.

5:00DJ Fat Tony:They booked us three months in advance, right, for the book. I was due to go on there due to clickbait rage what was going on about a certain story that was getting escalated and escalated. Because I refused to talk about it, they were like, well, we don't want you on unless you're going to talk about it. And I was like... Unbelievable. So I was like, you know what? I'm declining this now. Yes. Go fuck yourself. And literally, and then, so I literally did it. I was raging. I was sitting at the cold buried stone square. I wasn't really raging. I was just like, oh, you're not... You're just like, no, I'm not doing it.

5:33DJ Fat Tony:I've had enough. Yeah. And so I went online, like onto my Instagram live. I just called her out. That's always dangerous, isn't it? Fuck you. There's a reason you've been cancelled. So you were just a people to fill the dots. You were meant to be on this chat show with Vanessa to promote your book. And they were like, we want you to talk about this. I mean, anyone who doesn't ever do a rock, probably one of the most famous families in the country. Well, yeah, it was the Beckhams. And I refused to talk about it. They wanted a line on that. otherwise they didn't want you on. And so I told them where to get off.

6:00DJ Fat Tony:Yeah. And then, so then Claire Sweeney gets involved. Oh, Jesus, Claire. She calls me a beach. Claire. Vanessa's mortified. And I'm like, why? And she's like, she didn't know anything about it. And I'm like, hang on, hang on, hang on. If your name, right, is Vanessa, the Vanessa show, right? Your name is above that pub door. You're responsible for everyone in that pub drinking. Everyone in that pub, that is your license. If you're not, what the fuck are you doing? Do you know what I'm saying? She rang me crying and I said, I'm sorry, I'm not taking the post down. No. It's how strong I feel. She went, it's kids doing it, it's got nothing to do with me.

6:39DJ Fat Tony:I said, your name is above the door. You should be checking in on what they're doing now. Next time you get a TV show, if there is a next time, literally. Do you know what I'm saying, Char? Maybe take more care, more diligent care of your guests. Yeah, and how they're being produced before the show. Because I'm not going to be a part of it. No, I agree. Do you know what I mean? Good for you. And then, of course, you do that, and then you get 50 million bot messages, which is another thing I'd like to leave at the door, with people with no posts and no followers, but got a lot to say, which is a bot.

7:13DJ Fat Tony:But, like, literally going, but you went on there and you did this, and you said a lot, and it's like, block, block, block. You chose to talk about it at one point. You're allowed to decide to stop talking about it. It doesn't mean you have to talk about it on every appearance the rest of your life. No, I'm right. Why would I write a book about overcoming trauma and how to overcome trauma by talking about someone else's trauma? Yeah, no, I agree. It makes no sense. I am not that person. You know, I wrote this book. It's nothing to do with anyone's wedding trauma or any other trauma. It's only a bit more serious.

7:48DJ Fat Tony:It's about learned behaviour. What we do as a child defines us as an adult. and we go through life with these lovers. And that was what the book was about and is about. Well, let's talk about the book. You had great success in your first book, I Don't Take a Press, and this new book, Recover Me, A User's Guide to Overcoming Insanity. I'm obsessed with the title. How do you differentiate this book from the first book? So the first book was about me. The first book was my life story. It was a very, very, very honest book. Yeah, a true biography. Yeah, it was never meant to be that honest. It was only as, you know, as you know with ADHD we do something and then it's not right yeah and we'll change it and change it and change it and then two and a half years down the line you've got the most truthful account of anything on your hand and then I handed it in and then the very next night I woke up at 2 a.m and literally it was fever like freaking out get the book back get the book back and I rang Mikey at 6 a.m who I wrote that book with so I want the book back and he was like you can't so i then when i was like right i'm gonna ring the publishers rang hannah black who was my publisher at the time i said i want the book back and she was like you can't have it back it's an amazing book and i said i want it back because i was so scared of what people everything i wrote in that book i really thought that i'd overcome yeah and there was so much shame attached to everything in that book that i really believed at that point in time uh where i was in life that i it didn't bother me and I'd overcome it and I'd dealt with it I didn't deal with any of it and by bringing it all to the surface and condensing it and doing an audio version of it and reading it out for all those hours suddenly it's like that effect was like I had PTSD from the audio book because you're reliving stuff that you probably had pushed so far back into your subconscious 100 % you know when we wrote the abuse chapter in I Don't Take Requests I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and every week Mike would go do you want to do that today oh no not today i'm having a nice day today because it would ruin your day yeah because i just didn't know how i was going to feel about it and we started doing it and within 10 minutes of talking about it i was projectile vomiting i thought i had food poisoning literally was like oh my god i've got food poisoning we need to stop it went on all day i went to bed that night and woke up with the worst feeling of fever and he was in the room with me i could smell him the guy that abused me i could smell it i could see it was awful and that was the effect that it had by bringing it up and that so you condense that with every other story in that book that was that so this book is about overcoming the holds that those stories had on me so you basically because in this in this second book you jump straight in in the beginning into childhood trauma yeah and then you basically talk about it and at the end your therapist she then unpacks it in a certain way and gives people tools and like this is what happened to Tony and this is that and kind of breaks it down in more sense.

10:46DJ Fat Tony:Which kind of tells you where my nervous system was reacting and where I was. Such an interesting way to do a book. When we come into any form of recovery, right, whether it be alcohol abuse or drug abuse or anything, food, romance, there's so many forms of it.

11:05DJ Fat Tony:When we make that change in life, we're in recovery. We think that by putting down the problem is the end of it. It's not. It's the beginning. And to go back and unravel that stuff, because I was 15 years clean and sober and I was in the worst place I'd ever been. Once I'd finished writing that book, I was in the worst relationship I'd been in. I was in most darkest of times. My sex addiction had gone through the roof. I was actually now... Because you replaced that addiction with another addiction. Yeah, because that was my primary illness. From the age of 10 when I was abused, sex become a way and a means for me to change and get what i wanted because i i've been groomed into that way of believing and what you know when we're born and we make a noise to be picked up and her mother knows what noise that is we also make a noise when we shit ourselves we make a noise when we want to be fed and and then that suddenly becomes i want i need yes and when we do get i want i need that's a learned behavior that we will carry like the way i'm speaking now is i've learned to speak this way is a learned behavior so when you bring addiction or trauma in we learn coping mechanisms and for trauma for me it was alcohol and drugs and then when we go through life and also if you if you lie when you're a child like you do something really bad like setting the house on fire like i did whatever you had nothing to do me it wasn't me just like you get away with it yeah you will lie forever you will always go revert back to that place because we got away with it it served us yeah so this book is about overcoming all of those learned behaviors bit by bit you just said that's so interesting because i've attracted i'm the opposite of a liar i have verbal diarrhea but i've attracted a few liars in my time and i was talking to my therapist about why does someone because i find it really strange so i don't i feel like i can't lie i wish i could lie and she said at some point in his childhood he would have told a lie like you said it worked he realized oh my god that's a ticket to escaping consequence and then you just keep doing it as we said before we started the podcast today it's about stimulants like if we do coffee it shuts us down it makes us go inwards and it any form of stimulant for someone with adhd makes us go more into ourselves and and so we look so i i've learned very late on in life to drink coffee yeah right and now i drink too much coffee and i go it's so into myself that i can't talk to people how much coffee can you drink uh i well in the mornings i normally have like two two big iced black americanos so that's four shots then i'll have a third which is six shots yeah then then i as i always say to i to stabby oh my god you know i'm sorry i've been all day because i've had too much coffee and stabby's like yeah coffee yeah oh yeah yeah yeah it's the coffee but you know a neurotypical person would have a heart attack if they drank that much coffee they'd be like having a panic attack no it's the other way around yeah and it's like that's why when I go to places where I'm going to do talks or I'm talking to people, I try not to have coffee because I go inwards and I get brain fog.

14:07You go a bit like dissociative. 100%. Yeah.

14:10DJ Fat Tony:100 % can't remember. If I go out of here and I try to get in a taxi, I won't remember my address. Really? Uh-huh. Just completely, yeah. I go like completely blank. That's so interesting. It's mad, isn't it? You talk about so many things in the book and you've just referenced some there, you know, from your childhood and watching your mother and father's relationship to being abused as a child at school. I mean, you were expelled from school for sleeping with a teacher. Yeah. I mean, that is wild. At that time, was that recognised as you were being abused? Because you were 14. Absolutely not.

14:41Which is insane because that was an adult teacher who was sleeping with a child student and you were the one that was reprimanded.

14:49DJ Fat Tony:Yeah, he lost his job as well. He lost his job. We both walked away from the situation. And, you know, my mum had to deal with that because my dad didn't know because my dad would have like gone up to school and killed everyone yeah so me and my mum had to deal with it so i used to have to pretend to go to school so he didn't know you've been kicked out wow and for what reason because i you know i was such a mixed up kid at that point in time from the age of 10 to 14 i'd been abused for four years and groomed and led to believe that i was the problem but also at the same time being led to believe that i'm the problem at school because i couldn't read and write properly because of my dyslexia because i didn't have an attention span to sit in class and learn to speak fucking french i didn't have that attention span yeah so therefore i was a problematic child that they no longer wanted there and to feel that rejection not only from the school but from my abuser and from everything else being made to feel that i was worthless yeah well as you know and anyone listening to this who's neurodivergent and wasn't diagnosed you know being told all the time sit still concentrate get out of the class it's so damaging to your self-esteem or hearing the sentences or you can do it so much better you're a smart kid and you're like i know i'm smart i just don't know how to put it on paper it's very damaging and then did you feel like you seeked you know validation through a sexual life at a very young age because then when i as i very well documented in don't take requests i used to leave school and go and seek sex because that's all i knew yeah it was the only way i knew how to change how i was feeling and it was the only way to shut down what's going yeah and it was like a false sense of being wanted being okay okay you know what you're not that stupid someone wants something from you and that's where it went and it's a really you know is really it was a sad existence and but it was a learned existence that carried on and it would always go away when i met new friends or whatever but it would always come back because it was untreated what did life look like for you when you left school what were those early years like oh those early years were great because i suddenly discovered uh drama like in the sense of lights and entertainment i ended up in king's road yeah working in in on the king's road which was like social media everyone went to king's road on saturday to be photographed it was like the coolest place yeah it was and i was right in the middle of it all and then i was going out clubbing and you know i i was introduced to the bright lights of the west end as such and all the coolest clubs in the world and it it it was like i felt that i had a purpose what was the buzz on the king's road like at that time in that it's incredible because it was just it was it was post-punk yeah it was new romantic there was people were still dressing up and wanting to be seen it was everyone had their own platform yeah so you you had to do something to be to be recognized to be seen so you know you had your pete burns and your george's and all of these people walking up and down the king's road and the straight everybody who was in that industry was walking up and down there then you had all the young creatives that were up there taking photos and and that's where id came from the magazine and the face and all of these incredible outlets of style and fashion came from that one street.

18:23Yeah. Before it became quite Sloanie and quite sanitised and like, it's just a different world now, isn't it?

18:29DJ Fat Tony:Oh, you know what? I live right by it and I walk up there all the time and it's got no magic. No. I mean, at Christmas... It's vanilla, isn't it? Yeah, it is. At Christmas you've got... I mean, listen, the magic of King's Road right now is there's a Whole Foods. Do you know what I mean? Oh, my God, guilty. Oh, my God. I love Whole Foods. and also you know Peter Jones Peter Jones and old Pavilion Road as well and the Ralph Lauren Pop-Up at Christmas do you know what I mean yeah it's like that's it that's the magic Chelsea and Bloom so different oh once a year we can go down but it's like that's the magic of it that's all gone it's all been the life and soul of it it's been sucked out it's like Soho it's all been sucked out and we've been injected with things that we're meant to believe are cool and they're not yeah during those times is when you met boy George.

19:16He's a best friend of yours. Yeah. Do you know that I was in the jungle with him for like four days? So I was in the jungle in, what year did I go in, guys? I can't fucking remember. Two years ago.

19:26DJ Fat Tony:Three years ago. Yeah, three years ago. And I was only in there four days. They kicked me out because of ill health. Long, boring story. But me and George were on a, they dumped us on a deserted island for the first two days. We hit off straight away because he's just so funny. Yeah, he's just three years. He's so funny. And he ripped up all his camp uniform and made a, they told him, do not touch your camp. And he, but literally in the night I heard this like shredding. I thought, my God, it was getting attacked by Heinrichs. Because he made all that spotty stuff. Yeah, he's sort of making all this stuff out of his camp kit.

19:54DJ Fat Tony:I was talking to him last night actually because he posted on, he posted on X. And this is my last ever post. Oh, so I FaceTimed him and I was like, come on, what's going on? And he was like, looked at it and started laughing. I said, what, what, what's going on? He went, I've been arguing with Grok for three days. Wait, talk to him about Grok, because I don't do X or Twitter. And now I realise I've been arguing with Elon Musk. I'm like... So Grok's an AI bot? Look, AI is worst, right? So AI, I think AI, if it's embraced and used in the right way, it's incredible. Agree. Listen, as a DJ, right, who played vinyl, who learnt to play on vinyl, and suddenly CDs come in, oh my god we cut oh it's gonna kill the industry yeah yeah yeah we got rid of cds we got rid of physical music stuff that we could touch and smell when right we lost that magic and now we're we're wafts and we're with usb sticks and now they get trying to phase that out and it's going to be wi-fi and oh you know but embrace change move with it you've got to because it's not don't start like you know body shaming it it's like oh my god it's disgusting it's being used for this and being used for that everything gets used in the wrong way in this world i.e.

21:13DJ Fat Tony:clickbait i.e. you know bots on just don't buy into that side of it and i said to george yesterday what are you doing arguing with arguing with grok is that i can't help it is it true that um boy george gave you your nickname your name factone no that's a lie is it a lie no i mean look he uh he might have he might have been calling me it behind my back because that's where it came from people used to go oh which Tony they get oh fat Tony I was fat Tony I was a fat kid and then I got to after because I was fat because I was protecting myself I didn't want anyone ever to come near me again so I become fat it was like a castle wall that's so interesting and then once as I I kind of left school well that era of my life and moved on so I got to 16 and I just thought you know what I don't need to be hiding anymore do you know I mean and I kind of lost all that weight really quickly because it was like I'd suddenly just thought I just don't need to be that victim anymore.

22:13Yeah. But then you kind of adopted that.

22:16DJ Fat Tony:Become a victim of everything else, yeah. But you adopted that name and had it as your DJ name. Oh, I took it. You lent into the fact that that's what people were calling you. Listen, own it. Own it. Yeah, it's like, are they going to call me it? I'll call myself it. Do you know what I mean? What are your earliest memories about kind of breaking into the DJ scene? Do you remember your first proper gig? Yeah, my first gig was at the Lyceum where The Lion King is now in The Strand. And I'd complained every week about the music at this club that Rusty Egan and Steve Strange were running. And every week I'd go, because they gave me a job working on The Door.

22:50DJ Fat Tony:Okay. And I was giving out free tickets to everyone and basically building up my own platform. Just basically. Because I'd sign every ticket and it'd be like, oh, that's only going to see. So they'd all come in. And every week I would just make up rubbish. like rusted be like how was it tonight everyone left really early they didn't like the music there's this amazing dj called in tohurst who at the time was one of the greatest djs in the world he was like a dmc challenge uh expert and like you know like it was yeah and i i for some reason but you tried to make an opening for yourself and i was like yeah everyone hates to Ian's music so they literally just said if you can do better why don't you do it and that was it I turned up but the difference then was I had how did you learn to DJ I didn't do you just do you just talk yourself yeah I just literally played music I went there and played the songs that I loved it's so different to how it is now then when they say everything's chopped up but also I still play the songs that I love you still play the songs you love but in a different way in a different way and I I now love what I do.

24:02Yeah.

24:03DJ Fat Tony:And there's a real difference in that. Do you know what I mean? Rather than... Well, then it was like a ways and a means for me to be a part of that club and be seen. And you're like, I'm a cuckoo. So if you bring me in for one gig, I'm going to have 28 gigs on the back of it. Yeah. Because I will manipulate that situation. And you're in. Yeah, and I'm in. You write in your book, I'm excited or just shit scared. so I pretend I become the biggest loudest person and when you're an addict you have such a fucked up distorted view of yourself that the ego speaks first and the ego speaks loud is that how you so inside you are feeling like sort of um nervous maybe or unsure or never or did the always the ego louder no the ego is I always I I still am insecure in so many ways I will still have so much anxiety around every gig, whether it be three people in a room or 4 ,000 or 20 ,000 or whatever.

25:04DJ Fat Tony:But he never shows. I will have that anxiety. I will be on a plane, I'll be sitting at the front, not down the back by the bogs anymore, and I will still feel less than. I have imposter syndrome. I've always had it. And when you grow up and all of your friends have suddenly become the biggest pop stores on the planet, and all of your friends become editors of magazines and supermodels and everything else and you're just tony you're someone's friend right that that plays on that havoc so as with addiction and and going through life i never ever wanted anyone ever to love me so i always had uh a limit of where what i would do so and anything beyond that was like almost going into outer space so i'd go to the atmosphere and i would stay there and for me that imposter syndrome was a cap on my life because i didn't believe that i could be anything bigger and better i always felt second best and because i went through life wanting to be liked and never to be loved because i didn't know what love was and that sounds really pitiful and sad but it's true until now you know being liked was enough so everything i had in my life was enough except for drugs and alcohol and around that time is when you started heavily drinking isn't it and then heavily drinking led you to try cocaine yeah to stay up longer so the two things would kind of come hand in hand you get wasted then people need you to be awake so you try cocaine and is that when the sort of drug use just kind of spiraled from that point no i think that that it was there was definitely a pacer in the sense so was there a period of time where you had like control over it oh yeah of course i always believed i had control over it even when i was a complete crystal meth uh like you know junkie with no teeth i still thought i was in control really to a certain level i could stop this if i wanted to i had no intent it's like a lie you tell yourself of course it is we we live you know it's it's a self a false self sense of of being you know i couldn't survive without that stuff i needed i needed drugs to do the job that i did and that was blah blah blah who would i be without without drinking who would i be without taking drugs i you know early on there was a dj that was sober and and i used to be like how could she be a dj if she's sober yeah she can't feel what everyone else is feeling but i even and i really believe that when i've just been in ibiza and i'm not sober and i know a lot of djs and the majority of them drink and you know do whatever because i think it must be very hard how's that lifestyle it must be it's only as hard as you make it right do you think for me i'm gonna be 20 years in january and um you know my life is so incredible because of the things i don't do right um and drinking would destroy everything i have yeah and i'm not ready to throw anything away i just got it yeah do you know i mean i just really got it i got it i'm married i i'm in the best place i've ever been i'm the most happiest i've ever been but i'm still the youngest i've ever been what you talked about that you're when you lost your teeth i mean that that is like a harrowing thing to read that you pulled out your own teeth yeah like for anyone to hear that is is actually it's so it's so far from a reality that anyone could possibly imagine well you know i bite my mouth yeah yeah so my fingers are always in my mouth and you bring in a stimulant of some sort that's going to keep you awake for three days you're you're constantly you know a bag of nerves but my fingers are in my mouth constantly also when you don't drink out water for 28 years you get dehydrated my gums have receded and i my drug of choices changed so drastically.

29:03Okay. Right?

29:04DJ Fat Tony:And the substances I was taking got a lot more severe. And when you start to smoke drugs, Right. Right? The first thing that gets affected is your gums and you get infection. So then you'd sit and dig at them and then the finger wasn't doing it. So I'd pick up a bit of stick and start digging it. Because, you know, also at the time my face was always numb and... You couldn't feel it. No. And I just wanted them out of my mouth. And I was so mentally unwell that I thought it was normal. I would sit rocking backwards and forwards to stabilize myself. And what was the reaction from people around you who knew you and they saw you and you were losing your tea?

29:46DJ Fat Tony:All the good people had gone. As we go down, you know, I explained it in requests where the faster we go down, the more quicker those people hit the wall and go out. and you're left at the bottom with the carcasses and the sewage and the rats and all the bottom feeders. They're all at the bottom of that spiral. And they're not going to... But they're all right. They're your mates. They want the best for you. Yeah. We're all in it together. And you're all telling each other it's normal. Yeah. You talked about in your book about you were outside hospital with a drip in your arm and someone passed you that you knew who you used to party with and she handed you a...

30:25White key ring. A key ring for narcotics.

30:27DJ Fat Tony:for narcotics anonymous yeah julie her name was it still is her name she uh i was outside the hospital it's like 11 30 at night uh i've been in a coma i've been like i'd gone through the mill yeah and i was out in the street in a gown with the drip stand standing there waiting for a dealer to come along and i'd called him and he just he said yeah i'm coming an hour went by and he hadn't come and i was outside the hospital and along comes julie and i used to party with julie we used to do all the acid house clubs together and we used to go out for days and julie she's an incredible woman incredible energy incredible light and she walked along and i thought thank you god she's gonna thank you god and i was like all right julie what you got in your bag yeah and she was like well i said she well tony what's going on and i was like you're right have you got anything have you got anything in your bag and she's just looking at me she's like what's going on are you okay and i was like yeah i'm fine but if you've got anything and she went in her bag and she handed me a white key ring and i looked at it and i remember thinking what the fuck is this piece of shit and literally but you know what something magical happened at that point because i held on to it yeah and i went back just tossing it yeah and i held on to it and you know It didn't change my life.

31:49DJ Fat Tony:It didn't change anything. It was a bit of plastic. But the sentiment of her handing me that and saying to me, you don't need to do this, kind of lingered around, because we're talking about it now. So the fact that we're still talking about it. It was a pivotal moment in your life. Over 25 years ago. What were those first meetings like? What was your mindset going into them? Were you sceptical? God's waiting room. I used to sit there and think, I don't belong here. Like these people are far, far, far. Yeah, I'd look around the room at all their shoes, first of all. Their shoes, their fake handbags.

32:20DJ Fat Tony:Then I'd look at all the men's crutches. And then I'd literally, you know, and then I'd be like, no, these. And I remember going to my first meeting with my friend Michael, who used to come, I used to be at the Egg in King's Cross and the Cross. And they used to come there and I used to be like, oh, God, the Bible bashers are here. Because they used to come in and they'd go, let us take you to a meeting. And I'd be like, I don't need meetings. I looked like the mummy from the mummy film I was so emaciated and they were like let's take you to a meeting and I'd be like go away you're like Mormons it was like I felt like you kept ringing my doorbell sort of like telling me about the watchtower you know it was like one of those situations I was like I do not need God in my life well look at the state of me just leave me alone and he took it so at some point I'd been kicked out of my house for being me and my partner was like you're not coming back here until you sort yourself out and I so it was one of those moments that I was like Michael I really need to go to a meeting to be seen to be doing something to look like you're trying to fix it and I went with his sister my ex-partner's sister and we went to this meeting and it was in Duncan Terrace in in Angel just off of uh just behind Angel Station and I go I remember sitting there and at the time I thought there was no roof on the church there was a cauldron everyone was like warming their hands on it it was like a homeless show like a new york subway homeless show that's how i it was in my head i remember leaving the meeting and standing outside thinking come on let's get out of here and his sister was talking to everyone and i was standing there like oh my god yeah just go and michael come up went what did you think and i was like thinking fuck off you freaks and he went powerful right yeah powerful and i was just like yeah yeah literally and i just walked off and it took me about two years three years to actually get back to that point again and what was the what did group sessions ever help you what was the thing that you finally felt like i wouldn't be here now without going to those meetings and without being in early recovery and finding out which direction i needed to go into the rooms of 12-step fellowship saved my life beyond anything that that program has saved my life that program's allowed me to see who i am and for what i am and what reason i i i do what i do but you know it's it's uh it's another you know the longer you stay around the more gets revealed as they say but for me um i think that i i i i i choose my meetings wisely these days okay because for me i don't need to buy into the whole drama of everyone else's drama as in the like the story yeah because i i'm as i say i'm coming to 20 years i stepped back from me so look i talk about it in the book yeah my fellow my my therapist at that time this is quite controversial for people that are in the rooms i was going to early morning meetings and then i was going for therapy and i'd be raging i mean raging off the back of the meeting yeah like oh oh my God, I come so over that, listening to him say that every morning.