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Josh Wayard
(00:00:00:01 – 00:00:03:01] Today’s guest is a man who turned his pain into power.

[00:00:05:03 – 00:00:07:09] And his addiction into obsession.

[00:00:09:22 – 00:00:23:23] What followed was a descent into offshore, yawld benders, payday loans, total emotional collapse, capped off with betrayal, a £60,000 debt and losing himself completely. The first ever line I did was…

[00:00:26:11 – 00:00:40:13] That one little line lasted me all night. I was buzzing. It was like the best ever. And then how did that progress? Quickly. It was fun until it wasn’t. You’d get a packet delivered quickly and delivered a pizza, can’t you? That’s exactly what I say. You get a packet delivered faster than a pizza.

[00:00:42:02 – 00:00:55:18] Just tell me, how did using an eighth a day affect the relations you were in at that time? Yeah, terribly. She cheated on me with my best friend. And yeah, it just spiralled. And then I’ve ended up being in a debt plan for the last six years now. Of how much? It was £66,000.

[00:00:57:05 – 00:01:07:18] If you surround yourself with a load of bad vibes, it’s fine to be in a bad vibe, but if you surround yourself with some good people who want you to do well, then you will do well. No matter how deep you feel like you are, there is a way out.

[00:01:07:18 – 00:02:37:22] Hello, I’m Elliot Ward and welcome to another episode of Coming Clean With Me. Today’s guest is a man who turned his plane into power and his addiction into obsession. Josh Wyard was just a baby when his parents split, raised by his grandparents in Great Yarnworth. And by the age of 12 he was spending weekends in a house where weed was grown and partying was normalized. What followed was a descent into offshore, fuel benders, payday loans, total emotional collapse, capped off with betrayal, a 60,000 pound debt, and losing himself completely. But in January, 2023, contemplating stiffing another line, something shifted in Josh. And he hasn’t touched cocaine since that day. Not only that, he’s now 50 kilos lighter, stronger, mentally and physically. Welcome Josh and thank you for joining me with Coming Clean With Me today. Not a problem Elliot, it’s good to be here. How are you doing? Yeah, better than I was about four or five years ago, but yeah, I’m good, yeah. All right, let’s drill straight down to it. Let’s go for it. How were it like growing up? Tell me how you grew up, what the environment was like, give us some background. Early age, I had the best upbringing. Would not have changed it for the world. With my nanogram that it was amazing. I was only child, so I was treated the best.

[00:02:39:03 – 00:02:41:08] It comes to an age where obviously, like you just mentioned there,

[00:02:42:13 – 00:02:45:11] obviously I got weekends with my dad and stuff and he wanted to see me.

[00:02:47:00 – 00:03:18:16] But obviously what was going on behind closed doors when I was there, a little bit different maybe, what should have been going on. It was, I was at an age where I could realise what was going on there. Like it was, where was weed being grown? There was parties going on every weekend. I was always put to bed early while they carried on through the night. And then I had to spend the next day with my dad who was hungover or still awake. I don’t know what was going on to be quite honest with you. I was just a young kid, I had to deal with it. Do you think that impression stayed with you?

[00:03:20:11 – 00:03:53:23] I never thought it would be an issue. But now I’ve actually come to realise that it probably was, yeah. It was probably, it’s always there, isn’t it? It’s always in the back of your head. It’s always, it’s probably who made what made me me. So I would imagine so, yeah. Okay, and tell me about your early life. What was like growing up at school? What were you like at school? Friendships, et cetera. So in terms of school, so we’re talking, what’s up, what age are you talking there? From the age of 12 upwards. Yeah, 12 upwards, all right. So I thought I, I was a good boy. I was a good boy at school. I was all right at school.

[00:03:55:05 – 00:04:23:06] I got on with my shit. I sort of done what I had to do. I was bullied. I didn’t have a great time out of lessons, I was bullied quite a bit. I was picked on, obviously I was always quite a bigger lad. I was not quite in the popular group, if you like. And it was sort of like, I was always an easy target. You were overweight from a child. Yeah, yeah. Probably because I was an only child, you know what I mean? It was like, well, you just get fed, then it was great. I always wanted more and I’d get more. I got treated like a king at home, if you know what I mean.

[00:04:24:09 – 00:04:44:06] And at school, yeah, I was picked on. I was bullied. At some point, you’re just glad to finish school and get out of that and go to college and just branch away from that sort of side of things. And when you started seeing your dad again at the age of 12 and you spent weekends there and he was growing weed at home and having parties, what was that like for you as a 12 year old?

[00:04:45:08 – 00:04:47:09] At the time, it didn’t bother me.

[00:04:48:13 – 00:04:51:07] Peculiarly purely because I was happy just seeing my dad.

[00:04:53:18 – 00:04:56:09] It was difficult at the same time because we’d always be doing,

[00:04:57:12 – 00:05:21:13] not things that I wanted to do. It was always like, right, we’ve got to go meet this random person and I’ll just get waiting in the car. But looking back now as a 33 year old, it’s like, yeah, you were dealing around me. Do you know what I mean? You were off meeting people, buying, selling, doing whatever and it was, yeah, it was shit, yeah. Really, now I’m now thinking about it and looking back. It’s like, that was terrible. Do you know what I mean? I was happy because I was seeing him, but at the same time, probably it was shit.

[00:05:22:13 – 00:06:07:02] Do you think that exposure had an effect on you later on in life? The exposure to your dad dealing? Yeah, because it almost made it acceptable to be, if that’s the upbringing you get in and it makes it acceptable for you to be around drugs, it almost like, probably later on, give it five, six years from that, you go, all right, well, if he did it, I’ll do it. Like, why not? Makes sense. Yeah, I think so. I like to use the word the packet here instead of code name because later on, when we put this on social media, some of that can be a little bit textured. So can you walk us through the first time you first tried the packet, how that came about, where you’re at, who you’re with, et cetera. Okay, so the first ever line I did was, we went to see Skepta, the rapper.

[00:06:08:07 – 00:06:10:20] He was performing, I think it was called the Waterfront that’s in Norwich.

[00:06:12:02 – 00:06:17:08] And one of the lads, I must have only been, I must have been 18 because we were out, I was 17, 18, something like that.

[00:06:18:21 – 00:06:54:15] Someone said, “Do you want some of this?” And I was like, a bit like, oh, I was a bit above my head, you know what I mean? But you do it because you want to be cool. If I’ve been bullied all my life and someone offers you something, it makes you cool, you do it to fit in. So I did, I remember having one little line in the toilet in the Waterfront, yeah. And that one little line lasted me all night, I was buzzing, it was like the best ever. And he like, that was actually all right, I survived, nobody died, it was fine. I got away with it, almost sort of thing. I remember it was like five, six hours later and I was like, still on a high from it, still having a really good time, it was amazing.

[00:06:55:16 – 00:06:58:23] But you chase it from that, don’t you? And that’s sort of what it is. How old were you then?

[00:07:00:02 – 00:07:20:19] I’ll say 18. Yeah, this is what’s so interesting because look at the environment that you first tried in. You tried in a social environment and then I guess from there it became a socializing drug. Of course. Is that what happened for you? So from that, I would say from the next, until, if we say until about, I was about 22-ish, so what’s that four or five year period?

[00:07:22:14 – 00:07:40:02] You just, you’ve tried, it was never a problem, never ever a problem at that point. Somebody’s got something on the night out, oh, here’s a little key, here’s a little corner of a coin or whatever. Yeah, I’ll have a bit of that, I’ll have a line of that. Not a problem. You can work out who’s doing it, who’s got what. And from that, it’s fine, never a problem. You just haven’t won every other weekend, just a fitting of everybody.

[00:07:43:03 – 00:08:12:12] From the age of about maybe 25, I’ll skip forward there a little bit, but that’s when you sort of get to a point of, you realize who can get it, who’s the drug dealer. I could buy my own here. What’s the point of me borrowing a little line of someone when I can have my own bag of it? And at that point, it’s every, not every weekend, but on a payday when you’re younger, it’s like, well, okay, why not? Why not? I might as well make my weekend a little bit more enjoyable. I ain’t good money at the time, it’s like, why not? And what age did you start becoming a regular patent here?

[00:08:14:19 – 00:08:24:12] So I reckon it was probably not far off, like I say there, 2020, not 2020, about when I was about 25, 26 maybe. It was just before I bought my house.

[00:08:26:04 – 00:09:22:03] It become a thing, one of my friends, my close friends was a drug dealer at the time. And it was like, you know what? I’ve just come back from two weeks offshore. Why not treat myself? Which is looking back now, it’s awful. We shouldn’t be thinking like that, but why not? It was like we said earlier, that offshore environment, everybody’s talking about it, all the other people out there are doing it. So you think, well, I could have a little bag of it, like a little half a gram of it. Why not? But I’ve been away for two weeks, I deserve this. But so you do that. And at that point, it was never, it was fun. It was a fun drug. It was just me sober, just we’ll do one of them. We’ll go to the pub if you– Say sober, you dry sniffing alcohol. Yeah, dry, at the start, dry. You started as a dry sniffer. Yeah, as it was a regular patent, as it was the regular thing, it was dry. Obviously before that, it was nights out and we were doing it then, but that was never, it was never what it ended up obviously being.

[00:09:23:10 – 00:10:20:06] But yeah, it’s just dry, just literally like, oh, we’ll get a little half a gram, we’ll do that. And then that last year all night, I’ll be sat in my house where it gave me somewhere to do it because no one around is there. No one watching me, I’m not in a pub toilet waiting to get caught by a bouncer. So you progressed from going socializing, so I get a framework. You went from socializing to becoming a regular socializing to quickly enough, you got the start of doing it, doing it at home, you understand? Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much it was like a case of nobody really going out. It was like, we stopped going out at 23, 24, so he goes to 25, but I’ve got my own money now. Nobody’s going out, so what am I gonna do? I still wanna enjoy the bits that everybody else was doing so I can buy my own now. And everybody else was doing their own thing, whether it be weekends or whatever. So I think, well, you know what? I’ll make the call myself and I’ll just buy a little bit. And it was only like every 10 days or every week sort of thing. A problem still at this point. Okay, and then how did that progress?

[00:10:22:03 – 00:10:28:04] Quickly, I thought it spiraled. It was fun until it wasn’t. And that’s probably a common phrase that’s used all the time.

[00:10:29:06 – 00:10:49:19] It was a case of, well, I’ll just buy a little half a gram. Then before you know it, it’s, well, that didn’t last very long. So next time, what do we do? What will we buy a gram? Because it’s only, if you’re gonna waste it and be done by an X amount of time, you might as well have another bit. And I mean, that’s over the course of maybe two or three years. It was still at a gram at this point, maybe. So it’s like every weekend,

[00:10:51:04 – 00:12:15:00] you’re just smashing a gram every Saturday, whether it’s on your own or whatever, or you might bring a friend around to sort of join you. So don’t feel quite as bad as what it would have if you’re on your own almost sort of thing. Come around, yeah, I’ve got a little bit. Almost kind of thing. So you’re not, I’m not on my own in this. Like someone’s coming down with me almost sort of thing. But yeah, that’s– It’s become socially acceptable at that time. Definitely, definitely. Yeah, it’s, yeah, because everybody’s doing it. And the more people that you get involved with in that scenario is you see more and more people doing it. You think, I didn’t know you did this. And someone’s like, oh, I didn’t know you did this either. And before you know it, it’s like, yeah, we’re all doing it here. Like we might have the odd occasion to go to the pub and then we’ll be like, right, if you’re going to the pub, I’m definitely going to buy a Gramacoke. And it’s like, you know what, let’s all do it. We’ll all buy a little bit and we’ll all chip in. You become a magnet to other users. You do, of course you do, yeah. And you’re like, and I don’t know if it’s my face or what, but you go to the pub and like, it seems to be one of them people that somebody comes up to me in the toilet and says, do you want a line? Or have you got any? Do you know anyone? And whether it’s my face, whether it’s who I am or whatever, but yeah, you end up being a close group of people who will fucking just do it. And it’s like, but again, it’s fun at that time. It’s still fun, I think. And so it progressed from a half a gram to a gram to how much did it progress to in its prime? Like your prime, should we call you? Yeah, prime, good word to use, yeah.

[00:12:16:18 – 00:12:35:02] It was an eight for day. An eight for day? Yeah, it was an eight for day. So obviously like I said to you before, I was off shore on a rotation, two and two. Yeah, actually you know for the listeners, let’s just pick up on that, let’s just backtrack a little bit. Yep, go on. So your job is working off shore. Just explain to everybody what that means. So basically it’s like, we do oil and gas.

[00:12:36:11 – 00:12:47:23] So we fly off helicopter out of Norwich, which is around the corner from my house basically, out to a platform, set it to take 20 minutes on a helicopter, we’ll set out there for two weeks, do the work we’ve got to do, come home.

[00:12:50:00 – 00:12:54:12] Yeah, so you basically do two weeks away, which means you get your two weeks off back at home kind of thing.

[00:12:55:14 – 00:14:31:17] We earn good money, I’m not gonna deny that. We earn amazing money. And that’s why you end up doing what you do when you’re off, annoyingly. Because everybody else, I mean, let’s face it, the two weeks I’m off, I’m at home, 99% of people are still at work. So what do you do? You’re bored. You’ve already got, maybe not an addiction at this point, but you’ve already got something that sped your day up, made your day a little bit more fun. So why not? You work out, you can get it during the day, rather than just someone who’s about the evening. And yeah, that’s where. It’s interesting because I’ve interviewed other people that have worked off shore, I’ve had many patients that have worked off shore. And there’s a few things to touch on. First of all, two weeks where you’re working, you work long hours. Yep, 12 hours, 12 hour shifts, yeah. Okay, and it’s hard to interrupt, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, don’t get me wrong, we try and do as little as possible, but at the same time, you are. You’re 12 hour shifts and you’re in the middle of the city, aren’t you? It’s a bit of shit, but all, you get a bit of time off, you’re talking in the smoke hut or whatever, and at the time I smoked and it was like, everyone’s talking about packet. Can’t wait to do this when we get home. I’ve got an eight ball waiting for me when I get home. I’ve kept that there since I went away. Or my missus is getting him dropping me this off at the Ellie port, or it’s there. Dropping it at the Ellie port? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, it’s people are, yeah. Well, a lot of- It’s so casual, it’s so normal. It is, and it’s looking back now, it’s so unacceptable. It’s so, you can’t, how dirty disgusting it is. How, like, we always do know you can get a packet delivered quickly and you get a delivered a pizza, can’t you? That’s exactly what I say. You get a packet delivered faster than a pizza.

[00:14:33:04 – 00:16:39:08] What’s also interesting about working offshore is, that two weeks that you’re back home offshore, like back on land, it’s like a holiday again. Yeah, of course it is, yeah. Because, like I say, everyone’s at work, you’re just sat around doing sod or you’ve got a load of money in the bank. It’s, what do you do? Everyone’s still doing their own thing, they’re going to work nine to five. I’m just sat on my ass, I’m playing Xbox or whatever you’re doing or watching Netflix or trying to find something to do, to occupy yourself. The only thing I can relate that to is like the pandemic. When it was locked down and everybody was locked down, and here’s the interesting thing about locked down and what I found, is that there’s a huge percentage of my patients who, listen, they didn’t start using because it was locked down, but what happened is, because it was locked down and they were on furlough, they had money coming in, they had no structure, they didn’t have to get up for anywhere, their usage increased. Okay, yeah. So I can imagine that if you are working where you are working offshore and then you’re back home and it’s on a rotation system, that actually to some degree feels very similar every month. Yeah, I mean, it becomes, rather than, let’s not use the word addiction, let’s use the word habit. So you come home, I think my rotation finished on a Thursday, which is fucking shit considering it’s in the weekend, didn’t it? Straight away as soon as you get home. But that Thursday, you go, right, Thursday again, what do we do? It becomes that habit of, that’s what I do. So this is what I’m going to do again. And I will do it again and I’ll do it again and I’ll do it again, but then you get to Thursday. So you do it Thursday, maybe get like a team dropped off before you know it, it’s fucking Sunday, isn’t it? And you’re no sleep, four days in, you’re like, shit, this is okay, this is what we’re doing now, is it? And then, all right, you might have a day’s sleep and then we’re back into Tuesday now or whatever and you go again and it’s, obviously you’ve got to get clean again before you go back offshore because we have random drug tests and stuff. So you’ve got to be a little bit careful, but we all knew how to play the system. We all knew there was piss tests available if you wanted to buy them. We all knew there was things you could buy online to flush your system out. Everybody knew the score and everyone was like, right, if you’re desperate, I can get it. I’ll get it delivered Amazon Prime next day and it’ll save you and you can go back offshore again and detox for two weeks, ready to go again the next Thursday.

[00:16:40:12 – 00:16:47:17] Wow, and this two weeks, how much do you think you would spend on using of the packet in that two week period of time?

[00:16:48:23 – 00:17:03:16] I remember at the start, I knew I had an allocation of how much money I could spend because I said, I’ve just bought my house at this point. So it was like, I had to be, I wanted to be sensible with it. So I knew what my house bills came to. I had that always set aside.

[00:17:04:20 – 00:17:49:15] I knew what I needed to live, whether it was food shopping, whether it was wifi, whether it was paying for things, but I knew there was always about 1500 quid to play with every single month. And it was like, really, you could look at now, you can go where you want it now, holiday wise, you can do what you want with that. You can buy nice things, but then it wasn’t. It was like, right, I got 1500 quid, I can waste that. I don’t know if that’s who I am as a person or what, but you go, right, okay, well, 1500 quid, what’s that? I can get on the packet for an eighth a day for a week on that or whatever. You can survive, not survive, that’s the wrong word. You can have fun for a week, 1500 quid, that’s me, all right. I got that, I’ll set that aside. That’s my fun for 10 days. Did your usage ever get to the point where you were flagged as an employee or coworker, any problems at work?

[00:17:51:09 – 00:17:58:12] Yeah, this is a little bit later on than the point we’re talking about now. Do you want me to move forward to that? No, no, no, you carry on. No, so.

[00:17:59:19 – 00:18:05:14] So we’re at an eighth a day. I mean, the stories that I could tell you about the eighth a day is crazy.

[00:18:07:07 – 00:18:11:01] I mean, you do it and it’s fine. I mean, we should start in the mornings.

[00:18:12:09 – 00:18:22:18] So like I said, one of my close friends, nine, pretty much. You said that quite a lot. Yeah, it was, because it was clockwork. The misses I had at the time, she would go to work at eight

[00:18:24:16 – 00:18:45:23] and my mate who was a drug dealer, he was a very close friend of mine and actually we are still close friends now and I’ll get into that. But he was a drug dealer. So he’d come around, he’d come out at nine and we’d call it breakfast club. That’s what we’d call it. The breakfast club, yeah. And that’s what we would call it. He’d come out. How did he come out with that mate? Because he’d come around at nine in the morning. He’d come out with a yogurt, because none of us could eat. Because we’ve got enough aces off by about 10.

[00:18:47:03 – 00:19:48:23] So it was like, right, this is it. Come out, I mean, he was buying ounces at a time. So he’d come out with just whatever, throw it down and go, right, this is us for the next three or four hours. Then he’d leave because he was a dealer. So he’d have to go off in the afternoon and do what he had to do. And he’d go, I’ll go, right, well leave me this. Here’s the money. I’ll transfer it to you, whatever. And yeah, he’d leave me with like a couple of yak ults and a couple of fruges. And that’s me for the afternoon. And my missus at the time, she would finish work at, she was doing different things. She was like, she was a carer. So she was doing like split shifts. So sometimes she’d come home at 12 till two. So at that point, I was, she was an underwiser. I say that, she probably was, but she was a bit clueless to it. So I was trying to hide it. I’m sniffing all morning till 12 o’clock, say. She’d come home and I’d have to be straight face, narrow, not sweating, not pouring the sweat. And then she’d go again at two, three o’clock for an evening shift to 10 o’clock. And that’s my other, it’s party on then. So I’m like, right, with reviews what we’ve got, ring him up again, right, drop him off a bit. And then go again. And then in the evenings, it’s, I’d say she’d be home at 10.

[00:19:50:05 – 00:20:05:01] She’d always want to go straight to bed because she’d worked a full long day of shifts. And I say, right now I’m staying up for a bit. Looking back now, there’s no way she didn’t know because this went on for days and days and days, but I thought I hid it really well. Was it in those days you’d get some sleep?

[00:20:06:22 – 00:20:12:23] Yeah, so I’d potentially go, I remember I thought it was a constant cycle of like, I say from that Thursday to the Sunday where I wouldn’t sleep.

[00:20:14:09 – 00:20:21:20] And I’m sorry, there was no, not even a remotely thought of sleep. And by, I know there’s a big thing. And if you’d stop by like day three, four, you start seeing things.

[00:20:22:21 – 00:21:43:19] And I did see things and it was, it’s a scary place to be that. It was a very, very scary place in my own head. It was like, yeah, I need some sleep now. Like this is, I need to reset almost kind of thing, which is a bit, there was the right, in my head that was the right way to do it. So we’d go right, day four. I mean, I remember day four in, yeah, I’m sat in my car on my fucking driveway sniffing lines of gear, cause I wanted to be out of the house, not doing it around her. And I’m doing a line of gear and I’m tired, instantly tired. And that’s not the right effect it should be having on you. It should be keeping you awake. I’m thinking, right, I need to go to sleep now. I hadn’t eaten in other than a yogurt here and there for like two, three days. I’m drinking quite a bit of water to fluids to get some, something in my system, but I’m feeling fucked at this point. So like you go to sleep, you wake up again the next day and you’ve got a decision to make at that point, whether you go again, whether you try and intentionally get some more food in your system. So at that point, I’m like, right, normally, my routine would just be like, come Monday, we’ll be like, right, let’s eat, let’s eat today. And then come late one in the afternoon, you’re craving it again. So you go, right, okay. So you go again, which for me, that was just how it was for them two weeks I was at home. And I knew by the following weekend, I had to be a bit clean before we go away again on the Wednesday, Thursday. So it was like, right, this is my last bit. We go, I’m gonna clean again and detox for the two weeks away and repeat, repeat, repeat.

[00:21:44:20 – 00:21:56:14] That’s the thing, isn’t it? Some of your mindset about the, well, I’m back on the rig for two weeks and I’m clean. So tell me how that logically plays into it.

[00:21:57:15 – 00:21:59:19] For me at the time it worked, it was fine.

[00:22:00:20 – 00:22:46:20] I mean, some people obviously struggle with addiction and there’s different levels of addiction. Some people can’t go without it. Whereas I felt like I could go about it for two weeks. But in your outlet, everyone’s talking about it again. Like we said a minute ago, it was like, I can’t escape this. So you’re back talking about it again. Everybody, what did you get up to? Well, I did fucking half ounce of gear on the first weekend. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah, I had great fun. We did this, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t eat. And you think, okay, this is, and like we said, you attract to the similar sort of people and you end up working out who does it, who doesn’t do it. So you’re like, I’m not gonna talk to you lot because you don’t do pack it in the weekend, but I do. So I’ll surround myself in the smoke room or the TV lounge of all you boys. And we’ll just chat about life. And you get on better people who are in a similar situation as you. And because you’re all talking about it, it’s acceptable.

[00:22:48:03 – 00:23:18:02] And like you said, two weeks off short, I coped with it. For me, I didn’t struggle. I didn’t ever crave it while I was off shore. But once you knew that you were going home and it gets to say the Tuesday, if you’re coming off on the Thursday, that couple of day period, it’s like, right, I’m fucking ready now. Let’s fucking, I’m gonna let it go now because I know what’s waiting for me when I get home. And there’s been many a time when I’ve had it, I don’t know if you laughed about it saying dropped off at the airport, but I’ve had it dropped off to my house and put in an envelope, put it through the door. So when I land at home, it’s there.

[00:23:19:06 – 00:23:49:13] I think most listeners who have been on a holiday and decided that when they’re on holiday, they’re not going to use or they go to a place where they can’t take or they can’t get it. And yes, I know there are many places you can get it, but for those people who’ve gone on a holiday and decided they decided not to use while they’re on holiday, it’s a very common thing that as you’re flying back, you either messaging your dealer while your luggage is going round and round or while you’re driving home, it’s going to be through your door. It’s very common. Yeah, okay.

[00:23:50:15 – 00:24:07:06] There was something I wanted to pick up on. You said addiction is different. Somebody, I could go without it. Were there people on the rig whose addiction that they had to bring the coat on the rig or the packet on the rig so they didn’t? So you can’t, you can’t, you get searched. Like you do at an airport.

[00:24:08:18 – 00:25:00:01] There’s always talk of people that you know that have got it and they’ve managed to get it offshore, whether they’ve plugged it or whether they’ve done what they’ve done. I mean, you can’t– I was going to say, get into a prison. Yeah, you can get into, you get it. I mean, if you wanted it that badly, you could get it where you wanted it. Do you know what I mean? Like you just said, you can get it into a prison, you can get it where you want. But to be able to get enough to last you the two weeks, maybe not like– And to not get caught. And to not, and I mean, you’re talking, it’s job gone at that point and there’s nobody who’ll take you on after that. So you’ve got to make that decision at the time, depending on how bad your addiction is obviously. And that’s brings me full circle round because you said, depending on your addiction, go there. And I think a lot of people, because I’ve spoken, I’ve had a lot of patients who’ve worked offshore and I think a lot of people who work offshore is a bit like the holiday mindset. They get used to not using it when they’re abroad. And I think that’s what happens. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree, totally agree.

[00:25:01:16 – 00:25:48:17] Yeah, my addiction was when I was at home. When I was away, I wasn’t, you’re somewhere where you know you definitely can’t get it and you definitely can’t do it and you definitely can’t get it out there. So you have to, you have to make do and it’s like, right, okay, this is fine. But this is my reward is the day I’m home, we’re getting fucked up. And that’s just how it is. And before you know it, it spirals. So from a psychological point of view, you’ve attached no stimuli to being offshore. Okay. Whereas here, it’s like going to the pub, being around your best mate who’s a dealer. I’m off work, I deserve it. When you’re offshore, you don’t have any of those associations. So it’s a safe place. Yeah, fair enough. But yes, fair knowledge, yeah, I like that. Just tell me, how did using an eighth a day affect the relationship you were in at that time?

[00:25:49:20 – 00:25:51:12] Yeah, terribly.

[00:25:52:21 – 00:26:02:12] Like I’m not innocent. I know that I was doing an eighth a day. We had a terrible, terrible relationship. It was very, very toxic from day one.

[00:26:04:00 – 00:26:18:21] At the time when we first got together, we both had partners separate to each other. We both split up from the partners to get together, which for me now is like, you can’t start on something on a rocky road like that. So it’s the recipe for disaster from day one.

[00:26:20:10 – 00:26:39:15] Me doing an eighth a day, I was more interested in what I was doing rather than maybe what she was doing. And it’s potentially things that I could have obviously done a hell of a lot better. There’s, like I say, I’m not innocent in the whole situation. It ended up, if I cut the long story short without talking about her too much, she cheated on me with my best friend, not the dealer, someone else.

[00:26:41:08 – 00:26:43:22] Yeah, and my head just absolutely fell off.

[00:26:45:16 – 00:26:46:16] It just inspired me out of control.

[00:26:47:17 – 00:26:53:01] At the point where I was doing an eighth a day, yeah fine. But this tipped me over the edge. And it was at that point where like,

[00:26:54:10 – 00:26:56:20] she’d left, I’d left her, she left me wherever we split up.

[00:26:59:01 – 00:27:24:07] I remember at the point, I think I’d done about, what did I do? I had about five, six grand worth of gear in about a week. Five to 6,000. Yeah, so I was doing like fucking three quarters an ounce a day. Like it got really bad and I was like constant. I remember buying like, just buying enough to last me so I wouldn’t have to leave the house. It was like, right, this is me, I’m doing this. I mean, at that point I had a bit of money behind me. I think I just sold a car. So I was really into my cars when I was a bit younger.

[00:27:25:16 – 00:28:15:06] So I had a bit of money. I think I had about, yeah, what did I have? Must have had about 10 grand. And I was like, right, you know what? I’m gonna make sure I buy a car. So I’ve got a bit sorted. I think I bought a car for about three or four grand. The rest of it, I was like, right, that’s going up my nose. So that was me sorted for a week, 10 days, two weeks, whatever the time period was, that’s it. That’s going up my nose. And I did, it was like, that time it was like, it was a never ending. That was the worst point of my life was that. There’s almost like some self-harm at that point. Definitely, definitely. I mean, there’s been a point where like, when you talk about self-harm, when I have tried, but obviously I’m not gonna sit here and be an attention seeker like I tried and I failed. But there’s been points when it’s like, this can’t carry on like this. I’m fucking myself up. Like, but you’re so happy in what you’re doing because that’s your happy place is doing cocaine, sticking a microwave on, repeat, whatever.

[00:28:16:11 – 00:28:33:11] It’s okay, it’s acceptable. Whereas it sort of blanks. I’m gonna just expand on the microwave because I said something about microwaving a video the other day and a lot of people in other countries who listen to this. I have no idea what that meant. Oh, really? Yeah, so anyways, to dry it out so you can chop it. Yeah, yeah, it’s hot, isn’t it?

[00:28:34:12 – 00:28:48:18] It was really weird, but sorry. It’s the right thing, though, we all had it, didn’t we? Yeah. So, you know, lack of sleep, large quantity, and eight to much larger quantities when your relationship completely fell apart. Yeah. Fell apart, sorry. Tell me about paranoia.

[00:28:50:02 – 00:28:56:15] Yeah, awful. I’ve never, so like I say, she was cheating on me with a friend, a very close friend of mine.

[00:28:57:19 – 00:29:00:20] I suspected it for a long time. I mean, we were sort of still together,

[00:29:02:04 – 00:29:07:19] but I suspected it for ages. And I was told by her that it was all in my head.

[00:29:09:15 – 00:29:31:20] So I’m confused at this point. I’m very, very confused because I know that I’m paranoid because of the cocaine. I knew I’m very well aware of that, but it fucked me up. And I was so, I know that I’m a smart person. It was like, I knew that this was, I was right. But it was the paranoia that fucked me up. And it was things that I saw, things not just with her, I was like, I’d always see things in the house, in the garden.

[00:29:33:11 – 00:29:35:17] I thought it was people breaking into my house more than one occasion.

[00:29:38:01 – 00:30:28:02] Whether it be a funny story now, I can look back on it, but it was like, I’ve been in like my upstairs bedroom looking out, just because you’re paranoid, just staring out the window, curtain twitching just to see what’s happening. It’s dark, I’m pitch black. I’ve got a light on in the bedroom. My neighbors must be looking at me going, he’s off it again, here he goes. And I’m looking out in the garden and I had like a tree or something at the time. The tree is moving in the wind. I know it’s a tree, you know it’s a tree, but you tell me that five, six years ago, I didn’t know it was a tree. I thought it was people coming into the house. You hear like a little, and I see it, you’re like, fuck, what the fuck was that? Hey, the gate in the wind, someone coming in, locking all the doors. I’ve walked outside my front door of a baseball bat to go round to the back of my garden to just see what it was. And my neighbors must be looking at me going, the fuck is he doing? But I walked outside and like, I wrote no shoes on flip flops, pair of shorts and a t-shirt, with a baseball bat around, creep around like eight, nine o’clock at night.

[00:30:29:04 – 00:30:50:17] The fuck is this guy doing? It must have looked horrendous from anybody watching him, ever anybody did watch and nobody watched, I don’t know. So yeah, who knows? Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because when you get to a point of using for a long period of time, lack of sleep, okay? You already got paranoid that you think your girlfriend’s cheating on you, which you’re very suspicious of.

[00:30:52:05 – 00:31:25:07] What happens is you get a huge dopamine rush from doing a line up. And doing the quantity you’re doing, your synaptic clef, can’t cope with this quantity of dopamine. It goes straight to the same network of your brain. And what happens is that attaches meaning to the dopamine. And what you experience is that doom, that someone’s coming to get me. Because if you think about every part of your paranoia, it all relates to the fear of someone coming to get you, a type of vigilance, and it’s a concern, it’s a panic. That’s how you experience it. Yeah, 100%. That is exactly it, yeah. That’s how it was.

[00:31:27:08 – 00:31:33:21] Yeah, and then obviously from that point, it was a case of, so give it a month or so after we split up, we tried it again.

[00:31:35:19 – 00:31:51:07] She obviously said to me, look, you need to stop doing cocaine. Because at this point, she sort of knew about what I was doing, and I said, look, it’s hard, I’m struggling with it. Like, you have to sort of speak about it at some point. And we sort of gave it a go, and again, I hid it. But I thought I was fucking really good at hiding it.

[00:31:52:08 – 00:32:15:01] And knowing what I know now, there was absolutely no way that I hid it. Like, whether it be white powder on your nose, I don’t know if it’s the same for everybody else, but I used to sweat so badly. And it was, there’s no way that she didn’t know. My face must have been chewing my jaw off, to the point that I’ve lost like three or four teeth on each side, because I’m going in so much. And you think, there’s no way I was hiding it. How many teeth have you lost?

[00:32:16:20 – 00:32:17:22] I’m counting on my tongue and I.

[00:32:19:05 – 00:32:20:09] Yeah, definitely one from each corner.

[00:32:21:12 – 00:32:28:08] Maybe two. You know what I’m saying? Over 15 years, I lost 18. Yeah. It’s funny you picked up on that, because I’ve only just had them done. I’ve had that, yeah.

[00:32:29:10 – 00:32:34:16] It was an ongoing thing. So tell me about your mental health, and the betrayal and the breakup,

[00:32:35:23 – 00:32:40:05] and how that transpired in your usage and your mental health.

[00:32:41:08 – 00:32:42:09] Yeah, it spiraled out of control.

[00:32:43:13 – 00:32:45:02] My mental health was at an all-time low.

[00:32:46:07 – 00:32:55:04] Like I’d always had my nan at the time, because my granddad had died at this point. I always had my nan, and she was always there for me. She was always my fallback.

[00:32:56:12 – 00:33:00:20] She never knew anything that was going on. And to be honest, she didn’t even know until about a week ago, because I told her I was coming here to speak to you.

[00:33:02:04 – 00:33:07:03] But yeah, so I always had that. That was always my safe place, and it always has been my safe place.

[00:33:08:05 – 00:34:30:11] But in terms of actually mental health, through the drugs, through actually, as soon as I walked out of my nan’s house, and come back home, my life was shit. It was like, I’ve got to deal with this. Something’s got to change here. I’m smart enough to know that I had to change it. I just didn’t quite know how to, and I didn’t have the support around me from anybody. So I was on my own. Nobody really sort of knew that I was doing it. It was like a hidden thing, like people who know me personally end up watching this. Nobody knew that I was doing it, and nobody, because they didn’t know I was doing it, didn’t know how bad the problem I had was. So, but yeah, I was at an all-time low, but I was on my own. You were very selective who you used with. From the sound of it, is it just your best friend you used to do, or just the best friend you used to do? At that particular point, it was just my best friend at the time. And it become the point where he actually said to me, we’ve got to separate from each other, because we are bad for each other. And it was actually lockdown. It’s like towards the end of lockdown. And it was like, you know what, he was right. But at the time it pissed me off. I was like, why aren’t we strong enough to be able to get through this together? We can do this together, but it was good we did that. You think he was right? He was right. He was right. He was right. 100%. And I think he must’ve got it in the ear from his missus at the time, basically said, look, you need to binge off here. Because one of you is gonna win badly. And we did, we separated for about three or four years. Just to expand on that.

[00:34:31:13 – 00:34:59:20] What’s interesting is a lot of people say to me, do I have to part for my friends around me in order to stop using hell? And I always say to them, look at, think about it like this, take that friend. I remember the last 10 times that you went out socially with that person or did something with that person. And out of that 10 times, how many of them did you end up using? And if the answer was 10, well that’s 100%. Yeah, 10, 10. I wasn’t gonna say it’s 10, 10 out of 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even if it’s four or five, it’s still 40, 50%.

[00:35:00:22 – 00:35:18:13] You know, that tells you something. You have to take a wide– But it becomes a habit because you’re seeing that friend and that friend, you associate with drugs. So you go, oh, well, we look at each other. We go, well, come on then. Did you say you’re back in touch with him? Yeah, we’re very good friends again. How long was that? Four, four years. So it was locked down till about,

[00:35:19:22 – 00:35:25:08] about a year ago almost. Last summer, we became friends again last summer. Is he clean? Yep.

[00:35:26:16 – 00:35:32:23] Fair play to you. And that’s why he’ll like that. I actually spoke to him on the way this morning and he sort of said good luck and stuff.

[00:35:34:00 – 00:36:08:13] And I said, look, we’re in a better place now. I was like, I’m proud of you. And like, do you know what I mean? We’re proud of each other. Do you know what I mean? We actually do, we socialize together all the time now and we don’t go to the pub anymore. We don’t do things like that. And if we do, we take the, we take the messages with us. So we’ve got our clean sort of thing, but we’re good friends again now and it’s good. What can happen now? Cause you said, cause I know you said to me earlier off camera that you were a dry sniffer and then you used alcohol occasionally because it wasn’t your gateway. And now that you don’t sniff, you occasionally still have alcohol.

[00:36:09:16 – 00:36:48:06] So this year, as we’ve both gone now, I’ve drank once this year. Purely because I don’t want to put myself in an environment. I’m a lot of lads that I know that we come closer with the minute. They’ve invited me out. Do you want to come out? No. Whether it’s because I, in my head, I feel like I’ve completed it. I don’t know. Like I don’t need to go out. Like we did it all year to go. Like it’s what I’m fat free now. For me, I don’t need to. I can have fun at home with my missus and my dog. (Laughs) You said that time that you had the drink because you said to me. Yeah, it was a social thing. I think it was Easter weekend. Me and my missus went out with her sister and her partner. It was just a day session. Literally, we went out, I think we met at 12. We had some food. I think I was back home. I’m walking a dog by eight o’clock. What did you drink?

[00:36:49:08 – 00:36:50:05] Just shorts, cocktails.

[00:36:52:01 – 00:37:07:13] Well, I was pretty steaming by the time we got the train home, yeah. But it’s funny because I don’t drink. And I thought if I’m going out, we’re going out. Which is one of them. Like it was a good occasion. Got dressed up. I was like, “Right, we’re going to have a good day here. We’re going to have a good people. We’re going to have a good vibe.” And no thoughts of you– No, I thought, not a single thought. What did you put that down to?

[00:37:09:08 – 00:37:09:14] Accountability.

[00:37:10:21 – 00:37:39:22] There’s a lot of people around me now that help me. They don’t know they help me, but they do help me. I’m past it now. I look at that. One of the funny stories I’ve got is actually, we were in the, we were watching England last summer, whether it was at Euros or World Cup, whatever it was, we were in the pub. And there was a guy, so we were sat here watching the telly over there. And there was a guy sat in the corner, off his nut. And I looked at him and I thought, that was me. Your Saturday, he’s glared into his phone. He’s just staring at it, not even looking up. And he’s like, “It’s George’s.”

[00:37:40:23 – 00:37:55:23] And I’m like, “That was me.” It makes me sick now. I’m like, “I don’t want that. That’s not me. I don’t need that.” So that thought of me ever being like that and that state again is what keeps me clean. And I don’t want to be that guy anymore.

[00:37:57:05 – 00:37:59:19] Tell me about the 50 to 60K in debt. How did that happen?

[00:38:01:03 – 00:38:31:02] How did that come about? So yeah, that was a bit of a fucking period as well. Yeah. So like I said, we earn good money. At the point– Because hang on, sorry to burn you, but I just want to say, when people talk about earning good money, what you’re actually talking about is you earn a very good salary. And on top of your very good salary, you don’t pay tax because you’re– No, we do pay tax. We do pay tax because we’re still in UK waters. Oh, I thought you set up a corporate company. No, that’s only if you’re outside of UK waters. You can do that. And you can sort of wing it that way. Yeah, yeah.

[00:38:32:05 – 00:38:33:12] Some of the lads wing it like that, but yeah.

[00:38:34:21 – 00:38:46:17] So yeah, so I mean, we earn good money. I’m not talking amazing money. For someone who’s my age, I’m earning like 50, 60 grand a year. It was fucking spot on now. It was all right. At that point, my contract changed so that the actual deal was offshore.

[00:38:48:00 – 00:39:03:06] Wasn’t as regular as what it was at this point. So you’re trying to keep up with what you used to have almost kind of thing. So I mean, I remember being back in my office, just doing like sort of site work and stuff like that. You get the old offshore day here and there, all the old trip and stuff here and there.

[00:39:04:14 – 00:40:29:03] And it was at that point, it was like, right. I need to have offshore money, but not have to actually work for it. So what do you do? Well, you have a little Google, don’t you? You go to your bank. I can’t, can I borrow a thousand pound? Or can I up my overdraft for a 2,000 pound? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s fine. No problem, Mr. Ward, yeah. Then before you know it, that thousand pounds gone. You’re like, hmm, I’m down fucked. Okay, so what’s the next option? More payday loan. Oh, they’re simple. They’re easy to get. You can get them in five minutes. I’ve been at a point where I’ve rang my drug dealer at the time, got the payday loan out before he’s even delivered the packet. And it’s like, this is all right. I can deal with this. You only get a little payday loan for say 250 quid. Because that’s enough to buy you an eighth. And that would last me a couple of days, a day, whatever. Then the next day comes and you’re like, hmm. Now what? We go again. So you find another one. But before you know it, it’s an ongoing cycle of payday loans. And you think, I’ll can pay that back because I’m still doing all right. I’ll be all right. And then– There’s someone who doesn’t know much about payday loans. Because there are people with different countries listening to this. Yeah, okay. Explain what a payday loan is. How much an average person pays back on a borrowing of XML, how that looks. If you borrow, I can’t remember the actual exact figures, but I’m pretty sure it was almost at the point of if you borrowed 250, say, so it was just like your eighth or whatever. You go, okay, well, if you pay this back by this Friday,

[00:40:30:04 – 00:40:38:12] it’s fine. You pay back 300. So it’s across 50 quid. But if you don’t and you go over that, that sort of date that they set,

[00:40:39:13 – 00:41:12:09] then the numbers start creeping right up of what you’ve got to pay back. It’s almost like if you’re a week late, it’s another thousand quid. What? Yeah. How much? Another thousand quid. If you’re a week late, it’s like a thousand quid. It’s like another 250 a day. It’s ridiculous. Don’t quote me on it. A thousand pounds? For a week late, yeah. I’m not gonna hold you to the exact thing. No, no. But it’s an incredibly huge shift. And it starts spiraling. Unless you pay it back, and before you know it, I remember being at a point where it was like, right, okay, well, it’s still achievable for me to pay all these back, like buy this X date. If you can set the date, if you set it by next Friday, whatever, it’s fine.

[00:41:13:19 – 00:41:41:11] Yeah, I was at a point where I could, it was still, whatever I was earning per month, I was always under it. I made sure that I knew my salary and I knew that whatever I borrowed, I still had enough to pay back. The payday loans. So I was covered until a point where I went. It was like, I needed one more. One more day went up, and that extra 250 went up. And yeah, it just spiraled. And then I’ve ended up being in a debt plan now for the last six years now. It was 66 grand.

[00:41:42:12 – 00:41:59:23] For payday loans? Yeah. Pay for your habit? Yeah, it was payday loans, whether it was bank loans, whether it was like other loans. It was, whatever I could get my hands on. Yeah, it was 66 grand is what it was. If I add all the years you’ve used for, from when you start on a regular basis, how many years is that?

[00:42:03:17 – 00:42:13:15] Six. Okay, so over a six year period of time, what was your estimation that you think you have spent on purchasing?

[00:42:15:16 – 00:42:17:03] Yeah, a lot. Can you figure?

[00:42:20:08 – 00:42:20:18] 500 grand?

[00:42:23:15 – 00:42:42:00] 200 grand. Probably, yeah. I mean, I don’t think that’s probably, I mean, you’ve got 60 grand in debt there straight away. Nevermind what else I’ve got. Absolutely. And that would take the six. That’s your thing that you have lost from lost revenue that you potentially could have made if you hadn’t have missed days, if you hadn’t have been in the pub, if you hadn’t have been.

[00:42:43:13 – 00:42:51:16] That. (Laughs) And what figure do you think you could have made on, that’s what you spent. What do you think you could have made in terms of financial income?

[00:42:52:23 – 00:43:19:00] A decent amount, a decent. Give me a figure. What, do you mean like. So if you hadn’t have been offshore, hungover. If you’d have been offshore and had another job or an offshore. Or you’d put a bit of raft in you mean, yeah. Or put some additional hours. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Which I’m sure the capacity. It was there, yeah, yeah, it was always there. The capacity to put the money over time, high rates. So that’s what you spent in six years.

[00:43:20:00 – 00:43:48:08] What did you lose from loss revenue that you could have probably made. So if you put another week on each trip I did per year. So I don’t know, basically it’s what’s that 12, 13 trips a year, another week. So probably 30 grand a year times by six, seven years. 180, so that’s nearly 400 grand, 300, 180 grand. So let’s just say that we think Josh, your addiction over a six year period of time theoretically cost you 400,000 pounds. Thank you, cheers for that mate.

[00:43:49:13 – 00:43:59:16] Yeah. Listen, we can’t do the 400 grand, but what we can do is the next six years and the six years after that and the six years after that and the six years after that. And you are what, 33?

[00:44:02:09 – 00:44:27:01] There you go. So tell me one of the craziest stories that you can think of. Ah. I don’t wanna glamour. I do want some people to be interested and go, shit, I did that. Yeah, so you mean crazy or do you mean like the worst experience? The worst, let’s change your wording, the worst. So the worst one I’ve had, I remember it’s four days into a bender here, right? So I’m an eighth in a day for four days here. Not slept, not drank, not eaten.

[00:44:29:00 – 00:44:39:10] I remember having an argument with my girlfriend at the time, the ex-girlfriend, just to get out of the house. I mean, I’m creating arguments at this point just to get out of the house, just so I can go and sit in my car and sniff pack it on my own somewhere.

[00:44:40:18 – 00:44:49:23] Santa car park, it’s actually the lifeboat station is like a little, that’s what we call it. It’s just a literally like a dust car park right near the sea.

[00:44:51:19 – 00:45:03:20] I’m sat there sniffing cocaine. It must’ve been, yeah, the packet. Must’ve been like three in the morning. There’s nobody about, nobody about. I’m on my own in this car park, lights on in the car. I must’ve looked like stood out like a sore thumb.

[00:45:04:22 – 00:46:15:06] And I’m sat there and I’m just doing lines and I’m gliding to my phone. It’s time just dragging. I’m like, yeah, whatever. And I look up and I noticed and whoever else knows where this car park is they will know this. There’s tractors, right? So they, I mean, they’re just for the farmers or whatever they just store in there. And they’ve all got like wind socks on them. Well, then wind socks weren’t wind socks to me that day. They were like, I thought to me, they invited. I know like when you open a shop, you get them like them, I’m inflatable people that sort of moved around and stuff. I thought it was them and they were coming at me and they were chasing me. So I’ve driven off in my car and driven background like sort of days like a mile loop you can do round and come back round. I’m like, right, they’ve gone by now. They’ve tried to chase me and they’ve followed me out. So as I’ve gone out, they’ve followed me and I’ve evaded them and I’ve gone back to where I was. Got back there. I’m like, right, we’re good. Looked around, nothing there. Right, I’m good. Sniff another couple of lines. Like, okay. You look up and they’re back. And like for me, looking back now, I can laugh about that so much. I’m like, that is wild for me. Or like, I, I’ll give you one more fight. So another story was, there was me and the best friend who was the dealer at my house

[00:46:18:03 – 00:46:19:17] and it was a knock at the door.

[00:46:20:22 – 00:46:36:11] I was like, fuck. A bit of power, not too power at this point, but it’s like 10 in the morning. I’m like, we’d have a few lines. We’ve got the plate set out with like the packet on it. It’s whatever. And from where my kitchen window is, you can see the front door. So you can like, you can sort of look around the corner a little bit and see the front door.

[00:46:37:13 – 00:46:38:14] And I’m looking at the door and it’s copper.

[00:46:39:23 – 00:46:59:08] I’m like, the fuck’s the copper doing it? We’ve got like an ounce of cocaine sat on the top of my fridge here in a minute. Like what the fuck’s the copper doing it? So we like, right, okay, this is, this is all right. But I put it on top of the fridge. It’s like, right, what I’ll do, I’ll put something on the top of it so we never see. I’d want them, are they baking trays that you put like your cakes in and that? So I put the cocaine inside this baking tray. I was like, right, I’ll top of the fridge.

[00:47:01:02 – 00:47:09:11] And I said, do it. And I’m like, I’m pretty like self aware of what’s going on. I’m like, all right. And he’s like, yeah, yeah. I was like, can I speak to a Mr. Wyatt? I was like, yeah.

[00:47:10:12 – 00:47:26:15] He’s like, and if you started chatting, it was literally like an irrelevant matter, totally different. He was like, can I come in? And I was like, I was like, no, no, no. I was like, I’d rather chat here. I was like, I’ve got, only because I didn’t want him in the house. So I was like, so I’m shitting myself at this point. I’m like, fuck, like, what the fuck does he want? He was like, it’s totally irrelevant matter. It’s like, there’s nothing to do with drugs, nothing to do with that.

[00:47:28:05 – 00:47:34:12] And then all of a sudden he went, you know what you’re wearing? It was obviously some sort of technique of him. I don’t know whether he was trying to catch me out on something. He was like, that jacket.

[00:47:35:18 – 00:48:20:12] It’s a really nice jacket, mate. And I’m like, what this jacket? And he started talking about my coat, this copper. And I’m like, he’s like, yeah, I’d really like to get myself on them jackets. And I was like, you can have this one if you want. I decided I’m doing it. He was like, no, no, I can’t take your jacket off here. And I was like, okay, that’s sweet. And like, we started chatting. We were chatting outside my house for about 30 minutes, 40 minutes. Just me and this copper by this coat. And this is not a paranoia. This is a genuine true story, right? And it’s like, this is fucked up. Like, what the fuck is this? Anyway, copper disappeared. And I went back inside and told my mate. I was like, he’s like, where the fuck have you been? I was like, mate, you’re never gonna guess what I’ve just been talking to this copper outside about. He’s like, what do you mean, please? And I was like, yeah, mate. And I told him the story. And it was like, that was just a fucked up scenario. Like, what the fuck was this? Like, that’s mad.

[00:48:21:22 – 00:48:35:16] And obviously there’s the time which we spoke about before, which is the last ever line of cocaine, which I did, which I know is the last one. And I don’t know if you want me to go into that or not. Tell me, yeah, I want to hear it. The last hurrah. The last one, yeah, the last ever one.

[00:48:37:04 – 00:48:46:08] So I’ll bring it back a week forward, a week prior to that. We had a party in Milton Keynes actually. I think it was England were playing it was the World Cup again all year. I think it was one of whatever it was in the winter.

[00:48:48:10 – 00:49:02:16] And I said, one of my mates said, look, he lived in Milton Keynes. I said, look, we’ll have a party. We’ll get together. I got a hotel room for the night. What we’ll do, he said, he’ll get a bit. I’ll get a bit. I was like, yeah, I swear, perfect. Well, he come out with his mates at a hotel room. We got absolutely, it’s bangled.

[00:49:04:16 – 00:49:38:15] And it got to like, say four or five in the morning and I was still awake. He disappeared and I was laid down. I thought this is fucking shit. Do you know what I mean? Like I’m having a moment to myself here. I’m like sort of huffing like, this is not me. Like who the person that I ended up becoming while I was doing the packet was somebody I hated. Whether it be like the paranoia of checking up on what my miss is who I’m with now is up to. Just like having a look and just like checking up on Facebook, checking up Instagram in like the likes and in the comments. And you’re like, who the fuck’s this guy? Who’s this? Like that paranoia and I hated it. And I was like, this is not me. I hated that guy.

[00:49:39:23 – 00:49:41:12] So fast forward anyway to another week later.

[00:49:42:19 – 00:50:00:00] I met a guy pulled me up during the week. He was like, right, yeah. I knew that he was like a small time drug dealer. He was like, we need to get together. Like we have a chance in your years. And I was like, yeah, fine. Pop around on Saturday. He’s like, yeah, I’ll come on this Saturday. I’ll bring you a little half a gram. We’ll have fun. He’s like, bring some weed. I was like, look, weed’s not for me, but like I’ll have a bit of sniff off here.

[00:50:01:09 – 00:50:09:00] Anyway, there’s a point for me. It was the smallest little bit. And for me, I was used to like big bits and it was like, yeah, point for that’s nothing. I’ve been fine with that.

[00:50:10:03 – 00:50:18:03] So I took my time of it. It comes to the last bit, the last line. I put it down. I think he’d left at this time. He said, like, I’m going, I’ll leave you to it, whatever.

[00:50:19:06 – 00:50:37:04] And I had this plate out. I just put it in the microwave, put the last line on it. And it was a bit on the table and it was, I looked at it and I thought, I looked up and I looked around the room and I just thought, I’ve actually got a picture of it on my phone. I took a picture of it and I’ve got the time, the date, when it was, which is what I’ve always used as my calculation of when my last one was.

[00:50:38:05 – 00:50:52:01] And I looked at it and I thought, this is it. I’m going to do this one and I’m going to try and see how long I can go about it. And I did it and I thought, that’s it. That was it. And that was the last one I ever did. Never ever looked back since.

[00:50:54:01 – 00:50:56:16] Yeah, that was sort of like this almost the start of,

[00:50:57:21 – 00:51:00:02] I say, I want to say season two of my life really.

[00:51:01:11 – 00:51:09:12] And when did that tie into your weight loss journey? So I think, I will say that’s around December time-ish. December.

[00:51:10:17 – 00:51:15:21] 20, 22, 23-ish. December 22, 23.

[00:51:17:02 – 00:51:35:05] So a gym opened up near me and I thought in my head, I thought, you know what, something’s got to change here. I’d like to join a gym. I was 135 kilos. I was a big lad. I always looked at myself in the mirror. There was pictures of me and my missus. And I thought, I’m getting bigger. Like something’s got to change sort of thing.

[00:51:37:08 – 00:51:44:01] So I did, I joined the gym. Obviously the period happened where I had the last line of cocaine and that was the end of that. That’s behind me. So I’m like, I joined the gym.

[00:51:46:10 – 00:51:58:17] So there must’ve been about a month period in between. So whether I did the cocaine or the gym started, the packet started and then the gym at the same, similar sort of timeframe in real world.

[00:52:00:02 – 00:52:18:02] Yeah, and that spiraled out of control as well. So obviously got some sort of addictive personality there. But it’s a harness in the right direction. I totally agree. Yeah, who I am now is not who I was then. So that’s where the outcome was of the gym. So yeah, for the first six months, I joined this gym, which is the new gym that had opened.

[00:52:19:02 – 00:52:32:21] I lost a little bit of weight. I lost about, I know you’re working pounds and stone, but I’ll work. Yeah, so I lost about, I think I lost about 10 kilos, which for me at the time it was decent. Like I didn’t really see a size change in myself.

[00:52:34:20 – 00:52:39:20] So that was about a six month period. It was, I was okay. I was just plodding along, I was going to the gym. I didn’t really know what I was doing.

[00:52:41:03 – 00:52:44:21] It got to around September times. This is pretty much two years ago to the date.

[00:52:45:23 – 00:52:47:18] One of my close friends is a PT.

[00:52:48:23 – 00:52:52:15] He actually reached out, big up Liam, because he’s been listening to this.

[00:52:54:00 – 00:53:23:07] He reached out to me and he said, look, I’ve seen you join the gym. He’s like, do you want some help? I was like, more than you ever know. And he was like, right, we’re going to go on a journey meeting here and we’re going to do it. And I’m going to make you into something special. And I was like, you know what? At this point I’m like, whatever, like I’ll play along with it, but like we’ll see what happens. I was like, look, he’s like, what’s your target? What’s your goals? I was like this, which at the time, I think I was about 120 kilos pretty much. I was like, look, 110.

[00:53:24:07 – 00:53:34:03] Like if I can get 110, I’ll have 10 kilos. I’ll be happy with that. 110, that was, we’ve done that within about three weeks. I was like, yeah, cool. I was like, oh, 100.

[00:53:35:06 – 00:53:57:07] He’s like, if you want 100, I was like, well, Christmas was coming. I was like, you know what, Christmas day, if I can wake up at 100 kilos, I’d be well happy. I think it was Christmas Eve. I woke up, weighed myself when I was like 99.9 kilos. And I was like, this is all right. I’m enjoying this. It’s a decent dopamine hit. Obviously you go to the gym and stuff, it’s a decent little hit. To know you’ve set a goal and you’ve hit that target.

[00:53:58:11 – 00:53:59:20] Well, that was a couple of years ago now.

[00:54:01:08 – 00:54:16:21] See, since then. Every time you go there, you’re releasing serotonin. Okay. So it’s running in a brain circuitry and makes you feel good. So it’s not quite the same as dopamine, which is a transmission, which sends a messenger, but it works similarly in terms of making you feel good.

[00:54:17:22 – 00:54:23:19] It does, yeah. And I’m a strong believer that whatever that feeling is, it’s fucking amazing.

[00:54:24:22 – 00:54:28:10] It’s up there with one of the best feelings I’ve ever felt in my life.

[00:54:29:22 – 00:54:34:10] Yeah, like I said, so anyway, it was 100 kilos-ish there thereabouts.

[00:54:35:23 – 00:54:44:03] We sort of got to a decent size, different decent weight and it was like, right, okay. I’m happy with this. This was sort of 90 kilos.

[00:54:45:04 – 00:54:52:21] Yeah, and we kept going and going and going. I got involved in some decent, different people.

[00:54:54:17 – 00:54:57:11] At the minute, we’ve got like this community we’ve got going on.

[00:54:59:03 – 00:55:39:04] We meet up on a Sunday morning. We called ourselves the 7am Club. The 7am Club. The 7am Club, big up the boys, because they are, I know they’ll all be listening to this because they’re massively invested. Is this a mixture of people who’ve got overaddictions and stuff? Yeah, yeah. What’s it called? The 7am Club. Big up the 7am Club, the clean, clean, fresh, serene, and feeling good. So it was boys and girls. There’s a lot of them that have got a story to tell, whether it be a similar story to what I’ve got, whether it’s they’ve struggled with bullying, whether they’ve struggled with pills or whatever, alcohol. They’ve all got a story and we’re slowly learning a bit more about each other. The more it goes on. I think we’ve been doing it now for about six months. I say every single Sunday now for six months. All we do, we go out for a little 5K jog

[00:55:40:13 – 00:55:58:22] where we have a chat and we learn about each other and what people are grateful for. And then there’s a local place to us that’s got a sauna and ice bath set up. So the boys have one week, the girls have the next week, and we go in the saunas and go in the ice bath. It’s a decent little group. And that for me is massive. Community is a big, big thing.

[00:56:01:12 – 00:56:03:06] Yeah, I replaced a bad habit for a good habit.

[00:56:04:12 – 00:56:19:20] 100%. 100%. I’m sure with it. Yeah, and the boys that know me and my missus will say that I have got an addictive personality and I am very, very obsessed with it. And like you said from the start, I’m 50 kilos lighter now. I weighed, so literally two weeks ago,

[00:56:21:02 – 00:56:44:03] I said, me and Liam, we set up and I was like, look, I want to hit that 85. We plowed, I was sitting at like 90 kilos and I was happy. But I was like, you know what would be good? I was like, if we hit that 85, I was like, you do know that’s a 50, did the full 50. And he was like, right, if you want to hit it, I was like, I’ll set up a diet plan and we’ll hit it. I was like, cool. So about three weeks later, we hit it. And I was like, this is fucking unbelievable. So yeah, but now we’re into like running and stuff. I think we’ve got a big event coming up this Sunday.

[00:56:45:09 – 00:56:55:13] Yeah, so it’s fucking, I’m a changed guy, mate, honestly. Like, yeah. Looking back now to you in your mid twenties, for somebody listening to this who’s in their mid twenties,

[00:56:56:22 – 00:57:11:05] what’s the one bit of advice or the one bit of encouragement or one bit of inspiration or the one bit of motivation you could sum up to say to somebody who’s listening to this right now, who’s not got to where you are and they’re struggling, what are you going to tell them?

[00:57:12:07 – 00:57:51:10] There’s a way out. Whether, surround yourself with good people is one thing I always tell people, and someone’s, plenty of people have asked me, what would you do? And I was like, it’s who you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with a load of bad vibes, it’s fine to be in a bad vibe. But if you surround yourself with some good people who want you to do well, then you will do well, is what I think. And there is a way out. There is always, there’s help. There’s people like yourself or whoever. People who want you to do well will get you out of it. And it is always a way out. No matter how deep you feel like you are, there is a way out. Josh, thank you for coming. Thank you mate. No, thank you mate. That’s been good, man.