How I Built My Sanity Sanity Squad

You need the right people around you if you want to keep your nut straight

2014 was probably my darkest ever year. I had really allowed myself to fall into a bad place with the drinking and the gear. I was staying out late after work boozing and coming home after the kids had gone to bed. I didn’t like myself and I don’t suppose my wife liked me much either.

The people I saw most often were, I am ashamed to admit, drug dealers. I was quite pleased with myself that I had numbers in my phone for connects all over the city : whether I was in north, south, west or east London there was someone local who could sort me out (in east London they always served me up a complimentary tub of cockles with every gram).

I might have been out and about but I wasn’t really socialising. Like any addict I preferred to get shit-faced alone. By the end, I just needed to go at my own pace - a pace that would have been way beyond the comprehension of most decent people. I only ever drank beers with large Jamesons chasers and I rattled through them like nobody’s business. I snorted what we called Hollywood lines of coke in pub toilets (I had my favourite cisterns in pubs all over the capital). I would sit in silent paranoia in pub corners, starting at my phone, wondering if everyone else knew what I was up to.

I went to my mum’s cottage on the Isle Of Wight one weekend to finish a book I was writing. I was way past my deadline and the publisher was getting jittery. I stared at a blank page for about an hour after I got there, then I just slammed the laptop shut, went to the local Londis, bought a load of cans and a bottle of whiskey and wasted the whole weekend boozing, alone.

Eventually I got sober.

One of the best things about my life today is that I do socialise, I have good friends around me, I like myself and (I am pretty sure) my wife likes me too. So do my kids. I am happy and (most of the time) easier to be around. I don’t have any dealer’s numbers and the people who were clearly in my life just for the drinking or drug taking have, thankfully, disappeared. I have been quite brutal in distancing myself from anyone who was bad for my state of mind. People who made me feel shit about myself (maybe because they felt shit about themselves) or people who were always on the take and the make. They had to go. I realised you could forgive people but, at the same time, resolve to never really engage with them ever again.

Beyond my wife and two kids (plus my cat, Nelson, who has stuck by me even throughout the cocaine years when he would observe me mournfully while I chopped out lines on the kitchen surfaces at 3am in the morning, shaking his head as if to say ‘You don’t need to live like this, dad’) I have built a wider squad of people who have become crucial to my sanity.

I have my personal trainer, Jordan. He is a former amateur boxing champ of London who has, over the past five years, taught me about the cathartic beauty of punching things in interesting and every more elaborate combinations. Jordan isn’t preachy but he does have the odd killer line up his sleeve (when I tell him I’ve been too busy with work to exercise he always say ‘health before wealth Sam’). But I get on with him. We talk about football and The Sopranos mostly. I look forward to seeing him every Thursday and Saturday morning (my son joins us for the Saturday training) - despite the fact that I almost always come away from our sessions feeling nauseous and faint.

Exercise gives me focus and energy. And being physically fit serves as a reminder of where I am and where I’ve come from. In the last couple of years of my drinking I had stopped exercising all together and got really out of shape. Today, I am not exactly Chris Hemsworth (I am 46, crisps remain my favourite food and I still have a pretty decent gut) but I can run for fucking miles without getting tired, I can lift heavy stuff and I can smash the shit out of a punchbag when I am feeling stressed. I’m doing okay. I’m much better than I was, which makes me feel happy.

I also have my therapist, Lizanne, who I FaceTime with every Wednesday. We talk about all sorts. It’s not just all the ‘tell me about your mother’ bullshit you see in films. Sometimes I will fall into telling her funny stories from when I was a kid just because I get a kick out of making her laugh. Other times I will moan to her about work so I don’t have to bore my wife with it. And sometimes we will get into deeper shit about my addictions. Lizanne was once an addict too, which means it’s much easier to tell her about the way I used to live. I don’t feel judged and, as she told me on our first meeting in June 2015, whatever stupid stuff I’ve done in the past, she probably did it ten times worse.

Sometimes I come away from a therapy session with a life changing revelation fizzing through my mind and soul. Sometimes I come away just feeling 10% more relaxed because I’ve let off steam about something trivial that was bothering me. Either way, I never regret a therapy session and I stick to my appointments religiously. I mean, a whole hour of talking exclusively about myself - what’s not to like about that?

I also have an actual shrink. Dr Campbell is a psychiatrist and top addiction specialist up the Priory. I see him every few months so we can talk about the medication I am on to help keep my nut straight. He is wildly intelligent but warm and funny too. Mostly he asks me questions about my work - he seems fascinated by the stuff I do in the media. Occasionally I get to thinking ‘what the fuck am I doing here? This isn’t psychiatry!’ And then - BAM - Dr Campbell casually chucks out an observation or insight to my inner life that triggers a full scale epiphany and I walk away from the appointment feeling like a giant weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Fucking worth every penny mate.

So anyway, those are the key members of the Sanity Squad I have built around myself over the past six years or so. They are important to me living a good, stable and happy life and they are worth every penny. I know not everyone can afford this stuff but talking and exercise come free. Just find the right people to do it with, they don’t have to be professionals. They just have to have love and understanding (and possibly some weights or at least a set of resistance bands). If in doubt, start with your GP. They are more used to talking to people about their troubled mind than you might think. You don’t have to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown to make an appointment and just tell the doc you need a break.

However you can afford to do this stuff, do it. Scheduling time devoted to self-improvement is really important. It’s more important than work or hobbies or socialising. None of those things matter more than you being happy, healthy and stable. I started to prioritise all of that shit above almost everything else in my life a few years ago and it worked.

Work is just the stuff you do in your spare time. Looking after yourself is your real full time job. Just make sure you’ve got the right people around you to do it.

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On The Reset Extra This Week

This week on The Reset Extra we’ve had music industry legend Alan McGee on the podcast, my eulogy to the therapeutic qualities of the Shark vacuum cleaner and Shaun Ryder talking about what cocaine used to do to his knob. There is also a thriving chat forum for members, where we’ve been discussing the best non-alcoholic drinks for summer and meditation for beginners.

If you want to join in the fun and get loads of extra content from me, it costs just $7 (about £5) a month. Can’t say fairer than that, can you pussycat?

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Seth Meyers Podcast Available Now

My chat with US comedy giant Seth Meyers is avaible now to everyone. Give it a listen, he is brilliant.

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Holidays

I am off to the Isle Of Wight for a couple of weeks now. I intend to do fuck all other than fuck about on the beach, waste money up the arcade and eat ice cream with the kids for the entire holiday. This means I won;t be posting newsletters during that time - but there are two cracking podcasts in the bag which you will receive in my absence.

Thanks for being a subscriber, wehther you pay or not. I appreciate anyone engaging in this bollocks. This letter will go out on Thursdays from now on. Since lockdown finished everyone seems to be out on the piss on Friday nights.

be lucky.

Sam

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Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times

https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123

@calm 0800 58 58 58

@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138

@ChairtySane 0300 304 7000

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/

https://andysmanclub.co.uk/