It was in Nairobi airport Kenya that I think the first monumental shift in my life took place.

It was the Summer of 2010, between year two and year three of university. I went to Nottingham to study Geography. Not because I had any passion for Geography, or because I saw any real use in it, or because I saw any use in university for that matter. Simply because I didn’t know what else to do. That’s what my brother did, and I figured, why not just follow. I think that’s what most people do in life.

After all, I had no passion, energy or light at this time to do or even conceive of anything else. Going back now, I’d have just dropped out, not wasted any more time there, and tried to do something different with my life. But hey, that’s easy to say now.

At university, I really did nothing other than drink and waste my time. To describe the first two years as anything but a complete waste of time would have been complimentary. And I don’t just apply this statement to me, but to 98% of the people that I saw around me too.

Sure, I ended up with a half decent grade, but I knew how to study in one week, remember useless information and pass an exam.

To tell of all the absurd experiences that happened during this time could go on for 7 chapters, but a couple to note.

I went with a good friend from school to Cheltenham horse racing one Thursday. The night before I was thrown out of one of Nottingham’s nightclubs that at the time was ironically called Isis, I guess before the other well-known group Isis had become famous. 

I don’t remember why I was thrown out but that happened a lot in those days.

I got up the next day, got a train to Cheltenham, met my friend Tim and went to the races. I think we lost money on every race, so the only solution to get over that was to go out and continue drinking. He ended the night in a strip club, I was too drunk to be allowed in. I can’t really remember any of it anyway…

We were meant to be staying in a friend of Tim’s house. I didn’t know the person, where it was or how to get there. Even if I did, it wouldn’t have made a difference…

The night passed and, in the morning, I was woken up in the stairwell of one of the University of Gloucestershire’s halls of residence. I had never been to that University, had no idea where it was, and God knows how I ended up there.

I had pissed in the corner of the stairwell right next to the concrete on which I was sleeping and a little had been soaked up by my jeans and jumper. 

The student who found me outside his living quarters was not happy. He kicked me out before insisting on searching me first to ensure I hadn’t stolen anything. However, it seemed someone had stolen something from me…

Outside I realised I had no wallet, phone, keys or anything, just the clothes I was wearing. 

To be fair it was probably more likely I’d just lost everything through pure drunken stupidity than theft, but hey, theft made for a more dramatic sentence above... 

Anyway, I found a payphone. This was back in the day where every payphone wasn’t a smashed-up urinal. I reverse charge called my friend Tim. Luckily, he answered, and he did accept. We agreed to meet in the McDonald’s of Cheltenham city centre where we had eaten the day before. McDonalds was a regular dining experience and meeting point for me in these days.

I still had no idea really where I was. After asking around, it turned out it was a 45-minute walk away in the freezing cold. We met there…

A few months later I was being pulled over by the police. Coincidentally, I had been thrown out of the same club Isis this night too.

To paint a picture, with a friend Jeff, we weren’t going to go out, but at the last minute decided we would. It was an out-of-town club in sort of a shopping complex, so we decided to drive there at 10pm, drink a bottle of Sainsburys Basics Vodka in the car park, then go in. I said with 100% certainty I’d leave the car there that night, would never drink drive, and would pick it up the next day. 

As the detectives among you have probably already guessed, that didn’t happen…

When you’re smashed off your face, your decision making can become questionable. Another friend Max had been thrown out with me too. What to do? Get a £5 taxi, or drive home… It was just 5 minutes away. Why not?

I had the perfect solution. I knew I was drunk, so I’d drive super slow, at 5 mph. That way nothing could go wrong. It was night and the streets were lit, so I also forgot to turn my lights on…

2 minutes later blue lights were flashing behind me. I can’t help wondering how they knew I was drink-driving…

I pulled over, got out the car, put my hands up and said, ‘’you’ve got me, I’m drink driving.’’ I mean what was the point in trying to deny it, I was smashed. They pulled out the breathalyser, I told them there really was no need, I was well over the limit, but still, it was procedure. 

On the positive, the police report, if I remember correctly, said something along the lines of me being one of the most apologetic and friendly drunk drivers they had ever pulled over.

At least I’d learned good manners from my childhood and adolescence.

They took me back to Nottingham police station, put me in a cell, I threw up in the metal toilet there, passed out, and was woken up by prison breakfast in bed. Sausage and baked beans in a kind of metal tin foil tray. 

I wasn’t really feeling in the mood for breakfast... 

I was let out shortly after and had to walk an hour back to the university feeling like a true piece of shit.

A month later I was in court with my dad, pleaded guilty, made my apologies, and got a hefty fine and a 2-year driving ban. All very deserved I might add, and I was genuinely sorry. The level I was over the limit put me in the bracket to be handed community service but luckily, I missed out on that. I also had to attend a drink driving course where I met a load of other very messed up characters completely lost in society, one insisting he shouldn’t be there despite the fact he attacked two cops.

That’s two events that occurred in a short period during 1st year of university.

Now let’s get back to Nairobi airport. 3 days before this I was in Brazil with Tim, as you do…

We went to the favela of Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro. South America’s second biggest favela with one of the most beautiful views of the Atlantic Ocean you’ll ever see. Ironically in Rio and many parts of South America, the favelas are the places with the most incredible views as they’re built up on the hillsides. The flipside of that being that these zones are usually undeveloped because they’re geographically unstable which is why these spectacular views remained open for development. 

The favelas  of Brazil I want to add are also where you meet amazing communities of incredible people doing their best to get by and help one another. What I write below is a small and unfortunate minority of the areas, made worse by, well, people like me...

We didn’t go with an organised tour guide or anything. We went with a guy who knew a guy from there, who knew the back streets, Rafael.

We met gang members, held their machine guns, saw piles of cash and a load of drugs, mostly cocaine. The pictures of us and the guns were even on Facebook at one point; I think thankfully they’ve disappeared now. We had to leave a little extra cash as a tip for this ‘privilege’, no doubt which was used to finance that lifestyle and the drug wars that did happen at this time and still do today.

At the end we went to a local bar down a side street. I was 20 and cocaine was one of the few things I had never actually tried. So, I thought, what better time to try than in the back streets of a Brazilian favela ravaged by past violence and conflict, partly due to the fight for control of cocaine.

Turns out I loved it! Full of life, full of energy, full of confidence to chat shit about whatever I wanted. I knew all that was false bullshit that would wear off to a horrible low after a while, but hey, in the moment as a 20-year-old stupid kid, who cared... Except we were in the middle of the favela, a long way from our hostel, and it probably wasn’t a good place to be high off my face. 

And as maybe expected, after the initial sensation wore off, I only wanted more. We were with a few people who had more sense than Tim and I, and they wisely decided it was time to find our way back to the main street and take a taxi back to our hostel. Fortunately, we listened and followed, extra gear in pocket of course.

The journey home went surprisingly smoothly given where we were, but the party only continued in the hostel after. I couldn’t stop the cocaine. Tim tried to make me stop, locking me out the toilet whilst he indulged. But I climbed over the top of the cubicle. I wanted more! And I was going to get more! He gave in and left me a little bit. 

I ditched the traditional note and ground my face on the toilet seat, getting every last bit I could before coming out looking like a snowman. He dusted my face and body off, and we went back out to the bar.

For some inexplicable and truly dickheadish reason a little after, I went to our hostel dormitory room, threw a load of load of things around, some mine, some not, sort of in a messed-up rock star style of way, with none of the glamour and all the shame. And needless to say, I pissed a whole load of people off. 

Half of the rest of what happened, I can’t even remember. I couldn’t walk properly the next day because my right foot was killing me and completely swollen.

Thankfully we were leaving that day too. We also hadn’t paid our bill. Which was the perfect excuse to keep our heads low, drop our bags out the window onto the street, walk out the hostel, and take a taxi to the airport.

Another truly dickhead move!

And when you add the comedown from the coke, alcohol, awful behaviour and so much more from the last two weeks on top, much of which I haven’t touched on, and then add a 12-hour overnight flight to think about my actions still wired, this really was rock bottom.

There were so many more similar stories, but I think those three paint a good picture of my state of mind at the time. Afterall, I had been doing similar things since I was 14 years old when I first got drunk.

I was banned from my local nightclub called Casino in Guildford, received a 24 stay away ban from the town centre once, the police called my mum as a 16-year-old because I jumped over the counter of McDonalds and started flipping burgers around, and a whole lot more.

Back to where we were. Two days later I’m in Nairobi airport, as you do. And I was off to Malawi to volunteer with a microloan charity for 3 weeks… Try and do some good and all that bullshit that most volunteer charity work in Africa often is… 

The white person who did all the things above, goes to support poor black people in Africa. And for 95% of these volunteer roles, doesn’t do anything positive for anyone, apart from maybe raising some money for the charity.

I truly felt like shit. How could you not? I mean, I deserved to feel like shit.

And there I was outside a tiny bookstore in the airport. I looked up and there was a self-help book. The first I’d ever seen or touched. The industry wasn’t that big 16 years ago like it is now.

It was Robin Sharma’s ‘’Life Lessons from a Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.’’

It called me in, and I bought it. And finally, I had some place of hope, some refuge. A guide. My bible if you must!

From what I remember it was a list of 100 steps that, if followed, could help change your life. I really tried to follow them. Say hi to strangers, help people, live in the present, exercise, eat well. Mostly basic and obvious things but it’s often those basic and obvious things we forget in the darkest time and that we first have to get back to.

To clarify one thing, I was by no means an alcoholic or regular drug taker. I was a British style binge drinker to a very very extreme level. I could happily not drink all week or month if I stayed at home, but if I went out, almost every time without fail, I’d end up at a stage of blackout or worse. 

The people I spent time with at this point were pretty similar to me too with the drinking and life choices, although maybe to a slightly less extreme level. With my parents, I did my best to hide much of it, lying about many things, but I’m sure deep down they could feel some of it and were worried. But mostly, I just kind of got by doing the things I was doing.

And it may seem unbelievably contradictory given the stories above, but I was a nice, kind, timid kid most of the time, who lacked an extreme amount of self-confidence, and a very healthy dose of self-control when under the influence. 

And all this behaviour was to try and mask over that complete lack of self-worth that I had developed from childhood and through adolescence. It never worked, only made things worse, but at least for a few hours there was some mild escape into the abyss. When I stayed at home, I was so far within my tiny comfort zone that I was protected, but it also wasn’t what I wanted to do. Staying in I was unbelievably lonely. A conundrum faced by so many today.

Anyway, this made these 3 weeks in Africa a good time to make a change and try something new. I wouldn’t be drinking or doing anything else, just trying to help, or maybe better put, not get in the way too much. And from a selfish point of view, it was an amazing experience.

I stayed with a local guy there called Chippie and his family in a mud house. Followed him around at the charity, met a lot of locals who always love meeting a foreigner, and the charity really did do some great work too. So maybe I was a little negative above.

It felt good. I felt better. You can’t rub out the mistakes of the past, and anyway, they’re what made me who I am today. Really that was the big lesson from this time and much beforehand, and it was worth it just for that. There were fun and good moments too of course, but it’s often the bad that sticks with you.

In the next few years, I read several other self-help books, now the latest booming industry and trend. And to an extent, I think they can help people. It certainly helped me and gave me a little light that I was searching for. And when you begin to feel that a little, it grows stronger inside of you. 

But as most people who have read self-help books will attest, they’re good for giving you a little boost up, but for finding the real answer, the root of the problem, the core, they’ll never truly take you there. 

And many people end up in a cycle of reading book after book, repeating bullshit positivity after bullshit positivity, and forgetting half the ‘’lessons’’ they read a few days on, ultimately ending up in the same place as before, but with more questions.

That said, I’ll be forever grateful for that book, because in my ultimate low, it gave me a recipe, a way forward, some practical advice to dig myself out of a self-inflicted hole I’d created for myself. And mixed with the emotion that I never wanted to go back to the state I’d just come from, it worked, and here onwards saw me beginning to try and take the first steps to overcoming some of the deep gremlins inside of me. There were many to overcome and many more mistakes to face, but from here, the will was there to try and do it, at least for much of the time anyway.

To make some amends for the Brazil story, I returned to Rio 5 years later in a much better state and decided to go to the hostel, admit what I had done, and pay what I owed. I doubt they’d even remember or have the info, but I had calculated the rough amount and had fully planned to pay it back.

When I arrived at the door, I realised the hostel had closed down… This made me feel bad. Was I to blame? Perhaps to a small level. It was called Mellow Yellow in Copacabana by Cardeal Arcoverde Metro Station.

I instead donated the money to The Ayrton Senna Foundation, a hero of mine and most Brazilians, with a great charity offering amazing opportunities for the youth of Brazil. And I explained in the donation exactly what I’d done and why I was donating that amount.

Did it cancel out the past? No. But it was the closest thing I felt I could do to level the playing field a little. 

Reflection #1

Maybe that’s the lesson here, the old cliché. 

‘’The past is in the past’’

Sure, I’d climbed over a toilet cubicle, rubbed my face in the cocaine on the toilet seat, threw a load of stuff around in the hostel, then did a runner without paying my bill…

I’ll hold my hands up, that’s not good in anyone’s book, especially in my own...

But until Elon Musk invents a time machine, I can’t change that. And sitting in a pile of shit feeling awful about it only makes things worse. There came a point where I couldn’t continue that way, and I had a choice to make. 

Do I stay there repeating the same shit again and again? Or do I stand up and finally make a real decision to change

When I made that decision, life began to shift up, down, sideways and in roundabouts, but at least it finally started moving, and for much of it, it began moving upwards.