Begin Again with Davina McCall - Patrick Cox: Reclaiming My Life Through Psychedelics

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

In this episode of Begin Again, Davina McCall is joined by iconic shoe designer turned psychedelic healer Patrick Cox. From the heights of fashion fame to the depths of identity loss and grief, Patrick opens up about losing everything—including his father to suicide—and how his journey with psychedelics helped him find joy, purpose, and a new beginning. Raw, uplifting, and deeply human, this is a story about healing, transformation, and the power of change at any stage of life. 📢 Drop a comment: What’s your biggest takeaway? Would you consider trying psychedelics for mental wellness? Yes, no, or maybe? Follow me here: www.instagram.com/beginagain https://www.tiktok.com/@beginagainpod  Doors of Perception: http://www.doorsofperception-ibiza.com/  (00:00) Intro   (03:25) Davina Introduces Patrick Cox   (04:25) Catching Up: Davina and Patrick Reunite   (05:56) Patrick’s Early Life in Africa, Canada, and Family   (09:38) From Toronto to London: A Creative Journey   (14:16) Fashion Beginnings and Working With Vivienne Westwood   (19:04) The Birth of the Iconic Wannabe Loafer   (24:40) The Rise and Success of Patrick Cox   (28:10) Car Accident, Mental Health Struggles, and Leaving the Brand   (40:52) Healing Through Animals: Getting a Dog   (44:12) Rebuilding Identity After Crisis   (46:41) Lathbridge Shoes, Moving to Ibiza, and Rehab   (53:14) Microdosing and Self-Medication for Recovery   (55:19) Life-Changing Experience With Psychedelic Toad   (1:14:46) Meeting Caesar and Training as a Toad Shaman   (1:31:34) The Future of Psychedelics in Wellness   (1:34:33) Rediscovering Creativity and the Doors of Perception   (1:40:14) Coping With the Death of Patrick’s Father   (1:46:00) Facing Another Crisis and Finding Inner Peace   (1:49:25) Final Thoughts From Davina  This episode is sponsored by: Life360 - https://www.life360.com/uk/ Download Life360 Indeed - https://indeed.com/beginagain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Some of my new friends said, you want to try microdosing. And all of a sudden, I was just so happy to be alive. If I say the name Patrick Cox, everybody goes loafers. We sold a quarter million within 13 months. Wow. And then it just went, br-l. Every shoe brand was copying my shoe. And then it all went wrong.

I can't use the name Patrick Cox. I'm unemployed. I can't design shoe. ever again. So I became very, very suicidal. I justified my existence on this planet by being Patrick Cox's millionaire shoe designer. What were you scared of? I kept saying, I'm stuck. I need to know what to do next. Micro-dosing works. And it's changed my life and it's changed so many people's lives around me. You connect with something bigger than yourself. It's a feeling of unconditional love. That's so nuts.

I got an email and she just said, Dad's committing suicide. Yeah, I said, I love to, he looked me. Change is scary. Yeah. Change is good. We're allowed to change from the age of 5 to 15, from 5 to 35,

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So you get a little nudge when someone arrives at their destination. I love that. If you want to make life easier and stress a bit less, Download Life 360 today and Family Proof Your Family. Today I'm talking to Patrick Cox. Patrick Cox is a friend of mine and when I started Begin Again, I made a list of people that I wanted to have on this podcast and he was right at the top.

I'm so in awe of Patrick because he has picked himself up, dusted himself down and started again so many times, but he's now got to a stage in his life where he feels to me at peace. And I feel like that's something we all would love to have as well. So so much to talk to him about. I hope you enjoy it. And please, if you enjoy this podcast,

Will you click subscribe? Because it means that we'll be able to send you all our new episodes as they come out. I've got like, I've got like cuteness aggression. I love you so much. I have known you for so long. So long. Is it, it's not 80s, it's 90s, right? Patrick Cox, I have known you.

I think for 35, 40 years. Yeah, definitely. It's early 90s, maybe even 80s. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Nightclothes. I used to do the door at the wag.

Yep. 88, 87, 88. I mean, we clubbed together. We partied quite hard together. Oh, yeah. And we had a lot of fun. What was the club at Notting Hill? The underground, the one under the rails.

Oh, subterranean. Subterranean. Yeah. That was where we really hung out from all the door and anything back there. Amazing. Yeah. And here we are. And here we are.

Still alive. Still alive. Just. Finger nails. Well, what you've been through. I mean, really. Well, and I wanted to talk to you about this. Obviously, this podcast is called Begin Again.

And having known you for a large chunk of our lives, I'm hard pushed. When I wrote the initial list of people that I wanted to talk to with that theme in mind, you were top of my list. You sent me the list. I was honored. I was like, wow, are you sure about this? I have never known anybody begin again as many times as you. It's been incredible.

Yeah. I feel like Madonna continually reinventing myself. Yeah. But I'd love to go back to the beginning because what was quite nice about preparing for this interview, I did actually learn quite a lot about you that I didn't know. You've done your research. Yeah, I've done my research. And what I really was excited to hear was about your time growing up in Nigeria.

Can you tell me a bit about how you ended up there? So I'm born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My mother's Canadian. My father's from the east end of London. My father was a linguist. He studied languages and taught languages. And born in 1963, 1965, they moved to Lagos. Obviously, I was two. I had no choice in matter. I went along with them. But the Baffirn War broke out and things got very heavy. And after a while, we left the country. And we thought we were going back to Europe. But the plane landed within like two hours. And we arrived in Chad. And we were told, get off the plane. And then we lived in Chad for a year, kind of wards of the state. There was another, sadly, another war going on in Chad. So eventually we left Chad. And then my mom had had enough. You know, there was like genocide war. We had every tropical disease in the world, you know, because it was early times for immunization back then. And my mom said, we're moving back to Canada. And I was like, yay. And she goes, yeah, not dad's not. And that was kind of the divorce. Me, my brother, and my mom flew back to Canada.

It was an amazing childhood. It's not your average childhood at all. And we flew from Africa wearing little safari outfits, shorts and everything, and landed in Edmonton, and the person opened the door to the plane had a full, like, snow suit, fur suits, and it was 30 below. Wow. And my mom took us from the airport to the Hudson's Bay Company and bought us, like, long underwear and wool hats and gloves and everything. And I was looking like going, what?

What happened? I didn't really like Edenton, to put it mildly, after that childhood, but, you know, it was what it was. I mean, I guess everything changed for you at that point because it wasn't just a new country. It was a new family set up. Everything changed in that. It was the 70s. And my mother wasn't Maureen Cox. She was Mrs. Terry Cox.

She couldn't have a credit card or a name. And while we were in the air, my dad canceled all the credit cards. So when we landed, we were penniless. I wouldn't trade it for the world because it made me who I am and very independent but it was rough how did that affect your mum

what was she how was she like as a person my mom and I have a complicated relationship there was probably about almost a 30 year period where I didn't really speak to her after I moved out of the house there was a fair amount of violence in my house coming from a place of love she just wanted the best for me

but she wanted the best for me this sort of thing to control yeah she would get angry yeah academia was everything your marks were everything I never did anything remotely artistic

because that was frowned upon my brother is two years older he was gay also my mother remarried and were four boys three of which were gay so three for my mother's womb. The one who is a gay actually was bored by Cesarian.

So he says I jumped out the window and I avoided the gay passage. He goes, you all came out the front door and you all became gay. And we say this for my mom's in the room and she just sort of giggles and laughs. Yeah, it was an awkward relationship at times. There was a lot of love. There was a lot of, yeah, unhappy years in my childhood. So why Toronto? I just needed to get the hell out of Edmonton.

And then just after turning 17, I just got to get out of here. So I was in Toronto two years. They were insane. Why? Well, my Toronto years were clubbing, clubbing, clubbing, clubbing. I was the doorman of the trendiest club in town. I was the bitch with the clipboard at the door saying, you can come in, you can't come in. And basically, you were either cute or I went like that and they put drugs in my head and then I just put them in my mouth.

But I didn't know what it was. So by the end of the night, I was like, I had no idea what I'd taken. And I got very into the new romantic movement. Everything was British, Duran Duran, Spassau Club, Spaddle Ballet, Culture Club, eurythmics. Everything was British. Everything was electronic. And I got very, very much into that.

And because of that, I was very, very into Vivian Westwood. I was into British fashion, more than New York fashion. So I was working with a clothing designer in Toronto named Lucas Clanthos. He was one of Canada's biggest clothing designers. I didn't know anything. I hadn't been to fashion school. I couldn't cut a pattern, but I was very outlandish in my garb. My attire, I'd been photographed a few times by the local newspaper, the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star, things like that.

I worked the door of this club. So this designer had me working with him in the studio. I did the styling of the show. So I was involved in hair and makeup, and I was involved in accessories and involved in the casting. I remember how Linda Vangelista coming is like 19 to a casting. Amazing. I did honor. What?

I know. I know. So there is no Canadian footwear industry other than like snowmobile boots or indigenous shoes like mucklux or anything. Right. There is no Canadian, you know, factors and everything. So I went to Chinatown and I bought these little kung fu slippers that they're like a dollar a pair. They're like the little shoe of the elastic gusset about a canvas. And I hand painted them and then I attached legs of swayed to them and pushed them down.

So it was like a crushed boot. Oh, great. Just ad-libbed with what I had. And the designer said to me, you seem to enjoy doing the shoes. When I was in London in 1976 and I was a punk, I heard of this shoe college. Why don't you do that? The only thing I heard in that sentence was London. And so I just decided, I'm moving to him to be a shoe designer.

I mean, it literally came out of nowhere. I'd never done creative things before becoming a club club. So I moved. Cordwainers wasn't famous then. Now it's a world-class college as part of the London University. But they just accepted me without a portfolio. I didn't even know how to draw then, so I wouldn't have ever got accepted. But I paid the foreign student fee, I think it was three grand.

And I got accepted. And in September, I moved to London. I paid 30 quid a week to live in a mansion in Belgravia. Did you enjoy the whole kind of process of going back to school? Because I know you loved learning, right? Not there. Not bad. Why not?

It was like a Victorian asylum. It was run at a different time. I mean, now it is a world-class college, but back then it was really bleak. What do they think of your ideas? So the first day of college, the design teacher, said, everybody draw a shoe. Most of the kids drew a pink or red stiletto. I would say the majority of the class. I was trying to draw a square-toed brogue with my rudimentary drawing skills.

And the teacher came up, took my drawing, held it up to the class. And he said, I said, draw shoes, not cars, Patrick. That was the first day of school. And I was like, wow, it's going to be like that, is it? it. Okay. And it came up, bit his ass because what was my best thing, a square-toed loafer, which made my name and, you know, made millions and everything. But that was tough. And the course was really, I don't think you can teach design. I think it's something you have innately or you don't, but you can be taught the tools to realize your design. So what I loved about the course,

they had a factory attached to it. So we learned how to make shoes. Most places like St. Martin's, if they have a shoe bit or FIT in New York, if they have a shoe bit, they hand the shoe, they're designed to a technician. The technician meets it. We made the shoes. And that served me in really good stead when I got to Italy and someone would say, inevitably, no, you can't do that. And I would go.

Amazing. And they'd be like, what the hell? What? You know, a lot of the factories said I was the most technical designer they'd ever met. Because I was approaching it through craft as opposed to fashion. Because the people I knew, like Vivian Westwood and John Galeigh, I know, they were so fashion, so art that I felt very insecure in their presence. You'd come to the UK with a love of Vivian Westwood. She was my goddess. She was half the reason I moved to England.

And in Canada, you know, you absolutely thought her. You came here and by some freak, like, chance. Yes. Like, it's unbelievable how that happened. That was literally like the universe shining on you that day. There was a universe. It was drugs. It was a lot of things.

It was nightclubs altogether. So I was at the Camden Palace New Year's Eve between 83 and 84. I got into a taxi when the Camden Palace closed at like 2 a.m. With the English designer, sadly passed away, Stephen Linnard. We took a taxi to Soho to a speakeasy called the Pig Pussy Cat. And we were in the toilets of the Pig Pussy Cat about three in the morning. And the Vivian Westwood team came into the Lou. And they were like, you know, full regalia and everything.

And they walked up to me as I was washing my hands or wiseries. whatever. And they said, you're that American boy that shops at our store. And I said, Canadian, actually. And they said, we like you. We think you're cool. Whatever they said, you can hang out with us. And that might sound pathetic. But that was the most affirming moment of my life to date that I had been noticed by the cool kids. And I did at last to be on their team. What was interesting was that in Canada, you'd been seen as cool because you were kind of outspoken and independent and all of these things. But actually... Or she was a jerk. Yes, all seen as a joke, that's true.

But what I think you'd always thought was you'd always felt like not enough around fashion people. So did that mean the world to be accepted by? It was everything. Yeah. It was everything. And a few weeks later, David Staines was Vivian's assistant. He needed somewhere to live. He was moving.

I found a flat and David became my flatmate. Cut to a few weeks later, it's four weeks before the March. in March 1984, a fashion show for Vivian. And all of a sudden they went, shit, we forgot to do the shoes. And David goes, oh, my flatmate's a shoe designer. It was in my first year of college. I didn't know anything. And ended up doing the shoes for Vivian and modeling in the show

and working in the store and just everything. You know, I did it all for free. Didn't get paid a penny. I don't care. I don't care. She was such an incredible person to be around. And she just let me get on with it. We had a meeting.

You know, I was shaking. It was in the presence of Vivian Westwood. Oh, my God. and she said, I have this idea that I've done before. What do you think? And I said, well, why don't we do it in Peyton? Because I really love Peyton matter. It was very, like sort of glam rock platform still.

And I said, why do we add a little platform to it and everything? She goes, okay, get on with it. Vivian had no money. So I had to find people to make the shoes. I had to find Greek Cypriot cobbler, people that maybe she'd work with in the past or whatever, that she couldn't do anymore. And I had to pay for the shoes. And then I took the hovercraft to Lunt to Paris for the fashion show,

carrying the shoes by hand, delivering them to Vivian by hand. And then she ended up modeling the show. It was, yeah, it was a beautiful, beautiful moment. There was so much freedom in fashion back then. Yeah. Yeah. She was so corporate. But then it was just people doing it, weird people doing it for the love of it.

You're talking about this wonderful, kind of beautiful kind of moment with Vivian and how all that happened and it happened so naturally. And it was like you'd manifested it in a way. but at the same time, inside, you were kind of racked with insecurity. What was it like trying to juggle those two sides of you? Because like, if there was a drug culture, club culture, that was kind of mad. Yeah. And yet you were working really hard.

All the time. So how are you surviving? I mean, I don't know. I mean, now if I don't get 10 hours sleep or whatever, and I'm going to go out once a month, I'm like, but you'd go from a club, take a shower and go straight to work. And it's just, you just did. I don't know. I mean, I had no choice.

There wasn't the plan B. I'm very, very, very stubborn. You know, I should have quit and gone back to Canada. But there was just no way I was admitting defeat. There was no way I was ever doing that. So I just kept going. You look for your moments of validation. Vivian was huge in giving me some confidence, this kid from Canada who knew nothing sort of thing,

and being accepted and every step. But my career ended up feeding the demons. Yes. Because I was only valid because I was Patrick. I was, you know, oh, you don't need to look like me, look at my turnover. Or you don't need to like me, look what Vogue said about me. So it, it, when I lost the company, I thought I deserved it. Because I had imposter syndrome through my entire career.

I mean, I know nothing when they can have figured out. When are they ever going to figure out that I'm actually worthless and stupid? And when I lost the company, I was like, there you go, everyone triggered it out finally. Talk me through the company, because we've gone to Vivian Westwood, you then decided to start your own company. Yeah. Name it wannabe. Or Patrick Cox. Patrick Cox. Patrick Cox. And you started with that, the amazing loafer that everybody talks about. That was eventual. So Vivian was my first year of college. Second year of college and designed shoes for a company called Body. map. Then I graduated in July 85 and by September 85 I had a little stall

at London Fashion Week at Olympia when it used to be. It was two by three meters and I had all the shoes that I designed in college. I never won one project in college because when they would say design shoes for a 70 year old woman with bunions for Clarks and be like yeah fuck that. And I designed whatever I wanted so I never want any project ever because I was like yeah I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. So I had my little collection together of like 12 styles and I

started and I started to sell. And then I, in the audience when I did Vivian Nesswood was all the British future designers, John Galliano, John Flett, all these people. So I started to do pretty well half of British Fashion Week. I did John's shoes for three seasons. I did Alistair Blair. I did Workers for Freedom. Wow. I did John. I did everybody. Richard James. I mean, I did everyone. So I had a very big press book, but my actual sales were very much. And then in 1990, my sales always decreased in the summer because my shoes were made in England and they were very chunky and heavy so I thought I've got to do something

that's more summery so I saw these there was several things there was Pee-Werman wore white loafers with every single thing he did and I was obsessed with Pee-Werman and white loafers there's also a very good taste bad taste moment with men in white loafers it has visions of gangsters has visions of pimps it has visions of senile old men golfing in check trousers and white shoes so I always love that could taste, bad taste moment. And I always love white loafers for some weird reason. And I always love square-toed shoes for some reason. So it was kind of putting all of those elements together that I saw pictures of Paninati, these Milan sort of Rome kids on motorcycles, scooters that were dressed

kind of mod. It was kind of the Italian equivalent of a mod. And they wore loafers. And I went, okay, I'm going to do that. It's a soft shoe on itself better in the summer sort of thing. So I did it one season in Patrick Hawks. And the patterns for various reasons are expensive to do. So I had to tell the factory, I'll keep doing it for a couple years just to get them to do it. And I did it and it sold. And then the next year, it sold more, which had never happened in my company. Right. From the youth, through everything out of your season, started again.

And it sold to really cool people. I mean, Paul Weller came in and bought a pair. Jazzy B from Soul to Soul came in a bar. They were my first two celebrity clients. Wow, great. And they were cool as fuck from different worlds, you know? So I was like, okay, we're on something here. Then this company in Italy that specialized in moccasins started copying me.

And then they reached out to me and asked me if I would design for them. And instead of being the petulant young designer and going, fuck you, you're copying me and slammed down the phone, I just said, why don't we work together? Instead of me giving you another shoe, because you're already doing my best selling shoe, why don't we make the copy become the original? And why don't we do something together? Because their prices were incredible. They were a third of my price because they specialized in making loafers. And that was the birth of wannabe. I mean, I tried all sorts of the name.

It was going to be called something, something by Patrick Cox. It was going to be called anything. Love that. Anything. It was going to be called Patrick Cox People, PCP. And then eventually it was called wannabe because it was the time of diffusion lines when there was CK1 and, you know, DK&Y and what was it, Gochi Jr. So I thought you want to be someone who buys the mainline shoes.

You want to be someone who could afford Patrick Cox, where at the time we're about 200 pounds a pair. But you're not. You're buying the wannabes, which are 80-quit-a-pair when we launched. And we set a target of 20,000 pairs the first season. And we sold a quarter million within 13 months. And then it just went, I went from two employees to like a full-blown company within the course of like two years or something.

And then rode that wave. You know, the wannabe years, let's say, our 94 to 2002. Those were the glory years where the high street was me. You know, every shoe brand was copying my shoe. Marks and Spencers, the best shoe on the floor was a copy of mine. For anybody watching that's not British, I mean, it was... It was global too. It was everywhere.

Yeah. And it was like you were as big in the States. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was massive everywhere. But it was the biggest shoe in the world. It was crazy. And what's so funny. She was in front of the store.

If I say the name Patrick Cox, everybody goes loafers. Yeah. Like everybody goes, oh, loafers. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely. Absolutely insane, isn't it? That to be universally globally recognized for something that you've done is incredible. I think to have something that goes down in the history books is what all you all want is

as a designer, something to live on, you know, beyond your time. It can be a little bit of an albatross around your neck because everyone's, when are you doing the next wannabe? I'm like, my God, it's like lightning striking the way everything aligned, the stars align for that to be the shoe and the moment it became and everything. it's kind of like an artist, a recording artist, having a one album that blows out of never doing anything again. So everyone was always like every design project I ever did for anyone after that,

they wanted a loafer. They wanted a loafer. So it was amazing, but it did sort of become this thing that you had to carry around with you after the success night down. What was your personal life like at the time? Did you have a partner? Yeah, I've had two long-term relationships, but it was what was always the first was work.

You know, Monday to Friday in Italy, come back Friday night, hit it hard, and then stumble to the airport Monday morning, because you've been up half a Sunday night and then get back to Italy. It was the split was quite intense because my entire company was in England, and it got to like 50 people in England. Not one of them spoke Italian. And then I'd go to Italy and not one of the people in Italy spoke English. So I was the sole interlocutor between the...

You know, going back and forth and back and forth. And no one would do anything in Italy unless Patrick was in the room. Once I got bigger and I had design assistants and everything, they'd be like, yeah, yeah, I spent the on. Let's wait for Patrick. Let's wait for Patrick. And it's like, no. That's my assistant. They're empowered.

They had the meeting with me in England. Now they're telling you what to do in Italy. But, you know, a lot of these companies are family companies and they'd seen me grow up with them and they just wanted Patrick. You. Yeah. And there's only one you. Yeah. It's exhausting.

Yeah. I mean, when we got really big. You know, a week would be like one day in London, then two days in Italy, and then fly to Tokyo, two days in Tokyo, and then go to New York and one day in New York and then start the whole thing over again. And I was a cheerleader. And whatever city I was in, everything was great. I put out all the fires, but then everything was exploding in all the other cities that I wasn't in. And then I was like, if we could clone me and send one Patrick to there, one Patrick to there, one Patrick to there, you know, but you can't. And I was never, I didn't hire professionals. I hired people I loved. My interviews were insane.

I won't go into the details of my interview process, but they were pretty bad. So I got amazing people who grew with me and loved with me and, you know, and I'm still friends with some of them. But I never hired like a proper CEO or a proper this or proper that. And when I did, it all went wrong. I made mistakes. And I took my eye off the ball. And then the fashion world changed. You know, I was this owner, founder, designer, kind of my own CEO until later.

And that's what all the other fashion houses was. There was Mr. Clareuxry, there was Mr. Moogier or Mr. Montana, whatever. They were all in charge of their own companies. And then the Prada group, the Louis Vuittal group, the Gucci group arrived. And the playing field became very uneven. It was me, a single designer against a corporation. And people started saying, you know, look, Prada is opening 30 stores a year. Gochie's open 30 stores a year. I was opening one or two stores a year.

You know, I had many stores in Asia. I had the store in New York. I had three stores in France and three stores a month. I was store in Manchester. So I was doing stuff at a store in Lyon. But I wasn't doing anything like that because it was my own money. We didn't even have an overdraft at the bank. Wow. We didn't, you know, when there was much money in the bank, let's do this. There's not money in the bank. Let's do that. And then people started to explain to me debt and leveraging and investors and all these sort of things. So it's like, yeah, okay, great. Let's go with that. Yeah, no. So I got investors. They turned out to be the wrong investors. They said, would you like us to exit? And I was like, yeah, you've not really do anything. But they'd got me spending on a level that

we never would have accepted with my own money. And then instead of wanting to say that investor, we needed an investor. And we got an investor where everything went wrong. I got hit by a car. and I was in hospital in 2000. So wait, let's just talk through that very quickly because this was a catastrophic chain of events here. This was a change my life moment. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I quickly just want to add a little trigger warning because we do discuss suicide ideation. What happened with the car accident? So I've always driven a scooter in London. I've drove a scooter in Canada. And I'm mad the way I drive. You've been the car with me in Ibiza?

Yes. Most people remember that. Most people were like, so anyway, I was on to, I lived in Little Venice. I was on my way to my offices, we're just off the King's Road. I was going by the roundabout, which is over the flyover, and I got hit by a car. I went full speed into a brick wall. David and Elton, Elton for Christmas that year had bought me a Louis Vuittal helmet. That helmet saved my life because it had a guard here, which I'd never bought one

with guards here because I didn't like the way they looked. I always got cute little ones which are useless. Yes. So I went face first into that wall, came back down, laying half on the pavement and half on the road. It was the morning, it was 8.45 in the morning, this man who I never got to thank you, never got, if he's listening, thank you, I never got to see him again in my life. He came and held my hand. And I laid there in the road with buses and cars going by and everything. and I got quite dramatic and I said, I'm gay, I'm in fashion,

I'm vain, I can't live in a wheelchair, just let that bus run over me and this poor man just held my head. Did you really? Yeah, I said all of this. I was blabbering. I was in shock. I mean, I literally said I'm gay,

I'm shallow, I'm in fashion, just let me die now. But I think what you were trying to say was I don't want to live if this is really bad. Yeah, if this is the way it is. So that had entered your mind. So then I, oh God, yes. So I tried to lift, the ambulance crew arrived and they were debating

and it started to light rain on my face what to do because my spine was half on the curb and half on the road. And they were like going, we need to mobilize the spine. We can't move them and everything. And they said, you know, they told me, don't move anything.

And I said, because it helped me if I tell you, I move my toes and it's fine and everything. And they're like, oh my God, because I lifted up my head and they were just caught off inside. And I went,

okay, this is bad. This isn't good. I'm not going to walk away from this I had lots of little scooter accident, someone else a door or whatever. But you always got up and went home and you might be bleeding or whatever and the scooter was bashed. But this I knew was real. And so finally they put the mobilizing thing underneath and grabbed me by my jacket and just pulled me onto the thing and then pushed me off to St. Mary's Paddington.

And I ended up being there for about six weeks. Wow. Because they found out I'm opiate resistant. Morphine doesn't work on me. But that's not because you'd been taking it. No, I mean, I said to the doctor. Literally, you are just opiate resistant. I said to the doctor, I said, cocaine, I get.

I could be immune to. I said, but I've never done heroin. I said, I don't understand. He goes, it's genetic. It has nothing to do with your drugs. I didn't even know that was possible. Yeah. Wow.

So I said to him, give me the good stuff. He goes, the bad news is opioids worked on like 98% of the population, so there is no good stuff. And I was like, because I was in the ICU just screaming in pain. And they couldn't give you anything. Well, they were giving me everything, but it wasn't doing anything. And I had this. first come by. And I was like, I'm in pain. I was like, give me more. She goes, you've had enough to kill an elephant. She goes, you've had this much morphine as the whole ward. And I said,

obviously, something's wrong. And anyway, bless her heart, the number one pain specialist in England works out of St. Mary's Paddington back then. So they had him come down. He did some tests on me and said, yep, you opiate resistant. So anyway, there is nothing they can do. So they put an epidural into my spine. Right. But when you have an epidural, you can't go home because it's basically liquid morphine and liquid cocaine going straight into your spinal fluid so you can't go home. So I had to stay in the hospital for weeks and weeks and weeks until you got better. And in that time in hospital, I had time to think about everything. I mean, I was doing shoe fittings in the hospital because I was still trying to keep the collection and the company going. I mean, the nurse walked in

and there was a model walking up and down and two Italians taking notes and she goes, this looks like work. Get out. Like, get out. And I was like, uh. And then, I got back to work, my desk was this deep and bad news because this new investor had been involved now for about six months. And he wrote me an email on Patrick Cox's letterhead to Patrick Cox saying, what can you do for my brand? And I went, he'd taken it. Yeah. And he'd taken your name over. Yeah. And I said, I can quit. And he said, you'll never quit. I own you. And I was like, you own the company. My name is a trademark within the company. You own that, but you don't own me. And that was the end. I left in May 2007.

What does that feel like effectively losing your name? Losing a company, losing money is one thing, but losing your identity? Yes. It was traumatic. It was everything. I justified my existence on this planet by being Patrick Cox shoe designer. In that reductive way, the daily mail would write Patrick Cox, Millionaire, shoe designer. And I was like, I can't use the name Patrick Cox.

I'm unemployed. And I can't design shoes ever again because I had a non-compete with the company. So I was like, what am I? So they effectively stopped you from designing shoes as well as... I had a three-year non-compete. Wow. My lawyer at the time said, this is insane. They can't stop you from doing anything.

I said, if they want to pay me a quarter million a year to not do anything, I'm so beaten up and so exhausted from what happened. I'll just take it. So I, things, my mental health, I'd always poo-pooed mental health. I'd always sort of meet fun of people. Why do you think so resilient? Yeah, you know, because I just get over it. You know, get over it.

Go do this. Go do that. Well, you know, there's no point crying. No one's going to come save you. And then I kind of went a little bit gaga. I got agoraphobia. I couldn't leave my house. I had a little four-story house in Little Venice,

and I couldn't leave the bedroom floor for several weeks. Luckily, there was a bathroom on that floor, but the kitchen was two floors down. So my poor, long-suffering PA, who I love, Anita Ronki, I love you. She came and brought food to me three times a day, and she did every day, do you want to try to come down the stairs? Do you want to try to come walk around? She finally got me out the door out of about four weeks,

and I held on to the lamp post, just screaming. I had full on agoraphobia, and I was like, okay, this is mental health. This is what mental health issues are. I didn't understand, but now you're having a full, full nervous breakdown sort of thing. So I became very, very suicidal because I couldn't figure out what the point of living was. I wasn't Patrick Cox anymore. I wasn't fabulous anymore. I wasn't like to use my name. I wasn't anything anymore as far as I could see. And I'd always justified myself through all of these outside validations. And then I spoke to a friend. I said,

what do you rich famous fucked up friends do and i said don't say therapy because i'll be dead in two weeks i said so it needs something quicker than that and so um it's a very good friend of my elizabeth salzman you probably know her and she did some calling around and she called back and she said the hoffman and said what's that she goes it's this intense thing it's eight days long um you know blah blah blah blah whatever um it's a short sharp shock it sounds like what you need can you explain to anybody that doesn't know about the hoffman My best friend, Sarah, did the Hoffman and came off drugs. Yeah.

It is a pretty miraculous and very clever technique. Could you explain it? There's secrecy around it, so I can't explain it fully. Roughly. Yeah. So basically it's prosecute your parents, find empathy with your parents, forgive your parents. It's all about intergeneration pain. It's like everything that happened to you happened.

not because they were horrible and they hated you with this, it's because it happened to them, because it happened to them, because it happened to them. It's just passing on intergenerational pain. So it's an eight-day intensive psychodrama where they create situations and you have to deal with them.

And it's quite terrifying dealing with them and they manipulate your emotions up, down, left, rights and everything and strip you right down and then rebuild you by the end. So I did that and I came out of that and you're not supposed to contact anyone, you're supposed to do all these things when you come out. Well, stupid me,

I'd flown my mom to be waiting in my house when I got back because I thought everything would be fine. And then so as I'm driving down the driveway of the Hoffman, you haven't had your phone. I turn on my phone. My CEO calls and said, we're going into liquidation on Monday. My best friend calls me and says,

I have full-blown AIDS. And then my brother calls me for the first time ever and says this letter he received my father blaming everything that happened in childhood on us and my mom. So I was like, and then I get home and my mom's waiting for me, which was a giant mistake to do that. And I was just like, whoops, that was not what I was supposed to do. You're supposed to have a soft reentry,

and it was the worst reentry possible. Patrick, I listen to you talking. I mean, there's so many things. I didn't know about that either. That happened to you where something good, happens to you. And then. Yes.

Very quickly. Yes. Yeah. It feels so cruel. Yeah. How do you come to terms with that? Now, with the new spiritual me, what I think is everything happened for a reason. This moment talking with you here today is perfect.

So everything that happened, good or bad, happened to get us to arrive at this moment. Yes. Takes a long time to get there. Yes. It takes a long time to stop what if it takes a long time to stop blaming. It takes a long time to stop being angry at my family, the world, the injustice, the fashion system, bankers, whatever. Because at the end of the day, you can't do anything you have to live in the now. You have to because you'll drive yourself insane.

And I was driving myself insane. It's not fair. It's this. It's that. Who cares? Nobody's going to fix it for you. Nobody's going to help you. you just have to go forward and reinvent and, you know, kind of like a worm wriggling on a hook.

You're like, okay, this doesn't working. That's not working. You know, you just got to keep trying until you give up, you know. I mean, I've had two periods of intense suicide aviation in my life. That one I would get to when I got to Abitha where I was just like, it's over. I keep up. It's just no point anymore. I'd be better off.

Gone. I used to call it exiting. I had a euphemism for it. And it was totally sane. I wasn't going to do it in a moment of insanity on high on drugs and everything. I was like, plan, systematic, and I'm just going to exit. Because there's the laws of diminishing return. The future I can see after losing my name was never going to be as glamorous and as fun and everything as I thought my life had been.

So exit. You know, like James Dean living at his peak. Merle Monroe leaving at their peak. You know, it was that sort of idea. It's like, it's just going to be this sad depredation into adult, you know, into old age. Just let it go. But I did. But did you talk about it at the time to anybody?

Was this something you were going through? Oh, it was a constant refrain. It was, I went from being the happiest, luckiest person to the most miserable motherfucker you ever met at your eye. I mean, my friends were on suicide watch. They had a rota, and they would call every hour to just make sure I was still alive. And then I, in my flippant way, said, you do not. I can kill myself many times in the 59 minutes between your phone calls. They're like, Patrick, we're really trying, man.

You're so hard to deal with. And my constant refrain to anything, how are you? Whatever. How's today? Whatever. I mean, I just said, whatever, for about six months to everything. And then when I got out of the Hoffman, they recommended a Hoffman-based therapist. And I saw this therapist.

I have internalized homophobia. I've had problems with myself and body issues and all this sort of stuff. And it was this gay leather queen from San Francisco. And I went, whoa, I was like, they've done this on purpose sort of thing. And I lasted about six sessions. And we won this session. He goes, you're going to quit sooner. And I said, uh-huh.

And he goes, how long do I have? I said, this is our last session. And he went, right, get a dog. And I went, what? He goes, get a dog. Wow. He said, you have so much love to give. You are so desperate for structure and love.

And you're just in this spiral of self-absorption and negativity. Get a dog. He goes, I shouldn't be saying this. It's against everything. He said, but you need something to bring you out of this. You need to have reason to get out of bed every day. You know, because I had such a structured life and so busy. And all of a sudden I was just laying in bed going,

nothing you know no appointments phone not ringing you know all of a sudden you know you go from the most feted person in london to forgotten you know convogue stopped inviting me to parties everywhere just did overnight just stopped um so i ended up getting an english bulldog caesar um who saved my life i mean some days i wanted to murder him because he needed to be fed he needed to be walked but it took me out of myself and I could give all of this love because I'd broken up with Tyler in 97. Now we're talking 2007. So I'd already at that point been single for 10 years. So I had something to pour my love into and to share my life with. And that was, I'd always loved animals my whole life. As a kid, I was going to be a vet. And then I discovered drugs and my clubs and got into fashion.

But it was the road not taken. And we discussed that a few times during the Hoffman. Like, why don't you go back? to your original. I couldn't go to vet school at 45. But it was that connection with animals that I really, really was missing and I really, really needed. I think one of the things I really loved about having a dog was that

I really, sometimes, if it was windy or raining or freezing cold and I'd have to get up early and put my coat on and I think I really can't be asked, like, why? But you take the dog out. And then halfway round on the walk, you go, wow, I would never have come out in this weather, but look, look at the sky. Look at the rain. Look at the streets.

Yeah. How beautiful is all of this, but I would never have done this by choice. They make you get out. That's the greatest, for me, that was the greatest gift of all nature. It's make you get off your butt. Yeah. Because I would be sitting there smoking, pot, watching TV, and just not doing any. thing in the basement of my house just for hours and hours, dates and days and days on,

pour me, poor me, poor me, poor me, this giant, giant pity party, not nonstop. I love that expression that they have in AA, which is, pour me, pour me, pour me a drink. I never really drank. No, you didn't. Drink was never really my thing. You know, because I so vehemently didn't like my parents as a child, so I never smoked cigarettes, I never drank alcohol. I just went straight to class A's.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, because I didn't. Now I consider myself an adult, but it was only probably in my late 50s where I started calling myself an adult. I still talk about grownups like there's someone else because I've got that eternal teenager living in me, rebelling, wanting to do things their way, discovering their way in the world. How did you get to Abitha? So I limped along after losing Patrick Cox. I had the three-year non-compete and then in the middle of that

I opened a cupcake shop as you do. I love the name. Please tell everybody the name. So the name was Cox, cookies and cake. Love it. My friend, his family,

owned a little bit of Soho and they used to own all the sex magazine stores and everything. One of them, you know, since people went online and don't need to go to Soho to wank. They can wank at home online. All of those businesses were dying

and he was converting him to other things. And one of them on Brewer Street opposite, his offices was coming up And he said, oh, why don't you open a shoe store there and why don't you do this? And I said, no, no, no. I don't think so. So I was ready for a 500 pound shoe store. I said, but remember that cupcake idea?

So Cox means Cox. Cookies means balls and cake means fanny. So to me, it was in an old sex store and it was Dick Balls and Fanny. It was basically what I was calling my store to the world. No one really got that. But it was Cox Cooks and Cake was for that reason. And it was in an old sex store and we styled it like a sex store. It had neon in it.

And the staff were shirtless. wearing studded leather aprons and we did titty cakes and ass cakes and cockcakes. This was way ahead of its time when you look at how many cupcake ships there are in London now. But it was kind of a cry for help. I should have been getting back to shoes, but it was just, what can I do? What can I do? And it was a chance for me to try to put my name out there again, try to be a designer again, but without doing shoes. So I designed the store, designed the logo.

I designed the cupcakes and worked with this bakery, and zoo, the cakes and everything. and it was just a test run to get back in the public. It was a huge success. We were supposed to open herds. We were supposed to open suffrages. We had American people coming to ask us to do it. I was like, don't you have enough cupcakes in America? They're like, not like these.

And then I got an offer from this Italian company to return to designing shoes. It sounded like a big amazing offer. It turned out to not be quite as amazing as I thought it was. So I started to design for them when I started flying back and forth to Italy. And at one point it was like something's got to give here. Yeah. I can't do this and that. So I let Cox cookies and cake close.

I closed it because I did not want to sell it. Because already I'd lost the name Patrick Cox. I didn't want Frickin Cox cookies and cake stores on every corner and have to deal looking at them continuing without me because the Patrick Koch company still exists in Japan and limps along doing hideous things without me that every now and then pop up in my feed and make me go, you know, so I didn't want that. And that got me back into being a shoe designer working for this company, very commercial company. and I ended up with all these ideas that I could never give to them because they only wanted commercial things. And so I decided to come back. And my middle name is Lathbridge.

It's my great English uncle's last name. So I launched Lathbridge shoes in about 2014. Well, if I didn't like my career when I was ruling the world, I certainly didn't like it when I was a nobody all over again. And instead of having millions of pairs and having factories and tanneries bow down and do whatever I wanted, I was like reduced to begging and cajoling people to make my shoes again because the whole world had changed and moved on with social media,

with the advent of the super brands. And I was like this. So I did this, did this, did this. And then we showed in January 2017 at the Paris fashion shows. And I got back and I sat there. And I thought, I don't want to do this. Why did I do this? I said, you know, if I can imagine 10 years from now, I'm going to be alone in a field

in Italy looking out the window with a cow as I'm drawing a shoe I was like no I have to stop I have to let all that go and do something completely different so my birthday March 19th 2017 I had a party and my friends are there and I turned off the music and I said

the house you're standing in his soul and I'm moving to Abitha and everyone looked at each other like what drug is he all now and then I moved there September 2017 which was probably a little bit of mistake to move there with just the winter in front of you and not having lived through the fun of the summer. And winter and Abitha is like therapy.

If there's something you don't like about yourself, you're going to have to deal with it. And without the constant distractions of London, fame, success, drugs, whatever, parties and everything, the chickens came home to roose. And I was like, I kind of had almost a nervous breakdown, I guess. I was, you know, suicide, suicide, suicide, suicide, suicide, suicide. Everything was just dark, dark. The only thing that saved my life was my dogs because I was trying to figure out how to kill myself, but they were still alive.

So it was like, do I drive off a cliff with them in the car? Do I gas us together? I mean, it was really that dark that you really were thinking, how can we all go together? Because I can't leave them for anyone else. And then a friend of mine who I spoke to, I spoke about suicide with my mom. I spoke about it.

You know, it was just a concert refrain. People would be like, oh, God. And then a friend of mine made a call, and friends got me off the island and got me into rehab. Not for drugs. I wasn't partying a lot at all. No. It was for depression, suicide, ideation.

And I did 28 days in rehab. I hated every second of it. Really? Why? I fought them every step of the way. Did you? I fought them every step of the way. I loved somatics. There was equine therapy, which again, animals.

I loved equine therapy. But the group therapy and everything else, it was all based on drugs and alcohol and sex, addiction, and gambling. And there were three of us that were there for depression. The other two had never done a drug in their life. So they were really lost. At least I'd done shitloads of drugs. And I kept saying, the drugs are the symptoms. They're not the cause.

I can be alone in a room and dead sober and still hate myself. I don't need help. I'm perfectly capable of doing that. I said, they are me trying to block out all these feelings. When are you going to help me deal with that? And they kept going to trust the process. On day 26, I'm like, I'm leaving in two days. Still want to kill myself.

I was like, where is this magic thing going to happen? Was that a scary time? Because you'd literally thrown everything. You know, you'd done Hoffman, you'd done therapy. You'd gone to group group therapy. That nothing was working. Nothing was sticking. The drugs didn't work.

Like, nothing. Yeah. Were you like, okay, there is only one option left to me, right? To take my own life. Yeah. So while I was in there, a friend of mine who's Buddhist that had known me for 10 years called, by luck, he didn't know that I was in there. And I took the call and he said, when you get out, he lives in the Alps. He said, you're going to come spend a week with me in the Alps.

And I went and spent a week with him in the Alps. And that was the beginning of my spirituality. Wow. We did visualizations. we did meditation, we did energy work, we did all these things. And I was just like, okay. And no drugs. Oh God, no. No, no, nothing, nothing.

So you just changed because everybody tried to help you. What was it about his approach or what you were doing that made you feel spiritual? How did that? So the first step in rehab is admitting you're powerless. Well, after I had fought, my entire life, the one thing that I was not going to ever say was I'm powerless. So I had problems with step one. I never got past step one.

I never certainly did the rest of the steps. I never got past step one because I was like, I would say in the group's hair, if I'm powerless, I'm going back to my room and hanging myself now. I said, because I can't accept that. So he said to me, he said, you are powerful, you are unique. You're not better than anyone else. So you're not feeding your ego. He goes, you're not worse than it.

worse than anyone else, but you're powerful and unique. And that resonated with me more than anything I'd been told before. And it said, you can do this. You have this power in you. You are a spiritual being. He goes, I've known you for 10 years. You've always made fun of it. He goes, and I understand your anti-religion, but spirituality and religion are two different things. And he, it appealed to me. The way he softly, softly approach, the way he did it was really quite amazing. Then I got back to Bitha. Everything was still going wrong. And I was like, now what? That didn't fix anything. I was clinging to this spirituality and this breath work and meditation that he'd given me in visualizations to calm me down when I would start to spiral.

And then some of my new friends that met in the Btha said, you want to try microdosing. I had tried to do an ayahuasca ceremony before going to rehab, but I was on antidepressants and taking Xanax every day. They're like, no, you can't. You can't do a ceremony. So by after rehab, I was completely clean. And, you know, everything about psychedelics is intention. You know, your intention. Your intention. How you're approaching the ceremony, the situation, the set and setting, do you feel safe?

What is your mindset? Don't take psychedelics when you're in bad mood. Don't take psychedelics and you're angry because you're only going to amplify that. You know, when you're ready, you're prepared, you feel safe. And then what your intention is. You know, people taking mushrooms and tripping balls and glastonbury and all that, sort of stuff and going out to clubs, yay for them. That's not what I want. I want to do deep spiritual work and I normally do it on my own. I call it Mushroom Monday or Psychedelic Sunday and I'll just

sit at home alone and I'll have two grams of mushrooms and just let it all in full. My dog's on either side of me in silence and just have the experience, let go. So when somebody suggested microdosing, were you a bit like, oh, I don't know about that. Well, I was like, and she goes, you don't feel it. You know, the whole point about microdosing, if you feel it, you're not microdosing. Oh, you're taking too Yeah, because the analogy is, it's like taking an aspirin. An aspirin, you shouldn't feel it. It's just working on you. Yes.

So it's the same analogy. Microdosing, if you feel it, you've taken too much. It should work on you on the subliminal level. But if you say, oh, I can't see or this and that, then that's not microdosing. And so what were you, how do you take? How do you microdosing? It was a pipette with diluted LSD, and I could never really get the dose right. So I was like, you need to take less than a drop.

I was like, well, the pipette does a drop. So how do you take less than a drop? So I'd put a drop and then I'd flick it. And then I'd do it. So it was very hit and miss. Sometimes I'd be driving down the road in Italy and go, I mean, a piece on the road, go like, oh, too much go home. And in other times it's like, so May the next year, 2019,

a friend of mine, the same great friend who suggested that I microdose, said, look, there's this practitioner coming in. from L.A. She serves Toad. She serves Bufo. Do you want to be part of it? I didn't even really know what I would say yes to. Can I quickly ask you, Toad and Bufo, is that the same thing? Yes. So it is, do you want to get technical? Yes. Yes. I'll explain it for everyone. So it is the biggest land toad in the Americas. It's the Sonoran Desert Toad. The Sonoran Desert is northern Mexico on the border with the USA. The toads actually do exist in California, New Mexico and Arizona also as well as being in this province. They are about five to seven inches across the back

and on their shoulders and on their forearms they have peritortal glands and within those glands is produced secretion which has the strongest psychedelic known to man which is five M-E-O-D-M-T. Stronger than DMT. Stronger than DMT. Ten times stronger than DMT. Ten times stronger than what you would call DMT which is in ayahuasca. The toads hibernate 10 months a year underground and they come up in the summer for an orgy of copulation and eating during the rains, during the summer rains, June, July, August, sort of thing. It is now illegal for anyone but non-indigenous people to touch them because they're being threatened from overpopulation, river diversion, pesticides, and people going out and milking these toads to death. You get a whole piece of glass in one hand,

you have the toad in the other hand, and you squeeze the gland. Kind of like a teenager squeezing, is it? Yeah. You squeeze the gland and it expresses onto the glass, and you put that glass in the sun and it dries into a very thin, less than a millimeter thin film of sort of this caramel colored sticky toffee sort of substance. You put that into a pipe, vaporize it, super high heat it, a tiny amount like that big. Yeah. And it is the life-changing experience. It's last 10 to 12 minutes. 10 to 12 minutes. So a normal trip, I remember taking LSD when I was a I was younger. Yeah.

That was like, and I had a terrible, terrible, terrible terrible. Oh, I see 10 to 12 hours. Oh, my God. And it was never ending. It was just horrific. The worst thing on psychedelics is when one person in the room goes, when's it going to end? And then the whole room is over because it's like making it away, make it end.

Oh, my God. And, you know, that that's the worst. And I think that really terrified me for the, for the, I mean, that was happened when I was about 19. So this 15, 20 minutes sounds actually ridiculous. I mean, almost frightening? Well, yes, it is the strongest psychedelic known to man. I mean, I don't like the word psychedelic because psychedelics has a lot of baggage attached to it.

You think of hippie sawing themselves out of windows and everything. And people, when they think of the word psychedelic, even though it is mind-changing is what psychedelics mean, people think visuals, people think hallucinations. DMT, and then to a lesser degree mushrooms are the most psychedelic, visually substance that there is. Toad, Bufalvallvarius is the Latin name of the toad. Okay. So it's a toad. It's Bufalvarius or it's 5MUDDMT. It's one of those three things you will call it.

And it's all the same thing. And it's all the same thing. Yes. There is synthetic, as I call pure molecule, which was made in a lab. A pure 5MUDMDMT. I was going to say if there's a lot of people taking it on, are the toads in danger. Yes. That's what I said why non-Indigenous people can't touch them or river diversion.

The toads are threatened and the future will be the, the pure molecule. I don't like using the word synthetic because it instantly put people against it. Right. So you say pure molecule. It's exactly the same as the toad makes, but it's created. But it's created. It's actually even easier on you because within the toad venom, there are a lot of other alkaloids. There's bufotinin and a few other things, which can make your heart race and have a heavy body load where the pure molecule, you're just doing this. We do a lot smaller amount because you're just doing that pure amount. purists say you know who's your spirit guide you know it's an anonymous lab in china as opposed to the toad

my answer is everything is god you are god i am god this chair is god that glass is god everything is god everything is carbon molecules everything is stardust they're all recycled everything so it's the same you know that is my argument to that and also with the advances into psychedelic medicine and this explosion of psychedelic use, these toads are more and more and more endangered, and they only exist there in the world. You know, people see images of people licking toads. If you lick one of these toads, you'd get very sick to die.

You can't not ingest it. You can only superheat it. Right. Where with the 5MEO molecule, you can, there's lots of applications. There's a nasal delivery system. It can be injected, boof up your bum. There's all sorts of things you can do,

which you can't do with the 5MEO coming from the toot. Toad. So when you heard about this woman and she said it's a 15, 20 minute thing, like, you know, that might help you. What was your instant thought? You like, look, I'll try anything. I'll try anything. Were you really nervous? Strangely, no.

Well, what happened was, so Brutus had died 2018. 2019 on the day that I was going to do my toad ceremony, Caesar, my still living bulldog, had 12 epileptic fits in the morning. And I had to drop them off at the vet, not knowing. if he would be alive by the end of the day because we're like, we're going to have to knock him out because we're going to have to do some tests and he's a 12-year-old bulldog and he might not make it. So I showed up at the ceremony in hysterics and I just said, I don't think I'm going to do this. I mean, set and setting you're talking about this earlier. And I said, I don't think I can do this.

I can then do. And she goes, Patrick, what are you going to do? You're going to go home and you're going to freak out until 5 p.m. You're going to get the phone call. Your dog is alive or dead. She goes, why don't you try to do this? Because you need help and you're a desperate for help. And she goes, why don't you give us a chance and why don't you take part of this?

So I did, and I did it. We did a smaller amount the first day. So I had a beautiful experience, but certainly not God as everyone else was talking. And everyone was all together for the debrief at the end of the day. And they're all going, God, God, God, and I'm like, I don't know what y'all did, but I didn't see God. It was kind of cool and trippy, but, you know, it has to change my life. And they're like, he needs to go again. So it was a very tight schedule, but on the Friday, they made really.

for me at the end of the day and we we did a higher dose than what I'd done and then my whole life changed in that period how yes I mean so was this one day after the other two one day there was a Wednesday and a Friday okay one day off in the middle and were you so because you didn't have a particularly intense experience on the Wednesday were you nervous on the Thursday about going back on the Friday or were you like no I really want to do this I was ready to try it, but the doubting, you know, as you said, I've tried so many things that hadn't worked. So I was like, so we did, first I did one hit on the pipe and everything. And strangely, I sat up within a minute and nothing really happened. I don't know how I think I talked myself out at such a

degree. And then all the walls started to come up. Then I was like, what am I doing here? These people are insane. What are you doing? This is bullshit. And I really started to build up. walls. And the whole point of psychedelic work is to knock down all these walls. But these walls were coming up real fast and you're going in immediately. And so I did another hit on the pipe. So they put it in the pipe. They create the smoke. They present the pipe to your mouth. You do one long, slow, slow, slow, slow, inhale. Get as much of the medicine into your lungs as you can. Then you hold and then lay your head back. You're nine down. And then you exhale. It's like being strapped to the outside of a rocket ship. There's an incredible roaring and clicking in your ears. Everything,

if you have your eyes open, starts to pixelate until you have no vision. And it's an incredible feeling of acceleration and expansion. Acceleration, what, an expansion of what? I don't know, but you feel this and then you reach this point of maximum expansion. And in that moment, you die. You don't die your body, but it's a 100% equal. go death. You cease to exist. But how does that manifest? Can you describe what that feels like? Any other drug experience, there's always subject and observer. You're always like, oh, look at that. I'm high. Oh, listen to the way that sounds funny. I'm high. Oh, look at that. There are always you and an inner dialogue and you relating to everything. In that moment, there is no more you. You become part of a

hole. Sort of like a drop of water being dropped into the ocean. All the integral parts of you are still there, but they become part of the whole. So it's very esoteric. It's very hard to explain until you've done it. But it's a moment of returning to source. As I said before, all the other experiences are very visual. Tote is not that visual. Normally people see pure white light. But it's the whitest light you've ever seen in your life. And besides seeing the light, you merge with the light. and you become the light. So you are God, not in an egotistical way. You don't come back, I'm God, I'm God, I'm God, I'm God.

But you reach that God consciousness. And I know using the G word is a big one for some people. So if you want to say source, if you want to say Gaia, if you want to say universal consciousness, but you connect with something bigger than yourself. And it is so beautiful. And it's a feeling of unconditional love that I never really felt

other than being with my animals, let's say. And it's a place of acceptance. I call it like a psychic reboot, like unplugging a TV and plugging it back in. So you unplug, you die. And in that moment, all of the conditioning, all the stories you've told yourself and everyone's told you, you're fat, you're stupid,

you're useless, you're worthless, you're this, all of it drops away. And you see yourself as you truly are. Perfect. I get emotional. a perfect light being. And it's, it's unforgettable, you know. It's, it's fundamental.

It changes you, changes you on a molecular level, changes on the DNA level. It's, it's something that you hold that moment forever, ever, forever in your life. You can't unsee it. You can't undo it. It's there. And it's a feeling of connection, you know. You feel connected to nature. You feel connected to all the people around you.

You realize that you are all one. So everything that happened was in my family. I love them. Everything that was happening on this island. I love this island. Everything that happened. You know, you have to get to the point, you know, if you do really deep work with non-duality, it's like love the rapist, love the this.

There is no evil. Not quite there sometimes, you know. But you get to a point where it's just unconditional, accepting love. And I'd studied physics and chemistry biology, so I thought, well, when you split down, you split down, you spit down. But what is there when you split down everything to everything? Love. Love is the unifying force of our world, of everything out there. My idea of God isn't a man by any means. It's not a force that we can appeal to. I don't think prayer is valid. I think it's a benign force. It's somewhere we came from, the place we will return to.

But it doesn't play a role in our earthly life. We have to decide to do that. It's not like if you're bad, you go to hell. And if you're good, you know, all of that Catholic and all that sort of stuff. It's not that. It's, it's, yeah. So I get really emotionally, you can see I'm all sitting up and everything. It's just so beautiful.

It's so, so, so beautiful. And I sat up. the experience lasted, I guess, 12, 15 minutes. And I sat up. And I was just, I mean, I called the beef of this mother fucking rock in the fucking Mediterranean, why the fucked I moved it? I hated myself. I hated the island.

I hated everything. And I was just full of love and gratitude. You know, when people write hashtag gratitude on Instagram or hashtag bless, I was like, what the hell are they so grateful for? And all of a sudden, I was just so happy to be alive to be in this spot, in this moment, in this time. And I went back to my house and I hated my house. and I jumped in the pool naked and I called friends and I said, I love everything. And they're like, you're high.

I went, no, I'm not. I think I was a few hours ago. And that was five years ago. And it hasn't changed. I'm not mad. I have good moments and bad moments. To want to live in a state of happiness all the long is the definition of insanity. Yes.

But to want to be able to return to a place of peace, to want to be able to live in peace, to not have those constant recriminations, that constant self-judgment, I mean, I didn't have an inner dialogue. I got an inner bully just constantly telling me, you're worthless, you're worthless, and worthless, and worthless. And he shut up. I mean, I sat up after the ceremony and I was breathing really funny and they're like, you okay?

And I said, my lungs are bigger. My heart is bigger. I said, there's been a weight on my chest for 54 years. And it's been removed. And I can go, when I never ever could. It was short breast. Yeah. And I said, I'm.

Fight or flight. Yeah, I was stuck in fighter flag mode. I mean, they analyzed the way I stood. I stood on my toes and I leaned forward because I was always ready to run. And they said, lean back. And I stood on my heels. I stood on the ground. I was just like, this is amazing.

You know, you were talking about it, dying is part of the journey of Toad. To let go. So completely let go, right? But what's really interesting is how you'd spend. so much of your life not wanting to be here, but part of your journey to recover did involve... Realising how beautiful life was. But did involve it in a trip dying.

Yeah. To really let go, but then to still be alive. Yeah. And to be able to come back into yourself. That's what saved you. That ego death moment is where the reset happens. Right. You know, someone's very smart.

I can't remember their name. said, microdosing is to manage a problem. Big dose experiences are to fix the problem. With microdosing, you're just going to like antidepressants, I'm a little bit happier, a little bit of this, but you're not getting to the root of things. But with the big dose, the ego death, that moment of transcendence, then you're getting to the root of things. What's hard, I think, for people watching that haven't had maybe even any experience of psychedelics is to understand that all of that can happen in 12 minutes?

Yep. What, I mean, are you aware of the shortness of time when you're in it or is it? You don't exist. So there is no sense of time and space. You know, you come back and you think, how many hours was that? Like 12 minutes. You know, you don't. It's very hard because, you know, if someone comes back to recording and saying all these

things, I wouldn't think they broke through because like, well, who's doing the recording? And what are you looking at? If you were everything and everything is nothing, what are you looking at, you know? It's not a panacea, you know. The peak experience is the peak experience, but it's what you do in the days and weeks and months following. That's the work. That's ceremony. What's that called?

Integration. So how do you integrate? You have to take the experience and make it work in your non-tripping, your non-journing life. You have to take those moments, take the lessons, take the downloads that you were exposed to, that you were taught, that you were in that moment, and figure out how you're going to translate that into your everyday life. You know, people can have the experience and then go right back to their old life if they want to, you know, I don't know how they do. But what my teacher said to me was, you really are here for healing.

I said, well, I have no choice. I'll be dead. You know, my teacher was, well, we'll get to that. Yes, yes. You know, you had to, you have to absorb it and you have to sit with it and you have to think about it. A common thing when people come back is to instantly start blabbering. And it's their ego trying to make sense of this experience that was so huge. And the ego went offline and it doesn't want to go offline because it's God is to say he would protect you.

But it actually ends up limiting you. You know, I'd created this perfect wall around myself of nothing would get in because everything that ever came near me failed and didn't work anyway. And I had to just break down those walls and then keep them down. You know, the job isn't to destroy your ego. The job is to become friends with your ego and embrace your ego, but not let it run your life. And being in fashion, my life was lived in ego. You know, everything was about Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, Cogs and fame and celebrity and this and, you know, the figurehead of the company and all the rest of it. And I had to let that go.

I had to let that person and all that sadness and all that success die and start again. And that, that is the work. I like you calling it the work. Yeah. And I've heard you call it medicine. Yeah. These are all words that we use within the community. People within the community, they don't call psychedelics drugs. They call them the medicine. I've been made fun of by people. It sounds like you're just sitting around taking drugs, Patrick. I'm like, go ahead. If you think that, if you want to, I don't care. I don't really care what anyone thinks.

I know what I'm doing sounds insane, but it works. And it's changed my life and it's changed so many people's lives around me. You know, because in the beginning, obviously everyone thought I was mad. And all my friends were like, uh-oh. And now I'd say probably 60, 70% of my friends have done it. Not because I preached about it, but because they would say, whatever you did, can we try that? Because you changed. A friend of mine said something really good. He goes, you changed the channel.

He went from black and white to color. Yeah. You refound your joy. You were just so, I mean, I used to go on. And all of a sudden I looked up and I went, was the sky always this blue? Lou, were the trees always this green? I never noticed because I was just in this gray shroud of defeated and misery and negativity. And then I just decided, no, I'm going to live.

It's a attraction rather than promotion. Yeah. Isn't it? Yeah. And people go, wow, look what happened to Patrick. Yeah. Look, look what happened. Look what happened.

So after the peak experience, after that, she left, went back to Los Angeles. I had a follow-up phone call a week later. And she said, you need, I said, is it bad? All I do is think about Bufo. All I do is think about the experience. I need to go again. And she said, you need to go again. I recommend you go for once a month until you feel healed.

But this was the hippie part that made me go completely mad. You can't go looking for the medicine. The medicine will present itself. And I went, oh, my God, what the hell does that mean? I've never heard this substance. I said, I don't know what to ask for it, but I need it. But I got to look for it, but I'm not allowed to. Anyway, the week later, I went to a gay pool party, which is something I would never in my life go to.

But it was someone from London was over. And they said, I came over wearing a caftan to the ground. You can see me from here up. I even had shoes on. And I had my dog, Caesar with me because he was still alive. Because blooms had died. I never went anywhere without Caesar. And I'm shaking hands with a man at the party like this.

And my sleeve rolled up. And he saw the name Caesar. And he went, ah, Caesar. And I went, yeah. And then he pulled up his sleeve. and he had Caesar written that big on his arm. And he said, why do you have Caesar on your arm? And I said, because of my bulldog Caesar. And he went, and he ran away. And he came back with this beautiful Colombian man, baldhead, beautiful, gorgeous smile. And that was his husband, Cesar. Caesar.

Cesar, his bulldog, had died a few weeks before that looked just like Caesar. So I'm standing here on the lawn next to the bull and everything. And Hans was his name. He said, said and pointed at the dog. Cesar just threw himself on the ground and started hugging my dog and crying and hugging. So we scooted off and started talking on the lawn. And it was the usual be the conversation, how long you've been here. And I said, well, I hated everything. I hated life.

I hated myself. I said, but I did this thing called Bufo last week and everything is better now. And he went, and he had this smile. I said, why are you smiling about like that? He goes, I serve Bufo. What? Exactly. And I'd never believed in universe and all.

And I just looked up. I went, thank you. And that was it. Wait, that's so nuts. How long after? Two, one week after was the phone call, two weeks. I mean, oh my God. Two weeks after.

Two weeks after. You know, have you ever read synchronicity? Yes. I've just started reading it. I feel like I've got to an age now where I can't deny the fact that... People say it's coincidence. Shit happens. Shit happens.

And I'm like, okay, I don't think that's just happened by life. It's so specific. The seizure, the dog, Caesar, his name is. I mean, it's just too many things. My house in Abitha is called Can Cesar, Cesar, Cesar, because, you know, I named it after my dog and everything. So it was just everything was Caesar, Caesar, Cesar everywhere. So I said, I'd really like to do a ceremony. And we did a ceremony together, and it was absolutely beautiful.

And then we started to do a series, or once a month of ceremonies. And before every ceremony, you set an intention, and you say what you want to work on. And I kept saying, I'm stuck. I need to know what to do next. There's this famous saying, life is in two acts, and it's all about surviving the intermission. Well, I was stuck on the motherfucking intermission. I could not get... I haven't had that before.

That's so good. I don't know who said it. I've Googled it. I can't find it anywhere. Someone said it to me. So good. Yeah. So I was stuck on the intermission.

I couldn't imagine what I would be other than Patrick Cox, that Patrick Cox was dead. What was next? And after listening to me, say this, I think, for six months of ceremonies, he just said, maybe this is what's next. I said, what do you mean? And he said, I've seen you, Patrick. People talk about shoes and fashion. You run out of the room. Yeah.

And he said, but when people talk about wellness, mental health, psychedelics, transformation, he goes, you're all in. And he said, and you do the work, you are here to really change your life. You know, some people I serve and I think, they're not really here to do that. They're here to get high or whatever. He said, but you are really doing the work. And then he asked me, would you be my apprentice? And I went, wait, what? I said, no, I'm a gay cobbler.

I said, I know, it's just like, that's so cliche, someone moving to Abithen, changing their name to Ashanti. I said, you know, no, no, no, thank you, but no. And he said, why are you making fun of this? Why are you doubting this? He goes, you're a spiritual being. He said, you've seen. He goes, you've gone deeper than so many of my clients.

He said, this is what I'd like you to do. He knew he was dying. We didn't know at the time, but he had pancreatic cancer. for several years by that point and he'd been healing himself through his work with the medicine. So I worked with him for a couple years and then very sadly December

2021 he left his earthly body he succumbed. So when he asked you to work with him you didn't know that he was dying? No, I had no clue. He wanted to pass on. Yeah, he said would you continue my lineage? Would you do this for me?

When did you find out that he was? was dying. Baddy, well, he was hospitalized about a year before, but then he came back out, but he died in December from August to December. He didn't really meet to the hospital, and he just got more and more and more and more and more ill. And I became his medicine man. I mean, I visioned, well, yeah, it was a lot. He never said he was sick. You know, we're working on a, I'm working on a documentary called My Road to Toad. And initially, the meetings with the producer and the director were where Cesar. And it was going to be a buddy movie.

It was going to be me and him and how he'd fixed me and changed my life and all this sort of thing and how the medicine had helped and everything. And the day before he died, you know, and he was like a cadaver. He was like, you know, reduced, I don't know how many kilos and everything like that. He said, we're going to go to Mexico and we're going to have so many beautiful experiences. And, you know, I just looked at him. I knew he wouldn't be alive the next day. He died. I mean, I knew.

He was just hanging on by nothing. And I whispered in his ear, you can go. You can go on the last day. And then he passed away at like one in the morning when no one was in the room. He wouldn't die when there was someone in the room. His mother was sitting on one side of him, his husband on the other. And they finally left constant vigil. And then he died in the middle of the night.

And no one knew because he didn't tell anybody. His husband asked me to take over his Instagram feed and do a post. And everyone's like, he didn't even know he was sick. I mean, he just, he didn't want pity. He just wanted, you know, positivity around him. I remember, like, the last week he was alive. It looked like Christ on the cross. He was holding his mom's hand on his side, his husband's hide on this side.

The mom and the husband were fighting. And he was just laying there. And I came in and I would cry in the car, get it all out and then be like, up. And I'd come in and go and he was like, oh, thank God someone happy. And I would, when I could, when he was well enough, I'd wheel him outside and we'd smoke a joint. And then do you know what rapé is? Is that the tobacco stuff? Yeah.

So rapi is it's a, it's a tobacco product. There's no psychoactive ingredient to it all, but it's from the Amazonian rainforest. And it's very finely ground up tobacco with ashes from the eternal fire and various medicinal herbs. And you blow it up each nose. So every day in hospital, I would give him some rapé. So I became his medicine man for the last few months of his life. And the nurses would walk by and they're like, your friend's die. You know, you can do what you want.

You know, you don't need to hide it. You can see what you do. You know, it doesn't matter. Your friend's dying. Your friends dying. So that was an incredible honor to be able to serve him at the end like that. And then I got very angry at everything. Because I was like he was a saint.

And if there is a spirituality, why would you take him? Then I got really angry. And then I said I wasn't going to do Bufu anymore. And I certainly wasn't going to serve it. And then his husband's like, he left you everything in his will. He's like not money or anything, but the accoutrema, the sand bowl, the Rappi pie, the Toad out of stone. I mean, all this sort of stuff for ceremony, his ceremonial sash that the Grand Shaman from the village where the toads live in that area, the Comcock people in the desert in New Mexico. He left me all these things and I was just like, what do I do with this?

What do I do with this? So I found someone that he had served Bufo too that served Bufo and I had a ceremony with him. And the first thing I saw was, is Zahar. You're going, get off your ass. What are you doing? You know, there's work to be done. And that was the beginning of that, that phase of my life. Complete change.

Complete change. Like, is that what you do, sort of, I mean, how often would you help people? Probably once a week. Probably once a week. You know, Cesar, that's what he did. So, you know, he would be doing like four or five ceremony a day or something like that. He would go from ceremony ceremony. And he also served Cambo, which I've never got involved with.

What's that? Cambo is from an Amazonian tree frog, as opposed to being from a land toad. And it is another venom. But it's a purgative. It's a purifier. It's not psychoactive at all. They take an incense stick and they burn you. Each burn is called a gate.

And then to that little burn, they, They apply the toad, the frog venom, and then they add a drop of water. And within 10 seconds, your whole body goes red and there's an intense feeling of heat. And then it's a perjative. You can't do. What like being sick. Yeah. I mean, remember little Britain and they go, it's like that.

So you have to drink at least three liters of water before you take Tambo because it's all going to come up. And you get rid of, they say, heavy metals in your body. I forgot how many alkaloids and peptides are within the actual. chemical secretion, but they're being studied by scientists all over the world for all sorts of properties. But it's purifying and purging and resetting. I mean, that obviously would make sense for getting rid of poisons or toxins or something like a heavy metal poisoning. But what are the kind of changes that you've seen in people that have come to you? Do they report back after their experience? Oh, God, yes. I call these people my Toad Tribe. They're my friends forever.

because we've shared the most incredible experience. I mean, when someone comes back into their body, comes back into this dimension, whatever you want to say, and they open their eyes, it's just such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful moment. They're so full of love and life and gratitude. The classic thing is they thank me. And this is not a cultal personality.

I am not a shaman. I was like, thank yourself. You did this for yourself. Pat yourself on the back. You've been so brave. You've been so amazing. I am just here as a witness, creating a safe space for you.

But you did this. I always say to people, you heal yourself. The toad is a modem. I'm here watching, but you are doing this work on yourself. You are doing this for you. This is the ultimate presence for yourself.

I mean, it's amazing for PTSD. It's amazing for grief. I mean, the amount of people I've sat with that saw their partner, their mother, their father, their child. that passed away and got to have a few moments with them. Some sort of closure.

I mean, it's so, so, so, so beautiful. I saw my dog Caesar on one time, Cesar. I said, why didn't you concentrate on Caesar? And it was just the most beautiful, beautiful moment with him saying, it's okay, Daddy. I'm in a place where there is no time. And all the animals I'd ever owned in my life were all around him. We're just, you know, waiting for you sort of thing.

Yeah. It's, it's undescribable. I could wax lyrically about it forever, but it's a knowing. You know, I served my Buddhist friend who started this whole process with me. He said, I need to do this. He said, you're achieving states of consciousness that people who've been meditating for 30 years are going to flash over for 10 seconds. It's called samadhi, samadhi, where you just transcend. And so he came and he did it. Oh, did he? Yeah. Oh my God. That's amazing. It was so amazing. So he started your journey. He started.

And you. And then he came back. And he said, I love that. He went back to his Buddhist community. And they're all like, you're different. You're changed. And he said, I always believed. But now I know.

He said there was a knowing to it that he never had before. Because it's a human role. Wow. And doubt or what is. Or maybe. You know, whatever. But it absolutely changed. is Buddhism practice completely,

his meditation practice completely changed. You just become a kinder, more compassionate person, more empathetic person. You know, alpha males tend to have a rough time because they think surrendering is weak. Oh yes, letting go is bad, right? Because your number one job on the day

is to surrender and let go. If you don't, you can have a bumpy ride. The medicine will win. And you might, you know, some people scream in terror and things like that. They get there in the end, but sometimes there can be things that you have to go through. And it's all about moving energy. It's all an energetic work.

And you have to go a few times in a row to shed your inhibition, shed your inhibition, and get to the place that you're ready to actually let go. And that might not happen on the first time. Like it didn't happen with me on the first time. It might happen the second, third time. But each step is a step closer. I always say each

dose opens a door and you walk through that door and then there's the next door and the next door. And then eventually you get to that state. I mean as a as a um an ex you know heroin addict I um would you know obviously cocaine and heroin I know are super super addictive um but I I when I took LSD when I was 19 or whatever I was like well there's no way I want to do that again for ages you know it's not it wasn't a particularly enjoyable thing is there anything that could be addictive around No.

Psychedelics that you know of. Psychedelics are not addictive and most of them it's diminishing returns. So if you do mushrooms four days in a row by the fourth day, you can eat a handful. I mean, they just stop working. Doesn't work. And also, it's not the most pleasant experience. It's work, you know. And you're nervous and you're scared.

I mean, I'll still be shaking before ceremony for myself, not taking care of someone else. Because it's a really big deal. My teacher said, Cesar said, the goal is to never use the medicine again. The goal is you will achieve these states of consciousness on your own. Wow. You don't need the medicine. Are you there? I probably go about three, four times a year.

Okay, so that's a lot less than once a month. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, that's extreme. What I was doing was extreme and because I was teaching and everything. I would say, general rule of thumb is, you know, insert, but I would think someone doing it once a year was plenty. You know, if someone really had a problem, maybe twice a year, but, you know, really, because if they're not integrating, then they're just, they can create other problems. Right. Whether it's a faux spirituality and they're becoming addicted and their ego gets amplified rather than push down.

So there are dangers of that with people abusing and things like that. But it's not an addiction. It's definitely not an addiction. It's not recreational. You cannot do this on your own. No, and it's not something you would do and go out. No, no, no. You can't.

You're gone. Your body is laying there. You are, you know, you can't walk, you can't talk. There is no way to do this other than a safe ceremonial situation. Right. There is no way to just casually pass this to someone. Yes. Because they be, boom, you know, sort of thing.

And it's unsafe. You can't have alcohol in your system. You have to be cleaned from drugs. You know, there are a whole protocols, you know, before someone starts to do the work, there's a whole intake of questions asking, first question, why do you want to do this? And if someone's like, it's on my bucket list, like, bunch of jumping, I'm like, get out. You know, there has to be a real, real reason.

And then another question is, are you ready for everything in your life to change? Everything. And if you're not ready, don't do this. Do something else? Yes. Do you have psychedelic experience? Don't start with Toad. Right.

That's diving in the deep end. I would say, get some mushrooms, have a trip sitter, have someone, you know, and start small and build and see if you can navigate that psychedelic space and see where that takes you but don't start with this. No. And, you know, it's not going to be for 99.9% of the world because it is very, you know, out there. But it is, it does have a lot of applications for psychiatric work and science because of the way you can do it.

This is what I love about you because you are actively taking part in research now, aren't you, to help kind of advance the scientific. So Dr. David, was on your show and he's one of my psychedelic heroes. Yes. And I very amazingly got to share a stage with him talking about psychedelics a couple months ago. Yes, I came. Yeah, in London.

And so I took part in the first UK-5MEODMT study at Imperial College London, where I was given the pure molecule, obviously not the toad venom, all monitored up. It's pure science they're doing. It's pure brain mapping. There are other people doing applications for commercial uses, for PTSD, for anything. addiction for all sorts of things, but this is just pure science. And it was an amazing experience. I was honored to be part of it. Yeah.

What's your wish for the future, do you think, for psychedelics? And, I mean, I feel like there is a huge wave towards trying to understand psychedelics and their effects and the benefits that they can have on people, particularly around depression. Yeah. And what you went through and how it's changed your life. and that it's classified. I mean, mushrooms are classified, I think, as a class. Class A.

Class A job, which seems. It's a plant the grossing ground. Yeah, when it is something that seems to have such enormous benefits. We've talked about it quite a lot on this podcast, and I'm super fascinated by where it's going to go. What do you think it's going to look like that? If I can do anything to normalize the conversation, if I can, you know, use my remaining infamy celebrity to talk about this. That's why I did it. I remember when I did my psychedelic coming out article in The Guardian three years ago and one of my best friends said, oh my God, what are you doing?

You were the shoe guy. Now you're the Toad guy forever. And I was like, the shoe guy's dead, baby. Yes. I said, if I can help someone, if someone can go, wow, that might help me and get in touch with someone and somehow do something and save their life like Cizar, save my life. That's what the goal is. I think, you know, the conversation around mental health, people shouldn't be ashamed anymore. It's a fact. It happens. And other modems, because just popping antidepressants isn't working. It's not working.

It might be keeping the pharmacology business alive, but it's not working. But it's a bit like microdosing, isn't it? It's putting a plaster on the issue, whereas something deeper might actually solve. Yeah. My mom is starting to suffer from depression because she's very old and her partner has full senile and has been taken away in and the home and everything. And I was on a family phone call and they were all trying to get my mind antidepressants. And I was like, why don't we get her to try microdosing some mushrooms?

And they're like, shut up, Patrick. And I was like, look, instead of suppressing her sadness, why don't we help her find joy? Yes. That to me is so much more positive than just beating down the sadness and leveling out your emotions. I am also loved what this journey has done for your creative. as well. I mean, we've got to talk about your top. It's so amazing. And I know that that top well, because I've got, I've got, I've got one myself in red. I just want to let you know. Oh my God. Oh, no, wait, middle eyes. Stop it. This one's mega. Beautiful that. Oh, my God. It's like

rainbow my little pony. That one is actually an old Beba design. Is it? These two are from 1950 makeup books. Some of them are from a cult, some of them are religious, some of them are from all sorts of symbolism. Yeah. Wait, and also can we just discuss this? So it's based on a Tibetan prayer flag and a little bit of the yellow submarine and a little bit of Jefferson Ars airplane, sort of all mixed in together. This is what I love about you is that your cookie shop, well everything was designed you go the extra mile but but I felt like

you fell out of love with fashion design everything you're like no more thanks for this Patrick you're welcome and how did you rediscover the love well Cesar on his deathbed

said to me Patrick you are a creative being in order for you to be truly happy you need to reconnect with creativity. Yes. Because he never saw doors of perception. He never saw any of it.

It all happened after. It all happened after he died. I never got to give him a sweatshirt. I never got to give him anything. And he would have loved it. But he just said to me, you are a creative being. You need to reconnect or you will never be truly happy. And so I designed this one sweatshirt.

The first one was in black. It was this sweatshirt. There are 40 eyes, 20 colors of thread. It takes 40 hours to a machine embroidered this thing. I did it with someone. And then I sat on it for about a year because I was so scared. Because I was like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

I can't. Fashion, judgment. Right. Being in that milieu again where I'd been so ingloriously spat out. So I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it. And then I met this woman in Abitha that could do this embroidery. I went to the hippie market and her name is Nieves and she has a stall there when she does

embroidered cushions and I showed her the sample that I'd made with this embroider in England. And she was like, oh, I can do that. I can do that. And she said, but you need to order 80 because. we need to pay for the cadcams and all the embroidery programs and everything. I was like, okay. So I had my 80. I was still sitting on it. And then like three weeks before Christmas, 2022, I called a couple friends. I said, I'm going to launch this thing. I'm thinking about doing February. And they're like, have you ever heard of this thing called Christmas? If you launch today

and you deliver by the 25th, I'll take three. If you delivered by the 27th, I'll take one. And I'm like, oh, shit. So I just, the website was all designed everything. I just hit go. and we started to sell a little and I spend every Christmas with my best girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley she's like my family her son Davians like my honorary godson and you know that's that's my team and so on Christmas day I gave her a white one

and they do Christmas presents after lunch not in the morning and so she said one minute she calls me poison she goes one minute she ran upstairs with Damien she came back there and she goes here post that and it was a picture of her wearing just that nothing else it was down to about here it was just taken against the wall in her bedroom no fancy lighting. I think it was just a snap. And I went from, I think, 40 followers to 800 followers

over the 25th, 26, 27th. Because everybody's at home. Everybody's bored. Everybody's on their phone. There's a fucking beautiful picture of Elizabeth Hurley. And I was launched. And that was it. And the name? The name is from the famous Aldous Huxley book, The Doors of Perception. It was a book while he was under the influences of Mescalin. And he talks about the doors of perception in your mind. And to me, it all made sense. I didn't want the name Patrick Cox on anything. But if you see on that giant label, it does say designed by Patrick Cox is one of the things. To me, if you just think it's a cool sweatshirt, yay.

If you feel there's something special about it and you want to go a little bit deeper and you want to read about it, the new word for psychedelics is entheogen. And entheogen comes from the Greek to reveal the God within. Oh, really? Yeah. And so I call it entheogenic apparently. I call it consciousness raising clothing. It's just something special that's a little bit different.

It's not by a big brand. It's sustainably produced. It's just a different series of things. They're beautiful motifs, all embroidered in Ibiza. And if you want to go a little bit deeper, you can understand where it came from. And it's just celebrating that and trying to normalize the conversation around it. Yeah, I mean, I feel like meeting that woman, going to Abitha, meeting that woman, Caesar, all of that led you to purpose. This has given you a purpose to help people.

And it's got meaning. I'm happier now than I ever was without substances. And I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not hurting myself. I'm helping people. I'm making something beautiful. I want to spread joy. I want to spread beauty. I think I became a designer because I have an eye for beauty. And I want happiness around me. I don't want to live in misery. I don't want to live in all those places that I've been come out of. And so if I can do anything that furthers that,

then that's what it's all about to me. I want to just quickly touch on because you are that the like epitome begin again. I mean, you've just done it a thousand times, right? We've heard about numerous times. Now, but this year feels like it's been a particularly taxing year for you already. And it's like it's punishing you in a way this year. Are you, are you all right to talk about your dad? Yeah.

And what happened at the end? Yeah. Yeah. So basically when he was gone. He was from when you moved to Canada. I did not see him until I turned 16. Really? Yeah.

Nothing. Any contact? My mom wanted us to have a relationship with my dad. never insulted my dad to me, so she wanted us to have a relationship with my dad, but he's an emotional cripple. He just died a couple months ago. We got some resolution a little bit, but he's an emotional cripple because of his childhood, and it's intergenerational. He's passed it down to me, and that's what you have to learn. Learn I'm going to be the end of this cycle, you know? What happened was what happened, but I'm going to stop it. So I hadn't spoken to my dad in, oh,

15 years or something like that. And as I told you, I haven't spoke to my brother in a long time. So through my work with the medicine, I realized that by hating them, I was hating myself. I am you, you are me, we are one. So I reached out to my brother a couple years ago, and he has since visited me. And since we have a relationship now,

he's done some Bufo. He's working on himself too. My youngest brother, the one straight brother I have, who came, saw me, who worked on things with him in his life. It's really been a beautiful family feeling that I could reconnect with them people. Because most people thought I was an only child

and an orphan because I never talked about my family and nobody knew I had three other brothers. Well, I've actually got five other brothers because my stepdad had two kids too. So there were six boys on the weekends back in the 70s and early 80s when I was at home. So I reconnected with all that. My dad and I never really got further than the odd phone call.

But I hadn't spoken to him at all in about 15 years. And last year on my birthday, we had our first phone call in about 15 years. video phone call. It was a lot. It was a lot. You know, I don't think he understood, you know, because you have to meet people where they are just because you've done all this work on yourself. Doesn't mean they have. They're still the person they were. And you can't judge them and you can't revert to hating them or, you know, being triggered into all the emotions that you had before. So you have to learn a serenity, a way of meeting them where they are. Just saying,

you know, I love you, dad, you know, sort of thing. So that was a big deal. And we'd started talking and we'd started emailing for some reason. It doesn't leave in smartphones. So there was no WhatsApp and there was no social media. I kept going, just go on Instagram. Don't do that. All right, fine.

So we're emailing. And then I got an email out of the blue, the second week of January from my half-sister, his daughter, who I've met three, four times in my life, maybe. I haven't seen her in probably 20 years. and she just said, Dad's committing suicide on the 28th of January. You might want to reach out to him. I was like, wait, what?

And in Canada, it's legal. It's called maids, medically assistance in dying service or something like that. And she wrote that in the email, but I didn't understand what maids meant. I was like, what the? And then I sort of wrote back. I said, does he know you're telling me? And she said, no, he gave me specific instructions that the boys, me and my brother, weren't to know.

And I'm like, you just brought up all the feelings of anger and what the fuck in this and blindsided me. I was like, wow, I didn't have my dad committing suicide on, you know, the first weeks of 2025 on my game card. I was like, wow. So I wrote him a heartfelt email, slightly reprimanding him, just saying, you know, this could have been handled a little bit better. But I totally support your decision. You don't want to live anymore. You're 90. Your quality of life isn't what it was and everything.

but, you know, and he said, and you answered, I didn't want your pity. And I went, how about my love and my forgiveness? And, you know, I have to forgive it, but my love, you know, and a chance to say goodbye. So three days before he went in and ended his life, we had a phone call, which was really intense and beautiful. Yeah, I said, I love to me. and that was goodbye and he was like I wish you could be here

to give you a hug and I was like motherfucker if you had to handle this a little bit differently you know I would have been there too so say goodbye

so that happened sorry which was intense I'm not what I imagined and it was weird because I'd hated him for almost my entire life

and it was weird to realize how much I was going to miss. And he was 90. He was going to die. He was going to die anyway. But it was just the way it all played out. But I got to say, I love you. I didn't bother saying, I forgive you, because that's insulting. Because he'd be like, for what? You know, sort of thing, you know, because they have their own reality. You know, they don't realize what they did wrong.

So that was very, very intense. It was beautiful. It kind of shook me. We spoke and everything. but I'm so glad that we had that moment and I'm so glad that I'd reached out and as I said at the beginning it's all about breaking that curse of intergenerational pain and maybe one of the reasons

why I don't have children that's now gay people can have children too is because I still see elements within myself that I want to stop I don't want to pass on even with all the work I've done myself I just think this line Let's say this line is cursed or anything, but I want to stop with me.

It's going to stop with me actively and that I'm going to engage with people with love, but it's also going to stop with me. So that was a big moment. What did it feel like for you after he had gone? I remember when my mother died, I'd spent so long being angry with her. in my life that there was almost a feeling of letting go when she went. But you'd had a different experience because you'd sort of managed to connect on his deathbed. How did it feel?

The fact the way he handled the last few days did trigger like, oh my God, we're talking and you're still not, you know, you're still emotionally dead sort of thing. This is going to sound horrible relief. Yeah, that's how I thought. Because you can't hurt me anymore. Yeah. You can't disappoint me anymore. You can't hit me anymore. It hasn't been able to hit me for a long time, but you can't hurt me anymore.

And that's a horrible thing to say to yourself. And you're riddled with guilt. I mean, it's less than two months ago. It's less than 60 days ago. So I guess I'm still thinking about it and things like that. I remember when the Hoffman, they ask you to prosecute your parents, and I'm going to do you're supposed to prosecute your dad, and I just sat there.

And I'm like, well, I said, I don't know him. I'm not mad at him. And they're like, think of the child that you could have had if you'd had a loving and supporting father. Then I was like, and they're like, there you go. Work on that. Because I didn't.

But, you know, it is what it is. Again, like I said, this moment is perfect. So whatever happened before. And it's funny how him, like, leaving you permanently, has happened at the beginning of this year there's something about loss that leaves a space for something but you've...

You said that very kindly. You said that. Maybe it's creating space for something. Well, the disaster last week. But that's what I was going to bring up as well. Yeah. You know, there was obviously the fire. Yeah. Just so everybody knows.

So on Thursday, today is Monday, Monday. Monday. So on Thursday, the lovely family run, Atelier that does all my embroidery burn to the ground. in Abitha overnight, in a fire, electrical fire at the ball. And they've lost everything. They've lost, they've been in that building since the 1970s. They're her mother found in the boistery business, whatever.

And the machines are so expensive. I mean, designs. Everything. I've lost my entire spring production because we're about to start delivering to stores on the island and on my website and things like that. And I really, that shook my spirituality. I would have taken me that. The Thursday was not a good day.

I spoke to you. Thursday was not a good day because I was like, what the fuck? You know, but you go on. You go on, you know, you go on. It's a setback. It certainly wasn't expected. It certainly wasn't desired. I don't really think it's the universe teaching me a lesson because I don't really think

there was a lesson that anyone needed to learn here. But I'm a survivor. I just get up and keep going. I moan. I complain. I drive my friends insane. But I'm still alive. And I do believe, you know, something amazing is just around the corner.

I'm leaving Abitha. I'm moving to Italy. I want to open an animal rescue center. I will continue to do doors of perception. And I think the future is rosy, you know. Patrick, this has been a joy, really, because obviously I have such a personal love for you and you knew me before I was famous.

You knew me when I hated myself and was looking for a way out. And look at us, we've come full circle, we're still friends. You mean so much to me, but you have been, this has been such an amazing chat just because I love discovering a little bit more about you, but also you are the king of reinvention. Not reinvention, really.

It's about rebirth. Rebirthing yourself. Change is scary. Yeah. Change is good. It is. And you need to do it. Yeah.

You know, we're allowed to change from the age of 5 to 15, from 15 to 25, 15 to 25, 15 to 35. And then we're supposed to ossify and become the same person for a rest of the life. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. You know, I made a giant leap of faith and moved to Abitha at the age of 50 something. I've launched doors of. reception at the age of 59.

Yes. You know, I'm going to move to Sicily now at the age of 62. And it's never too late. It's never too late. It's never too late. Find what makes you happy. And do it. Find what makes you feel safe.

Find, you know, get out of your comfort zone. Otherwise, what you just, the slow decline until eventual death. I mean, you know, death is inevitable for all of us. But live your life to the fullest is, you know, what I'm trying to do. You are. Aspiring to do. You're doing it, Patrick. You're living it.

I love you. I love you, baby. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I think that was one of my favorite chats I've ever had with Patrick. That was absolutely amazing. I don't even know how long it was,

but it felt like it was 20 minutes. It went so fast. There was so much to take away from that. But I did love it when he said, life is in two parts. don't get stuck in the intermission. And that is so true. I also love that he talked about.

It is impossible to be happy all the time. And what he was seeking was peace. And I feel like he found it. And it doesn't matter what life throws at him. He finds a way through and learns from it. And I really admire that. And he shared all of those learnings with us today. It was incredible.

I hope you got something from it too. Do you run your own business? Are you looking to hire more people? Well, if you answered yes to both of those questions, just want to say, well done, boss ladies and boss gents. Keep chasing your dreams. I have been there myself and I know how much goes into building and growing a team. and it is brilliant fun and it's scary, but it is really worth it.

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