The Blindboy Podcast - Addiction and Prison with The Two Norries

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

I speak about addiction and the prison system with The Two Norries. James and Timmy have both been through addiction and prison, they are now working in addiction services, to assist others in recovery. James is a PHD student in Criminology. Together they both host the Two Norries podcast, an honest and compassionate podcast, which is trauma-informed and focussed on harm reduction Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Step into the husband tunnel, you cunning Sullivans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I hope you've all been staying hydrated and wearing sunscreen and coming to the aid of any hot cats. Hot cats in the sun with their sweaty bellies, assisting panting dogs, hosing misty water on the arse of parched Antony, smearing tepid mud on the chests of damp frogs, using your

lips to blow cooling air over the brow of a balmy postman, spawning Fanta into the mouth of a priest, using your large haircut to cast a shadow over the opening of an ant's nest, rubbing ice cubes on the wood wasp, painting crowsows white. Apologise to the moon. Ask it if it can send you cooling rays the way that the sun sends you warm rays. Sponge down the armpits of the Avon lady. It's very hot at the moment. That's what I'm trying to say. The greedy cunts in the supermarkets are after upping the prices of salad items.

Four euros for a punnet of fucking sun-dried tomatoes and duns. Dirty pricks. They're not even sun-dried. They're bothered in an oven. And you can't trust the lettuce at this time of year when you need it most. Wash your lettuce thoroughly at this time of year because arse bacteria gets onto lettuce

and it grows in this weather. It gets mishandled. Last time I got food poisoning, it was from a Starbucks Caesar salad that was blooming with human arse bacteria. I don't know, just salads are unreliable. Salads. No one thinks of salads and food poisoning,

but I'm telling you, wash your fucking salad leaves, and salad will always let you down when you need it most, when the weather is hottest. E. coli, norovirus, wash your fucking salad, and not even, the Irish summer salad has become a heritage item now.

Like, the Irish summer salad doesn't exist. It's no longer a salad of convenience. Now the salad of convenience is arse bacteria iceberg lettuce, sun-dried tomatoes, and hot food counter chicken fillets. But the humble Irish salad is now an ironic act of performance.

Anyone who's making a traditional Irish summer salad is doing so deliberately, which immediately negates it as a summer salad, because the whole point of the Irish summer salad, which is, I've done a whole podcast on this, huge podcast on this, the Irish summer salad is half a boiled egg, weird leafy lettuce, folded cold ham, half a tomato, large unnecessary slice of cheddar cheese and most importantly it's a culinary act of apathy and convenience. It's too hot I don't even want to think about food. I'm just going to grab whatever's cold in the deli and put it together. In England they call it picky bits and they eat raw mushroom with it. But anyone who's doing that

is now doing it deliberately because they're trying to recreate a summer salad. So it's no longer like a convenient thing that happens by just grabbing whatever's at the deli. Because deli culture has changed. It's all gojons and olives. If this is your first Blind By podcast I suggest going back to an earlier episode.

I would like to thank everybody for the feedback I received from last week's episode though. Last week's episode was about feelings of anxiety that we all have as a result of two years of lockdown. And I was a bit worried about putting it out because I was concerned that the experience was too unique to me but it turns out quite a lot of people really related to what I was saying and experienced a kind of a sense of catharsis and clarity from it based on the feedback I'm getting so I'm really glad I put that out and thank you to everyone who gave me some kind words so this week I'm chatting to two lads called the two Norries and they're from Cork James and Timmy are their names and they host the podcast which is

about addiction the prison system, the education system. James and Timmy have both been through addiction. They've both been to prison. They've both had bad experiences in the education system. They both went back to education. James is now a PhD candidate in criminology. And both James and Timmy do a huge amount of community work around addiction they do work in prisons they do work with youth they're trauma informed and they're both incredibly

fascinating compassionate people who contribute massively to the national conversation around addiction via their podcast. So in the chat that we have, we speak about addiction, we speak about drug use, we speak about the prison system, the education system, and we focus on the importance of podcasts in particular when it comes to helping people via authentic and honest conversation especially in a country like Ireland where our mental health and addiction services are very very underfunded and as a result difficult to access despite the hard work from very, very passionate people that work in addiction and mental health services in Ireland. On a systematic level, they're underfunded.

So here's my chat with James Leonard and Timmy Long, the Two Norries. And you can check out the Two Norries podcast or go to thetownorries.com to find out more about them. Also, to my international listeners, these two lads have Cork accents, which are quite similar to my Limerick accent, but a bit more cheerful. I don't know if you'll be able to hear that. Maybe even people from Dublin won't even be able to tell the difference,

but this is a conversation between two lads with Cork accents If you'd be able to hear that. Maybe even people from Dublin. Won't even be able to tell the difference. But. This is a conversation. Between two lads with Cork accents. And one lad with a Limerick accent. So I hope that. Isn't too exclusionary. An experience. To my international listeners.

So ye do a podcast. That's mostly about addiction. And. We do. Your podcast covers addiction, the school system, the education system, the prison system. You speak about trauma a lot. First off, what I think you're doing is absolutely fucking fantastic. Thank you. What I adore about your podcast is how vulnerable you are all the time.

Like, when you can say to somebody, I'm scared, I'm insecure, I am worried about other people's opinions of me, like, you speak in that way a lot. That's what makes people feel safe to listen because we are not allowed to say these things in society you like to say to someone i'm insecure sometimes i think other people are better than me or sometimes i look down on other people we're not allowed to

say shit like that you know what i mean and ye speak that way frequently and i love hearing it you know and as well it's nice to hear it in Cork accents yeah you know what I mean because it's just I love hearing Cork people because it's like Limerick people who are you know they've found something nice about their day and they're just nice and happy happy Limerick people what was the you started the podcast in 2020 what was the goal or aims of starting the Toon Ardies podcast so i was working in um homeless services at the time actually i was working in homeless services then i was working in education um so that was my background and timmy was in construction but we were bought in college as well at the time and when timmy talks about the time when we were starting out and we were going

to do we didn't know what to do all we knew is that we wanted to make recovery visible we wanted to talk about stuff you mentioned about like we all experienced these things but we never talk about them and me and timmy learned the skills and got the courage to talk about them through the help of therapy and treatment centers and stuff and we knew the power of leaving yourself vulnerable and talking about this stuff so we wanted to try and help others to do that you know so that was the aim of it but around that time uh when we were planning the podcast um i was up in my head around you know the equipment and everything is expensive and the editing and how to and you did a podcast on the history and the philosophy of podcasts and it was the timing was beautiful because i remember i was listening to it and in the podcast you said look you can get caught up around the equipment

and the quality and all this stuff, but the content is the most important thing and if you're passionate about what you do, people will receive it. So don't be worrying about having the best equipment. And that took a lot of pressure off us. And then we said, you know what, no, we'll just focus on the content. And the right people helped us along the way.

And now we're on your podcast 18 months later. I remember listening to you I remember walking the corridors, MTU now was the old CIT and at the time I think I was maybe first or second year of college and I was going through a lot it was a difficult time for me and I was in my maybe first or second year of college and I was going through a lot. It was a difficult time for me

and I was doing a lot of researching in myself. I was trying to get to know myself a little bit more in depth and I found your podcast. I found them very, very helpful. I found the one about core

beliefs that you did a good time back like that just sat with me so much and it gave me a great understanding about the belief systems that I was after being brought up on you know the ones that were passed on to me exactly

that and other things it's amazing what information is out there for everybody at the moment and then we're not learning it in fucking school it's all about people's experiences and I think there's no better way for anybody

to learn new ways to get well learn new things about themselves than listening to people that have gone through the exact same forms of trauma and experiences as themselves you know. And as well as what I think is important is that the person isn't doing it from a position of I have all this fucking knowledge now and I'm gonna make this

knowledge seem inaccessible by using words you don't understand. And then all of a sudden you don't feel that this thing is accessible because it's like, that person's mad smart up there now, and how can I access this? But for me, like I always speak about mental health as, like here's my, here would be, I think the society that I would like to see

regarding mental health, right, is, do you know the way when you're growing up, when your buddies breaks their leg and they get a cast? And what do we all do? We race around to sign our names on that cast. How beautiful is that? Here's a person with an injury and we're celebrating this, you know? We're having empathy, compassion.

Imagine that if someone with an internal injury an internal wound someone is a depression anxiety addiction and people gather around them what I'm look what I'm what I love about the signing of the cast race is there's humor in it because sometimes when we speak about addiction or suicide, we get real serious all of a sudden. I've got depression, I've got anxiety. And you say it to a close friend, and that's very frightening and intimidating

for the other person. And now you're not dealing with your friend anymore. You're dealing with a frightened person who has now changed into, it's what I call it is the, do you know when you go to a funeral and there's the sorry for troubles? Like that's useless. who has now changed into, it's what I call it is the, do you know when you go to a funeral and there's the sorry for troubles?

Yeah. Like that's useless. Yeah. It's fucking useless. It's not authentic. It's not human. And I know myself as someone who's gone through bereavement, it's heartbreaking to be at the front row

and you see people you know a long time and you're not getting a hug. You're not getting anything that's authentic to your friendship. You're getting sorry for troubles authentic to your friendship you're getting sorry for your troubles because you feel

alone and we do that a lot with mental health we shut down whereas fucking taking the piss out of

if it's your friend and you have that relationship taking the piss out of their depression taking the piss

out of anxiety there's your healing that's the signing of the cast but it's on the inside of someone's

mind you know the gas thing about the cast is when you're going home when you're a young signing of the cast but it's on the inside of someone's mind you know the gas thing about the cast is you know when you're going home when you're a young fella with a cast

and somebody's after drawing a big mickey on your leg or a hash plant I know and then and then what happens is

you get in trouble for it like and it's like I didn't fucking draw it it's not drawn to scale either yeah that's actually the same as if you bring someone it's not drawn to scale either.

That's actually the same as if you bring someone on your podcast and you end up getting in trouble for what someone else says and it's like, they fucking said it, it's just my podcast. Yeah, yeah. But you give them the platform,

that's the thing. And that's why you have to be very careful of who you bring on. Like, we vet people all the time in terms of like, for two different reasons first of all you have to check the mortars there's a lot of a lot of self-promotion out there a lot of bullshit yeah and it's very hard to find

who's authentic and who's not hopefully we do a good job at that I'll say that then when people are in early recovery and it could be recovery from addiction or mental health they've been through tough time I know they feel great but it's still early days. And sometimes when you feel great, and I remember, and I cringe about it, six months sober, you get your clean tag in the AME and you put it up on Facebook and fucking it's great.

You think back and say, I probably shouldn't have done that, you know. We get a lot of people like that. This is my story and I've been through all this and now I'm four months away from that and I want to come on your podcast. I'm like, do you know what? You have a great story, it would make a great podcast but it wouldn't be necessarily good for you and you have to worry, you have to think

about the guest all the time. What is it about that, what's dangerous about that for the person? Because when you're in an early recovery you might be aware of the wheel of change and relapse is in the wheel of change. So does pre contemplation and contemplation and action and then sometimes relapse. So like relapse is an inevitable path of recovery for some people. So if you're in recovery from mental health or anything, addiction,

and you go and you tell the world you're not you're not Struggling anymore. You've some amount of pressure on you to maintain that created a new identity as someone who's cured and maybe relapse Like I didn't get recovery first time around was loads of attempts So like it wasn't until I was ready that I spoke about it But some people that do it too quickly then the relapse is it just compounds everything you know and like you've so much pressure to maintain it and then when you relapse you just go to ground and it just makes the relapse a lot worse because is there ever a danger as well of we'll say you get your six months badge right and you have this little achievement and then you kind of

go fuck it fair play to me I'll have a pint you know what I mean yeah but seriously because the thing is when when you achieve something naturally the body wants a reward and if substances are your reward it's it's like when you are in recovery the areas that you have to be very aware of are are the good times because like when you're feeling great about yourself, you know, you can nearly forget about how bad things were before as well. And, um,

that's not something you, anybody in recovery needs to ever forget is how bad it was and how it felt to be back in that place. And for me, that's one of the most important things like is you know when I was at my worst walking the streets you know knowing that I couldn't go to this person because what was your addiction alcohol drugs gambling and everything my wife And, fuck, everything. My wife is probably out there and over the list of them that way. I'm in recovery now for multiple years, thank God, right?

If I watched, I remember I watched Trainspotting 2 was out. I know your song was in that, actually. I know, they paid me not in the concert. But before I watched Trainspotting 2, I re-watched the first one. Yeah. And as miserable as they looked in the squat, But before I watched Trainspotting 2, I re-watched the first one. Yeah. And as miserable as they looked in the squat, and with the dead baby,

there was a part of me thinking, fuck it, that looks all right, do you know? Yeah. Because, you know why? They're completely out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks miserable, and there's HIV and blood and everything, and dead babies, but I know exactly how they feel

because they don't feel a thing in it. And there's a part, yeah, like you remember the pain, but you also remember how good it is, whereas logically you shouldn't never have a fantasy thought about something like that. How dangerous is that? It can be very dangerous if you haven't got the awareness, I suppose, to expose it.

I suppose you learn through personal development and through certain books and self-help and stuff like that to observe your thoughts and to not identify yourself with your thinking mind so years ago I was driven by my thoughts if I didn't feel like it on the day I didn't do it that that was going on a date or going to work or if i remember in the treatment center uh the council up there his name was john resound and uh one morning i was in there and i was depressed and i didn't want it was on a farm and you had to get up and work in the farm which was grand like but on this day i didn't want to do it and i stayed in bed and he come up and he says

james come on i said no i not up for it today. I'm not up for it today. And he says, stand up, he says. He says, repeat after me. In spite of how I am feeling today, I will turn up for life. And he says, you can feel the thought, or you can think the thought. He says, but you can still go about your day. It doesn't mean it's true.

Exactly. And it doesn't have to rule your whole day or rule your behavior. So when a thought like that comes in for using, recently I had my wisdom to it out. It was out fucking nightmare I got three stitches Dry sockets and I was trying to be a master. I didn't want to take opiates for obvious reasons, right?

After about 24 hours, I was into the chemist looking for opiates All right They ran out after two days and I was so fucked up in my head about going to the chemist again for another box because I Was it brought me back to that person who I used to be trying to get scripts trying to plumb ass people for tablets yeah and it's just that memory you know but like that part of the addict brain it's always there it's just the recovery side of it is more stronger today so you'd never use a word like cured definitely not there's it's it's a prolonging journey to heal like we mentioned recovery you have to really really use that word recovery in the right context you know because there's

people still like there's people aware from alcohol and drugs and they say they're in recovery but like recovery is is recovery from behaviors that you had during addiction, it's recovery from trauma that possibly push you into these addictions and alcoholism and all these different things you know you need to be very very very careful and we were talking about pain but there's constructive ways of dealing with pain and there's not. We can see psychologists, psychotherapists, and talk about the past and bring up the emotions of all these experiences that we may have went through as kids

and during addiction. Medication is critical for, for people that are, it helps people. Like I was, I've been on antidepressants myself for, for my mental health, you know, I couldn't cope with what was going on around me, but it is a short term kind of thing. If anybody is really, really adamant about really becoming their true self, you know, becoming their true self you know it's both really finding real ways dealing with it and for me it was about dropping the fighter mentality that I always had you know that I lived with that saved me growing up as a young child because of my different circumstances and and in different ways could you talk about that

so that the fighter mentality what do you mean by that? Right, growing up for me I grew up with a single parent my mother she suffered badly with her mental health I was the oldest of three boys and you know we we were very very very poor and on the streets you'd see back in the 80s like it was normal to see a married couple it wasn't to see a mother bringing up three boys in a row it's different today but back then it was it was it looked upon very nicely but there was no father figure there in the house and what that meant was there was a lot of bullying but there was a lot of violence within the home you know there was a lot of fighting out in the street but i also had to fight basically growing up because we were in poverty i had to battle my way into trying to get food to feed us feed myself you know there was fighting on the streets you know there was fighting inside the family home

and it was like i had a battle every single stage of my life and I had that in the years way about myself you know I built up this mechanism to get through life because of like life wasn't set at a really really good stage for me growing up so I had to build these ways about myself so I had this coming into recovery I had the fighter mentality so when I was sitting inside in the prison cell for 18 hours a day right early recovery three or four months into my recovery and my head is telling me to take my own life do not have to give up and everything you know that I was a bad person you're horrible you know, to give up and everything, you know, that I was a

bad person, you're horrible, you know, you're this, you're that. Like, these were really, really negative thoughts happening. And does the fight turn on yourself then? It's like, it's like back and forth. It was like back and forth, the fight. No, I'm not a, you know, I'm not a bad person, I don't have bad teeth, blah, blah, blah. But then all of a sudden, one day I just said you know what I'm not I'm not going to fight and that was that was the turning point for me I stopped because I was after gaining a little bit of awareness as well and a little bit of compassion

for myself through meditation and I stopped fighting I stopped the fighting when did you discover meditation I discovered meditation in about my fourth or fifth month into my prison sentence in the Midlands it was given to me a book and an audiobook was given to me by the prison psychologist within the prison because I couldn't retain information because I was I was a player played all the time constant yeah and I was full of adrenaline and I was constantly hyper vigilant it was all over the place and that was the only thing that was given to me but at the start of meditation for me I literally had to stop my legs from bouncing off the floor that's how bad you know what it was for me and I had nothing left to give I there was no more I couldn't go left or right

anymore for anything else drugs couldn't be a part of my life anymore because I knew I wanted my wife and my kids back in my life you know so if I went down that route they were gone you know and I didn't want this you know although there was days where I wanted more drugs to take me away from the pain. But anyhow, when the meditation, I started and slowly done a few minutes here, there, and I just continued and I kept growing. Did you have a moment with meditating where the first time it hits, the first time it's like, I know a calmness that I do not know.

What was that like? The first time I got awareness. I know a calmness that I do not know. What was that like? That was, it's like a break from the duality, the constant back and forth in the head. It's like Timmy is fighting the conditioning. The conscious mind is fighting the unconscious mind. All the different experiences, the core beliefs.

And there's the conscious mind here, and you're fighting what you have been brought up around and everything else. And I'm sitting there, and it's like, what the fuck? And then meditation was able to give me a bit of an awareness. This is why I think podcasts are so important. Because if you think of a podcast, right? Podcasts happen on our phones. We listen to podcasts on our phones.

All of us, since about 2015, no, 2014, all of us are now continually scrolling, right? It's an endless scroll. Now, the problem is with the endless scroll, whether it's Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, we're in a consistent state of confusion because the scroll isn't curated, right? So you can have,

there's a photograph of my friend's dinner. There's a cute cat. There's some horrendous news about Ukraine. There's another dinner. But those are all very conflicting things happening very suddenly. And the thing is, is we get bombarded. So the sensation of scrolling is no one emotion. It's all of them at once and we can't handle it. What podcasts do, podcasts are the only mindful space that we often have left in our lives now. When you stick on a podcast and you're actually listening,

it's one of the few things that that's the one thing I'm doing right now. If you're listening to a podcast and you're stuck into it, you are not taking out your phone to also go through Twitter. You're in that fucking podcast. And you leave the podcast space feeling refreshed. And the reason is, for once in my day today i just did one thing and one thing only and i listened to that podcast and i think that's why they're working and when you can do something like we're trying to do which is introduce introspective

thinking asking people to look inside themselves it's the perfect environment because you're naturally mindful when you're listening to a fucking podcast. Yeah, yeah. And we were chatting backstage about, I won't say her name because I don't know if the study is out there. Is the study public yet? Well, she shared it on Twitter.

She did share it, okay. It's not published yet, but she spoke while she was talking about what she's doing. So Dr. Sharon Lambert, who, I had Sharon on this podcast and the boys had Sharon. Sharon is fucking amazing she works in UCC she's trauma is her thing

she's an expert in trauma but she's doing a study on the impact of podcasts on people's mental health in Ireland mental health themed podcasts and how they help if they help and she put out a survey monkey on social media

and she rang me a couple weeks ago with some of the answers and she spoke about you know your own podcast but like you do podcasting and you know mental health and you know self-help and stuff like that and we do the same and so we get comments all the time of lads just listen to this podcast and they help me in this way and I sent it to my sister and I said I have to help her. So we get up them comments every day of the week and you'll probably get them yourself. So if we go around telling everybody or my podcast I have to help her in this way. When you get it from an independent researcher you know it's gonna have a lot more weight so I'm very excited to see

how people are like what they're actually saying but one of the comments was like um with blind boy with the two norris or whoever there's no waiting list they just press play yeah and like that's a sad indictment on ireland it's a sad thing but my hope with sharon's study and the findings is that it ends up embarrassing the out of the the powers that be because the thing is we're trying our best but who the fuck are we we're just lads speaking about our experience

like how sad and shit is it that the people are going to listen to us and not have access to fucking services like I enjoy doing my podcast and I love helping people I love doing it

but I also feel like shit that there's no other option listen to some cunt with a fucking bag in his head but seriously that's shit, that's really fucking shit yeah yeah

but you know what's so positive about your podcast and our podcast like we basically watched you in the last few years and listened to you and what we're doing now is based on what you're doing now and there's probably another listening and so it's now it's a collective fucking conversation so the people are taking this they're taking the initiative themselves and they're going out there and they're educating each other and that's the beauty of a podcast see if i'm suffering with drug addiction i'll go on to blind boys podcast or james or some some other one and and

i look up addiction or someone struggling i'm actually getting an am meeting within my room and i'm sitting there and i'm watching it and i'm learning and i'm actually getting an am meeting within my room and i'm sitting there and i'm watching it and i'm learning and i'm relating to this person and i'm getting ideas of where i need to be myself where i need to go you know and that's the beauty of a podcast there's people listening to you in particular who simply aren't ready to walk into that meeting yes exactly or what i find with people who listen to myself like going to a counselor for the first time is fucking terrifying admitting to yourself i need help is fucking terrifying because when you're not

you feel like you're fucking broken and you feel like you're you're wrong and you feel like this person is going to tell me more about why I'm wrong and why I'm broken. And like, Jesus, like fucking hell, when I think about when I first went into counselling, like I hadn't a fucking clue. All I knew was a couple of times a day, I think I'm dying. That was it.

A couple of times a day, I think I'm dying. And I didn't know that it was called a panic attack. And then the counsellor says to me, oh, that's a panic attack. That's what that's called. Loads of people get them. Immediately, 50% of the anxiety is gone because I'm not alone. I thought I was the only person in the world who just is at home going, I'm dying. I'm currently in the process of dying at this very moment. All right. And then

I don't die and it happens again after the six o'clock news. I was like, fuck. I'm going to go into this cunt now and he's going to diagnose this as me being the only person in the world having this. And then he just says to me, that's a panic attack. That's just a fire

alarm going off with no fire. And then you go through the process and you go, why are you getting these? And then you speak about your childhood. And then all of a sudden you speak about, oh, I've got very low self-esteem. And it's this big, big, long journey. And then you go on your podcast and you share your experience

because the other person that's coming up behind you is in the exact same position. And I remember when you were talking there, I remember when I was in addiction you know like putting you know ham in my body with needles and tablets and overdoses and stuff like that and thinking like why am I doing I don't enjoy this I feel guilty and shameful I'm hurting my family I'm lonely and isolated and all these things but I keep doing it and I keep doing it and then eventually when I went to therapy and stuff like that not know what to expect but learn about like you're doing it

because you feel a sense of fear and anxiety you have a notion to the child and you feel insecure and all these and you walk through that so then what we doing the podcast is for the next James come up is I know how you feel and when you try this this is what you will feel this is what you will experience this is what it'll be like it'll be tough these are the what you'll feel. This is what you'll experience. This is what it'll be like. It'll be tough. These are the challenges you'll meet. But this is the reward you'll get when you persevere with it. And if you just take that risk, because it is risky, disclosing details to somebody else.

But some breakthroughs can be got through it, you know. And that's the power of the podcast, just to show people the pathway out of it. Let's have a little ocarina pause right now so that you can hear a digitally inserted advert. Where the fuck is little ocarina pause right now so that you can hear a digitally inserted advert. Where the fuck is my ocarina? Hold on. I'm in my studio. I'm not in my office. It's too hot for my office.

Here's the ocarina. Yeah, so I'm back in my home studio this week. I didn't go into my office because of the heat. My home studio is quite dark so it's cool on April 5th you must be very careful Margaret it's a girl

bad things will start to happen evil things of evil it's all no no don't the first omen i believe the girl is to be the mother mother of what is the most terrifying 666 it's the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real it's not real who said that the first omen only in theaters aprth. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm.

You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com that was the ocarina pause which means you heard a digitally inserted advert that ACAS put there. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast.

This podcast is my full-time job. This podcast is how I earn a living. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, if it gives you solace, if it gives you joy, if it gives you entertainment, if it gives you a bit of escapism, then please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. But if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free because the person who can afford it is paying for you to listen for free.

So everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. But I would urge you to become a patron if you can afford that price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. Because that's what keeps this podcast completely fully independent. I am not beholden to any advertiser. What makes podcasts shit and what makes all media shit, what makes anything shit is when advertisers step into a creative space and they say we're sponsoring this and now you have to change how you make the thing you make in order to accommodate our adverts so

I don't know if this podcast was sponsored by a big brand they would say don't talk about addiction this week I don't think we want you to do an addiction podcast that's not really going to get a lot of likes it's not going to get a lot of listens and we're paying for this with our brand instead can you do an interview with a controversial reactionary right wing prick

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of kerry so if you're thinking about a little staycation this weekend come down to ballybunion and catch my live podcast at the ballybunion arts festival okay back to my chat with the two norries where we speak about in this part we speak about drug use and also timmy describes his experience of using ayahuasca as a form of addiction treatment and it goes without saying you're all adults but a lot of this shit is illegal so no one's telling you to use drugs so there's one thing I wanted to talk about you to talk about you specifically Timmy right you recently did ayahuasca as part of your addiction recovery

can you speak about that first off what is ayahuasca ayahuasca is it's a plant based medicine and there's a DMT based within it. And what it does is...

What it done for me, okay? What it done for me was it stripped me completely back. I would do meditation quite a bit, and I'd be a little bit aware of what's going on in my life. I know the difference between what's going on in my head and what's reality to a degree. Not perfect in any way. My wife will tell you that. But what it does is it strips your ego and it brings it right back and heightens all your senses, your hearing, your sight. And I went down for three nights to this retreat center.

I walked in the door and they told me we were going to do it that night. And I looked in the kitchen and I see this Spanish guy. He was brewing a pot of ayahuasca. Okay. And they said the ceremony would start at 10 o'clock that night. So I was grand. So I set myself up and I was full of fear. As you would be.

I was full of fear. And I went in and I took the first cup inside the room. It's small, black stuff. It's really, really horrible. You know, I drank out of bats inside manky apartments where we'd go out robbing kegs out of pubs and throw them into the bat and fill the bat

and drink it with, you know, the bat would be full of stale I've done that but this stuff is just rotten but anyhow I drank it and I went into the experience with real trust I really trusted this

I looked at what was going to be happening to me I looked at what was going to be happening to me I looked at it and I believed in the whole process I knew it was going to be something to really help me to understand myself and get in touch with stuff that I never did before in my lifetime and I had that going into the experience

so after about an hour I start getting a little bit lighter not stressed, lighter, lighter. And then they give you another cup. And that was my second cup. And next I start seeing everything getting a little bit brighter, you know. And then they give you another cup. then they give you another cup. And that's when the magic happens.

So I got the third cup and at this point, no, there was a lady singing in the room. She was chanting. She was walking up and down the room with a guitar. And then she'd use a drum and she'd be singing. And they might play some really, really powerful music. And there was a fire lighting in the corner and you could hear the wood crisping, you know. You could hear everything. And you look around the room and everything was so, it was just the realest thing that

I've ever experienced. It was so real. But the main experience for me was after I went right into the experience, I experienced love for the first time in my lifetime. And I cried. And I cried. And my understanding of both was the crying was a sadness that I would have felt as a young, young child going through difficult circumstances in my life. And it brought me back to that moment. And it was like it was showing me the moment in time

where I completely shut off from everything as a young young child because of my situation and the love was the love that I was born with that I was every human being is born with and one minute you're laughing

you know and you're hugging yourself on the bed like this the next minute you're crying and you can feel a sadness that you've never, ever, ever felt, you know. But then it starts giving you all these bursts of information, you know. And the information is only relevant to you around your own life. And it can be really, really hard to understand because the information is so intense right imagine disinformation be given to you raw no sugar coating no it's not that bad you know it's completely raw and while that was happening to me I was

trying to control myself and say it's okay it's okay you know at one point it was after telling me that as a young child there was mad mad things happened and and it was raw and I was saying and I'd bring myself back five minutes later I'd be hugging myself again in the bed you know and then I'd be crying but I came out of that experience anyway the next day and the next day then there was an integration session and I spoke about my experience and I told them what happened and I got massive, massive healing from it, you know. And I was able to look back on the night as well and get a little bit of more of understanding around the information because sometimes the information information some people can get misguided around the information and not

understand it you know you have to be really really relaxed about it and understand what's going on the second night I don't know it was a different experience the second night I lay down after the three cups and I could see a green energy starting from my toes and working its way up my body and it was like it was healing me from from down here the whole way up and I stopped here then down around my tummy here just by my belly button and it paused and I kind of understood why it paused because I'd understand a little bit about the chakras and stuff and it paused because there's a lot more work for me to be doing around this area, a lot more

stuff to be dealt with in my own life. And was that pausing there, would that be related in any way to the anger and the confrontation that you spoke about earlier? Yes. I knew in my own head from working with psychologists and psychotherapists that there was more work for me to be doing here. And when it stopped there, it was like it stopped and it went back down and I just walked here. And it was like I cleared the lower centre, which is the onean your first chakra and that was cleared and I was happy and the information then came and they just said there's more you have to come back you know it wasn't like come back next week and you will get stoned again it was not like that yeah yeah yeah you know it wasn't like that it was like we will do

it again you know and and I haven't gone back again since it's two and a half years now since two years but I haven't gone back but the third night it was the third night so I started the third night and I drank the third cup and I was laying down on the bed next time fuck what's that? My tummy started like and I just ran and I got a dish and I was getting sick for about four hours at the end of the bed just constantly burping getting sick and it was like this black stuff was coming up from my tummy there was nothing in my tummy but it was coming up and the information was just saying like this is this is trauma this is a lot of this is you're releasing experiences you're releasing all these emotions that were

trapped in your body from experiences growing up and it was definitely definitely wanted to break the turning points in my life. So a question I'd have for you around it, right, is, so you're taking the ayahuasca and you're confronting trauma, right? Yeah. But also, with addiction, you're medicating for trauma. And as you said earlier, you've done a lot of drugs, a lot of different drugs.

In your experience with those drugs from the past, was there any similarity in that? What I mean is, did any drugs take you to that place where you have an awareness of something in there? Do you know what I'm trying to say?

Yeah, I do 100%. Did any of the drugs from the past give me a similar experience to the ayahuasca? Similar, but also confronting that trauma. No. No. Because when you're taking drugs, drugs. Yeah.

Drugs, drugs. I like that. Yeah. When you're taking them, it's like it's not real, you know? Yeah. It's like... It's like... It's not real, you know? Yeah. It's making you become a different person.

Yeah. You know, you're becoming... You're getting self-esteem. You're getting confidence. The things that you wouldn't have. Ego-based stuff. Exactly. With this stuff...

There is no ego. I was completely stripped. There was nothing there. There was... you know, I wasn't thinking negative about anybody or I didn't want to go out and fucking sell drugs or rob anyone. There was nothing like that. This was just completely solely based on helping me understand me as a human being and if if I'm ready to heal with something we'll do a bit of healing around it as well and

that's what i got from it i got a bit of healing and one thing you said there which i found really fucking beautiful was you said you you you felt the love that you were born with and which is something like i tried to speak a lot about a thing called um our intrinsic sense of self-worth. That every fucking human being, every single one of us has this self-worth, worth inside of us and it's no greater or lesser than any other human being.

We all have this and no aspect of our behavior can take away from that. Even if you've done bad things, we all have this intrinsic worth. And someone asked me recently to explain it and i said the closest thing i could think of was a tiny little baby when if you got like nine babies together right you're never gonna go to nine babies and go are't like that one. That one's a bit long. You don't. Like if you see

multiple babies, every single fucking baby is amazing. All babies are incredible and beautiful in the most equal, wonderful, awe-inspiring way and that's intrinsic worth. Babies are nothing but intrinsic worth and then what happens is that baby becomes a toddler and they go to fucking school and then someone says you're not good enough and then

that baby, that toddler learns to compare themselves to another toddler and then the fucking ego and then they get hurt and then the human grows from that. And depending on those experiences, that human can either become a happy person or someone who's not happy or someone who's angry

or someone who acts out. You know? But all of us have that. We were all fucking born as beautiful, wonderful babies that were no better than any other baby. Just wonderful babyness glowing out of us.

And it never left any of us. us never left any of us yeah it never left any of it's all it's fucking there yeah and you're able to tap into it and like when timmy was talking about the plant medicine and the drugs drugs like it depends on what the motivation is when you use the drug as well yeah like um timmy's whole motivation using the ayahuasca was to uncover trauma and help him walk through them. So when you use drugs drugs the whole motivation is to block them out so you're actively trying to suppress that stuff. Now if you wanted to take drugs drugs to get the goal Timmy did you can actually do that too because some people use MDMA to work through depression

and mushrooms as well it's not about the drug obviously they act in different ways but if your motivation, it depends on what your motivation is when you're using the drug and the environment when you are using it a guest who I've had on my podcast twice Dr Paul Litnitsky

he's based in Australia and he's been given the license, he's a neuroscientist and a psychologist, he's been given the license by the Australian government to study MDMA and mushrooms to help people through trauma. And what he's doing specifically is that he's using MDMA to help veterans in war

to basically, how he described it was, there'd be veterans who'd go through something deeply traumatic in war and then they can revisit this using mushrooms with that sense of safety. So they're back at the triggering moment where they switched off, but they're now there safely looking at it and working through it. And then the mushrooms, he's using it with people who are in palliative care, people who are about to die. And they use the mushrooms as a dress rehearsal for death to basically take them through what he thinks death will be like

and for them to process that. I just want to say this, something very funny. You go back, you were talking about the experiment, about the MDMA. Back in the 90s, we were doing them experiments as well. Up in Sir Henry's. Yeah. You know, fucking...

You'd be out in the streets on a Wednesday and you'd be fucking threatening to kill a fella. You'd be out on a Friday night with him, you'd be buzzing with him, you'd be fucking telling him you love him, you'd be hugging and kissing him, fucking telling fella, you'd be out on a Friday night with him, you'd be buzzing with him, you'd be fucking telling him you love him, you'd be hugging and kissing him, fucking telling him, do you know what I'm saying? Did you ever hear, Sean Ryder has, you know Sean Ryder from the Happy Mondays? He has a lovely story.

So it was about 1986 when Ecstasy wasn't that well known. And Sean Ryder and all his buddies from Manchester were out in the pub so there after taking a load of yolks and they're fucking dancing having crack not giving a shit because they're on yolks but in the same bar was a bunch of squaddies like English soldiers who were hard

cunts ready for a fight and all of these squaddies were very threatened by Sean Ryder and his buddies not being hard and taking their tops off and dancing they were going what what are you doing we need to fight immediately so the squaddies were about to fucking scrap with Sean Ryder but Sean Ryder's on yoke so he's like no no we're not gonna scrap take one of these so he gave yolks to all the squaddies they all took their tops off and had an amazing night

but it has the power to do that yeah you know and I remember when I first started taking ecstasy in my teenage years like before I ever took an ecstasy tablet I always kind of felt like like I dropped out of sports, kind of felt alienated, kind of alone, isolated, like feeling of insecurity, fear, anxiety, this stuff. And when I started taking ecstasy, I remember feeling like love, a sense of belonging, a sense of comradery, a sense of like, we were all in this together.

And I wasn't, yeah, a sense of connection. And like, when you don't have that sense of connection connection like i suppose a positive form of that would be through sport yeah through education but like for myself and timmy and manny like us we didn't have that so what we had was another quantum skill and it was drugs you know and i said something earlier on as well around um do i believe addiction can be cured? That's probably a controversial question. I probably gave a controversial answer. I said no, but I feel for me, no. The world is a big place with billions of people and there's plenty of people out there probably that were in addiction, worked through their traumas and now they can have a drink or whatever

and fair play to them. I know for a fact that's not me. I've tried it. I've tried different ways and means of using. I'll only take a Xanax. I won't take a rehypnol. I'll drink beer and have vodka. I'll smoke heroin. I won't inject it.

Tried it all and it all ended in the same way. Also, you have to check again. Check the motivation for the use. If you're

if you smoke weed, right? I'm not pointing my fingers. I do. If you have a... Right? You're a busy man, you're productive, you create some great content and people, you know, your fans and followers, what you're doing is good.

And at the end of the night or the end of the week, you're entitled to put your feet up and have a big five-five, you know? Yeah. Fair play to you. Yeah yeah yeah right and the audience here it's a saturday night the sun is out end of the week or after covered yeah people are entitled to have a can the problem becomes when that giant is in the morning or the can is on a monday morning and then why exactly and the way the relationship isn't great the job isn't going great so I'm not feeling good in myself and you're then you step that's then when it becomes the problem and like for myself and Timmy who are abstinent in terms of we don't take anything

complete abstinence that suits us with some people when I work in drug and alcohol services some people come in the door to me in very bad condition and they say I can't wait until I'm in recovery believing that recovery starts the day they become abstinent and what I always say to them is the day you decide to try and make your life a bit better that's the day you're in recovery and it's along a continuum of sometimes it might be medication and people can go on and live very full lives and be happy and rear families and work while on medication they can do it while on methadone as well yeah people can reduce their use to a way to a place where and even alcohol to a place where it's actually manageable there's a treatment

called heroin assisted treatment and it's been in the UK for 100 years but it's not well known and it's not widely practiced it's been in the UK for 100 years, but it's not well known. It's not widely practiced. It's practiced in Canada as well. For heroin addicts, where all other forms of treatment have not worked, like methadone, suboxone, abstinence-based treatments, 12 steps and all this, for every reason, they're always on the street using and injecting heroin, right? So heroin-assisted treatment just basically means the doctor prescribes them a

pharmacy grade heroin and they don't go to the street they're not robbing for it they're not overdosing because it's facilitated the the use novel is facilitated and it takes them out of the black market takes mode of crime and they're not passing on hiv hepatitis and you can actually go on and live a good life while doing that and who's to say then that no, what you're doing is wrong would you deny a diabetic insulin? Exactly

and if you're looking at drug use from a health lens like what we expose in our policy that's what we need to be looking at but we're so far away from that in Ireland that that's the disappointing thing I think What do you think of countries like Portugal so in Portugal now for for 20 years all drugs are decriminalized they have some of the most progressive drugs laws in the world where they basically say these substances should not be illegal because what's happening is that

people are self-medicating for pain so we can't criminalize these people people are self-medicating for pain. So we can't criminalise these people who are self-medicating. What would you like to see in Ireland in terms of a policy around drugs? Well, if you look at Portugal, right, the reason why that policy came in was because they had some of the highest rates of HIV in Europe and overdose deaths were through the roof. They were really at breaking point, you know, and what happened was they had a socialist government come into power.

And the socialist government, like a radical situation like that, needed radical change and they brought this in. But even the most ardent of conservative wuzzles would not go back to the way it used to be. Because now they have some of the lowest HIV rates, they have some of the lowest overdose rates, they have some of the lowest overdose deaths and prison population has gone way down and what happens is if you get caught in the city with a bag of weed or a few Yorks or a bag of gear or whatever, you're not charged, convicted or whatever, you go before a dissuasion committee, it's a lawyer, a doctor, a policeman or whatever, so there's a board and it's like

why are you using what you're using? These are the options that's available to you but we're not going to convict you because we know that doesn't work, do you know what I mean? So and it works really well and there's loads of science to say that that works but unfortunately in Ireland we don't have evidence-based policies, we have moral-based policies. And that's the big problem. And a lot of it has got to do with class as well, blind buy. Like, we brought in a mockier.

Do you use that word, limerick mockier? No, we don't. But I know what it means. My dad's from Cork, I know it. It's like a spoof version of decriminalization in Ireland where two strikes, right? You get caught with weed or coke once and you avoid conviction. Twice you avoid conviction.

Three times, status quo, you go to court, prison, whatever. Who's that for? That's for people who can just take or leave a bit of weed. Do you know if somebody comes into my service with chronic addiction, they get caught in the morning, right? They get caught in the afternoon. they'll get caught again in the evening yeah they're not thinking about court but you know if you're a student yeah and you might get caught with a bag of weed on rag week if you're very unlucky

you might get caught twice when you're doing your degree yeah you will avoid that conviction so that policy is for a certain cohort of people yeah before people in a chronic addiction and people from neighborhoods like my own it's not for us you know and the status quo remains and, you know, it's just very disappointing that there's stuff like Portugal is one example, but in Germany there's decriminalisation, you don't even have to go before a committee. Really? Yeah. And in Australia, in certain parts of Australia it's the same. And they're brought in some states in America as well. Portland. Yeah exactly. But Portugal is obviously the first that decriminalized all drugs so it's working really well but we don't have a hair and

like you spoke about Gabor Marte, I asked Gabor Marte the question you asked me and he said to me he says I was brought before a senate committee to explain my evidence-based practices and i was looking around and i seen the politicians and they were looking at their phones and their watches they weren't interested in what i was saying and i stopped in the middle and he says here you are asking me about my evidence-based practices but you've not evidence-based policies and he walked out. A fair play to him. Wow. Something I'd like to chat to you about because you spoke to Gabor Mate about this on your podcast is

so if we take the trauma-based lens around addiction, right? Ireland is a very traumatised country because of our history. What are your opinions about addiction, Ireland and our history of What are your opinions about addiction, Ireland and our history of trauma and intergenerational trauma? Well the Irish people firstly like we're known for crack you know we're known to be

drinkers yeah you know and but there's there's there's more to that. Yeah. You know, we could be having the crack Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but the Monday you're so depressed you can't get out of the bed or, you know, you could be contemplating taking your own life, you know, because of something that may have happened in your life, you know, that's what depression does. We get depression from alcohol and drugs that's how I always felt you know and locking myself away in the house but intergenerational trauma is is something that isn't spoken about regularly enough you know we we've had a lot of different

different things happen within this country. And we spoke backstage about the famine. Yeah. The effects of the famine is still here. It's only 200 years ago. It's still here. We're talking about great, great grandparents, or great, that's not a lot. But there's a number of factors you could look upon.

Up to 40 years ago, the families in this country were anything from 7 to 20 yeah you know what what form of anxiety and does that cause for a mother who can't feed her kids yeah what what does that do to us and then you've kids that who are bringing up each other yeah you know and there's all sorts of mad you know like you have to understand that too you know these kids aren't to be there's a saying went when I when I was inside in Shelton Abbey prison I used to go into the library a lot and and I'd ask the librarian in there for parenting books because I was going home to two young kids and I actually didn't know how to behave or become a parent because of my own upbringing you know and I'd look at these books and I'd ask her

and I'd ask her to maybe teach me a little bit a few things because I was going home to a family that I wasn't their own before while I was out of prison and stuff and so I started looking at books and reading them and having conversations around parenting. You know, it wasn't until afterwards I really understood parenting is about just doing what you believe is the right thing for the child based on the reality of the situation and how you feel in your gut about whatever's going on. But you have to have an emotional literacy with yourself. You have to know what you're fucking feeling. Exactly.

Another guest we had on in that space was Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Oh, yeah. And he spoke to us. What's his... The book is... The Body Keeps the Score. The Body Keeps the Score, yeah.

So I asked Bessel about Ireland specifically. And I was asking him about, like, what people can use, alternative methods that people can use to heal from trauma. And he spoke about song and dance and rhythm. And he says, like, if you look at it, he says, like, we're talking about a collective trauma within Ireland and a negative consequence of that would be the alcohol, right?

Yeah. But he spoke about, like, what about the positives? He said, if you look at the most traumatized countries in the world, they have the best dance, they have the best literature, the best music. He said, like, Ireland is so famous, you know, the land of scholars and Irish dancing and, you know, famous playwrights and, you know, you're out there creating and all these things, you know. He said, if you look at, like, if you look at the Africa Cup of Nations, you know, you look at the Ghana team coming in, the rhythm, the dancing, that's a coping skill too. Yeah, you have the alcohol, but you have so much positive stuff too.

He said, like, yoga, he said this now, so it's not just me, he said that yoga is proven to be work ten times better than antidepressants, right? And he says, but you will never be prescribed yoga, you will never be prescribed dance or rhythm by your doctor. and he's on a

bit of a crusade against medication. He said medication is very important for some people but he's against over prescribing of it. So I think in Ireland we have a collective trauma and intergenerational trauma and alcohol is attributed to it but there's so much positives that we've developed as well the corporate. Do you know a French philosopher Michel Foucault? I know Foucault yeah. You got into him for the prisons. Yeah exactly. He wrote a book on crime and punishment. Yeah yeah yeah. In that he talks about what you're talking about there. Like I suppose the whole premise of the book is like post-modernism, he'd be

post-modernist where like our civilization is evolving all the time to be better than the one that's previous. And he critiques that. And one of the examples, this is what you gave, we believe that people from the medieval times are savages and we're so much better. But back in the day, if people had schizophrenia,

they were seen as quirky and as great members of the community. They had their place and they were seen as quirky and as like great members of the community, you know, like they had their place and and they were valuable and no we medicate them sometimes we lock them away in asylums. You know, and like are we so much better than that civilization? We're actually not. And like Foucault, he was a bit of a mad cunt as well though. He died of AIDS. Yeah he did yeah yeah and Foucault, he was a bit of a mad cunt as well, though. He died of AIDS. He did, yeah. And Foucault, he made a mad argument that he believes that the public execution

is actually healthier than prison system. Foucault believed that the social justice of, we'll say, murdering, executing a person is a healthier way than he referred to the prison system as medicalizing problems that it's actually more barbaric to get someone and remove

their to remove the person from society that nobody learns from that I'm not saying I agree with it I'm just saying it's an interesting thing that Michel Foucault... I think if you look at it from the macro level, right? So if you have a

Cork City here, right? Now where we grew up, there's a place called the Old Woman's Jail, Cork City Jail. And it was to hang people outside out of a Sunday morning. So the spectacle of that would scare or would instill a sense of authority across the public right from the ruling class but what Foucault is saying there like um and when the

when the prison system the prison industrial complex come in in in the form of the panopticon all right yeah it was Jeremy Bentham he was was another mad cunt, yeah. But that was around the Industrial Revolution. And it was the prisons, it was asylums, it was factories. How do you observe everybody from one point? And they don't know whether they're being watched or not. They think they're always being watched, so they're just going to confirm. But what Foucault was saying about that was,

like, you might execute one person, but instead of execute one person but instead of executing one person now we're locking thousands away behind closed doors and nobody gets to see the punishment and sometimes the punishment is prolonged it's torture solitary confinement and is exposing thousands of people to solitary confinement actually better than executing one... For society as a whole. As a macro, exactly.

So it's just another perspective. It's another perspective. It's not something that me and James are saying, let's start executing people. Because that's the thing about... You know what I mean? I just think it's interesting. It just gets you thinking.

The panopticon then as well, Jeremy Bentham. So Bentham designed the prison which a lot of modern prisons are based on. Even in Irish prisons like there's the circle and all the wings come out of the circle and then you can look down all the landings at any one time. And the thing is that the prisoner

Bentham's theory was that the prisoner will never know whether he's being watched or not so therefore he will confirm. And the factory worker. And the factory worker too. And our fucking phones, man. Our social media.

We now mediate our behaviour because we don't know, am I being watched or am I being listened to? So the social media companies have taken Bentham's panopticon. But Bentham, when he died, demanded that his body be stuffed companies have taken Bentham's Panopticon. But Bentham, when he died, demanded that his body be stuffed and placed at the head of the fucking

board of directors of the hospital. It's still fucking there, man. It's like 200... You know about that, don't you? You know about Jeremy Bentham's stuffed, man. You didn't know that? Jeremy fucking Bentham. His fucking body, 200-year- year old is just sitting there

in a glass case and it's only like 40 years ago people were, he said it was a hospital and he said I've a huge fortune right I will give all my money to this hospital and the hospital was like yeah we need it but

my corpse has to be at the top of the board of directors. Fucking hell. And they did it, like, they only got rid of him in, like, the 1950s. That's madness. But they still have his body. They took it away from the board of directors, and they moved it outside, and there's a wardrobe.

But if you open it, he's in there. Look him up. Jeremy Bentham. That's legit. Fucking madness. We'll have to fact check that in a minute. So, who says he should be fucking designing prisons? I know. And I think around the time of the Enlightenment as well,

we're trying to move away from the savagery of public floggings and stuff like that. But maybe the motivation to create the prison industrial complex was to, so people wouldn't be slaughtered on the street. But did we actually make it better? No. I don't think we did either. Here's an interesting theory I heard about the Enlightenment,

and it's related to substances. They claim the Enlightenment happened because the West got exposed to coffee. So the Enlightenment was like the 17th century, and it's a very Western thing. And it's when a lot of modern science and all this comes from the Enlightenment, where mostly men who had a lot of money would sit around and think. But the thing was, because of colonization, this new substance came about called coffee. So they all started, instead of meeting in pubs or taverns and drinking

they all now started meeting in coffee houses and driving themselves mad from caffeine and the enlightenment happened from that There's a boiling hot coffee and a boiling hot take There you go So thank you to my guests the two Norries

that was a wonderful chat, that was a very enlightening chat it was an absolute privilege to hear two people speak about their lived experience of some quite tough shit and to hear how they're coming out the other end of it and helping people

one other thing I want to plug is Timmy there who you heard speaking he's organising a GoFundMe page right and it's called walk this way to a wider education and Timmy basically is trying to raise 24,000 euro so that kids who were in schools in Cork who are struggling with their education. Timmy's raising money so that kids can get psychological assessments to find out if they may be struggling with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, any educational issue, because not every child can afford this.

As you know, I'm autistic. I struggled terribly in school. It would have been quite helpful to me at a young age to receive a diagnosis in school and to understand why I was underperforming. So Timmy Long's GoFundMe page, Walk This Way to a Wider Education, is trying to create that change in the lives of kids in

schools in Cork who may need a diagnosis so please consider supporting that and I will catch you next week with some hot takes and thank you to the two Norries for that chat and check out their podcast too. Talk bless. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the

ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. you