Crime, Addiction & Violence: Glasgow in the 90s | DEEPER

Added: 2026-06-01

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[00:00:25]>> I'm Mariana and today I'm joined by Darren. Hi, Darren. really nice to have you here.

[00:00:30]>> Um, can you please introduce yourself?

[00:00:33]>> Uh, my name is Darren McGarvey and I am an author, a broadcaster, uh, and a and a musician um, based in Glasgow.

[00:00:42]>> Let's start from the beginning and because I know there's quite a lot you can tell us about that. So, where did you grow up and kind of what was early childhood? I guess uh I grew up in um Glasgow in a housing scheme or estate as it's called in England called Pollock which frequently found itself at the top and bottom of all the wrong league tables, crime, poverty, deprivation um and all the rest of it. So it was a challenging time in the 80s, but my community was quite distinct from a lot of the surrounding areas because as well as a lot of the economic inequality and deprivation, there was a high level of political consciousness and so people locally were always organizing around different issues. And so it was a kind of I guess it was sort of sort of paradoxical upbringing in the sense that on one hand we didn't have a lot and there wasn't a lot of a reason to be hopeful about the future but on the other hand we felt empowered that if the community was to improve that we would have to step up to the plate and do something about it. Can you just for anyone who's not familiar with the subject and can you give us a bit of an overview of Scotland and Glasgow in particularly around that time like what was it like like what people were I don't know what were the kind of the moods in society you know what were people were after and kind of where does it stand where I think also what I'm interested about sorry there's kind of two questions in it where kind of Glasgow stand in relation to other places in Scotland >> of course if you're placing it on a kind of economic history. Then Glasgow in the 80s was in the grip of de-industrialization.

[00:02:36]So Glasgow previously had been the kind of industrial juggernaut of of the United Kingdom. Uh our shipyards, our forges, uh had shipped products and and things of that nature all around the world. So in Glasgow it was kind of understood that young people of a certain age when they left school they could go straight into a job working on the Clyde. Um and then these industries over the course of a couple of decades were were wound down or closed entirely. And so this led to vast swaves of the population effectively becoming kind of idle economically.

[00:03:19]So massive rise in people being dependent on benefits, massive rise in poverty and a general kind of malaise setting in where people begin to feel skeptical of authority. Uh they begin to live in conditions of chronic stress due to the various forms of insecurity.

[00:03:42]Violence rises, family dysfunction rises and then heroin hits. So Glasgow becomes the kind of epicenter of of the heroin epidemic in the early 90s and ultimately that was when I would have been about five or six. So I was feeling the effects of that uh at home because my mother was an alcoholic and a drug user.

[00:04:05]So it's kind of it's interesting because on one hand I can see it sort of intellectually and understand the history of it and on the other hand I've got this lived experience of what it was like to grow up in that period and for many of us it was it was very challenging.

[00:04:20]So talking about your family because you mentioned your mother. Can you kind of give us an overview of what she was like kind of what why she become became an alcoholic? Why she became an addict and also what was your dad like?

[00:04:35]Um, my mother's name was Sandra. She grew up in Castle Milk, which was one of four housing schemes that were created in the late 50s. And they were created with a kind of utopian idealism. This was the post-war consensus when the main political parties all agreed that despite their differences, we had to commit to building social housing. We had to commit to full employment. We had to use the state to try and lift people up out of poverty.

[00:05:14]And these housing estates or schemes, they were very well equipped in the beginning. So this would have been the first time that people had a a home with multiple rooms, a toilet, a bath, things of that nature that we take for granted now. But over the course of de-industrialization, which occurred from the kind of 60s on to the '9s gradually, then you had these vast populations with increasingly less opportunity. And so by the time I came along in the 80s, my mother had already grown up in a dysfunctional home and she bore the emotional psychological scars of that. So I think having a child young, which is partly what poverty predisposes young people to do, that creates a lot of stress. If you've not been given the tools to manage your own emotional life, uh what happens when you become responsible for someone else? And many people in those days, they did what worked for them to cope in the short term. And for my mother, that was alcohol. But over time, that gets out of control. So, anyone who lives in an alcoholic home will know that you grow up with a sense of um dread or fear or anxiety because you never know what version of the person you're getting on any given day. And having recovered from alcoholism myself, I understand this even more now. When you're in the grip of it, you don't really realize or appreciate the harms it's causing other people because you're very much consumed by this demon that only really cares about obtaining and taking whatever the substance is, alcohol, drugs, whatever.

[00:06:59]And as you begin to burn through your resources and burn all the bridges with family and friends, you feel compelled to turn to more extreme means of dishonesty um of uh and and and other behaviors really that that sort of lower your social standing and reputation um and really just are a bit of a nightmare to be around. So again, I see it from both sides, but she was a good person. Most alcoholics are and the ones who recover, they clean up the wreckage that their addiction left in their wake. But unfortunately for some people, rock bottom is death. And that was definitely the case with my old deer.

[00:07:42]>> I'm sorry about that.

[00:07:43]>> It's okay. It was a long time ago.

[00:07:45]>> Yeah. But still, um, what was because you touched on it briefly, but I kind of wanted to go into it. So, what was the childhood and then teenage years like in that environment with uh with our mother? But also like what was your dad what was your dad's stand on it? Like was he trying to help in any way or was he just >> No, of course. My my my dad um my dad worked up until my mother left. And then when she left there were three children to take care of. So, working a full-time job and caring for three children who all have various levels of trauma or, you know, whatever.

[00:08:24]>> Um, it's very challenging and you'll have a lot of people maybe watching who think it would be a dodo, but I don't think they truly understand what it's like. So, he stayed home and, you know, had to do the kind of laborious domestic daily stuff that parents have to do.

[00:08:42]doing as a parent now. I can say it's torturous and I'm married and I have only two kids and a wife. So, I have more respect for my dad now than ever.

[00:08:51]Um, he was a musical guy. He was in bands. He was a songwriter. But then when we came along, that all kind of took a backseat, but he carried that creativity into his uh style of parenting. So we were always encouraged to be creative uh to express ourselves, not to settle for the first low paid job that comes along, which is quite an unusual stance for a parent to take in a workingclass community where the real aim is just to get out of education and get a job. Um my mother, she left, she was staying in various places in Glasgow and Edinburgh. So we didn't see her much. Um and then I was around 16 I think when she passed away quite suddenly uh succumbing to her alcoholism. She couldn't stop drinking um and her liver packed in basically. So it was it wasn't a not that any death is pleasant but uh that kind of alcoholic death. Um, that's not the one that you hear about when the rock stars are telling stories about how they wrote their classic songs on heroin and uh on on whiskey. Uh, because if you don't get that behavior under control, you know, really it ends quite miserably.

[00:10:05]Excruciating pain, swollen abdomen, unable to unable to to take in any food or fluids, delirious. Um, and and you know, you you it's not it's it's not a rock and roll way to go out.

[00:10:21]>> And what was kind of your teenage and growing up like? Do you think what your mom been through kind of affected you or do you think environment affected you?

[00:10:33]Uh these these questions are difficult to answer because part of it is about recognizing all the various influences in play but ultimately for you to say with any reliability what exactly was what factors made you who you were um it's not an exact science. So everyone has a story that they tell themselves about why they are the way that they are so that it makes sense. And my story is essentially you know when you grow up without a maternal figure um then then you know there is there is work you have to do to heal from that but it doesn't become apparent how you need to heal until you're confronted with life and then suddenly you realize all the areas of life that you're not so good at handling.

[00:11:20]So I left home very young. I was 17 and uh after a kind of failed attempt to move in with a then girlfriend then uh I was referred by a psychologist to a supported accommodation project uh which was for homeless and estranged young people. I say estranged not strange although I would have qualified for that also. And really the idea here was that this was a fully staffed project where you get your own accommodation which you are responsible for and the staff work with you to support you to gain the skills so that you can learn how to be independent which often is what a lot of young people who become homeless lack because the circumstances of them leaving home were so abrupt that they hadn't yet acquired the skills necessary to survive. So, basic little things like paying your bills or cooking or um even just making sure that you don't stay home too much and become lonely. Uh the staff are there to sort of help you with those things. And also there is mental health support provided.

[00:12:32]This was a time where if you needed help, you got it pretty quickly. It's nothing like now. Today it's unrecognizable how long people have to wait for professional help or support when they're in genuine crisis. Um and often the lack of support is what induces the crisis in the first place. But back then, you know, I didn't realize how lucky I was. Um but I took up drinking in that period. I remember I remember the day that I bought alcohol even though I couldn't afford it. And I bought it just to have it in the house.

[00:13:07]I didn't drink it but I remember standing very clearly I remember it and I remember in that moment thinking I will remember this moment. So there was some kind of foresight. I could see I was already in trouble and I just bought this bottle of cider just to have it in the house. It was like a it was like a companion. That was the role that alcohol played for me in the beginning and it wasn't for years until I became alcoholic but the dependency was growing and it grew and isolation social isol social isolation um and and grief.

[00:13:43]Um, that's an interesting thing because, uh, I've talked to other alcoholics and they say that the idea of not having alcohol in the house when you're alcoholic is the worst thing cuz you you're not necessarily going to drink it, but just the fact that it's there.

[00:13:57]>> Yeah, that's true.

[00:13:58]>> How did that kind of develop? Like how do you think can you talk us through what kind of alcohol dependency went through and also the mental health aspect of that cuz it's all kind of interconnected. Yeah, >> of course. It's really hard to say what drives someone into addiction.

[00:14:16]Obviously, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that social deprivation and trauma and all of the things that come with it can be a predictor for it, but this doesn't explain how people from more affluent backgrounds develop addictions. So whatever it is, whether it's a personality that's more sensitive than the average person and so requires some kind of anesthetic to turn that all down, or whether it's just a habit that develops over time until you cross like some kind of threshold physiologically where you can no longer control how much you take.

[00:14:54]something switches and what happens is you begin to experience a preoccupation with alcohol and then when you take alcohol you experience a loss of control or a loss of awareness or insight into how it's affecting you. So very early on uh because I was young I didn't have a lot of responsibilities and like many teenagers or people in their early 20ies very egocentric very self-centered and so I didn't really see that there were any major costs to binging for days on end getting high but I began to experience after the parties when I was back on my own again quite debilitating side effects that at the time I didn't associate with alcohol I thought I had a mental health problem that was clinical in nature and so I went to pursue a diagnosis of you know whatever back then it was border disorder was the thing that doctors would speculate that you had or it was anxiety and depression. Today it would be things like personality disorders or neuro uh divergence in different phases that are different in vogue conditions that seem to be thrust upon you and don't always apply and that was one of those the last thing any doctor thought to ask me was are you drinking a lot you know are you uh taking drugs a lot because a lot of the experiences I was having hallucinations hearing voices um sleep paralysis.

[00:16:38]Uh these are all withdrawal symptoms from alcohol. And while they weren't severe enough for me to have the kind of shakes like the classic alcoholic does or weren't bad enough for me to have to drink in the morning just to function, uh alcohol took control of me very firmly in my kind of mid20ies. And uh rather than confront the alcohol as the main driver of the issue, I confronted every other peripheral problem around it because deep down I didn't want to accept I was an alcoholic. I couldn't imagine my life without alcohol. So that's the trick alcohol plays on an alcoholic mind. It wants to hide in the corner like a monster in a dark room.

[00:17:21]Anytime a light is shone on it, it will move to the other dark corner and it will present a mirage that points to any other reason for your condition other than the drinking because it's like a it's like a parasite that lives in you. It hijacks your consciousness. It hijacks your your your awareness. And that's why the only thing that will stop an alcoholic from drinking is their own desire to stop.

[00:17:50]And even then, it's still a battle after that.

[00:17:53]>> Yeah. What was what would you say was kind of the depth of your the worst the worst kind of part of your addiction to alcohol into drugs?

[00:18:02]>> The worst moments for me weren't the dramas, and there were many.

[00:18:09]One of the things that really got me through my difficulties in my 20ies, but also acted as an accelerant to those difficulties, was the fact that I got involved in a local hip-hop community.

[00:18:24]So, I began performing under the name Loki and releasing music that drew on my experiences of growing up in Po and the dysfunction and later on my kind of mental and emotional health. And so this this created a guardrail where I didn't become too isolated. I was still getting vital social connection, forming social bonds, all the things that human beings need to thrive. And this was offsetting or mitigating some of the negative effects of alcohol. Increasingly, what I found was that there were nasty nastier elements to my personality which were part of my ego's defense mechanism. I didn't trust people.

[00:19:13]So, I had this technique of almost being deliberately unlikable so that I didn't have to deal with social rejection.

[00:19:23]I didn't know that at the time. In retrospect, that's how I see it. But all of my best friends now, they'll each be able to tell you an experience in the very early days of a relationship where subconsciously I was testing their loyalty by being very challenging, you know, getting in fights, um, saying kind of mean things. That was the weapon that I chose to protect myself within these communities, you know. Um, the only thing a tough guy is scared of is getting ripped verbally in front of other people, you know. And I understood that really really early on that that that was even more of a serious weapon, you know, than than than violence sometimes, but I deployed that thoughtlessly. And so, a lot of people got caught in the crossfire. Then you add alcohol into the mix. And the fact that rapping almost gives you a license to be aggressive um and and kind of toxic as people would say now. And before you know it, I'm I'm really leaning into this persona that I've created, which bears no resemblance to the Darren who left Pollock, >> who wanted to be an actor, who was into theater, um was interested in being a playwright.

[00:20:46]And you know, there were no opportunities for people like me though to do those things. Rap was the only art form that you were allowed to do really.

[00:20:53]What rap offered me was the the ability to veil my interest in music and writing and art behind a kind of masculine persona because these were the things that you had to do coming from my background. You couldn't be into art. You know, everything was gay back then. You know, this everything if you were into anything other than football, it was gay. If you could read, it was gay. any kind of academic prowess, any interest in anything out with the usual um the the usual sort of co-signed interests. And you were kind of marked out as someone uh to be picked on or bullied or mocked and usually by people who were just living in fear all the time. Fear of judgment, fear of ridicule. but they all clumped up together in little groups or gangs and gave the impression they were tough and this really impacted how I then went on to express myself later in the hip-hop scene. So, it's it's interesting because I spent many years creating a persona that wasn't really a reflection of who I am and then many many years slowly deconstructing that until now where I'm sort of closer to the realm of authenticity perhaps than I've than I've been.

[00:22:22]>> When you were talking about the all of those things where like if you read if you're like interested in music or poetry or anything like that, it's thought so gay. Do you think it has an element of workingass versus middle class? Is that is that kind of the way of people protecting their own kind of I guess identity and where they come from and going like everything else I just reject?

[00:22:44]>> Yeah. the there there's a kind of there's a sort of symbio there's a symbiosis between the stereotypes of middle class people and workingclass people in the sense that a lot of it is based on a on on a caricature of how the other person thinks and feels and lives. Now not all stereotypes are completely baseless.

[00:23:05]Some of them there is a kernel of truth and the kernel of truth at the root of of my analysis of class is that you have a lot of middle class people who have strong opinions and confidently assert those opinions because that's the culture they've been raised in where they're told that they are the smart people. They are the people who go on to administer society and culture and the arts.

[00:23:37]And workingclass people, they sense that because the culture that they see, all they see is the middle class perspective, the middle class voice. And I'm not saying all middle class people think the same way or speak the same way, but there is a sensibility with each social class that's pervasive among that class. and is very hard to deviate from. And the middle class sensibility sees workingass culture as an absence of culture. So it sees workingclass culture as a kind of as as as as something that has to be redeemed by becoming more middle class. So this is where you are taught to speak properly. Uh this is where your passion is confused with aggression. This is where your common language in parlance is seen as vulgar or the subjects or tone that you take when you delve into certain subjects as an artist are seen uh as a reflection of your character or your personality rather than a reflection of your interests.

[00:24:46]So, a rapper from a working-class background who raps about guns and violence and police brutality, they are seen as violent. A playright who writes about those things is seen as insightful, as seen as capable of handling lofty subject matter and theme uh and character. But any rapper who talks about an abusive relationship is assumed to have engaged in abuse.

[00:25:14]Whereas the middle class people, whether they've experienced these things or not, they get free reign to tackle any subject they want without that being seen as a reflection of their experience or their nature. And that's a pretty serious discrepancy or sorry, a pretty serious disparity in the arts. And really what that tells us from working-class communities is that there's a very narrow range of arts and very narrow range of subjects that we can tackle.

[00:25:44]without being excluded by middle class gatekeepers. So part of my work as an artist is about you know reminding middle class artists that you know in working-class communities we have our philosophers we have our storytellers we have our intellectuals just because they sound different when they speak or they look at things from a different vantage point. This doesn't mean that we're inferior to you. doesn't mean that you're smarter than us and there is much for you to learn uh if you come and walk alongside us instead of parachuting into our communities and lecturing us uh about how everything we do is offensive or abusive.

[00:26:25]Um I want to ask you about accent because I think that's connected because I appreciate that you are now making an effort for to talk to me so I can understand you.

[00:26:37]>> Yeah. So obviously partially that is because your accent is quite strong compared to other accents in the UK.

[00:26:45]>> Is that connected to to to what we've been talking about about class where you talking to people from a different background? Let's put it that way.

[00:26:55]>> You have to adjust who you are to fit in.

[00:26:59]>> Yes. But I'm the kind of person who's happy to make that accommodation. So I'm not adjusting who I am. I'm being who I am. But that's controversial in community where I come from where code switching or altering the pace of of speech or annunciating annunciating certain uh words is seen as an attempt to get curry favor with middle class people or is seen as inauthentic when actually these are skills that I have acquired as a result of moving through different social and cultural and economic spheres and for me not to apply skills that I've acquired would be dishonest. Um my goal here in this interview is to be understood.

[00:27:55]>> Mhm.

[00:27:56]>> And I have the skill to make that likelier. Um, so why would I not uh speak in a way that is uh generous to those who might struggle if I spoke in my natural speech style.

[00:28:16]>> However, what must also be understood is that for me to do that, it shows a level of sophistication.

[00:28:24]It shows a level of cultural awareness uh that is is often not associated with people from workingclass backgrounds.

[00:28:33]And what is additionally interesting to me is that someone who is privately educated and thus has acquired a speech style which is not doesn't actually uh correlate to any geographical history or culture. It's an institutional mimicry.

[00:28:49]they will automatically think that they are more socially sophisticated than me as a result of their speech style and as a result of their upbringing. Um, but they can only communicate and understand a very narrow range of people. Whereas you can put me in a room anywhere in this country uh with any social class.

[00:29:13]You put me in a room with uh someone who's been in prison for 20 years. You put me in the room with King Charles, I'll be just as comfortable. Um, and there are not a lot of upper class people who could say that. Uh, you put them in my community where I grew up and just leave them there without their big car and their entourage. Let's see how far their social sophistication gets them. Um, so these are just many of the contradictions of of of the kind of cultural class stuff that goes on in the UK. The people who think they're the smartest, often they are. are highly intelligent in certain ways, but um often they betray their deep deep ignorance every time they open their mouths. And it's important that you know there are some people like me around to point that out uh and for that to be heard. particularly for people from my background to see someone from their background doing more than just playing the role of the workingclass person who's rough and ready uh but someone who can engage on an intellectual level with people who are the smartest. So you you were talking about the um kind of getting into rap music and alcohol taking further grip of you. What was the low point which helped you to come clean and get out of it?

[00:30:37]>> I began to reach out for help in my kind of late 20s, so 26 27 and I did that through local mutual aid groups. You'll hear about them 12step fellowships.

[00:30:59]um you know, alcoholics anonymous, cocaine anonymous, narcotics anonymous, there is a fellowship now for every kind of addictive behavior, but they all borrow from the same program of recovery outlined by Alcoholics Anonymous. And having tried a lot of other things like uh alcohol and drug counselors, various types of doctors, I realized that actually the only way I was going to get well and sober was by following the example of other people who had recovered from the same type of alcoholism that I have. There is a certain kind of wisdom that someone possesses when they found a solution to a problem as grave as alcoholism.

[00:31:49]And it took me a while to accept that because I too had been conditioned to think that professionals had all the answers. And they have many answers, but not all of them. And so I began going to meetings and this was the first time that I had been confronted by people who used to drink a lot and then didn't and not only didn't but seemed happier not drinking.

[00:32:12]And that's powerful. That's one of the main ingredients of how you get sober.

[00:32:17]You need a tangible example to follow because anyone in theory can say just stop.

[00:32:23]But if you can't talk to someone about the specifics, what do you do on a Friday night when for years your mind and body has been conditioned to go into this ritual of going to the pub and getting a bag of whatever and being out for 3 days on the trot. How do you rebuild your life in the absence of that? But like many people, I was in and out and in and out. The idea of having a drink would return. I would think I'll just do it tonight or for the weekend and then I would be gone again for months on end. So that process reinforced for me how serious the problem was cuz when you have a period of sobriety and you think you've cracked it and then you find yourself back in that dark room uh with other alcoholics all trying to figure out how to get the money together to keep the party going.

[00:33:14]Um you know it's a humbling experience.

[00:33:18]So there were many rock bottoms for me, but luckily one thing I've never struggled with is knowing I have a problem and knowing I have to do something about it. It was because of that willingness to keep returning to those groups and those meetings and having the message reinforced again and again and learning from my mistakes that you know for more or less the last 10 years I've been alcohol and drug free. I've had some slips here and there. I was in rehab for a month a few years back after the success of my first book. Um, but I mean that's a miracle for someone who drank like I drank to to to to not have an interest in alcohol anymore.

[00:34:04]It's magic.

[00:34:07]Your music, cuz you talked about the connection between alcohol and your rap music and your rap persona.

[00:34:14]>> What was the adjustment there? Like do you think you had to lose a lot of that persona? Did you do did you feel like you couldn't come back to it now that you were clean?

[00:34:21]>> Yeah. Well, I tried. What I found with the the rap persona, which is a reflection of me, but I would say an emotionally stunted younger version of me, quicker to rise to conflict, someone who's more willing to deploy aggression to get their way. Kind of toxic behaviors. But toxic behaviors must be seen in context for young men.

[00:34:47]These behaviors are how we survive in the communities that we grow up in. So there's a kind of game theory to being a young male in a workingclass community.

[00:34:57]In order to ward off conflict, you have to make people believe that you aren't frightened of it. Um, and that's how the inauthenticity creeps in. Because ultimately what you're trying to persuade everyone of is that you're not scared, but everyone's scared. Anyone who carries a knife is scared. Anyone who carries a gun is scared. Um, and so that's how the persona develops. And with rap, you have an artistic license to embellish that with stories and whatever. So for me, Loki uh became I guess a kind of cipher of all of these what I now understand as personality defects. So things that are rooted in fear, things that are rooted in fear of judgment, fear of being seen a certain way, um fear of being seen as afraid.

[00:35:51]Loki was a kind of sandbox that I could play in where I could act out this fantasy of being dominant, of being strong, of being feared. Um, of course I'm 40 years old now and while obviously I keep that toolbox there just in case, I don't want to set bad examples to my own children and I want to live a peaceful life and an authentic life. And so the last kind of year for me musically has just been about setting that persona aside. You know, even with my last album, not funded by Creative Scotland, which is all about the arts and all about the accent and all about the things that we have discussed. That album is me saying goodbye to Loki and me saying thanks to the hip-hop scene for tolerating Loki for 20 years. Um, but it's also symbolic of me and a new phase of my recovery where I recognize I may not be bothered by the obsession to use alcohol and drugs, but there are still other things I have to work on and be willing to let go of. And part of that is that the that tendency towards those more toxic masculine traits. I want to ask you about your book because I think it's it's quite bio biographical obviously but there was a lot of things there which I think come across now with your work in terms of activism and kind of speaking about poverty and everything. So I wanted to touch on those two things like how did that idea come about like why did you decide to write it and also maybe talk a little bit about your view of the poverty and kind of the what we can do about it how we can solve it. Of course, the idea for the book came about because uh an author, pretty famous, respected author actually, Denise Miner, um she suggested to me to write a book, which was the first time anyone had ever floated the idea. And it was based on the fact, you know, in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, I had just got sober. I had a lot of energy. And I had a lot of time on my hands because I was no longer uh drinking every day. And this this this uh manifest as a real intense uh period of writing and opining and campaigning around politics and poverty.

[00:38:26]And so I was writing articles which I didn't understand then were cultural criticism or political commentary. They were just my thoughts. and social media was in its early stages in terms of Facebook and generous algorithms and we hadn't quite figured out the Pandora's box that we were about to open. So, social media at that time seemed like a tremendous tool that suddenly you were cutting out the media and just going straight to your fan base or your reader. And Denise enjoyed an article that I had written about the art school fire the first one and she says, "Have you thought about writing a book?" So, I had a bunch of essays and I started kind of compiling them and then thinking how could I develop them and what were the themes. But I knew that I wouldn't get a book deal because of my background and my reputation in the Scottish arts and culture as being someone who didn't play nice with the middle class gatekeepers.

[00:39:25]So I understood that memoir and personal lived experience was a way for me to create interest in a book from a workingass person and then I could smuggle in all of the political commentary and analysis that really I wanted to talk about. But I had no idea how big the book would become and it wasn't written for a mass audience. It was written for local people. So that side of it surprised me.

[00:39:54]Um, and then suddenly I regretted some of the personal stuff that I wrote about. Um, but that's an experience that I, you know, apply now to the current work I'm doing. Um, but Poverty Safari really, it's the culmination of everything that I understood about the world and myself at that point in my life. And that book has real legs in terms of where it's reached globally and how many people have been impacted by it. It surprises me, you know. It really does. It's really nice, but I mean, I still get messages about that book to this day. I still get royalty checks for that book to this day. Um, and the second one, well, I think it's a better book. People always say, "Yeah, I bought it, but I haven't finished it because it's too long and it's not personal enough." you know >> what's your cuz you when you read news these days about UK the there's quite a few elements that are quite grim I guess in terms of where the cost of living the um the state of many social services the kind of I don't know the the medical system the kind of young people and you know and and where where everything's kind of heading.

[00:41:22]What's your view on that? And what's kind of your view on I don't know. I don't know. Solving poverty seems like a very huge thing to ask, but do you know what I mean?

[00:41:31]>> Yeah. It's um my view is I guess depends what sort of scale you're looking at it. If you're looking at it just in a scale of an electoral cycle, uh grim is is is is going to be the theme for the next few years.

[00:41:51]We know what people need to thrive. We know that people need decent paying employment that's stable.

[00:42:02]They need secure, safe housing and communities that have access to well-kept, wide open spaces for exercise, social connection, and we need access to decent nutrition. Now you go to any of the burs in London where poverty is high and you tell me what you see, you don't see those things. But you can cross over uh the street some places, you know, and suddenly the house prices shoot up and suddenly the pavements widen and they're cleaner and uh and there's a park and there's florists and groceries and those people live 10 years longer than the people on the other side of the street. And we keep commissioning think tanks to figure out why this is. But we already know why this is. So when we talk about deprivation, what are people being deprived of? They're being deprived of those basic building blocks of health.

[00:43:08]And wherever we find poor health, we find cost, social cost. costs in welfare, costs in the NHS, costs in criminal justice, costs in the education system, which we are now in a kind of perma crisis, trying to retrofit all of these social systems, trying to catch up with all the the various trends that have been in motion for 20 years. And now we see a lot of the gains uh of the post-war period and life expectancy, interclass marriage, social mobility flatlining or going in reverse.

[00:43:48]So these are very ominous warning signs in the cockpit of society there. Lights flashing red.

[00:43:55]Luckily for politicians now, they've got a prospect of a new phase of militarism and talk of war.

[00:44:04]Um, and this will give all the workingclass people something to do in a few years.

[00:44:10]Uh, where the politicians send them all in to fight and the politicians get to take the performance-enhancing drug of war for their political failings. all over the western world right now. Very unimpressive, mediocre political leaders are enjoying higher polling ratings, higher popularity, telling a new story about society and a coherent vision which has been sorely lacking for many decades.

[00:44:43]So don't think that all this talk of war is just because of geopolitics. There are many incentives. Uh, and I think actually a lot of us might be drawn into it because we're so sick of the negativity. We're so sick of the division. We're so sick of there being no answers.

[00:45:01]And the idea that it's all Russia's fault just so so seductively simple.

[00:45:07]This is a difficult period coming up.

[00:45:10]Whatever it is, it's going to involve people on mass having to get out on the streets and do something, whether it's protesting a war or fighting a war. But I don't see any other way around that particularly for for workingclass people.

[00:45:25]>> When we talked with you before, you've um mentioned an interesting thing which speaks to me um where you say that where you said that the key to breaking the poverty is empower empowerment of women.

[00:45:38]>> Mhm.

[00:45:38]>> And educating education of women and stuff. Can you elaborate on that because I'm interested in your point of view of that. It was based on a kind of understanding that in uh third world countries one of the biggest barriers to economic development was how intensely patriarchal they were.

[00:46:00]So to the extent that women don't even have the same rights as men or they don't have they don't have control over their reproductive cycles or their bodies. So wherever there is more autonomy for women, uh more rights for women, the way that they leverage those freedoms has many benefits for people around them, including children.

[00:46:26]And I mean, you can see how that's led to a lot of economic productivity and social democracies when the more rights that women have have fought for and and rightly been given has led to massive economic benefits for them, for society. Now, don't get me wrong, with every solution comes a new problem. And the problem now for families is both parents working all the time. Child care, how do you make time for actually raising children properly when you're both thinking about careers or you're both thinking about working multiple jobs to make ends meet. But in general in a functional economy uh where women and men have equal rights then it just stands to reason that society would experience various dividends both social and economic and in countries where we don't see uh that equality then we see the economic issues associated with that. Do you think your how strong you feel about social issues is directly linked to your upbringing and kind of everything you've been you've been through in your family history?

[00:47:45]interesting question because yes definitely but also in in my current the book that I'm working on now trauma industrial complex um which is about the stories that we tell ourselves about our experiences and the things we talk about sometimes publicly.

[00:48:06]One of the chapters in that deals with identity and I deconstruct my own identity because many of the aspects of my personality or my history or experience that I sort of take for granted, these were things that I didn't choose.

[00:48:27]These were things that I just kind of embraced because that was all that was on offer, you know. So, you know, the workingclassness, for example, um or even the the the the trauma narrative, there were influences in my life when I was young. My grandmother, for example, who was just a kind of she really was an activist and a political campaigner, but she was constrained by the norms of her time.

[00:48:54]So, it wasn't the done thing for a woman to be out there campaigning or having political opinions, but you know, I've got a kind of I've got a she left a book to me uh that she collected all of her various little things that she did throughout her life, leaflets, campaigns, petitions that she'd been involved with. And you could see she was very highly intelligent, politically engaged. nothing made her more angry than injustice.

[00:49:24]So, it's obvious where I've picked up all of that stuff and I'm grateful for that stuff and that's part of who I am.

[00:49:31]But also at this point in my life I have to be wary particularly with a public profile that I don't allow this to just become another performative persona you know because when you gain a platform for writing about a political issue like social class an expectation forms among a section of your readership that you exist to represent them and that ultimately your your life is a sacrifice.

[00:49:59]uh that that um you shouldn't enjoy your life too much because there are so many people suffering and while that is a kind of I guess you know that's not entirely wrong you should be mindful that other people go through what they go through activism can also just become another way for the ego to take hold sometimes and we see this in a lot of the activism that happens all across the spectrum it's about being seen to be a certain type of person the people are really affected In my community, no one will ever know who they are. You know, they're out there doing the work every day in the community. They're known to the community. And it's at that level where I see real change.

[00:50:42]People come in with 40-year heroin addictions. They get sober in a few weeks, then they help other people get sober. There's real transformation, radical transformation happening at grassroots level every day which has not been orchestrated by activists and campaigners, but you won't hear about that on X or Facebook or Tumblr or whatever the activists are all using.

[00:51:06]Um, so yes, it's right that I have beliefs and desires and anger and it's justified and I should use my platform for good.

[00:51:21]But it's also okay for me to enjoy my life and prioritize my children and not see myself as some kind of quasi public service for other people's frustrations.

[00:51:34]And that's difficult. It's difficult because there's a lot of vanity in what I do and what we do as activists. We want to be seen as good by the in group.

[00:51:44]>> Um but I've realized that that um a lot of that is quite insincere and it's even more cynical when you're portraying yourself as virtuous while being insincere. You know, at least the right-wingers are honest about what pricks they are.

[00:52:00]And what do you think your history of addiction taught you to who you and kind of sh how how did it shape who you are now?

[00:52:11]>> Taught me uh that the mind is a powerful thing. My mind truly told me a story that I could not enjoy life without alcohol or the promise of alcohol and the middle distance and it told me that story for years and it was it was very compelling story and then you know one day I began to chip away at that. I also learned through addiction that sometimes the the the best way to win is to admit you've lost. You know that that with me alcohol was like a war that it was a battle I had lost many years ago but I was still out every day fighting it thinking this time it'll be different and that actually accepting complete defeat and and and kind of a a sort of powerlessness gave me access to power you know and some people they don't like that they don't like that idea of describing themselves as alcoholic once they've stopped drinking.

[00:53:21]But I learned the mind is still so powerful that I can forget. That's what I'm dealing with. A feature of my condition is that I will always return to those factory settings unless I am actively engaged in recovery.

[00:53:36]Why that happens, I don't know. But if if if addiction's done one thing for me, it's humbled me. And that is again that's quite a task um for someone with an ego like mine.

[00:53:49]>> Do you still go to um a meetings? Do are you still active in the community?

[00:53:54]>> I'm active and I'm not just attending meetings. I'm I'm I'm I'm someone in the community who's responsible for facilitating those groups so that other people can come in.

[00:54:05]So there are responsibilities that I have whether it's managing the money of a group or whether it's secretarial secretarial kind of uh duties for a group or volunteering time on a helpline a few hours a week. Um and I only say that for the benefit of anyone watching who's in recovery or early recovery or thinking about recovery. I don't say that to transmit or telegraph the things I do and how great am I cuz it's actually it's not cool to talk about the good things you do uh in our community.

[00:54:39]That's seen as egotistical. You know, that's why we do things anonymously.

[00:54:44]Uh but as someone with a bit of visibility, it's a bit different. You know, sometimes it's important to be frank and open about what's required to get sober and stay sober. And it's not just going and telling your hard luck story in a meeting every couple of weeks when you're battered and bruised from another drinking experiment. You need to become willing to do things you've never done before. And that means spend some of your week not thinking about yourself, which is a very hard thing to do, isn't it? That's what we call work and sobriety, not thinking about ourselves. But that's the key to a lot of the suffering I've experienced. And that's even the suffering that's situated in real systemic inequality.

[00:55:25]There's a lot of things that we make harder than they have to be um by uh falling for the tricks that our minds play on us and recovery and being around people who are authentic and focused on the solution and not the problem all the time. Uh that's life-changing and has been for me. It's it's really good and I ask you that question exactly for that reason. We've done a poll um cuz on our YouTube channel we can do a poll and we've done a poll about what topics people would want to hear about and the mental health and addiction came as the first thing.

[00:55:57]>> Yeah.

[00:55:58]>> And we've had a lot of um recovering addicts from different types of um addiction on the channel and um yeah I always ask this question and I always ask the question which probably going to be the last question I'll ask you. um what would be your kind of um message or a piece of advice I guess to someone who's struggling or has someone who they love who's struggling because I think that's also a very hard position to be in.

[00:56:24]>> Yeah.

[00:56:25]>> Like what would you say >> if you're struggling with the question of whether or not you are an alcoholic or an addict? Just know that people who aren't don't struggle with those questions. Very rarely does someone repeatedly return to that question and then find they don't have a problem.

[00:56:45]So if you're asking yourself that question, am I an alcoholic? The answer is probably yes.

[00:56:53]What you do with that information now is your choice. If you're supporting someone who has an addiction, understand that you play some kind of role in it.

[00:57:05]That's the nature of this condition.

[00:57:07]It's often a family condition and we all adopt roles relative to the sufferer of the addiction.

[00:57:15]Sometimes we think we're loving someone by giving them things or money or excuses or protecting them from consequences.

[00:57:25]And sometimes that can help. But sometimes that can make things worse.

[00:57:30]Sometimes that's just a green light that we can continue to behave selfishly, addictively. For me, consequences are what brought me to my knees.

[00:57:42]Consequences dispensed with love, structured punishment, you know, um these things brought me to a state of reasonleness about what was going on.

[00:57:53]So, counterintuitively, sometimes the best way to love someone with a serious addiction is to do it from a distance.

[00:58:00]and stop engaging in the dysfunction by enabling it. But these are controversial things to say obviously.

[00:58:09]>> Well, yeah. Yes and no. Cuz to be honest, most most of the people we talk to say kind of the same thing >> where you can um >> you can make it worse.

[00:58:19]>> Yeah.

[00:58:19]>> It's never your fault what the addict does or doesn't do. recognizing the role that you've been given by them as part of your own recovery cuz you have your own healing to do. If you've been afflicted by someone else's addiction, that's that's a long road, too.