My Story

I was born in a state of silence.

In a London hospital in 1982, I came into the world flat — no heartbeat, no breath, a total system failure before I'd even begun. The doctors brought me back, and for thirty years, the world told me I was fine. But a brain that starts with a power cut doesn't wire itself like everyone else's.

I spent two decades running at 100mph. By the late nineties I'd found my home in the Camden club scene — the tail end of one era bleeding into the next, when everyone was either coming up or coming down and nobody was asking too many questions. I managed the noise, the crowds, the late-night adrenaline. Looking back, I wasn't just working; I was self-medicating. Using the chaos of the city to jumpstart a brain that felt like it was constantly under-stimulated. I was one of them — the ones who came of age in that world and never quite left it. It worked, until it didn't.

I left Camden for Brighton, and Brighton got into my blood.

I didn't arrive as a professional. I arrived as a mess, and I became part of the community the way you really become part of a community — by dissolving into it. I worked in it, lived in it, became it. Somewhere along the way, people started listening to me. I met the mayor. I ran two charities. One of them was a community nightclub — because I understood, in my bones, that for some people the dancefloor is the only place they've ever felt safe. That the scene isn't the problem. The scene is where we survive.

The next round of traumas hit the way they always do — not one clean blow, but a series of them, each one finding the crack the last one left behind. And here's what nobody tells you about trauma: it doesn't just leave marks on your mind. It rewires your brain. The same way a cardiac arrest does. The same way a power cut at birth does. Complex PTSD isn't a reaction — it's a restructuring. Your threat system gets jammed on. Your brakes fail. Your ability to feel safe, to trust, to stop — physically stop — before an impulse becomes an action, all of it gets scrambled at the hardware level.

Over the last ten years, I've flat-lined more than once. Each time I was resuscitated and sent home. No rehab. No neuro-specialists. Just a "good luck" and a pat on the back. But you can't reboot a computer that many times without the hard drive starting to glitch. I lost days. I lost my balance. I lost the ability to stamp time. Most devastatingly, I lost my brakes.

The medical system didn't see a brain injury or a trauma response. They saw a difficult patient. The diagnoses piled up — each one a new label, none of them a solution. Personality disorder. Then another. Then another. I was sectioned at the Maudsley. Sectioned again in Sussex. More than once. Each time I came out with a new diagnosis and the same struggles. For eight years I lived as a chemical wreck — a sedated ghost of the person who'd once run a nightclub and sat across from the mayor.

When the fog became unbearable, I tried to end it. The system's response was to kick me out.