Why is Britain's Working Class FURIOUS?? - Darren McGarvey on the Trauma Industrial Complex

1. 0:00 – 2:05

   McGarvey’s origin story: anxiety, responsibility, and the working-class double bind

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:00

      Darren McGarvey, welcome to Origin Story. I wanna say off the bat, I'm a huge fan of you, your work, what you stand for. Recently read your new book, Trauma Industrial Complex, but this book, Poverty Safari, was a, a mere gift I was given as a teenager. Um, and when I read it, it was the first time that I felt heard and seen because you were so open about your story, uh, and that was reflective of what I felt my story was. And actually, it was my first foray into the power of storytelling because it was the first time I felt pictured by a story.

   2. DMDarren McGarvey0:31

      Mm.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:32

      Uh, and then your, your new book, Trauma Industrial Complex, is kind of like a ironic reflection of sharing your story so publicly. But before we go into all of that, can we set the scene of what your story is?

   4. DMDarren McGarvey0:44

      Certainly. Nice intro as well, man. You're quite smooth. Um, well, I mean, the general story goes, if I was to sum it up in a paragraph, grew up in a working-class background at quite a tough time for working-class people, and I was exposed to all the things that people would associate with that kind of upbringing.

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:04

      What were they?

   6. DMDarren McGarvey1:06

      Poverty, alcoholism, violence, and not necessarily always directly to me, but just that being the general feeling in the community at times. And so I, uh, I, I kind of grew up with a bit of a, a, a split personality in terms of how I felt life and how I thought about life. On one hand, I was a very anxious kid. I didn't feel safe a lot of the time, um, and I was always looking for reassurance or validation of some description. But then on the other side, I understood that I was responsible for myself and for my community, and that if I wanted a better life, then, uh, I need to, I need to get out there and do something about it. And I guess that dichotomy sums up me to this day, to be honest. It seems like it's a frame that I will never truly escape. It's just part of who I am.

   7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:03

      You grew up in Pollok, right?

   8. DMDarren McGarvey2:04

      Mm-hmm.

2. 2:05 – 5:04

   Pollok in the 1980s: utopian housing vision meets structural decline

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:05

      Set the stage of what Pollok felt, looked, and sounded like in the 19- was it 1980s?

   2. DMDarren McGarvey2:11

      Yeah. Well, in Pollok in the '80s, Pollok's ... See, Pollok is, is interesting because on one hand, it's, it's quite a nice area aesthetically in terms of there's lots of g- wide, open green spaces. Um, and the way that it was built, it was built to account for the fact that other forms of housing estate and social housing were sometimes overly cramped together, and there was little space, so you had the kind of high-rise or tenement, sorry, model. And so this was, like, built in the '50s. It was a kind of utopian vision that underpinned it. So Pollok would've been the first place that people had a, a bathroom in their house that they didn't have to share with a neighbor.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:53

      Mm.

   4. DMDarren McGarvey2:53

      Baths. There was regulations on term, in terms of what, what, what a dwelling had to possess in order to be called a home. So it had to be safe and secure. And so that's, Pollok was one of four of the big housing schemes in Glasgow that really represented that, uh, post-world war vision of a society, a new social contract, looking after people, having, you know, uh, deployed the state to manage all of the business of war, uh, and how effective that was. Then people started to think, "Well, why can't we apply the same level of thinking and strategy to how we organize society?" But unfortunately, uh, that all happened as, as the UK's sort of coming down off the, the peak of, of its empire and all of the wealth and prestige that comes with that. And so as the, the UK economy begins to suffer as a result of being over-leveraged all over the world, then that begins to show up in the UK as, uh, you know, structural poverty, where there are no longer the job opportunities to offset how many people, uh, are born, subsequently l- looking for work. And so I arrive in the '80s very much, uh, at the, at the peak or the bottom, depending on what sort of league table you want to look at. Um, and it just meant that, you know, the attitude in the community that I grew up in the time was very much that politicians didn't pay attention to us, uh, that there wasn't a lot of hope for the future, that you weren't safe i- in your community. And just the aesthetic stress of fly-tipping and littering, it creates a sense that kind of, it's, it's like your, your, your, your daily life is, I guess, typified by a kind of vigilance that you have about the consequences of just, like, moving around and going about, about your life. Um, and a lot of people will identify with that description even though they might not know Pollok.

3. 5:04 – 10:00

   Learning class through contrast: moving into the West End and seeing inequality up close

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr5:04

      You are my favorite commentator on class. You are so proud of your working-class upbringing and identity. When did you have this realization that you're working class? Was it always evident in your life, or was there a specific moment where you found out about that term and then self-described yourself as it?

   2. DMDarren McGarvey5:24

      I, I grew up in a time of militancy. Uh, there was a lot of, you know, hard left politics and hard right politics going on in the '80s, uh, and early '90s, and that was very much a kind of response to Thatcherism in different ways. I grew up on the left side of that divide, and I remember, you know, vividly being along at public meetings, rallies, seeing people in positions of influence being held accountable by normal, ordinary people who were organizing, who were finding their voice. And, um, and so, you know, whether it was the M77 motorway protests with the Pollok Free State, or whether it was people standing against school closures and whatnot, there always just seemed to be some campaign or action going on in the community, and I was along there as a kid just kind of soaking it up. I didn't understand it all at first. I was not there necessarily because I felt very strongly either way about things. I was there with my granny, uh, maybe my aunties or uncles or something like that. Um, so this idea of participating directly in democracy rather than letting a politician do it on your behalf, uh, that was just innate to me. That was just obvious to me as, as I got older. When I started to become aware of not necessarily my social class, but how that differed from a middle class background was actually when I moved into a middle class area, because then it becomes so stark what the differences are. So a former partner of mine, uh, her mother owned property in a very plush West End area, and we'd been living in a flat together, and then we got the offer of moving in to that property once it had become available. So suddenly I went from, you know, working class, rowdy, angry, eat the rich, and suddenly I'm living in a community where there is no litter on the street, where there are buses every 10 minutes. There's a train stop. Um, there are florists and groceries that are not really just off licenses masquerading [laughs]

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:50

      [laughs]

   4. DMDarren McGarvey7:50

      ... as something else, you know? And so just the general feel of the community, the upkeep of the community, it just, it just vibrated in a different way, and the overriding sense that I had living there was that I felt safe. I was safe. Suddenly I was the bam. Suddenly I was the, the, the dangerous person. Um, I was, I, I was probably the only person on my whole street that would ever drink Buckfast, you know? When you're walking back from the off license with your bottle of Bucky in an area like that, suddenly you're kind of aware of the fact that you've got a bottle of Bucky. When your friends are coming over, and they're all piling into the house, and they're all wearing baggies and baseball caps and got whatnot on them, uh, suddenly you're aware of the fact that that presence is felt differently in that context than it might be in Govan Hill, for example. And so it was really when I was there that I began to form what would later become known as my sort of spirited, slightly resentful class analysis, because I was right on the front line of the f- the, the fault line of inequality. I could see why people in this community lived longer, why they did better at school. I could see why they were more invested in the political and economic status quo that we felt had failed us and that we felt was redundant. And I guess that fed into the dichotomy that I described earlier as well, because it made me angrier. But it also, I was confronted with certain facts that didn't necessarily chime with what my prior beliefs were about middle class people, about their intentions, about their experiences. I started to understand, you know, that just because you might be lucky enough to be born into a wealthy postcode, it doesn't mean you don't care about the poor. It doesn't mean that you've never suffered. It doesn't mean you've not got trauma. But it took me a long time to accept those things, 'cause that's a pretty fundamental adjustment that you need to make in your analysis, when really you've always come at it from a very antagonistic point of view.

4. 10:00 – 11:49

   Working-class rage is real: same material pressures, different political channels

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr10:00

      So is working class rage real?

   2. DMDarren McGarvey10:02

      Oh, absolutely, and we're feeling it in the country right now. Um, and we're feeling it from many different, uh, sections on the political spectrum. Uh, you have people who are understandably, justifiably angry about the, the, the, the, the strain on household incomes. So we have rising energy bills, rising food costs, um, depending on where we sit in terms of our credit rating, the sort of debt that we might need to get into to survive, the cost of that is rising. Um, and then we have absolute collapse of public services, uh, sewage running in the rivers. And so people just generally feel that, that, that, that, that the UK is not being very well managed. Um, then you have on the other side of the political spectrum, the same anger, the same frustration, but maybe a different focal point or a different locus of the anxiety, which is borders and security and immigration. Um, and so ultimately you have different groups who have different fears. They have a different lens through which to construe what's going on. And so it's the same anger coming from the same material conditions, but it's channeled along different, uh, routes depending on what your media diet is, what your prior experiences are, culturally what, what, what you've been through and whatnot. Um, but that's the one commonality I would say between all the different tribes out there who are currently engaged in some kind of war of attrition online and in real life, is that they're angry and, and that the anger is not baseless.

5. 11:49 – 16:50

   Hip-hop as agency and survival: ‘man and mic’ storytelling and a new community

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:49

      When you spoke about moving to the West End and feeling like a bit of a class sore thumb in the area, I think about a term that I've kind of coined, like a social mobility loneliness where you don't really relate to your prior belongings because you have more than they have, but you don't fit into this new crowd. And a way to reclaim agency is by telling your story, and I've been a fan of your work b- before Poverty Safari as a, as a hip-hop artist. Do you think hip-hop was a, a medium for you to reclaim that agency over your story?

   2. DMDarren McGarvey12:24

      Absolutely. Absolutely. And also, it was really the only art form that I could get consistent access to, you know?

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr12:33

      Because it's man and mic.

   4. DMDarren McGarvey12:34

      It's man and mic. You don't need to own anything to do it. Your story's your currency, and how well you tell it is how you get your respect.

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr12:41

      Similar to comedy, in fact.

   6. DMDarren McGarvey12:43

      Exactly, and these are working class art forms essentially, which means they're subject to the same prejudices within the arts, which is a rapper or a comedian says something that's attributed to them personally. It's seen as a reflection of their experience, their point of view, rather than an artist who is leveraging audience expectations to project a persona or make a point of view. Because we're working class, it's not assumed that we're dealing with sophisticated, uh, dynamics, you know what I mean, in terms of how we go about our business. But to go back to your question, um, I, uh, was interested actually in, um, maybe being a playwright, and the best grade that I got at school was for drama. So I was, I was interested in the theory around drama, and I was interested in acting. And, uh, and I think I was, I think I was... M- I remember my teachers saying, you know, that I had a talent for that. Um, and then I tried, I remember going, or just doing a couple of auditions for things. I did community theater at the Citizens Theatre, which was great. I got a main part in a, in a production there. Um, but when it came to trying to kind of get into any sort of industry or anything like that, that's where I always felt a bit of resistance, you know? And maybe I just wasn't persistent enough. But around that time also, a lot of the trauma and, uh, difficulty that had kind of built up through childhood, uh, it started to surface again. And so that's when I started t- to experiment with alcohol and drugs, and that's much more well-suited to hip-hop.

   7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr14:20

      [laughs]

   8. DMDarren McGarvey14:20

      You know what I mean? 'Cause you can still turn up for work, [laughs] as it were.

   9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr14:25

      [laughs]

   10. DMDarren McGarvey14:25

       Um, but also I found a new community, you know? It gave me a chance to, to set aside the identity that I had been built or had been attributed to me in Pollok. Um, and, and when I left home quite young and moved in a kind of supported accommodation in Maryhill, m- basically my only focus at that time was making a name for myself in the local hip-hop scene, you know? And, and I, and I, and I seen... When I learned that a hip-hop scene had been going already for, you know, 20 years before I was even aware of it, then I, I, that excited me, 'cause I thought, at first I thought, "I'm the only person in Scotland who's rapping. That can't be anyone else doing that."

   11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr15:07

       [laughs]

   12. DMDarren McGarvey15:07

       "So this is gonna be easy." But when I found I was part of a lineage and a community, I really liked that, and I, and I, and I looked... As, as much as I was influenced initially by American artists, particularly Eminem, uh, my real heroes were the veterans in the Scottish hip-hop community, 'cause it was tangible. I thought, "When they walk in the room, you can feel the respect they get, and they're not walking around like tough guys, and they're not walking around picking on people or bullying people, at least not all of them." Um, but they have a gravitas and a respect because they're good at their craft, and they've made good music, and people think that they have integrity, and I was attracted to that, you know? And I, even since I was a, m- I was only, like, 20, and I just wanted to be a veteran. Do you know what I mean? [laughs] That, that's what I wanted to be. I just wanted to be one of they guys that walks in the room and all the other artists go, "There's the guy that I grew up listening to." Do you know what I mean? And I just forgot about everything else when I was doing that. Forgot about my problems, my trauma, my resentments. Forgot about my alcoholism, my, my, my growing drug dependency. Forgot about all my responsibilities, my family. I was low-key. That was all that mattered. And, in a way, at that time in my life, I think that's what I needed. I think that's what I needed, you know? And I had to turn back and circle round and deal with my shit eventually. But if it hadn't been for hip-hop, if it hadn't been for finding that community, I can say hand on heart I have no idea what may have happened to me. Um, because as smart as, as people tell me I am and as resilient as I've managed to be, uh, there were times where I was really broken, and it was the solidarity and love and acceptance that I got in that community that carried me through.

6. 16:50 – 19:46

   Brokenness and addiction cycles: comedowns, shame, and untreated trauma

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr16:50

      What are those moments of brokenness?

   2. DMDarren McGarvey16:54

      I mean, the moments of brokenness come when, uh, y- you know, the party stops, and, uh, the alcohol's done, and you've not got a lot, and you're going to Cash Converters with your, uh, hi-fi that you got on hire purchase, um, and your PlayStation and whatever else, you know what I mean? Um, and you're handing it over so you've got enough money to get a couple of decks of fags, you know, to see you through the week. Um, it's also when you, you, you, you've been out partying for a few days, and then you go home, and you've got to suffer the physical effects of withdrawal and coming down. And I think that's, if you've expe- if you're running from your problems, the comedown's always relative to what you're running from, right? So if people genuinely go out, and it tends to be people don't wanna get that high if they've not got problems they're running from. But if, if, if you're not running from something significant, your comedown is something that you sort of understand as just a necessary part of, um, uh, you know, the, the, the, the physiology of getting high. You're up, you're down. But if you're running from the amount of things that I was running from, um, you know, a narrative about my life that, that hadn't quite been squared off with the truth of everything yet- Running from the reality that I'm becoming the sort of alcoholic that I hated as a child and resented as a child and blamed all my problems on. Running from the fact that all the pain that you suffered, you're now transmitting it on other people in your life through your character defects and your behaviors. And that ultimately the sort of person that you would like to be seen as is not the sort of person who's showing up on a daily basis. You know what I mean? Um, when you run from all that, that's the stuff that terrorizes you when you're having a come down. Then you add in hallucinating voices, all of the stuff that I dealt with-

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr18:55

      Oh

   4. DMDarren McGarvey18:55

      ... sleep paralysis, demons, [laughs] you know. Like, and, uh, that was before we had all this language to describe all these things, right? Back then I just thought I was mental. You know, I thought I was bipolar, schizophrenic. Um, I knew I wasn't a sociopath or a psychopath because I felt connection and empathy and concern for other people. Do you know what I mean? But there was a sort of narcissism, uh, within my wider personality that got activated in vulnerability. It was a over-concern with how other people see me, and, uh, and a desperate sort of need to be liked and loved, which funnily enough, created a persona that was easy to dislike at times, just due to the sheer neediness of it, you know?

7. 19:46 – 24:06

   Sudden visibility after Poverty Safari: success shocks the nervous system and family life

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr19:46

      I can imagine when your book, Poverty Safari, hit the shelves, you won the Orwell Prize. A book that was meant f- for local readers written from a local vantage point became an international, uh, read book. I can imagine those early feelings and symptoms and demons were exacerbated on a public and global stage.

   2. DMDarren McGarvey20:08

      Yeah, and the thing is, like, you know, th- th- this is the most successful thing I've ever done. By the measurements of, like, how most people think about success, it's not that big of a deal, you know. That book's maybe done 160, 70,000 copies now, right?

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr20:25

      Oh.

   4. DMDarren McGarvey20:26

      Um, but obviously you've got big world-beating books that sell 10 million copies over a few years and all that. So when I talk about success, I'm not sitting here trying to say that I'm burdened in the way that someone who is known all around the world by millions of people is. But still, any level of visibility, uh, that, that exceeds what you're used to or that you planned for will come as a bit of a shock to the nervous system, and it will, in many ways, if you haven't done any kind of preparatory work in advance, which few people do, 'cause why would you anticipate such a scenario happening in the first place, then you come to question what it means, and what does it mean about you, and what is your true value now. Are you more valuable? Uh, is your value dependent on what people think of that or how that performs? And ultimately, things were just moving so fast for me at that time that, you know, I would s- sometimes sit and reflect on those questions, and then it would be into another big piece of work. And the thing that overwhelmed me back then, apart from the birth of my second child, just learning to be a dad, navigating all of that, massive burden on my partner also, 'cause we understood these opportunities don't come along. I should get out there and do what I can, not just for myself, but for the benefit of the family. Uh, but that placed a heavy burden on her in those first two or three years. So I became kind of disconnected from family because I was working so much. I would return home, and I would feel like a third wheel. Family, they all get into a way of doing things in your absence. I struggled sometimes to connect with my son because, um, he was spending so much time with his mum and with his papa, and th- th- those were more natural connections for him 'cause I was sort of there and then I wasn't there. And it wasn't like I, I wasn't showing up to do the work, you know. I did a lot ... I, I did most of the nighttime stuff, the morning stuff. Any opportunity that I could, could let my partner get some rest, then I thought, "This is a great way to sort of show my gratitude for the burden that she's taken and do my bit." But also it meant that the quality of interactions, I think, sometimes with family back then were not great. I ultimately thought, like a lot of dads do, "The harder I work, the more love that shows." Um, and I think that was one of many ingredients that, that led to me falling into ill health. You know, that disconnection from family, even when I'm there, not feeling like I'm there, working, traveling all the time, and quite frankly, moving around in industries where everyone is paid to be nice to you, whether or not they like you, whether or not they respect you. And, and, and having come from an environment where your survival depends on being able to really accurately read the temperature of the room and ascertain the intentions of people in it, I was experiencing what I was seeing as a lot of insincerity, and I found that quite, um, disorientating as well. Uh, but it would take me a few years to, to, to get to a point where I could find my place in all of that and find safety in all of that. It's just when it happens so quickly, then you can't do anything but kind of scramble to try your best to not sabotage the whole thing, while at the same time, uh, you've got to go through a kind of, um, a kind of grieving process for life as you thought it was before all that shit kicked off.

8. 24:06 – 28:15

   When pain becomes a product: capitalism, personal branding, and the attention economy

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr24:06

      How does it feel to be contained by the prospect that your poverty and pain became a product, and that product is what keeps, um, stability and sustenance within your household? I, I relate to that a lot. Um, I'm not sure if I've told you offline before, but I joined a large corp- uh, corporation as, uh, through a social mobility charity- Uh, then became their face of social mobility and was able to amplify that at the World Economic Forum to meeting the Queen, and then I became well known for my story.

   2. DMDarren McGarvey24:36

      Mm.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr24:36

      I became validated for that story, and I was able to c- essentially make a career out of it and encouraged this podcast, which is called The Origin Story, on that same accord. And now my story and the stories of similar stories have become a product. Um, and I, after reading your recent book, uh, Trauma Industrial Complex, I'm fighting this, um, contrast between, um, feeling like it's a worthy endeavor, but also a, a kind of poetry prison or a narrative prison-

   4. DMDarren McGarvey25:09

      Yeah

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr25:10

      ... i- in some way.

   6. DMDarren McGarvey25:11

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr25:11

      But you, at, at this scale where you're selling hundreds of thousands of copies of books and you're getting paid gigs, um, that support your family and sustenance, how did you initially balance that productization of your poverty and pain?

   8. DMDarren McGarvey25:25

      Well, I, I think that's a really insightful, uh, observation that you've made there in terms of your own life, and I think that's the key, 'cause the first point to make is we live within a capitalist framework, right? Nothing is off limits in terms of what can become a product. Nothing, right? And in many ways, we've been socialized m- m- more aggressively, I would say, over the last 20 years to view ourselves as products and our values and beliefs and experiences as brand extensions. I notice this when I'm interacting with my children and how that corporatized language is part of their vocabulary. Uh, and very rarely, you know, you're out and about, they do something, they climb a tree, they jump off a, they jump into a puddle, they want it documented on film.

   9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr26:21

      [laughs]

   10. DMDarren McGarvey26:21

       You know? And I remember the moments where we've been, you know, having a nice moment where we're watching a sunset or we see two rainbows, and having to say to them, "Look, don't ask me to pull the camera out," right? Our brains are much more sophisticated than this, uh, this machinery, and it kind of spoils the moment when you start observing it from a kind of third-person perspective. Um, so there's that. That's, that's the context in which our experiences, uh, arise. Um, what the book warns against is going into this game without an awareness of that.

   11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr27:00

       Mm.

   12. DMDarren McGarvey27:00

       That's all. So I'm not saying don't capitalize off your own experience. If your experience is of value in a capitalist society, it's as valuable as other people are willing to pay. That's the basic principle. That's fair enough. I don't make a judgment on that. What I'm talking about is safety and awareness, and ultimately, I want to arm or help arm people who are aware, even subconsciously, that there is this attention economy, and the most, uh, the most immersive type of content out there is lived experience content, 'cause people, they're not just watching it to see someone else's experience. There's the narcissism of seeing themselves reflected back, and I don't mean that in a critical way, but that's what the function of that kind of content is. Um, so, so people should feel free to do what they want without judgment from me. Um, but ultimately, I just didn't understand all of that in the beginning, and so it's been a kind of mad rush to make meaning of it, and I guess to sort of use my experiences to warn other people, "If you get into this game, here are some things you might want to think about beforehand."

9. 28:15 – 32:40

   Losing control of your story: media prompts, AI summaries, and practical safeguards

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:15

      It's quite funny how, like, both you and I have used our story to reclaim agency, but your story can grow so productized and large that you lose agency over it. And there's a, there's a, a story that you, you bring to life in your, your, your book around, I think it was an interview with Channel 4.

   2. DMDarren McGarvey28:34

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:34

      And it was maybe a political editor or a social commentator or something like that, um, asking you about your-

   4. DMDarren McGarvey28:40

      Jackie Long

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:40

      ... Jackie Long asks you about your mother.

   6. DMDarren McGarvey28:41

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:42

      And you, despite writing about your mother in, in your book and talking publicly about it, you felt like you lost agency over it, and you felt quite insulted, uh-

   8. DMDarren McGarvey28:50

      Mm

   9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:50

      ... to some degree that she was asking about this.

   10. DMDarren McGarvey28:53

       Yeah.

   11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr28:53

       Um, I, I think that's something, uh, I mean, the analogy that you use is, um, essentially like letting the toothpaste out of the tube and not, not being able to get it back in. It does really feel like that, and I, I experienced that recently. Um, now that AI Gemini or whatever it is, uh, Gemini AI on Google will have very, um, AI-driven search results. I just, like, Googled myself a few weeks ago, and on a podcast maybe four or five years ago, I spoke about my, my dad's upbringing and how that was, uh, ladled with domestic abuse. But this AI generated a summary that said that my dad was a perpetrator of domestic abuse in my story, and I had no agency of how that story was written any longer. And similar to the Jackie Long, uh, instance in your story, I, I, I felt like I lost agency over my story.

   12. DMDarren McGarvey29:36

       Yeah.

   13. DJDavid McIntosh Jr29:37

       Um, how do you, in this capitalistic society, if someone chooses to own their story and productize it in some way, do you have any pieces of advice or safeguards to contain it?

   14. DMDarren McGarvey29:48

       Yeah. So there are three parts to it. One is prevention's better than cure. So if we can consider deeply what the potential implications might be, we might say, "Do you know what? I won't say anything at all," or, "I'll find a way of saying it that's not gonna result in that feeling of regret," right? Um, then there is, if we do do that, we can either try and clarify it, contextualize it, add nuance. But ultimately, I think if there is things out there about us, and I just mean this in a general way, it doesn't necessarily be as an, an influencer or a writer- I think at some point we have to make peace with the fact that previous iterations of ourselves will make mistakes, and that, uh, if a harm has been caused as a result of our conduct, we can offer a repair to whomever is harmed.

   15. DJDavid McIntosh Jr30:43

       Mm.

   16. DMDarren McGarvey30:44

       And that that is also a part of life, and that, uh, we can learn a lot about ourselves by taking accountability. Um, the book, the new book, part of the book is about taking accountability in many ways. It's about trying to put a, a truer picture of me out there that maybe I wasn't aware of when I wrote the first book, because I still... While on my, on my recovery, I was, I was, I was gaining more self-knowledge, and I was pra- putting it into practice. Um, I was still cooking, you know? And so wh- what I try to do with this book is say, "Yeah, you probably see me as a victim based on a lot of the stuff that's been written about me and a lot of the stuff that I've said, and there is a, a, a victim component and facet to my experience, but because my trauma was not treated and unaddressed, then I'm a villain in other people's story, or at least I was." You know, I would like to think at least anybody who's been, I've harmed unintentionally, uh, I have, I've made an offer of amends and taken some kind of accountability at whatever level the harm was committed. So if I commit a harm publicly, I have to take accountability for that publicly. If it happens privately, then I can make the offer privately. But I think that's always an option for all of us, whatever it is. In this information age, we're not always gonna know the right thing to do. We're dealing with impulsivity. We're dealing with tech platforms that understand us better than we understand ourselves. But I think as long as, as we're honest with ourselves about what our motivations are, what our intentions are, and what the impacts are, then we can always, we can always, uh, learn from it and try to do better.

10. 32:40 – 36:59

    Your story isn’t yours alone: competing perspectives, backlash, and perpetrators reappearing

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr32:40

       The idea in your book that your stories isn't yours alone is something that really kind of shown a mirror to myself, especially in light of that, uh, Gemini AI, uh, scenario that I mentioned, and how the portrayal perspective and sometimes omittance of characters in your own story can create a bit of a confusion amongst other people that see themself in your story. Um, can you bring that to life, how, like, different pers- like, everyone holds a different story of the same events, and how that might affect, um, sharing a story publicly?

    2. DMDarren McGarvey33:15

       Yeah, exactly. So if we're drawing on our own lives, uh, creatively in a sort of autobiographical way, then we're not the only people who have insight into our lives. All the people connected to us, who have interacted with us, relationships, they all have a version of us. And so if we tell a story about a particular incident or event, then straight away there's the potential there for other people to react to that interpretation. Now, it's right that we're entitled to our interpretation, and it's also right that we're entitled to speak publicly about whatever we want, including our experience. What the book cautions against is closed-mindedness about-

    3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr34:03

       Mm

    4. DMDarren McGarvey34:03

       ... this notion that we are the sole proprietors of the story. Because our stories, particularly if they relate to trauma, involve other people. Trauma really happens outwith the context of some kind of relationship or relationships. I have experience of telling a story and then people getting back at me and saying, "That's not true," or, "You did this for this reason," or, "Why are you making that up?" Or, you know, legal stuff. Um, and then the, the, the feeling of uncertainty and distress that I then felt, 'cause one, one, o- one thing that really gets to me is when I know something I've done has upset someone. Even if I think that person's wrong to be upset about it, even I think they've got, they've got the, the, they've got their wires crossed, the idea that I've done something that's caused someone else distress is distressing for me. And, um, that, that, that chapter in, in particular says to anyone, not just people who talk about their lives publicly, but anyone, anyone, think about the story. There's, there's your truth, and then there's the truth, and the truth is probably unrecoverable because it involves putting together so many different subjective interpretations of certain events that the s- s- the, the version of the story that you settle on, that's exactly what it is. You're settling on it. Now, that doesn't dispute specific traumatic incidents. It doesn't dispute victims who are courageously articulating what has happened to them, and it doesn't attempt to create a dynamic where survivors should be probed or questioned or interrogated about their accounts. It's saying to them in a very direct way, "If you're gonna talk publicly about this, expect that not everybody's gonna look at it sympathetically. For every person who agrees and sees it from your point of view out there, there's gonna be someone else who thinks that you are cynical for telling the story, who thinks you're being dishonest, uh, or some other motive. And if you're not, not got a thick enough skin, that will impact you." Um, and then finally, just the, the one of the most important points in the chapter, I think, if there's still someone out there, a perpetrator, someone who has targeted us in the past, someone who has harmed us- Uh, these people who lie dormant for many years can become activated when a story goes public. It can give them a doorway back into our lives, back into our thinking, and if we haven't got sufficient defenses in place, we can make ourselves vulnerable for, um, for them to, to, to, to try and, and gain traction in our lives again.

11. 36:59 – 41:46

    Micro-celebrity without protection: recognition, boundaries, introversion, and harassment

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr36:59

       I, I've been reflecting about this quite a lot recently, how TikTok and I guess Instagram Reels can make a celebrity of anyone, specifically if they're using their own personal narrative to gain attention. And maybe, like, 30, 40 years ago, if you got the same level of viewership, typically probably through radio or broadcast, you would have an entourage to protect you from, um, that public discourse and public, I guess, unsafety.

    2. DMDarren McGarvey37:24

       Mm-hmm.

    3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:24

       You m- uh, if you had that many viewers, you'd maybe have a secur- you'd have security or a PR team. But th- but now I can go on the... I mean, this podcast, say something deeply traumatic, hundreds if not thousands of people could resonate with it, and like you said, within a large population, there's gonna be someone that disagrees with it or maybe has a negative experience with you, and now they can have instant access to me. They might see me down the street and use that as a doorway to perpetrate violence or abuse. But 20, 30 years ago, with the same level of viewership, you would have safeguards in place, and now I can imagine we live in a very unsafe time, um, because of content creation. Like, I, I, I see people from Love Island on the street, and they don't have anyone, um, around them to protect themself. I see people from TikTok who create funny videos who have an influx of people at a bar stopping them for selfies, and that, that public safety is under quite a lot of duress, um, because we can celebritize anyone now. And I, I, I'm feel- having this podcast, I'm fearful for this. Like, I sometimes... A- and I'm ov- if anyone ever recognizes me from the podcast, I'm always gratefully overwhelmed, but there's the odd occasion where someone points at me across the street and goes, "I know you."

    4. DMDarren McGarvey38:31

       Mm-hmm.

    5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr38:32

       "I don't know, I don't know why, but I know you. Where do I know you from?" And it's, it's alarming-

    6. DMDarren McGarvey38:35

       Yeah

    7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr38:36

       ... um, because I feel like I'm being exposed.

    8. DMDarren McGarvey38:37

       Yeah. I, I can identify with that. And, um, you get, as you go on your journey, if this is continuing to be what you're gonna do, you'll get better, uh, at dealing with any sort of public, uh, recognition, um, or interaction. Some days I'm, I'm totally cool with it.

    9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr38:59

       Mm.

    10. DMDarren McGarvey38:59

        And some days I'm not. Uh, sometimes people don't necessarily, um, appreciate that I'm not, like, a public service. Do you know what I mean?

    11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:12

        [laughs]

    12. DMDarren McGarvey39:13

        Um-

    13. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:14

        Social media fame

    14. DMDarren McGarvey39:14

        ... and I can sound flippant, me saying that, but the reason they think that is because of all of the different content that's out there. Well, that's very much how I... That's my persona.

    15. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:26

        You're interactive and accessible.

    16. DMDarren McGarvey39:27

        Aye. I'm out there. I'm open, so people feel like they know me, and in some ways they do, but they don't... What they don't know is that I'm an introvert, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not hanging about a minute longer than I have to anywhere, whether it's the BAFTAs or my mother-in-law's. Like, I go-

    17. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:48

        [laughs]

    18. DMDarren McGarvey39:48

        ... when it's time to go. I need to retreat back to a quiet place because even lovely interactions like this, if they go on too long, I get burned out.

    19. DJDavid McIntosh Jr39:58

        Mm.

    20. DMDarren McGarvey39:59

        I just get burned out. You know, once a day, if I'm lucky, which most of the time I am, I have to just go into my bedroom and close the curtain and close the door, and it's very important that the curtains are closed and that the door is closed, and I just have to lie on my bed and go, " [sighs] " Right? That's what I have to do, and that's just from the morning, getting my kids ready for school. You know what I mean? So if I'm out and it's busy and it's hectic and I'm in that sort of overstimulated, uh, state, then yeah, sometimes I can be a bit short with people, or I can feel a bit unsafe. And I think most people are the same, whether or not they have any level of public visibility, but it is definitely more intense if your face is out there and people know who you are and feel like they can approach you. And also, it's the same for people who would, would try and, um, harass you, uh, threaten you, uh, bribe you. Uh, these are all different sorts of things that I've had to deal with at different points, different kinds of threats, and it's usually somebody that is maybe... There's only a couple or one degree of separation between me. They might be a member of a community I was part of, like the hip-hop scene before. Uh, they have a strong sense of me. They're going through some kind of mental health problem. Um, they try to draw me into some community drama that's going on, and, um, and then, you know, the, the, the minute that I put a boundary in and say, "I don't know who the fuck you think you're talking to," uh, they start to react aggressively against me, you know? I'm getting better at dealing with all these things, and 90% of the time it comes to nothing. Um, but ultimately, yes, that is a major downside sometimes of, of, of, uh, a career that's very much driven by visibility, to be honest.

12. 41:46 – 46:46

    The audience edits your life: validation traps, cutting-room-floor joy, and revising memory

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr41:46

       Another pitfall of modern-day personal branding that I, uh, found myself becoming aware of when I came to watch your, your friend's show about your book was, it's very synonymous with, like, a comedian's work-in-progress show where the audience dictates the final result. I noticed as a young man when I started sharing my story and some of the things around my family that I was getting praised and rewarded about some of the ways I portrayed my mother and my father, and which meant that I continued to tell those stories over and over again. But from what I've learned from your work and from what I realized from it is that I've missed out some of the good parts. And I, I just remember so vividly, age of eight, nine, I was, uh... My dad was a, God, I shouldn't say this publicly, a bit of a benefits cheat, right? So he was on Universal Credit, but he would do odd jobs around the local area, and he would take me out building fences. In the winter, it was like, my knees were on slabs, and I was nine building fences. And I would talk about that story and, and I'd paint myself a victim of child labor, and, um, I had no autonomy to say yes or no to these experiences.

    2. DMDarren McGarvey42:48

       Yeah, yeah.

    3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr42:48

       But there was the exact same- ... cr- uh, craftsmanship and handiwork that my dad used to build me a goalpost out of wood-

    4. DMDarren McGarvey42:55

       Mm

    5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr42:55

       ... with a fishnet so I could play football and have what the neighbors had properly.

    6. DMDarren McGarvey42:58

       Mm-hmm.

    7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr42:59

       But I don't talk about that part of the story.

    8. DMDarren McGarvey43:00

       Yeah.

    9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr43:01

       And because of the, the, the kind of performative nature of that story and the, the crowd appeasing and validating it, I became trapped by it.

    10. DMDarren McGarvey43:08

        Yeah.

    11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr43:08

        And, uh, based on your story, uh, you, you talk about some of the, the fun parts being, or the nice parts, the positive parts being left on the cutting room floor. I think that's something that was so powerful for me to understand through your book is that you, by retelling the, some of the, the, uh, adversities, um, you miss out some of the joy- joyful experiences, and you start to forget them.

    12. DMDarren McGarvey43:28

        Yeah, you do. And it's a lot of work and a lot of setting pride aside.

    13. DJDavid McIntosh Jr43:34

        Mm.

    14. DMDarren McGarvey43:35

        Um, 'cause one of the things about a story told publicly is that we then have an attachment to that version of it, and whatever, uh, rewards or validation we get as a result of it, or catharsis m- m- maybe that's a better way to describe it. Um, I have, I have loads of stories like that as well. I mean, genuinely with my mum, I don't have many. I don't remember... I remember one conversation with my mum. One conversation. That's it. So whether I've blocked out conversations that I've had with her, I remember talking to her on the phone quite soon, actually, n- n- w- wouldn't have been long after that she died. Obviously, we didn't know she was sick at that time. I was writing a song. I was working in my dad's room where he has the recording equipment and, uh, and, and I was talking to her, and she was... I, I remember it started over, over, you know... My dad would come to me with the phone, "It's your mum," and I'm just like, "Oh, for fuck's sake." Do you know what I mean? Like, that's, that's where I was at with her. But I remember on this day she was kind of curious about what I was doing. She was asking me about what I was making, what I was writing, and I was like, "Well, funnily enough, I'm writing a song about you. I'll let you hear it when it's done." Do you know what I mean? Um, but apart from that, I don't remember conversations with my mum. I remember her presence, and I remember her absence. And because of early incidents that I've detailed and various things that I've done now, it, it, that contextualizes a lot of subsequent stuff that might not actually have been evidence of neglect. So I remember when I stayed with her up at the Gorbals, I was up there, we'd go up at the weekend. I hated every minute of it, you know what I mean? Gorbals high-rises, just awful, right? I remember being given a dinner, and it was crispy pancakes, like, just a classic staple of working-class, uh, lifestyle. And I bit into it, and it burned my mouth off, right? So I ended up with a big burnt lip. Now, that's the sort of thing that could happen anywhere, right? But I remember that became another thing in my mind that was proof of her neglect. Why did she not tell me that that food was piping hot? Why was I served food that was that hot? She didn't care. She wasn't looking for me. What kind of crisp- crispy pancakes when your kids are coming to visit you, they only see you, like, once every few weeks, and this is the dinner that you're serving them? And so you can see how it can kind of grow arms and legs, and then you look at all these other little incidents that may or may not have happened, uh, that, that, that seem to change every time you recall them, and before you know it, you've stitched together this whole tapestry-

    15. DJDavid McIntosh Jr46:23

        Mm-hmm

    16. DMDarren McGarvey46:23

        ... where some of it is verifiable and can be corroborated by other people, and, and some of it is just happening in your mind, and it's part of a big story that your brain seems that it needs to create. And so we need to be disciplined and committed to always revising the story so that it rings true and not necessarily just feels good or offers catharsis.

13. 46:46 – 50:29

    Unwinding the narrative: community, rigorous honesty, and escaping identity lock-in

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr46:46

       How do you start to unwind that tapestry? Like, this is something I wanna learn firsthand right now where I'm currently at in my life, to build a better relationship with my upbringing and the people that were a part of it. Is it something you do solely? Is it something you do with the, the characters in that story? Especially when you come from, uh, a working-class background or a socially immobile background. I believe social mobility is the amount of ease or friction between an individual and their awareness, therefore access to opportunity, and I think some of that opportunity can be support systems to unwind those stories. Um, if you're from a community like ours, how do you begin to, I guess, reshape that narrative?

    2. DMDarren McGarvey47:21

       The first thing is, you know, it begins with that willingness, that curiosity. Is this the truth of things? Will I ever get to the truth of things? How much of this story is about a sense of safety for me-

    3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:37

       Mm

    4. DMDarren McGarvey47:37

       ... and how much of the story is missing, you know, in terms of your relationship to it, your projection, your desire for certain things to be a certain way because of what that says about you. Now, all of this is natural, and most people, they get away with all that sort of stuff because they're not talking about their life publicly, but we need to be more diligent if we are. And so through our experience, it gives us an opportunity to be a wee bit more rigorous with the honesty. Um, what I would say is that it's an uphill struggle if you're trying to get to the truth of a subjective interpretation from within the confines of your own subjective experience. You need to get the story out to someone else who can see it from the outside. So it could be useful to talk to a family member, or for me, I benefit obviously from being part of a recovery community where, you know, we're, we're just as full of shit as everyone else, but we do aspire to be rigorously honest with ourselves when the pain of being dishonest, even a little bit, just gets too much. Um, and so what the, the role that we provide each other in the recovery community is not just someone to listen to us and validate us, but also someone to go, "Come on, man. You were just moaning the other day about someone who did that thing to you that you are now doing to that other person."

    5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr49:09

       [laughs]

    6. DMDarren McGarvey49:10

       And in that moment, you know, you get humbled, you get called out, you feel the love of the person who is calling you out 'cause they, they, they, they, they love you enough to risk offending you by telling you the truth. But also, with them seeing you more objectively than you could ever see yourself, they offer an insight into you and your story that is often very valuable if you can sit through it. And so if you're trying to get to the truth of your life, it's a process and a collaboration between your own m- mind and imagination and other people who see you from the outside and see your story from the outside. A lot of people, they construct the story, they attach to the story, and then they tell the story before, uh, they've ever ran it past anyone else, and then, and then that story's something that they have to, uh, they have to maintain, um, because it's become so tightly bound up in their identity that any aspect of the story changing or being challenged feels kinda like a, an existential threat, and that's a dangerous place to be for all of us, and that's where a lot of people are, you know, politically just now. Um, but yeah, it's ... I would say community is a, is a, is a great panacea for a lot of our problems, including that one.

14. 50:29 – 1:08:53

    Identity politics, status rewards, and ‘triggered’ tribal brain modes—plus what the book hopes to change

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr50:29

       Funnily enough, my next question was to be, to be around identity, and maybe I, I, I'm young and naive to say this, but I do see there is more identity politics. There are more ways to identify, uh, or maybe there's more public awareness of how to identify and what to identify as. Uh, and I can imagine there's, there's, there's some am- amazing benefits to having more labels to identify as, but there's also pitfalls to, I guess, maybe using identification as a crutch. Do you have any... I mean, I know you do, but, uh, what are your perspective around, like, labels and titles, um, in modern society?

    2. DMDarren McGarvey51:07

       Well, obviously we live in a time now which is m- much more liberal in that regard, and rightly so. Um, so there are more ways for us to identify ourselves than there have ever been, but it's not necessarily led to increased harmony. It's not necessarily led to increased wellbeing, you know? Often the people who have got the most labels are the ones that are in the most distress. Um, while obviously I wouldn't speculate about, about the reasons for that, what I would say is that sometimes pursuing identity in the eyes of others, i.e. the desire to be seen and the demand to be seen by others in a certain way, it has diminishing returns once the initial novelty of the empowerment of taking the identity begins to wear off. If we aren't doing that inner work, if we aren't looking at the underbelly of our identity, i.e. the things that arise out of our own agency, our own decisions, our own choices, not the things that are enforced on us, not the negative experiences that we've been through, then we get into a weird place where we can become prisoners when, when actually we can become prisoners by factors that have got nothing to do with anyone else trying to oppress us. So in a strange way, we will defend identities that have been attributed to us or that we've assigned ourselves without ever questioning where that comes from. Now, when it comes to, um, identity being, uh, something that, that, that, uh, is a legally contested thing, i.e. you have certain rights and privileges as a result of that identity, you might even be so privileged that you get to decide what other people's identities mean-

    3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr53:02

       [laughs]

    4. DMDarren McGarvey53:02

       ... in those circumstances, people have the right and sometimes the obligation to resist that. Um, and I, I, I don't take decisions, uh, in the book or anywhere else about people's rights to do that. But what I will say is that you can get lost in that fight, and you can forget that sometimes that pursuit to be seen in the eyes of others a certain way, you actually avoid looking at yourself. You avoid what it is that's going on within you, and I think that's a real paradox in identity, where on one hand we demand that other people see us in a certain kind of way, while at the same time not really knowing ourselves. And so I hope as the years go on, um, that we can confront some of the problems of, of this age of identity, uh, while at the same time trying our best to be sensitive to the fact that it is a topic that has to be handled very, very delicately.

    5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr54:07

       Recently I've been giving, um, an awareness of reward systems and status generating groups. I, I remember I was, um, walking through George Square, and I saw, like, a far right rally, this may have been, like, a few months ago. And I was with a pal, and they, there was a bunch of kids on the front line, and my pal was, like, lambasting these little kids who were five, six, seven years old about being, uh, part of this rally, and I had to, like, remind him that they're part of a reward, they've got a reward system, that they are, they are seeking validation from their parents. When they go home at night, they, their, their parents have these ideologies, and if they succumb to the same ideologies, then they get rewarded for that. And- I think with this, uh, influx of ways to identify, there's reward systems and status-seeking behavior within that. And even as we, we start to share our stories more complex and more publicly, we become kind of trapped by that sta- status-seeking behavior. Um, but at the same time, each group of, um, identification has nuance and complexities. Just because you belie- just because you believe certain things doesn't mean you believe everything else.

    6. DMDarren McGarvey55:27

       Yeah.

    7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr55:28

       And in a world whereby your thumbs are expected to tweet on every single, um, foreign affair or socioeconomic, um, issue, we're, we're expected to have opinions on a- almost every public discourse, and the easier way for us to, to succumb to that is to c- create, like, maybe like bound by an identity that kind of has an amalgamation of all of those, um, opinions.

    8. DMDarren McGarvey55:53

       Mm-hmm.

    9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr55:54

       And yeah, I, I guess I'm, I'm making kind of the, the awareness that, like, reward systems are highly, um, motivating.

    10. DMDarren McGarvey56:02

        Yeah, and when we follow that impulse, as many of us will at points, particularly in the social media age, when we follow that impulse kind of blindly, and usually we'll do that when we ourselves are triggered by a certain thing. So we may, might be triggered by, uh, a challenge to our identity or our experience, or we might be triggered by an event which speaks to us in, in a specific way. And then before we know it, uh, that's when all of that gets activated, right? And then we're wading in. And I have experience of this. I've actually just had to put out a statement today.

    11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr56:42

        Mm.

    12. DMDarren McGarvey56:43

        Um, basically taking accountability for the way that I discussed an issue that happened last week involving a 12-year-old girl, uh, featured in a video purporting to show her, uh, carrying deadly weapons. Um-

    13. DJDavid McIntosh Jr56:59

        I saw that

    14. DMDarren McGarvey56:59

        ... and I, and my, my article was basically I was concerned that this video had been disseminated throughout the world. Um, and, and, and, and, and to be fair, by, uh ... and shared by some pretty far-right accounts. Um, and I thought, I thought this was about her safety. Why are you sharing this video of her? Why are you identifying her? Why are you celebrating a child carrying, allegedly carrying weapons like this, when we know that the risk to that child and other children increases by orders of magnitude, the risk of injury, death, imprisonment? But in order to get to that argument, I started the piece by just basically summing up what was public knowledge at that point, which was based on a police statement and a Daily Mail article, where the child was the aggressor, and she was aggressing against a couple. And I didn't think too much about that. And then as the days went on, um, I was receiving criticism, some coming from the far right, which n- I wouldn't dismiss out of hand, but there's a tone to certain criticism or just outlandish claims, and you can just go, "There's no point engaging with that." But other people were being a bit more, um, nuanced, and what I started to realize was I got triggered by that event, um, because I had been immersed in a far-right, um, pipeline, where I was watching people getting defamed or accused of kidnapping children or playing with children in play parks, all based on racial stereotype and racism generally. Um, and, and what had happened was when I saw that incident, I thought, "That's getting shared because it's speculated that it's an immigrant couple-

    15. DJDavid McIntosh Jr58:49

        Mm

    16. DMDarren McGarvey58:49

        ... that she was aggressing against, and that's the only reason they care about this." Because usually people like me who defend, not defend, but who argue in defense of children with trauma who feel safer by carrying weapons, the first thing we hit when we're arguing for smarter justice and trauma-informed approaches is that same body of public opinion that have very socially conservative beliefs about weapons carrying. Children in particular show very, very little sympathy for working-class kids and young people who behave in the way that this girl appeared to be in the video. Now, I understand it's much more nuanced. Anything could've been happening, so I had to take accountability. Despite my strong convictions that my argument about celebrating kids for carrying knives and protecting their identity is sound, um, I had no right to frame the event in the way that I did based on the scant information that was available. Part of what happened to me was a tribal aspect of my thinking getting activated. I find that there are almost maybe three or four different modes that my brain can go into, configurations that see things in a certain way and respond to things in a certain way, and by far the most exhilarating of them all is the one when it's triggered. Because when I'm triggered, I have a very strong sense that I know exactly what's going on, that I'm right, and that anyone who disagrees with me needs to be fought, not debated, and that is invigorating. It's intoxicating, especially for someone who's cleaned off alcohol and drugs. When I feel like that, it's a fucking buzz.

    17. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:00:37

        [laughs]

    18. DMDarren McGarvey1:00:37

        You know what I mean? Thankfully, it only take me a few days to come out of that, and then another mode is activated where I start to feel within me that I have not lived up to my aspirations, that I've not lived up to my values, and sometimes that means I have to apologize. And like I said earlier, if I fuck up publicly, I have to apologize publicly. Um, unfortunately, it's not something you see a lot of because people stay in the triggered tribal- They don't come out of it, so they're just always in there. It's very tiring. It leads to a lot of rancor, acrimony, toxicity. Um, so I'm just grateful that I can spot it when I go into it and then, and then bring myself out of it.

    19. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:01:19

        What I find quite remarkable about that, kind of as we end this podcast, is that you're still on a kind of continuous healing journey. Like, you're not the finished article, and you still make humane errors and errors of judgment, and you're still skin and flesh and a beating heart. Like, but people see you from the outside in as this s- polished social commentator, Orwell-winning prize writer. But at times, you're still on this journey, and you're not the finished article.

    20. DMDarren McGarvey1:01:48

        Yeah.

    21. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:01:49

        Um, but I don't think people on the internet have that perspective of the k- the kind of content that they consume online and some of the creators of it. Um, I guess one of the questions I want to end on is, like, if you were to go back to Darren McGarvey, who had just ventured into the West End, found literature and hip-hop as a way to express themselves, what type of healing would you hope that he would continue to embark on? Is it the journey that you've been on now, or do you think there's other approaches that you wish you took earlier to safeguard yourself from-

    22. DMDarren McGarvey1:02:23

        Mm

    23. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:02:23

        ... uh, some of the pitfalls?

    24. DMDarren McGarvey1:02:25

        It's hard because everything that you go through brings you to where you are. But if you could get a do-over, if there were some things that, that, that, uh, a younger me might avoid, um, it would definitely be it, it, it try and, um, address the alcoholism sooner, you know? 'Cause I'm really lucky that I've managed to get a career, and even then, I'm not out the woods yet with it, you know what I mean? Just now I'm feeling resistance due to the cultural forces, the economic forces. It's a lot harder, um, to get projects off the ground. There's more risk aversion within the industries that I'm in. There's a lot less money. You know, the big names, the household names, the celebrities, they, they, th- they, they soak up all the marketing money, and they soak all the, suck all the oxygen out of the room. So I was very lucky that I stopped drinking at 30 and managed to get a foot in the door before all the drawbridges are getting pulled up, 'cause that's what, what is happening. Unless you want to really, like, sell yourself in a way where there's no integrity, i.e. you're just signing up to be a fucking working-class fucking idiot that's a prop for middle-class people. "Oh, we'll get him to go and do this crazy stunt, and what about if we have him living in a fucking, some fucked-up place?" You know what I mean? And, like, "We'll put Darren there, and he'll do that." You know, that would get green-light and no, no bother.

    25. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:03:55

        Like a Danny Dyer-type-

    26. DMDarren McGarvey1:03:56

        Exactly

    27. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:03:56

        ... documentary.

    28. DMDarren McGarvey1:03:57

        Exactly, and I like Danny Dyer, but I-

    29. DJDavid McIntosh Jr1:03:59

        Me too

    30. DMDarren McGarvey1:03:59

        ... no analysis, no observation, just somebody walking about going, "Oh, that's interesting," with some sad music underneath it, do you know what I mean? And it's all about characters rather than about stuff. If I could go back, I would say, "Wee man, you want to wrap the drinking, drugs when you're 25, 'cause then you can get to college before you're 30." And then the, the whole trajectory that will unfold from that in terms of your life, the quality of relationships improving, the stand- you're standing in your community improving, your health improving, that'll all happen a wee bit sooner, you know what I mean? Um, because while I'm grateful for everything I've got, when I got it, sometimes I worry it was just a wee bit too late, you know? It was just a wee bit too late. Um, that remains to be seen, obviously. And the book, as you know, reflects on a lot of this in terms of me thinking at what point do I weigh up the pros and the cons? Are the benefits worth the sacrifices? Is visibility, which is absolutely necessary for my career, is it worth it, you know? Are there other things that I could go and do? Um, could I start writing fiction? Could I move into something else entirely, you know what I mean? Like, working with people in communities again like I was before. Who knows? But I would say that to anybody. If you're getting on it in your early 20s and you're already feeling like you cannae control it, don't delay it. If you're wrestling with that question all the time, "Am I an alcoholic or a drug addict?" just know that people who aren't don't wrestle with that question, so the answer's probably yes.

Episode duration: 1:08:53