Thread by @nthlondonhippy

Today marks the 4th anniversary of the publication of my book, “Personal Use”.

I wrote it while working for BBC News. Literally.

To mark the occasion, I am going to tweet out the story of how Personal Use came to be, all on the hashtag #PersonalUse

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I explain the origin of my online identity in the book, but I will briefly summarise it here. I created the name northlondonhippy in 2004 to post on a forum about magic mushrooms. Then I used it for a blog. And I kept using it, and it stuck.

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But I am going to skip ahead to the Summer of 2015. Some drastic changes were being brought into the newsroom & because I worked nights exclusively, I was going to catch the worst of it. For secret mental health reasons, I preferred nights.

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#PersonalUse

I’m not going to bore you with corporate politics, so I will keep it simple. For 11 years, I worked only on the BBC Foreign Desk. These new changes being introduced, meant I would need to work on the Home Desk as well.

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#PersonalUse

Both desks have similar roles, but they require different skill sets & local knowledge. The Home Desk is fiddly, you’re expected to engage at a different level of detail. It was starting again, from scratch, 11 years in. No one was happy, least of all me.
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#PersonalUse
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I sorted out a new job, in a different department, but at the last second, my department decided not to release me, so I was stuck with this new arrangement. Or I could quit, which I couldn’t afford to do. After a long delay, the new system started in 2016.

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#PersonalUse

One of the key differences between desks, is the amount of downtime you have on the Home Desk. The reality of domestic news, is that very little happens in the middle of the night. So between around 0100-0500, there was a lot of time killing.

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On the Foreign Desk, the workflow was steadier, as there was always a country awake, somewhere, & someone covering something. Not so much on the Home Desk, though that doesn’t mean stories never broke. Of course they did.

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#PersonalUse

Think of a Fire Department, they’re on standby even when nothing is burning. It’s the same with a news desk at night, sometimes you’re on fireman duty, waiting for something to happen.

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#PersonalUse

I don’t like downtime, and I wasn’t happy bouncing back and forth between desks. I was very depressed, and I needed to somehow pull myself out of it. I decided to publish a book culled from around 750 separate blog posts I made on my old blog.

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#PersonalUse

As I started to go through all my old writing, I realised that my style, and my confidence grew in the decade or so I was blogging, and the quality across entries improved over time. I pondered writing something new from scratch.

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#Personal Use

And then the title popped into my head. The original name was a lot longer. It was “Personal Use - 35 Years On Drugs.” It had a subtitle at first, a play on words. Was I writing about 35 years on drugs, or was I on drugs for 35 years? Why not both?

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#PersonalUse

Ultimately I dropped the subtitle, as Personal Use is catchy and easy to understand. But the subtitle helped me to focus on the story I wished to tell, about the benefits of some drugs, and the risks of others. And how our drug laws aren’t fit for purpose.

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#PersonalUse

And I told that story, by giving an honest and unvarnished account of my own personal drug use, from 1981, when I first got high on weed, right through to my present day self-medicating. But I wanted the book to be a fun, entertaining read.
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As I am a chronic depressive, choosing to be “fun” was deliberate. Often the arguments for drug law reform are dry, clinical, factual & emotive, including some of mine. But drug use can be fun too, & it is a disservice to the cause to ignore that.

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#PersonalUse

I worked on the book for months. Every night I was on the Home Desk, when I had everything done & my downtime started, I would pull out my MacBook, and write. And write. And write.
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#PersonalUse

The MacBook I used, the 12” model, was purchased specifically to work on the book. I installed an app that took a selfie, every time I opened the lid. It took 100s of snaps. It became a very short, time-lapse documentary of me writing the book.
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Yes, I have a short time-lapse video of me writing my book in the BBC Newsroom. I look terrible, unkempt, and depressed. Nightshifts don’t bring out the best in one’s appearance. I can’t tease you with this. I guess I have to show it to you now.

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#PersonalUse

That handsome devil is me, and this is the shortest documentary about a book being written you’re ever likely to see. And low angles don’t flatter. If it is any consolation, I probably look even worse now. Ageing sucks, so do pandemics.

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After several drafts, and some brutal edits, I decided I was finally finished. A good friend of mine offered to proofread it for me. When he returned it with the corrections, he said he thought it was good. Like really good. Like I should publish it.

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#PersonalUse

It probably won’t surprised you to discover that I had no plan on what to do with my finished manuscript. I didn’t even attempt to find an agent or publisher. I published it myself. It’s actually not the first book I wrote and published.

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#PersonalUse

The first book I wrote & published is still a secret, that I won’t be revealing today. I only mention it to explain that I was already familiar with being a publisher, and I had a rough idea of how to proceed.

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#PersonalUse

It probably won’t surprise you that once I published the book, I had no plan on how to promote it. On 1st November 2016, I offered free digital copies to people online. The reactions I got back were overwhelmingly positive. Now, what?

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Nothing. I did nothing. I was a bit stumped. I knew I needed to do something. In January 2017, I sent out three print copies, along with limited edition Personal Use mugs, and some chocolate. Who doesn’t love chocolate?

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#PersonalUse

Writing & publishing Personal Use was a risk. I was under no illusions. If I was found out, I would have been sacked. But I was pretty fucked off at the time, & part of me wanted to be sacked. I knew I would never quit. I joked about being a full time hippy.

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#PersonalUse

One of my three promotional letters went to @mrjamesob, as I knew he had an open mind on cannabis. One of his programme’s producers got in touch, a few days after I posted out the book, mug & chocolate. I was invited to appear.

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#PersonalUse

You can listen to the interview if you’ve never heard it. I only listened to it once, when I got home from LBC. People said I did OK. I know I could have done better. And will do better, if @mrjamesob ever invites me back.



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I wrote about my experience on LBC, rather than re-hash it, you can just read about it here. There’s a lot of good detail in it, about the studio visit, & how nervous I was about being found out.

northlondonhippy.com/the-personal-r…

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After my appearance, my book sales increased. A lot. Like, wow. One radio appearance and suddenly I’m shifting units. I could get used to this. But then I didn’t. I couldn’t. My personal circumstances changed.

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#PersonalUse

Not long after my only media appearance as the northlondonhippy, I was suddenly not in a position to lose my job. Quite the opposite, I had to cling to it, hard. I met one of my managers for a coffee, and surprised him with a request.

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#PersonalUse

After resisting all of the changes to my job, I thought about what my real issues were. The biggest one, was the back & forth between desks. I found that hard, and it meant I never really learned how to do the Home Desk properly. That was about to change.

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#PersonalUse

I asked for a long, uninterrupted stay exclusively on the Home Desk. I knew the only way I would get good at it, would be to engage with it completely & make it my job. I wanted to own it, like I owned the Foreign Desk. So that’s what I did.

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I threw myself into the job hard, and I gave up any ideas of doing any more broadcast media to promote the book. I sent a couple more promotional copies to print journalists, but I didn’t attract any attention. And that, was that.

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#PersonalUse

While working on the Home Desk, I caught several high profile domestic stories. Caught, meaning I was working on a nightshift when they broke. These were my first real tests on the desk. I passed.

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The three biggest stories I encountered, were the Manchester Arena bomb, the terror attacks on London Bridge, and the fire at Grenfell Tower. All three would end up being amongst the biggest stories of 2017.

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Grenfell was especially bad. In my 30 years as a journalist, it was easily the most horrific I’d encountered. From the time we found out about it, to the first pictures being sent back live into NBH, was around 20 minutes.
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I still have nightmares about it. Within minutes from the story breaking, people were circulating forum posts from residents, detailing how unsafe the building was, yet nothing had been done regarding their concerns. What happened was criminal.

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In time, I grew very comfortable on the Home Desk, & I started to prefer it over the Foreign Desk. I had done the Foreign side for so long, there was no challenge to it. I had to raise my game to work on Home. I thrived on rising to the new challenge.

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#PersonalUse

Of course, all good things come to an end, especially if you’re happy with them, and my extended stint on the Home Desk ended, and I was back to bouncing between Home & Foreign. Again. The thing I hated most.

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#PersonalUse

I won’t lie, this did not help my mental state. Quite the opposite. I was back to the worst of two worlds, never feeling a part of either. People could see the effect it was having, but no one was in a position to help. Least of all me.

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#PersonalUse

Less an a year after this, I had a breakdown. It wasn’t just the work, I have some other issues outside of work as well, and the combined weight of both finally got to me. There’s a chapter in my forthcoming, yet unfinished book, High Hopes, all about it.

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Mainly, I recovered, and a big part of that recovery was wanting to recover, instead of wallowing in my depression. Once I chose to help myself, and I temporarily increased my self prescribed dose of cannabis, I got better. It wasn’t easy, but I did it.
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Once i recovered, BBC News offered me redundancy, and I took it. I did that sort of work for 30 years, including the last 15 with the BBC. These days I still think of myself as a journalist (lapsed), but I add that parenthetical modifier.

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#PersonalUse

I left on good terms. They gave me a nocturnal home for 15 years. And in return, I helped them cover the hardest shifts to cover, overnights. Unlike me, most normal people hate them. I miss my old job, but I did it way too long. I’m better off out of it now.

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#PersonalUse

When I left the BBC, I published the first chapter of High Hopes online, as a way to reintroduce myself to the wider world. I wanted people to understand, why I kept my online identity a secret for so long.

northlondonhippy.com/i-was-a-backgr…

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I left the BBC’s employ at the beginning of Feb 2020, and published that piece around a month later. And then we went into lockdown, which messed with my immediate plans in a massive way. I know I am not the only one, far, far from it.

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After decades of hiding away working nights, I was ready to rejoin the world. And then the world said, “closed due to pandemic”. I was finally all dressed up as a full time hippy, but with nowhere to go.

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My new rules of engagement with the world are simple. I either do good, or have fun. And since leaving the BBC, I haven’t done much of either. But I live in hope, and I still have many ideas and plans.

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In the very near future, I will be launching my first solo campaign, called the Ceasefire Initiative. I want to end the War on Drugs, and this is my very small idea on how we could kickstart that process.

northlondonhippy.com/the-ceasefire-…

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And I am still working on High Hopes. There’s lots of good stuff in it. It’s not a sequel to Personal Use, but it will complement it, and fill in some of the blanks. Much like I hope this thread does too.

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My problem with High Hopes is silly. The overarching theme is about remaining optimistic in the face of adversity. Truth is, I haven’t been feeling so optimistic. Makes working on it somewhat tricky. But I will finish it. I need to for my own sanity.

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Finally, I am changing my Twitter profile photo today. Four the last 4 years, it’s been the cover of my book, but no more. From today, it’s a masked selfie of me holding my book. Think of it is as small step in the right direction.

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If you made it this far, and you read this entire lengthy thread, thank you. Only one more tweet to go.

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I very rarely tweet out the Amazon link to Personal Use, but here it is.

Whether you buy the print, or digital versions, you can put a pound in my pocket. I'm a full time hippy, you know.

/ends

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amazon.co.uk/Personal-Use-N…

I very rarely tweet out the Amazon link to Personal Use, but here it is.
Whether you buy the print, or digital versions, you can put a pound in my pocket. I'm a full time hippy, you know.

/ends
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amazon.co.uk/Personal-Use-N…