In a depressive episode, Alastair Campbell talks self-harm, addiction and happiness

aleister campbell hello first of all obviously how are you uh pretty [ __ ] i thought yeah i thought when you sent me a message yesterday i thought i really don't want to talk about [ __ ] johnson and all that [ __ ] but i thought i know we talked about this before and i don't know i just thought it'd be quite interesting to sort of do this when i am feeling like not my normal self yeah yeah yeah absolutely let's just let's just get straight into it then you write in your latest book that every morning you give yourself a depression score one to ten one being unadulterated happiness and ten feeling suicidal you don't ever give yourself a one or a ten but you do a two or a nine um tell me where were you this morning uh about seven okay seven's not great um yesterday was six and i sort of dragged myself up most of the day but i don't know why i've just been kind of just got dragged back down again um it's quite strange actually because so like when i woke up this morning i um i went to bed really early last night about nine o'clock uh slept a lot and then when i woke up i was drenched in sweat um which is unusual but you know not not not the first time that has happened um so that means i was obviously i don't know something going on during the night that was kind of i don't know what and i just felt kind of empty really um and then you you sent me a message last night wanted to do an interview about stuff and i thought you know i'll give it a go uh but and i thought it'd be quite interesting maybe because it is it's it's just interesting to to reflect on it and for myself even to um i like to force myself to do stuff but also i think it's interesting that you know the physical i think people sometimes don't understand there's a physical element so like when i when i got up i think i say in the book that i always try and shave because if i don't i'm not myself another another my dad so i did shave but it's funny as i was shaving i noticed the lines on my forehead much more they were much clearer i've noticed that this eye wasn't opening this in the same way as the other one um are you fishing for compliments right now alistair should i be telling you i'm not no i'm not promising i'm not but i'm uh no i i feel physically when i'm depressed i feel physically different and i know my voice is different oh yeah definitely definitely definitely yeah i was out walking with um walking with fiona yesterday and she had just asked me a question she said i can't hear you and then she's and that's when she knew because my voice just goes very thin i like talking and but i know at the end of this i'll be i'll be like tired normally i just never get tired i just have loads and loads and loads of energy so talk to me about about sleeps because i know uh often a feeling of depression is uh lethargy sort of not being able to get out but also sometimes that's combined with insomnia or even though you feel incredibly fatigued you can't actually you're not able to fall asleep i mean is that something you identify with is that how you feel well you know what's really weird is yesterday we're out in the heath and this guy he'd heard me do a podcast for a charity and he came up and he said i heard you talking about he said you should come see me i run the london sleep center but it's interesting with me i'm either and i said to him i said well at the moment i'm sleeping too much uh now this was before i kind of you know got on this sort of it's not a place a mini plunge this i think it could become a plunge but it's definitely i mean seven is like danger territory for me but so i so last night i mean i probably slept nine and a half hours i'm not often when i'm depressed with anxiety laden in i just don't sleep at all uh you know or if i do it's very kind of fitful and very you know ruminating the whole time so i get these two extremes i mean i either sleep too much or i don't sleep enough um and if i'm in good shape if i'm kind of three four on my scale then i sleep really well i'll maybe go to bed 11 you know wake up 6 30 and i feel fine when i'm like this i either sleep in sleep too much or i wake up at four and i'm just i can't stop thinking about stuff that i'm not controlling it's not it's not my useful thinking it's just kind of goes all over the place i think obviously you speak you've spoken about depression and your own mental health i mean at length you've written a book about it you've spoken to me about it interviews other people in interviews i still think though for some people it might be quite surprising to see someone obviously you're portrayed people understand you as this kind of bruising former number 10 director of comms i mean the definition of an alpha male really and here you are i mean speaking to me in the middle of a depressive episode how important do you think it is for people to understand first of all that mental mental health is universal it affects everyone but also i suppose having the bravery to to speak about it and i mean in your case speak about it publicly yeah see i don't see it as brave um because why don't i see i i think i think brave is actually a little bit stigmatizing because it's like you know we don't talk about it brave it's not brave to have covid it's brave to be a nurse and a doctor given [ __ ] ppe by the government and you know go and look after people who are ill it's brave for you know special forces guys who've got real kind of you know got their own issues and yet they know when they're told to go and do that they're going to do it and they're going to give it their best shot that's that to me is brave i i feel even though i said to you i think i'm going to feel tired at the end of doing this i know i also know because i've i've felt this before that i feel better for talking about it but i do think that particularly with the whole kind of pandemic and everything that's going on i think the more we talk about it the better because i think that you know i think in a funny sort of way questions that we've usually just dismissed as small talk how are you feeling how are you how are things right they've almost become like existential questions you know it's like how are you going to mean something because i think everybody's finding it difficult in some way i'm finding the second lock down harder than the first yeah don't know what that's about but i am um whether it's because i don't know it just all feels a bit kind of weird i mean i had a really bad depressive episode during the first lockdown um but i also had a you know quite dangerous manic spell during lockdown as well i really was kind of off the scale for quite a few days um which you know i have mixed feelings about that because on the one hand and even while it's happening i recognize this this is not quite right and this is a bit dangerous and it's hard for people around me but like fiona said yesterday she said she said you know i do prefer it when you like that because she finds it really hard when i'm in this sort of just very quiet very withdrawn not wanting to do stuff cancelling things in the diary just really wanting time to pass because the one thing i do know and my scale helps me on this because i refuse to recognize ten and one i won't i won't kill myself so nine is the max that'll allow myself if i get to that then i really have to kind of you know there's certain things i will do i'll go and see my guy david that i talk to and all i'll just i'll look i'll i'll find the ways to look after myself but what you know when i am this this just you know so i'm talking to you um but i when i woke up this morning it was like i would normally go through walk with the dog with fiona and the dog i didn't go i said you you go and i'll just stay in bed for a bit and it's almost like hoping against hope is gonna lift but you know it's not you know it's not but i do know it will go i do know it will it will go and i've even got a kind of i've got a feeling for the rhythm of it so this one started like it wasn't sudden but it was fast if you see what i mean it wasn't instant sometimes it's like that but this was like a kind of over a few hours i just felt myself thinking i'm not feeling right and by the time i got to bed i knew i just wanted to be asleep and by the time i woke up i knew i just wanted to get through the day and i i could be this could be famous last words but i sort of feel i'm about a third of the way through this i feel a little you know stuff will happen stuff will emerge i wouldn't underestimate how politics affects me as well you know i think the combination of trump johnson uh that stuff today i mean i was reading that stuff about the kind of corruption uncovered today and i just it doesn't hit it so that's yeah that's what i wanted to ask you about whether you'd had any success in identifying what sort of triggers these feelings in you because you mentioned during lockdown you felt manic you felt depressed and you're just talking about politics then whether you had much of a bearing on what it is that that triggers these feelings in you i don't to be honest but i think it's a combination the collection of things so like for example um i was talking to somebody yesterday about you know you were out in america for the elections i was talking to somebody yesterday who said that she said somebody i worked with and she said god did you actually go to sleep at all during the american election and i was well not very much now i sort of sat on the sofa for five days because she said you know every time i went to bed and every time i woke up the first thing i saw on my twitter feed was you saying something doing a video whatever it was and i was i was kind of enjoying that sense of trump's on his way right and maybe the fact that trump hasn't just vanished kind of hangs over you i do i do find every time i see johnson on the television at the moment every time i see michael gove every time i see one of these ministers being crap it just kind of drags me down you know and then maybe last night corbin's all over the news again and i'm thinking so and i think what it is is that feeling of powerlessness um exacerbated by the fact that as you you know the alpha male image and all that stuff people still think i'm powerful and they sort of you know they they say to you and people will stop me in the streets what are you gonna do and i'll say well i don't know what can i do you know um and so it's the sort of paradox of feeling powerless whilst being was feeling power if you see what i mean i feel i understand power i understand and people would say i've got a powerful personality so when that goes when i don't feel powerful physically inside mentally psychologically and all this stuff comes out i don't know it might be that it might be um you know i don't know i just i never find i never find a single trigger yeah i'm sure that well i'm sure there are many but interesting you mentioned powerlessness because i'd seen i think i've see i've read you describe it as a feeling of hopelessness as well and i i expected that to be something that really affects you because as you've just said sort of hope begets action action begets open as a man of action i imagine yeah that it feels almost painful perhaps for you it's like the thing about hope i think i say this in the book that you know when i get depressed i feel hopeless in two in both of the main meanings of that i feel devoid of hope i feel this is [ __ ] it's not going to get any less shitty even though my rational mind knows that it will but i'm not sure the world will um and that's kind of so that's hopeless but then i also feel hopeless as in useless i think sometimes people will look at me and i like to think i can fix other people's problems and i like engaging in other people's issues and so forth but when you get down there you just feel like i can't take that on and that sort of that fuels guilt and all this stuff it's like you know just before we started the conversation i had a i had an email i get these all the time right um from a student wanting to talk for a dissertation right and it's like and sometimes i see that and i think oh yeah i can't do that i'll just give them a ring 20 minutes you know and then other times i think you know can't be bothered and i'll just send them a nice polite reply but for some reason this one just made me just sort of cast me down because i thought you know they were they were being really nice and i just can't face it can't face it and it's like you know so that whole thing and i'm you know and i go into this whole thing about guilt in the book um i actually had subjected myself this really weird mri experiment which i which i did enjoy but it's like this thing about when you you know it's just it's just it's like it's almost like you you normally have got a light switch that you can switch on in your brain and you know it gives me energy and desire and i can go out and i can do stuff right and when it's it's it's like the switch is there but every time you switch it on kind of nothing happens okay well let's talk let's talk about coping mechanisms first of all what were they for you when you were in downing street and you had these kind of emotions what were your coping mechanisms well work is one of them and that's not necessarily a good thing and of course now my life is such that i can i really can pick and choose um so i chose to i've chosen to speak to you i'm doing a thing this afternoon that i kind of have to do um so you know being paid for it contractual got to do it i've got a couple of those things in the diet today but pretty much everything else has gone so that's a coping mechanism which i use now which i would never have used before and i don't want to overuse that one but it's just a way of saying right rather than do that thing that i could do but i don't want to do i won't do it not because i'm going to waste my time just sort of sit twiddling my thumbs and sort of feeling sorry for myself because actually i'll i'll do other stuff i will it's quite a nice day i'll go on the bike for now i'll list some point during the day um i know you were keen to see prime minister's questions i'll probably give it a mess i'll probably give it a miss um it'll just annoy me so i get it i'll i'll pick up with it afterwards but i feel a bit better but i think for me it's like you know exercise i will exercise i'll probably listen to music at some point i might get my bagpipes out uh playing music i find really helpful uh fresh air is really important so i'm sort of beating myself up a bit i've not been out yet but i will go out before i will go out um and then it's stuff like reading um you know i'm reading this this is really really weird right i'm i'm doing this german course at the moment i'm trying to get my german back okay i'm reading this uh this novel she's a very famous german german novelist right and i bought in freiburg about a month ago and i picked it up a few days ago i'm just saying it is it's a page terrorist so kind of you know in german though yeah it's in german yeah yeah yeah but anyway the other day i'm going through it i mean how weird is this right i think if you see that william ellis school it's there's a scene in hampstead at my at the school where my kids went to serendipity i don't know what it is anyway i'm getting i'm i'm on page 584 so i'll probably finish that um so yeah these are all kind of opening mechanisms aren't they and and i think they're they're probably all about killing time to be honest um and then i know hopefully in a few days it will just kind of i'll just and actually one of the one of the few really good things about depression is the feeling when it lifts is like you know is that is worth living for something yeah something to look forward to i suppose at the end of it um i'd also like to talk to you about sort of the um about negative behavior during during depression and i know you've spoken in the past about addiction and how you view addiction as a form of self-harm i mean would you be able to just quickly sort of talk us through that and your your experience of addiction yeah i think that you know it's essentially i think i've got an addictive personality um when i had a breakdown in the 80s i was i was never formally diagnosed as an alcoholic but i was advised to stop drinking and i did and i stopped drinking for more than 13 years and actually you know i drink now but not to excess but i think i've had other other addictions i'm probably addicted to exercise um which i never was i didn't really start doing exercise till i was in my 40s and we were out in france on holiday and my sons were both into running at the time and said you're going to go for a run i went for a run with them and the next day i entered the london marathon and it's like that's that's addictive compulsive behavior but then i did do it i did i trained for the marathon i ran the marathon and um i raised a lot of money because that that's another sort of you know that that became so i get i get obsessed i get addicted to these different sort of things as i go i mean the german thing at the moment has become a german university then i lost a lot of it and now i'm getting it back and i'm doing something german every single day i've just signed up to do another another course i've finished one course and i've signed up to do another so that's all kind of addictive behavior um and i think what it is is it's working out whether there are good addictions and bad addictions now you could argue there's no such thing as a good addiction but i'd rather be addicted to exercise than addicted to alcohol i'd rather be addicted to learning german than addicted to you know drugs or something uh or gambling or you know the the the kind of common addictions so but i do think looking back and i've you know the book in a sense tracks my life and then it tracks the sort of how to live with depression different ways of living with it but when i track back my own story i think the i think the alcohol was a cover for depression which was i didn't want to recognize or did or i didn't understand and then i think at different times in my life since then i've covered it with work with campaigns with um with sport with obsessions with passions with different you know which are not all they might not always seem destructive but there's an element of there's an element of destruction in them um and what where i think i've got to now and i think probably the reason why i wrote the book and definitely the reason why fiona's got a chapter in it is i think we both got to a better place of just understanding it kind of i hate the phrase it is what it is but you know it's just part of who i am um every time i say about that by the way and i've had so many people have sent me their their kind of you know it's quite weird when you're out there like publicly people analyze these people sending me their theories as to what i need to do now and you know one of them might be right i don't know but it's kind of it's uh you don't want to go out on a limb and try one no not at the moment um i guess the thing there with that that addictive behavior you're mentioning is that you can if you have the strength of personality perhaps to be able to harness it or steer it towards something that's not necessarily as destructive as alcoholism for example exercise or learning german and maybe try and turn that behavior into something positive i guess i think that's what i'm trying to do i do think that's i do think that's something i try and do um i think even the kind of you know when i talk about the things like you know campaigning i think energy is such a i mean like when i feel like this i i sort of you know i that's what i miss the most is that sense of waking up with a real kind of you know energy now i know and i i know it could be hard to live with i know that i mean uh when i'm when i'm feeling good when i'm like on a three and a four i will literally if you only will vouch for this i will literally wake up and the first thing i will say to is right how are we going to change the world today and he's like you know and i can see her go oh god here we go but i will i'll be i'll be full on all day doing stuff and but then of course and i don't know is that an addiction is that a is that covering a sense of powerlessness i don't know if it could be yeah supposedly because i sure as i don't feel like that today um would you be able to talk um about self-harm but not in the sense of addiction in the sense that perhaps people may be more familiar with um so for example physical violence yeah well i've done that and and um you know it's like it's it's funny how you you think back and so like when i was at university uh and that's when my drinking became really quite dangerous but i used to getting quite a lot of there weren't even proper fights that were just kind of like skirmishes and but i obviously had sort of a bit of a self-harm thing going on and there's a there's a picture of me uh may ball when i've got my head in a huge great bandage because i used to have this party piece of head butting doors try and open them i know that's what i do when i think about it now but that's what i did if i would see a door and i tried to open it with my head right anyway the reason i had the bandage on is because i did it with a glass door yeah so i've got these if you look really closely you can see two scars in my eyebrows it's just bonkers right you know and so but i think that's a form of self-harm i'm not because i wasn't always drunk when i did it anyway the thing that the thing that the last really bad episode of that was in 2005 and it was actually really important to get a turning point for me because that was the moment at which i realized i've got to get help because i was physically beating myself up on hamster teeth when fearing out we were out for a walk and we just i don't know we were arguing we're rowing we weren't getting anywhere and i i just stood there and i was punching myself really really hard uh i breeze my face and i can you know fiona was standing there i just you know i thought this just this is just ridiculous so and what had happened you talked about serendipity in relation to the german thing philip gould is suddenly now not alive but he at the time had been kind of nagging me and pushing me to go and see somebody um over a period of weeks you know because because i was i wasn't in a good way for quite a while and um and that's what made me do it uh so i i went and saw this guy that he'd been recommending and and it was a real help it was a turning point it was like uh you know and i record in the book all the different exercises i've done with him all the different therapies i've tried and look you know as per today i'm not i've kind of just accepted i'm going to get depression every now and then but i am the book's called living better because i do actually deal with it a lot better than i did you know the fact i'm talking to you today is partly because i want to but also because it's it's one of the things i now do is i don't hide away a bit but i don't hide away totally in a way that i would have done so that that kind of physical and it's back to the thing about the link between the mental and physical you know i really believe that i really you know it's like i don't i'm not anxious at the moment but like i know when i'm feet you know when you get that feeling in your stomach why do you get that feeling in your stomach why didn't you start with god's sake answer because it's linked to what's going on in your head why do i feel when i'm like this why does my voice go why do i feel heavy inside i'm exactly the same way as it was yesterday or the day before so why do i feel heavier answer because there's a physical manifestation to a mental to your mental health and as you said earlier we've all got it and some days it's some days it's perfect and some days it's not well i hope i hope you get some of those better days alastair soon um i was going to ask you about corbin being suspended and all this stuff with the labour party but i feel like it would be in bad taste too after uh after what we've just spoken about well he kind of do you know what i don't know what i think about it yeah good well don't don't think anything about it i don't know what i think about it i think that i think it's a bit weird that i'm still out of the labour party by the way that's what i was going to ask you about well i think i am i think well i know i'm still at the laboratory i think about five years yeah everybody keeps telling me to apply but i don't know and then the other thing i keep hearing is that they're going to vote for the johnson deal well if they do that that is a bad mistake seems to be um he seems to be just routinely outmaneuvering and outplaying labor like across the field i mean even within we don't have to talk about politics if you don't want to but even within like the context of like this corbin thing that's happening i just look at how it's been handled by the party and it just seems like like in in every single way it's a loss you've enraged everyone on every side of the conversation it's been handled so poorly and like in terms of electoral success it just seems that the conservative party is far better at playing politics at the moment than than labour is yeah and yeah it's always useless as government of our lifetime well there's a difference isn't there between electoral success and government successful government but yeah but the the tories have now been in power since 2010 yeah a decade and they're still talking about you know sorting out the problems that they were that they inherited it's incredible and like today johnson going on about the environment ten point planting environment i thought when's somebody actually gonna go back over all the previous promises made and everything else that never go anywhere instead of just anyway we won't do it we won't do it i'll spare you we can do it another time um aleister campbell thank you very much for being so frank for being so open and for making the time to speak to me about this i really appreciate it uh the book is out now where can people find it oh god everywhere i hope [Laughter] amazon i'm sure oh well but yeah it's called living better support your local bookshop if you can uh but if you can't you can get it at the usual places and it's on audible as well with my voice where my voice sounds a bit better than this alex campbell thank you i appreciate it you

Channel: PoliticsJOE

Views: 12,730

Keywords: Politics, UK politics, British politics, Parliament, Government, Westminster, alastair campbell interview, alastair campbell, depression, mental health, mental health interview, self-harm, addiction, alcoholism, happiness, tony blair, labour party, alastair campbell gq, alastair campbell the thick of it, alastair campbell owen jones, alastair campbell john mcdonnell, alastair campbell dominic cummings

Id: 9niHjYtBr40

Length: 29min 30sec (1770 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020