27

TIME WELL SPENT

or

VERSIONS OF MYSELF

Rehab. The word has a stigma. I don’t think it should have. The few weeks I spent re-connecting with myself were some of the best and most important of my life, although I definitely didn’t appreciate that at the time. My intervention had been painful and humiliating. The first facility at which I’d ended up had been the wrong place for me. But with hindsight, I’m glad I went through all that, because it led to certain epiphanies that would change my life for the better. I didn’t believe that my substance use warranted the intervention, but I’m glad it happened because it briefly took me away from the world that was making me unhappy, and allowed me to get some clarity. I grew to realise that everyone in the room on the day of my intervention was there because they cared about me. Not my career, not my value. They cared about me.

After that difficult conversation with Jade I decided to check myself into a facility in the heart of the Californian countryside, miles from anywhere. It was smaller than the previous place, a family-run centre that treated a maximum of fifteen patients at a time. Far less of a medical facility, more of a sanctuary for struggling young people. There were two houses: one for boys, one for girls. The patients mostly had issues with prescription medications, and alcohol on the side. These were not the more seriously ill people I’d been forced alongside after the intervention. That’s not to say that they didn’t have problems: they did, and it was immediately obvious that their problems were more serious than mine. However, I immediately felt a connection with them. I didn’t feel quite so out of place there.

All of a sudden there was a rigorous structure to my day. I realised that I’d missed that. Throughout my childhood, on the Harry Potter set, I’d had structure imposed upon me without me really knowing it. I was told when to turn up, where to stand, where to look, what to say. There is something calming about that kind of certainty, and when it’s part of your life for such a long time, its absence can disorientate you. Now it was back. We woke at sunrise for morning gratitude, during which we would sit round in a circle and one of us would read a poem, proverb or prayer to set our intentions for the day. These would be small, achievable goals: I might have pledged, for example, to talk back less (my former cheekiness had not entirely deserted me). We would have breakfast, after which there would be hour-long classes throughout the day, with five-minute breaths of fresh air in between. Some would be group sessions, some would be solo. There would be cognitive behavioural therapy, hypnotherapy, one-on-one counselling. Sometimes we would laugh, or cry, and we would all talk openly and honestly to each other about our thoughts, our problems and what had brought us there in the first place.

The highlight of the treatment was when we were allowed to leave the facility and volunteer at a food truck for the homeless in Venice Beach. I really enjoyed the shared camaraderie of the volunteers. Some were from treatment, some were locals, some were old, some were young, but all were united in wanting to help those in need. It didn’t matter who you were or what you’d done, as long as you were there to help. I loved it. (I even learned how to make a burrito, a word I’d previously only heard watching Beavis and Butt-Head with Ash.)

We were all complete strangers in treatment, and vulnerable in different ways. In an environment like that you quickly become very close to each other. You bond into a family. In a matter of days, you start to care deeply about your fellow patients. That in itself is a transformative experience. Before, I’d have days at home where you wouldn’t be able to get me out of bed for lack of passion in anything at all. And I couldn’t show compassion to anybody else because I was so consumed with my own situation. Here, painting my guitar with a stranger, or teaching them a few chords on my ukulele, became the most important things in my day-to-day life. We’d all been so open that we ended up caring more about each other than about our own problems: the ultimate mental health tool. Suddenly you are able to put clearly into perspective everything that was overwhelming you.

The rules in rehab were good for me. They helped me get myself back on track. They were also my downfall. Because, let’s face it, rules had never quite been my thing.

Personal space was important. Touching was not allowed. Signs of affection were absolutely forbidden. Hugging? Forget it. It seemed odd to me at the time, although I now understand why. However, I’d just come out of a long-term relationship and there were pretty girls around me, one in particular. On a couple of occasions, the therapists caught me canoodling with her round the side of the building when we were pretending to put the bins out. One evening I committed the cardinal sin of sneaking into the girls’ house, and into her room. I honestly didn’t have anything particularly nefarious in mind. She had been quiet at dinner and I wanted to make sure she was okay. When I heard a knock on the door, though, I was terrified at the prospect of being rumbled and reprimanded. I hit the deck and rolled under the bed to hide. The door opened. I held my breath. I saw a pair of shoes stepping in my direction. They stopped at the edge of the bed. A moment of awkward silence, and then a woman’s upside-down face appeared. I gave what I hoped was a winning smile and, with a mini-wave, squeaked: “Hi!”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing!”

“Why are you underneath her bed?”

“No reason!”

I have to admit it didn’t look good. The woman looked at me with disappointed eyes, not dissimilar to my mum’s when I was arrested that time.

I was allowed out the next day to record a voiceover for an animation. I’d been in treatment at the facility for three weeks. I was completely sober, mind sharp as ever, cogs well oiled, full of positivity. The interventionist picked me up and took me to the studio. When I finished, I was on cloud nine. But before I got into the car he told me that I wasn’t allowed to continue my treatment. I would have to go back to the facility, where my stuff had already been packed, and leave without saying goodbye to anyone. I had not impressed them with my schoolboy antics.

I was upset, and angry too. I burst into tears and kicked a fence. When we returned to the facility, I begged them not to kick me out. I spent hours reeling off all the reasons why they should let me stay. I collapsed onto the floor in tears. I tried to persuade them that they were making a mistake and I would do better. But they were unyielding. I’d broken the rules too many times, they said. I was disrupting the others’ recoveries. I had to go.

I spent the following week in a daze. I’d spent time in a whole new world, with a group of people I cared deeply about. Suddenly I couldn’t be part of that group, and I missed them. But those three weeks had been life-changing. I realised that before I had been existing in a state of absolute numbness. It wasn’t that I was ready to jump off a bridge; it was that jumping off a bridge and winning the lottery seemed like equivalent outcomes. I had no interest in anything, good or bad. You could have told me that I was going to be the next James Bond, and I wouldn’t have cared. Now, I had my emotions back and they were firing on all cylinders. Some emotions were good. Some were bad. But either were better than none at all.

They could ask me to leave the treatment centre. They could bar me from saying goodbye to my family there. But they couldn’t stop me volunteering every Thursday at the food truck in Venice Beach.

I didn’t really know where else to go or what else to do. The boardwalk at Venice Beach can be an intimidating place full of intimidating people, homeless and struggling. When you offer them free food from a truck, you’re met with timid, suspicious responses. But they are so very grateful for it afterwards, and I found it incredibly rewarding to be part of that. But I was directionless myself, so when I saw an old friend of mine while I was volunteering on the boardwalk, and he asked me to dinner at his place that night, I gratefully accepted.

His name was Greg Cipes: an actor, voiceover artist and modern-day activist for animals and the planet. He lived in a tiny apartment on the boardwalk with his dog Wingman. He’s a vegan. He doesn’t drink and doesn’t smoke. He’s the cleanest, most accepting man I’ve ever met. I thought, This could be a good place to stay for a couple of nights. A couple of nights turned into a couple of months, sleeping on a yoga mat on his floor, with the sometimes disconcerting sounds of the boardwalk at night outside, and Wingman waking me at six every morning by licking my face. That time truly reprogrammed who I was as a person.

Greg referred to his swims in the ocean as a re-set. He taught me that every decision was always better made after the re-set. I resisted it at first, but after a couple of weeks I embraced his philosophy. We re-set at least twice a day, morning and evening. Before running into the ocean, we’d put our hands to the sky, say a short prayer and take three very deep breaths, before proceeding to run in, whooping like the children we are at heart. Greg also taught me that when you’re coming out of the water you should raise your hands to the sky and say thank you, to show gratitude for everything you have in your life. Greg told me that Einstein had appeared to him in a dream, saying that walking backwards off the beach would create new neural pathways. So we always walked backwards off the beach, keeping our eyes on the ocean, picking up pieces of littered plastic along the way. “Try to leave every environment better than when you found it,” he told me.

Greg also liked to talk to the seagulls. At first I thought this was ridiculous. In a very friendly, high-pitched voice, he’d tell them: “You’re so beautiful! You’re doing a great job!” I didn’t join him at first and to be honest I thought he was slightly mad. He then went on to tell me his theory that seagulls are the smartest birds in the world. When I asked him why, he said, “Name another bird that spends so much time at the beach!” I couldn’t argue with that, and now I do all the above as a daily routine whenever I’m in LA.

Some people think Greg is a little crazy. He has long hippie hair, eccentric homemade clothing, is always carrying Wingman—who he refers to as his guru—and speaks slowly and incredibly calmly in sometimes cryptic sentences. But no one has shown me more unconditional kindness, generosity and understanding. No one has taught me more about myself and endlessly shows me new ways to find the light.

Greg would argue he taught me nothing. He was just a witness.

After a few months with Greg I decided, at the age of thirty-one, to get my own Venice Beach shack and start my life again. I got new clothes—mostly from thrift stores, mostly floral. I rescued a Labrador called Willow. I was able to enjoy being myself again. Not Tom the celebrity with the house in the hills. Not Tom with the orange Lamborghini. The other Tom. The Tom who had good things to offer. I went to the beach every day. I took acting jobs that I wanted to do rather than being pressured by other people’s opinions of what I should be doing. Most importantly, I regained control of my decision-making. I didn’t go out for the sake of going out, or because other people were telling me to. Life was better than ever.

So when one day, a couple of years later, the numbness returned, without any warning and with no particular trigger, it was a shock. There was no rhyme or reason to it. I just suddenly and unexpectedly found it almost impossible to find reasons to get out of bed. If I hadn’t had Willow to look after I probably wouldn’t have emerged from under the covers very much at all. I endured that feeling for a while, telling myself this will pass, before accepting that it simply wasn’t going to. I decided that I had to do something proactive to stop myself feeling—or not feeling—like this anymore.

I fought the notion of rehab first time round. But this wasn’t the same me. I’d grown to accept my genetic predisposition to these changes of mood, rather than refusing to acknowledge them. I relinquished all command and, with a little help from my friends, I found somewhere I could seek help. I can honestly say it was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make. But the very fact that I was able to admit to myself that I needed some help—and I was going to do something about it—was an important moment.

I am not alone in having these feelings. Just as we all experience physical ill-health at some stage in our lives, so we all experience mental ill-health too. There’s no shame in that. It’s not a sign of weakness. And part of the reason that I took the decision to write these pages is the hope that by sharing my experiences, I might be able to help someone else who is struggling. I learned in the first facility that helping others is a powerful weapon in the fight against mood disorders. Another effective tool is talking about all your thoughts and emotions, not just the fluffy ones. I found that easier to do in an American culture. We Brits are more reserved, and sometimes see talking about our feelings as indulgent. In fact, it’s essential. So here goes. I’m no longer shy of putting my hands up and saying: I’m not okay. To this day I never know which version of myself I’m going to wake up to. It can happen that the smallest chores or decisions—brushing my teeth, hanging up a towel, should I have tea or coffee—overwhelm me. Sometimes I find the best way to get through the day is by setting myself tiny, achievable goals that take me from one minute to the next. If you sometimes feel like that, you are not alone, and I urge you to talk about it to someone. It’s easy to bask in the sun, not so easy to enjoy the rain. But one can’t exist without the other. The weather always changes. Feelings of sadness and happiness deserve equal mental screen time.

Which takes us back to the concept of rehab, and the stigma attached to the word. By no means do I want to casualise the idea of therapy—it’s a difficult first step to take—but I do want to do my bit to normalise it. I think we all need it in one shape or another, so why wouldn’t it be normal to talk openly about how we’re feeling? “I’m happy we won the footy.” “I’m pissed off the ref didn’t give that penalty.” “I’m so excited to see who they sign next.” If we apply such a passionate tongue and eager ear to something like football, for instance, why wouldn’t we do the same about the unspoken stuff? “I couldn’t get out of bed this morning because everything felt too much.” “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.” “I know I’m loved, so why do I feel so lonely?” Rather than see therapy as the emergency consequence of excess or illness, we should start to see it for what it can be: an essential opportunity to take time out from the voices in your head, the pressures of the world and the expectations we place on ourselves. It doesn’t have to be thirty days in a rehabilitation centre. It can be thirty hours over an entire year talking to someone about your feelings, or thirty minutes to set positive intentions for the day, or thirty seconds to breathe and remind yourself that you are here and you are now. If rehab is nothing more than time devoted to looking after yourself, how can that not be time well spent?