The Pill Diaries – a Journal into Living the Dream is a personal blog about recovery I began writing on a summers day during the restrictions of the global pandemic. Writing was in the blood, a calling from days of diary writing as a youth. And from producing freelance news, features and stories for mainstream and indie media, to journalling for reasons of mental health and self-discipline, writing has long felt like oxygen to my ongoing survival, becoming a creative tool to master in my lifetime.
The immersive act of writing my ‘great novel’ in my twenties and early thirties even took me to the edge of a complete breakdown and loss of identity. I did not write for thirteen years that followed, over a period I reference as the ‘Trenches’. This story eventually became the material for my memoir, The Soul Asylums – A Memoir of Love, Hope and Recovery. And having finished the first of six drafts over six years of The Soul Asylums, so an adventure into blogging began.
With the technical know-how of a long time exiled Luditte, backed by the advantage of a family member with a digital branding toolbox, a brand new website, writing discipline and social media campaign followed, and I began posting a weekly blog while the world was under Lockdown.
What began as a writer’s journey into addiction and recovery, The Pill Diaries – A Journal into Living the Dream, five years on, this internationally recognised blog has been commended by media and mental health organisations alike, and read by an audience from Camden Lock to Khartoum. The latest edition of The Pill Diaries can be found on this page, with new entries live every fortnight.
Find out more about the story, and how writing, blogging, and journalling could change your life and support your recovery journey in The Pill Diaries: Uncensored
Silence of the Lambs
I was following the flight of the Red Admiral, along the grassy path of a long disused and overgrown railway line, where there was a
Tree of Life
Three days into the purge and my body was rejecting the heavy metals being exorcized like unholy gem minerals from the bloodstream. I was trooping
Heatwave
The heatwave was sweeping the Island, like the insomnia plague in Garcia’s Hundred Years, as people roamed the streets forgetting their roots and stripping supermarket
The All-Nighter
The birds of the street were chirping, calling in the dawn light, while I was sitting in a camping chair, hypnotised by a dying bin
Country Files
‘No smoke without fire’, was the thought ringing like tinnitus, as the sound of ‘effing and ‘jeffing emanated from the nearby bushes. I was strolling
Miracle Grow
The seeds from a Cornish farmer had been waiting patiently in a packet for a couple of years for a seemingly scripted ‘hallelujah’ moment like
