Former Special Forces member Ollie Ollerton recently shared his experience of recovery with Professor David Nutt on “The Drug Science Podcast”.
Ollie Ollerton describes himself as being a survivor of childhood trauma, which was later reinforced by negative life experiences and warfare. After being engaged in various conflicts, Ollie Ollerton when on to involve himself in helping shut down child trafficking in Thailand. When the government were embarrassed by his findings instead of cooperating with him they set out to arrest him and put him in jail.
After fleeing Thailand to Myanmar, Ollie found himself in a state of depression he was riddled with anxiety, PTSD and problem drinking. Ollie describes himself as a “binge drinker”, where he drank to escape himself and for his only source of fun. This led to emotions becoming more unstable and depression becoming much worse. Towards the end of his drinking Ollie was determined that the only option he had was to take his own life.
In order to break his habit, Ollie put himself into isolation for 3 months and where he tirelessly worked on self improvement and alcohol abstinence, he believes this rebooted his entire life.
He stated he was able to ask himself the important questions and understand why he was so riddled with PTSD. For him the booze had to go also, he had abused it to the hilt and had done nothing for his nerves . At the end of 3 months of self improvement and self-help Ollie found that he had tackled his demons and “broke his programming” that made him drink on the back of his anxiety.
Just as his self improvement program ended, Ollie was snapped up by channel 4 who wanted to do a TV show on the SAS training regime. Ollie attributes this to a spiritual transformation where he believed that he manifested that opportunity through self-improvement. There certainly is something rather uncanny about that at times.
Since Ollie got his break he has also taken psychedelics in order to help him deal with his PTSD. Ollie has written three books on his personal journey in the SAS and beyond.
One interesting aspect is that I have found personally working with soldiers, those who present with PTSD and substance use disorders often find their adverse childhood conditions are often the most traumatic in their life. These adverse conditions set them up with an over-familiarity to stressful events and negative life events.
Listen to the podcast here to hear the full story of his recovery:
https://www.drugscience.org.uk/podcast/40-recovery-from-the-sas-ollie-ollerton/
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