Intro – How Jason got on Dopey A listener tells Dave to get Jason from Sleaford Mods. Dave stalks him on Instagram until he replies. Jason checks in from cold, dark Nottingham. Early life: Grantham, parents, punk, and Top of the Pops Jason grows up in Grantham, a dead-quiet market town. First connection to music: Blondie, ABBA, Adam & The Ants, Dr. Feelgood, Top of the Pops, pop videos and ABBA the Movie. Parents split, he meets his stepbrothers and is introduced to punk at age 10 via the Sex Pistols. Punk trickles slowly to small towns, second-wave bands like The Exploited, GBH, Discharge, English Dogs. Meat factory hell & knowing he didn’t want that life Works 12-hour shifts in a fresh-food / TV dinner factory cutting meat. Describes brutal “initiation” culture—older guys nailing you to the chopping board, wrapping people in pallet wrap, dragging them in front of the women. Realizes, “I did not want to do that for the rest of my life,” but drugs help numb him enough to keep working. Music vs. drugs: Weller, mods, ecstasy and rave/club culture Music comes first: early love of The Jam and Paul Weller; then Stone Roses and the whole late-’80s/early-’90s scene. He resists drinking and weed until around 17, thinking it’s probably not a good idea. Then: booze, weed, speed, LSD and eventually ecstasy. Describes club and rave culture as feeling like infinite possibility—no one wants to fight, football violence fades, it feels like a weird utopia. He gets pulled toward acting and drama school but can’t afford the fees, uses music as the new dream. Public Enemy, electronica, and the birth of Sleaford Mods Sees Public Enemy at Rock City: air-raid sirens, S1W security squad, Chuck D and Flav—“my Sex Pistols moment.” Gets tired of traditional guitar-bass-drums bands and moves into electronic projects. Discovering he can just show up, grab a mic, and someone else handles beats on a computer. Sleaford Mods is born in 2004: he shouts over a looped death-metal sample, has a eureka moment and realizes he’s finally found his own voice and formula. Early Sleaford Mods tracks are built from samples; he later meets Andrew but the core is always Jason’s vocal/lyric style. Cocaine, MCAT, crack, heroin chasing and the porn spiral Tries coke in London but hates how it turns his friends into selfish, dark, quiet arseholes. Coke becomes central later in Nottingham when ecstasy culture fades and bar culture + cocaine take over. He uses speed, then a cheap research-chemical drug MCAT (“like coke, speed and ecstasy mixed”) and occasionally chases heroin; crack never really hits because he’s already full of coke. Describes how addiction and work life feed each other: substances make brutal jobs bearable while killing hope. His real bottom behavior: buying a gram, going home alone, watching pornography all night for days; later doing the same thing isolated in hotel rooms on tour. Porn + coke: “eggs and bacon” and trauma Says cocaine and porn go together for him “like eggs and bacon / cars and diesel.” Explains the appeal: he can’t get an erection anyway, but the visual world and voyeurism are the draw. Builds an insular, secret universe where he controls everything and doesn’t risk being hurt in real-life relationships. Ties it back to not being parented, not being seen, being hurt in relationships, and never being taught how to give or receive love. Talks about PTSD and “euphoric recall” around those binges and how long it takes to emotionally disarm those memories. Childhood trauma: stillbirth, ECT, Valium and the “wife swap” At age two, his mum has a stillbirth; the baby (Nicola) has severe spina bifida. Mum goes into acute depression; treated with electroshock therapy and becomes addicted to Valium. He basically isn’t parented for several years; dad is a womanizer seeking attention elsewhere. Parents end up in a bizarre partner swap: his dad gets with a married woman, his mum gets with that woman’s husband, they literally swap houses on the same estate. He describes his family as stuck in a “misery cycle” that none of them want to break. Nervous breakdowns, Europe, and being “vacant” as a father By the time the band blows up, he’s had multiple nervous breakdowns, lost jobs, and been thrown out of places he rented. His wife Claire is doing both roles, father and mother, while he’s “vacant” and touring. On the road, he mostly isolates in hotel rooms, getting obliterated on drugs and porn instead of partying socially. Success gives him cash—no more dealers texting about debts, merch money in his hands—and everything ramps up. The bottom: wife leaves with the kids & the beer down the drain His wife takes their daughter and newborn son and leaves to a hotel for about a week. Jason comes home after a two- or three-day coke run; the house is empty. A friend stops by with curry and a can of lager. Jason goes outside, looks at the beer, and pours it down the drain. Decides to stop drinking, and because booze was his gateway, he stops cigarettes, weed and cocaine the same day. After a few weeks his wife tells him, “You’ve never been this clean.” He calls it his last chance. Therapy, complex trauma and breaking the cycle Early therapists tell him his main issue is trauma more than pure physical addiction and don’t push 12-step. Meets a trauma psychologist at Nottingham University—after a 10-minute history the guy says, “I’ll see you.” Gets diagnosed with complex trauma: a long chain of circumstantial hits that fed all his erratic, self-destructive behavior. Does years of psychotherapy, then moves to an inner-child therapist who has him talk to himself as a kid. Admits he came to see his first therapist as a father figure. No contact with either parent now; says he wanted to break the family pattern and did, with his wife and kids. Volunteers at a local center that feeds and clothes people, including folks with heavy addiction. Mental health, men, and friendship Talks about how men in particular struggle to talk, keep things solitary, and carry shame. Shares that he doesn’t have many close friends and sometimes beats himself up for not being able to “save” people still using. Believes mental health awareness is here to stay but there’s still a low-level taboo. Nerdy music lightning round Pistols vs. Clash, Iggy vs. Lou, Weller vs. Rod Stewart, Oasis vs. Blur, Stone Roses vs. Blur, Public Enemy vs. Beastie Boys, etc. Lots of British music nerdery and Jason shit-talking his own personal pantheon in a loving way. Ends with Jason promising to hit New York with Sleaford Mods, and Dave offering friendship if he ever needs it.