Jordan Stephens on ADHD, Sobriety and Relearning Healthy Relationships
On The Mend
High Performance
4.9 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2024
⏱️ 57 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s guest is the musician, actor, writer, and podcaster Jordan Stephens.
Jordan’s probably best known for Rizzle Kicks, the chart-topping duo he formed with his friend Harley Alexander-Sule, back in 2008.
He's since released music as a solo artist, starred in various TV and film projects, published a children’s book, and now he’s written a memoir: Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs.
In this conversation the pair discuss education, the impact of overnight success, ADHD, medication and self-medication, as well as their shared interest in psychedelics and Jordan’s journey towards healthier relationships.
For more information on some of the subjects Jordan mentioned, there are links below (including more on Professor Nutt and that toad venom).
And Jordan WILL return to On The Mend. These two just have too much in common.
Related links:
Jordan’s website
Rizzle Kicks on Instagram
Matt’s interview with Jordan on MTV Faces
BRIT School bursaries
Alan Watts on education
The Anxious Generation by Joanthan Haidt
Johann Hari’s episode of On The Mend
Professor David Nutt and drug classification
A 2002 overview of the link between football hooliganism and ecstasy
The effects of the inhalation of dried toad secretion containing 5-MeO-DMT
The ongoing study at King’s College, London
The Esther Perel quote was incorrectly attributed but she’s a fan of the person who said it, Terry Real: “Under patriarchy, you can be connected, or you can be powerful, but you can't be both at the same time because power is power over, not power with, it’s dominance. So, if you move into power, you lose connection. If you move into accommodation, you lose your power. I want to break that binary.”
Donna Lancaster & The Bridge Retreat
(01:02) Jordan’s childhood
(05:28) BRIT School and creative education
(11:48) Rizzle Kicks, Busted and dealing with overnight success
(16:36) ADHD: from voice notes to diagnoses (plural)
(20:34) ADHD: medication and self-medicationÂ
(27:40) Pattern recognition and relationships
(29:07) Sobriety and overcoming writer’s block
(30:54) Managing social media use
(35:52) Psychedelics (including dried toad secretion)
(45:43) Pressure to achieve vs connection
(47:02) Educating the next generation about relationships
(54:15) Matt’s conclusion
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Want to know who's coming up next? |
| 0:01.6 | Hit follow wherever you get your podcast and you'll be the first to find out. |
| 0:08.7 | Hello everybody and welcome back to On the Men. |
| 0:10.9 | My name is Matt Willis and this is my podcast about addiction, recovery and resilience more generally. |
| 0:16.2 | This week's guest is the multi-hyphenate musician, actor, writer and podcaster Jordan Stevens. Now, I can't |
| 0:23.5 | tell you how excited I am to speak to Jordan. I'm a big, big fan. Jordan's probably best known for |
| 0:27.8 | being Rizzle Kicks, which is the chart-chopping duo he formed with his friend Harley back in 2008. |
| 0:33.1 | Jordan's since released music as a solo artist, starred in various TV and film projects, |
| 0:42.8 | published a children's book and is now written a memoir titled Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs. |
| 0:47.0 | As you can tell from the title, he's got stories to tell and wisdom to share. |
| 0:49.9 | So shall we get into it? I love this guy. Let's do it. |
| 0:54.7 | Mate, thanks for coming, man. My pleasure. |
| 0:55.5 | Do you know what? |
| 0:56.5 | I've got to say, I kind of sort you out, mate, because I came on a podcast with you |
| 1:00.6 | recently for MTV. |
| 1:01.7 | Yeah. |
| 1:02.7 | And I kind of got asked about it and I was like, absolutely, I just want to meet this guy. |
| 1:06.2 | Let's go back to the beginning, right? |
| 1:07.8 | You grew up in London and you moved to Brighton at 10. What was that like? |
| 1:14.7 | At the time, it was great. I mean, I was in London, I was in a place called Neesden, which is in Brent. |
| 1:21.4 | And it's not like the prettiest area. I think people who are from Neesden. Shout out Neesden, though. |
| 1:46.1 | Shout out of North West. Absolutely. But it was like, you know, I lived on an estate called Coles Green Court. And I think we moved to Brighton because my mum's mom lived there and then my mom's sister lived there. Right. And I mean, someone asked me the other day if they think my mum moved me away from knees than because of like it might be in dodgy or like when I go from my boy to being like an adolescent, |
... |
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