photos : War Neuroses : Netley Hospital 1917 courtesy of the Wellcome Library
JON
Going to the Imperial War Museum and seeing a one-man nuclear detection capsule attached to the side of a warship
Feeling anxious zipped up in a sleeping bag zipped up in a sleeping compartment zipped up in a tent on family holidays
Searching for a theatrical form in which to accommodate the bleak landscape of post-traumatic stress
Meeting Dr. Ben Sessa, psychiatrist and coordinator of the UK’s first MDMA/PTSD clinical study
Talking to war veterans in Virginia who had been on the MDMA trials in South Carolina
Changing the name of our play from Idiot at War to The Good Soldier to The Happy Ones to Lovely to Give Me Your Love
Being diagnosed with title-it is – a chronic condition characterized by an inability to settle on a title
Giving the play a subtitle: ‘A Progress Report on MDMA assisted therapy for war veterans with chronic treatment resistant post-traumatic stress disorder in Port Talbot’
Wanting to hide from an audience
Playing soldiers at primary school and feeling proud on acquiring nasty grazes on the knees and rescuing a damsel in distress
Being given a couple of Nazi war medals by my great uncle, who had been a Desert Rat and helped to defeat Rommel
Deciding I didn’t want to have an Action Man
Proposing the motion ‘This house will not fight for Queen or country’ in the school debating society, being roundly defeated and subsequently ostracised
Feeling privileged to watch video of an Iraq war veteran in MDMA therapy, sitting on a futon bed with his pet dog as two empathetic therapists sit either side of him
Leading a residency for the remarkable Hijinx Theatre in Cardiff and being inspired to improvise twenty minutes of brilliantly sustained mania
Swearing loudly when we realise we haven’t been recording it
Thanking Gods we don’t believe in when one of the participants reveals she was recording it on her phone
Trying to act like Americans and finding it difficult because everything we say sounds like it’s been said already in a film
Changing the characters from Americans to Welsh and our hearts instantly fragmenting in a thousand pieces
Resurrecting a couple of characters from nine years earlier, Ieuan and Zach, two hapless Welshmen forever talking about rehearsing their music but never getting round to doing it
Reading about Bob, a Vietnam vet with chronic post-traumatic stress who was rejected from the clinical trials and sought his own therapist and MDMA
Taking quite a bit of ecstasy and worrying that I may have impaired cognitive functioning and short-term memory problems as a result…or have I already said that?
Taking street ecstasy for research purposes, but doing so in the wrong setting and morphing into a dancing flirty monster
Feeling a definite pro-MDMA therapy bias, but only because I’ve spoken to people who’ve tried every other therapy going for eighteen years and – having participated in the trials – are now transformed
DAVID
Watching the existential horror movie Buried
Retrospective consumption of Gavin And Stacey, Rhod Gilbert and Locke
17 years of living in West Wales as an alien
Reciting Welsh poetry in the Eisteddfod
Being on the rugby bus
My macho mate in the marines
Going to Welsh rugby games at the Arms Park
Playing rugby
Watching the Imperial War Museum film archives on WW1 neuroses
The documentary Wartorn and that really long one with found footage of marines gloating in their tank. Hurt Locker, American Sniper, Jarhead, The Long Way Home, Platoon and Deerhunter
Hanging out with Steve Macdonald of PRISM and the other psychedelic conference delegates at Entheogenesis Australis, 2014
The cleaners chucking out the cardboard set
The homeless guy outside the Warehouse at Arts House
Marco Cher Gibard’s sound scaping
Trainspotting, a shared house in Sheffield, lonely nights in Travelodges and “units”
Trying to join the army at 16 to get a scholarship in sixth form and university but not really wanting to. The recruiting officer telling Mum about a trainee being squashed when his tank rolled
The shot gun my brother and I nicked from an old farmhouse
35 years of nursing and counselling friends and family through nervous breakdowns, psychotic episodes, bipolar mania and depressions, obsessive compulsion, personality disorders, anger, hatred and grief
American diners, cheesecakes and all you can eat buffets
Barry Island
Failed Psychotherapy sessions
The Acid Test by Tom Shroder, Ecstasy: The Complete Guide by Julie Holland M.D., The Psychedelic Renaissance by Ben Sessa,
The paintings of Callum Innes
The music of God Speed You Black Emperor, Efterklang, Meira Asher’s album Child Soldier,
The dirty protests at the Maze prison, Guantanamo and Nauru
Cubism, Dada
Gary Owen’s Violence and Son
“Johnny get your mouse” on This American Life and Haunted Dreams on Radiolab
Donnie Darko – more for the music
The preamble to Yes,Yes,Yes hidden in a box losing the circulation in my legs
Napping in the afternoon on a busy day
All the love I have received, given, taken, enjoyed and been tortured by
The Prodigy at Bimbotown in Leipzig
Grandad’s vinyl (pronounced “Vin-YIL”)
MAPS, The Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies