Shownotes
A man who survived a hijacked plane at 11, spent years numbing himself with drugs and chemsex, was diagnosed with HIV on a comedown in January 2020, and found clarity four years later on a single dose of LSD taken to treat a pain condition.
Summary
Hamish Noah was ten days old when he left England for the Philippines. By six, he'd lived in five countries. By nine, he was in Malawi, sobbing in a supermarket in Blantyre because he couldn't understand why children outside had no food while his family filled a trolley. By 11, he was visiting an HIV project in one of Africa's largest informal settlements, surrounded by children living with the virus - with no idea how much that scene would come to define his adult life.
On 29 December 2000, aged 11, Hamish was on British Airways flight 2069 from London to Nairobi when a man with severe mental illness entered the cockpit and tried to crash the 747. The plane dived towards the ground and nearly flipped. The co-pilot pulled off what became known as a miracle manoeuvre. Four hundred people survived. Hamish was offered therapy. He didn't really understand what it was. What he did understand, somewhere below the surface, was that he had been about to die - and that changed the way he moved through the world.
By 13, he was smoking weed daily and shoplifting to fund it. By his late twenties, he was deep into chemsex, losing one or two nights of sleep a week, and running on a mantra left over from the hijacking: it's not that bad. On New Year's Eve 2019, he had a bender. On 6 January 2020, he went to a clinic. On the 8th, the phone call came. He was standing in his bedroom. Time stopped.
For four years, he told almost nobody. He experienced stigma from people close to him - rooted, he says, in cultural conditioning from the conservative African side of his family. He hadn't yet accepted himself as bisexual. He was withdrawing from drugs, starting HIV treatment on four pills a day, and going through it all in near-silence. Then, in early 2024, during a bout of cluster headaches - a condition so painful it's nicknamed the suicide headache - he took LSD for medicinal purposes. Alone in his living room, he had an epiphany of total clarity: of course he was going to share his story. He wrote 90% of his public disclosure post that day. He hasn't touched LSD since.
Today Hamish works as a recovery coach and HIV advocate. The DJ decks are on pause. The music, he says, will rejoin the party at some point.
Key Moments
- [01:03] Born in Cambridge, raised everywhere - the Philippines, Singapore, England, Malawi, and a childhood shaped by constant movement and a father in aviation
- [03:22] British Airways flight 2069 - a hijacking at 35,000 feet on 29 December 2000, a 747 that nearly flipped, a miracle manoeuvre, and an 11-year-old whose mantra became "it's not that bad"
- [07:36] Vinyl at 13, weed at 13, daily by 14 - the beginning of numbing, and why Hamish sees no point in regret
- [10:36] When numbing stops being fun - recognising early that the drugs weren't for enjoyment, and the argument that sometimes numbing is better than the alternative
- [13:28] Sex as a holiday from your life - chemsex, connection, and the complication of genuinely bonding with someone while high
- [16:18] New Year's Eve 2019 - a bender, a clinic visit on the 6th of January, and the phone call on the 8th that stopped time
- [19:15] The Terrence Higgins Trust helpline - a lifeline in the early weeks, and the peer supporter Hamish is still in touch with today
- [20:14] Four years of near-silence - stigma from people close to him, a bisexuality he hadn't yet accepted, and the weight of cultural conditioning from a conservative background
- [24:15] Acute trauma and complex trauma - the difference between a single event and the slow accumulation of being silenced, and why the body stores what the mind tries to forget
- [26:05] Racism, a cricket bat, and intergenerational trauma - watching his Black African mother be racially abused, and the understanding that trauma is passed down through generations
- [34:48] Cluster headaches, LSD, and the epiphany - a pain condition so severe it's nicknamed the suicide headache, psychedelics taken for medicinal purposes, and the moment of total clarity in a living room that led to public disclosure
- [40:30] The pushback and the net benefit - stigma from extended family, judgey messages, and the decision that silence helps nobody
- [45:31] Malawi, gratitude, and the supermarket in Blantyre - a nine-year-old in tears, a visit to an HIV project in a Kenyan slum at 11, and the sense of duty that connects everything
Dedication
Hamish remembers Hydeia Broadbent, a young American woman born with HIV who appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show as a child and spoke about the virus with extraordinary eloquence. She died recently. Hamish does not know anyone personally who has died of AIDS-related illness, and is grateful for the era in which he was diagnosed.
About Hamish Noah
Hamish Noah was born in Cambridge and grew up across Southeast Asia, Africa, and the UK. He was diagnosed with HIV in January 2020. He is a recovery coach, HIV advocate, and DJ. He is 37 years old.
Resources
- Terrence Higgins Trust - including the helpline
- National AIDS Trust
- Chemsex support
- Positively UK
- The 2025–2030 UK HIV Action Plan
If you have been affected by the themes in this episode, support is available at tht.org.uk.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcripts
Dan Hall
Welcome to 'HIV: The Morning After'. I'm Dan Hall. I'm a documentary producer and director. I've spent my entire adult life watching ignorance and prejudice play out around HIV. And frankly, I'm tired of it. And I'm sure many of you are too.
This podcast is an attempt to do something about that. By doing what I do best, interviewing people and letting them tell their own stories.
I can make these episodes, but I can't make people listen to them or find them on their algorithms. That beats down to you. Please rate, review and share 'HIV: The Morning After'.
::Dan Hall
When Hamish Noah was 11 years old, he was trapped on a hijacked plane. His mantra. Even in that terrifying moment was it's not that bad. Over the coming years, he'd need that mantra again and again. Hey, miss grew up in Southeast Asia and Africa before settling in the UK. He became a DJ, a charity worker, a man who knew how to be in a room and how to make people feel good, and how to make sure that no one looked too closely at what was happening in his own life.
::Dan Hall
So.
::Dan Hall
Hey, Miss Noah, welcome to HIV the morning after.
::Hamish Noah
Thank you so much, Dan. It's good to be here.
::Dan Hall
Can we start by learning a little bit about your childhood? Where did you grow up?
::Hamish Noah
Oh, that's always a difficult question to answer. I, I was born in Cambridge in England. And then a ten days old went straight back to the Philippines, which was actually the first place I lived as a as a baby. And I grew up in Southeast Asia until I was six, and five different countries during my first six years of life.
::Hamish Noah
Which is absolutely crazy. That is because my dad was working in, aviation, and he kept getting moved around. So most of that was when I was a toddler, a baby and a toddler. And then, mostly my first memories. Real memories are in Singapore, where I lived, for for till three years. Then I moved to England and then, after a couple of years in England, my dad got a contract in Malawi, in southern Africa with work contracts, and I remember him telling me and my brother we were moving there, like, what?
::Hamish Noah
We just got here, to England's, the outskirts of London in Surrey. And, so then went to live in Malawi, in southern Africa. And that was when I was nine, ten years old. And those years of my life, when I was nine, ten, what really, really shaped me.
::Airport Tannoy
Is like, there is it is nice to know, really. Please proceed to the departure gate to.
::Hamish Noah
Play on like.
::Dan Hall
Now than when you were still young, you experienced an incredibly traumatic event. What happened then?
::Hamish Noah
was December: ::Hamish Noah
And, we were really, really happy to get them.
::Hamish Noah
I think it's an 8 or 9 hour flight, 6 or 7 hours in six hours. And I think, everyone was sleeping. I was watching a film. I remember that, like four in the morning or something. Five in the morning. And just being a kid, making the most of that. And, the plane felt like it was taking off.
::Hamish Noah
Got that thrust into the back of my seat.
::Hamish Noah
This is A747 Boeing 747 biggest aircraft passenger flight in the world at the time.
::Hamish Noah
It just kind of went completely silent.
::Hamish Noah
And then it just dropped.
::Hamish Noah
It was diving towards the ground and nearly flipped on its back. It did what that plane is not designed to do. And we're lucky that, the pilots, the co-pilot pulled off. What is known as the miracle manoeuvre. It's known as a it's a pulled off, something which no one has been able to do, I think even on simulators since then.
::Hamish Noah
And he saved 400 people. And, what had happened is a man with severe mental illness, had written a suicide note and had gone into the cockpit and tried to cross the plane with 400 people on it.
::News Reporter
The British Airways jumbo jets safely on the tarmac at Nairobi airport after a terrifying ordeal at 35,000ft over Africa.
::Eyewitness
I don't think there's a single person on that Arab, and it did not believe that we were about to crash. I mean, every single person in that aeroplane was actually terrified. They were grown men screaming, people praying aloud.
::Dan Hall
, this British Airways flight: ::Hamish Noah
It's kind of hard to explain. I don't really remember.
::Hamish Noah
Details about the months afterwards. I do remember being asked if I wanted therapy. I remember my dad asking me that and I didn't really understand it. It put me in a position where I thought I was about to die, and that did something to me. I don't know what the after that, I did definitely start to take more risks, and it's the complex trauma that followed as opposed to that single acute trauma, that actually had the impact on my life.
::Dan Hall
You as a teenager really quickly started to get into music. I guess naturally. Then it's no surprise you then went into being a DJ. Am I right then, and thinking that you started collecting vinyl records from the age of 13?
::Hamish Noah
That's right. Yeah. I, I played piano when I was kids from probably when I was like five. I think I got to grade four and then I just got bored. I was learning classical and, I wish I'd carried on, but I didn't. But that sort of was the first, step into playing music.
::Hamish Noah
And then I played guitar. Guitar when I was probably 11, 12. And then again, I got a keyboard of, the guitar as well when I, when I discovered, turntable ism and I discovered deejaying, I've been listening to it, starting to listen to electronic music and stuff like UK garage and jungle and drum and bass, which were big things.
::Hamish Noah
And, UK at the turn of the millennium and, but it was only me and one of my mates in school that were listening to this. Everyone was listening to Slipknot and Nirvana and, Korn and stuff that I, I, it was just me and my mate were listening to, to this electronic music, this dance music, club music and hip hop.
::Hamish Noah
Which one of my aunties, who's African-American, introduced me to.
::Hamish Noah
And, deejaying has, has been a way for me to channel what I love from a young age.
::Hamish Noah
The other thing was that I was in such a state, for most of the week with, I'm out of drugs. I was using the. I was like, I can't I can't go into a job or a career. That's that's not got some sort of routine and stability. I will literally not be here if he is.
::Hamish Noah
So I went about trying to get like, in quotation marks, an office job or a day job, something that would give me some routine. And I just fell into working for a couple of fundraising agencies. So I used to work in a call centre, and I, I was knocking on doors, door to door. I'm sure you might have had someone knock on your door asking you to donate to charity.
::Hamish Noah
I used to be one of them. And, I fell into working in and, in the charity sector. What I'd always wanted to do was just help people, even though it wasn't face to face. I was helping people through that. Work that I was doing. And and. Yeah, I just kept deejaying on the side.
::Hamish Noah
And in a way, I sometimes find that is helping people, too. Just helping people let loose and, yeah, loose their bodies and, forget about their lives for a few minutes.
::Dan Hall
Can you tell me, when did you first notice that the way you were living was more than just having a good time, and it was starting to become problematic?
::Hamish Noah
When I was starting, yeah, I knew that quite early on, like, quite young. Yeah, I was, I was in, like, I went to some very dark places when I was a teenager, on multiple occasions. And yeah, I knew straight away that it wasn't for the right reasons. I mean, my mates were all starting to drink as well and started to smoke weed.
::Hamish Noah
I was smoking weed from 13 and daily by 14. And I was probably daily at 13 as well. And it was just pretty ridiculous. And, I was, I was doing things like shoplifting to fund my habit. I was, lying to my parents. I was and I was, I was, I was doing it to escape and I was that I know and I know a lot of the time I didn't I wasn't enjoying it.
::Hamish Noah
I wasn't enjoying being high, wasn't enjoying getting paralytic drunk.
::Dan Hall
It's curious that we often talk about numbing strategies as bad things. And I think I, I used all sorts of things for numbing strategies so that I don't have to process stuff. I think with alcohol I've used sex, I've used running as well, you know, something to do so that I have to process something. And, and I do think sometimes numbing, numbing systems get a bit of a bad press because I think often we do them because we're not ready to process whatever we need to process.
::Dan Hall
And so therefore we just take another option. And that other option might not be perfect, but it is probably better than having to face the reality of whatever it might be when we're not ready to do that yet.
::Hamish Noah
I think that's a really good way of putting. Yeah, really, really good way of putting it. Yeah. Because as despite everything I really wouldn't like, I don't I have no regrets, I have no regrets. And I think, all of that numbing years of knowing my life has prepared me for this part of my life. Life is short as it is, and there's a lot of really difficult things that happen in it.
::Hamish Noah
And sometimes the the pain pushes people to points where they can they can't go on anymore, or they will lash out in ways that are really dangerous for not just themselves, but for other people. And so if, if the if those are the alternatives, you know, harming themselves and other people with that, with their behaviour, with their mental health and it's, that's the alternative than maybe, being out of your head every week for a few years.
::Hamish Noah
You know, a difficult period of your life is, is not quite as bad.
::Dan Hall
And then later on as, as a youngster, you've spoken about sex as well.
::Hamish Noah
Sex and drugs going together has always been that from being a stone a young age to, drugs like cocaine and, ketamine didn't even matter. Like I was. Always was always on something. So it was like, yeah, sex usually happened when I was on something. The mess. And, the, the cams, the messaging with stuff came in more recent years.
::Dan Hall
And there was, an interview I did in the previous year, about this and about this subject. And, and I was trying to get very philosophical and deep about it, and my guess just went well. It also feels really good. You know, it's like it's also easy for us to sort of wrap these things up and, and try to give intellectual reasons, but things that whether they're escaping, making needles or not, things that make you feel good inherently because they make you feel good, even if it's just for a brief moment, can be very, very seductive.
::Hamish Noah
Of course I can. Yeah. I mean, I should describe I mean, I've been don't get me wrong, I've been in some dark places with it, but, for the most part, the way I would describe kind of sex in my life is like, it's going on a holiday a lot of the time. It's going on a holiday from your life.
::Hamish Noah
It's disappearing. So how many hours or days? I was doing it because it felt good. It felt better than being stressed in an absolute nervous wreck without doing any drugs. Number one and number two. Yeah, it's it's I think a lot of the time for me, I've actually had or that I've had this in relationships as well.
::Hamish Noah
For me, sometimes it, it has been built around connection and not taking me away from connection. And, it depends on the drug, I think. And it depends on the situation and the person. But, that makes it that makes it an even harder thing to change is if you're using cams and you're actually deeply connecting with someone.
::Dan Hall
you take us to New Year's Eve: ::Hamish Noah
I had a bender on New Year's, as usually happens. I all, all, all sorts of drugs, but it was definitely like several days with mess and, I, I, I was just, I was, I was I'd been getting unwell for few months before and in bits kind of chest infection. And then it was an eye infection after this New Year's Eve I've been living in.
::Hamish Noah
So much denial that it hadn't been on my radar to go and get tested at us. I'd been using protection in every scenario. In our every risky scenario. And I was I was, just convinced I didn't need one, obviously, in the, in the, time before. And, but because I've been losing probably one, I'd been losing like a couple of nights of sleep a week on average during this period where 1 or 2 nights a week.
::Hamish Noah
It's ridiculous. I went to the clinic. I don't, I said bit of a blur, but I remember being at home on the six visits and I went to the clinic on the sixth, I think, can I analogy, I was being I was at home, I actually can't remember the detail. This is the thing I was I was on the come down and as usual, I'd entered the ER in an absolute blur.
::Hamish Noah
So, I don't remember the detail, but on the 8th of January, yeah, I got the phone call, and that was the turning point in my life. I remember being stood in my bedroom in complete disbelief. And it's like those things, you know, when you see that time stops in the movies and just like, your whole entire perspective just gets flipped.
::Hamish Noah
And I was just couldn't believe the words I was hearing. I partner at the time, and she was just unbelievable support and just stayed with me, when most people wouldn't and supported me through that time. And I frankly, I owe my life to, and, I, I will I, I carry a bit of that love she gave me and everything I do every day.
::Hamish Noah
I absolutely owe everything I'm doing today to to my partner at the time. And the call I had with the Terrence Higgins Trust was really, really, Oh, calls, I should say. Are called the Times seconds. Just a few times. And, I'm in touch with the person I spoke to now and, on the helpline and I, I've worked for 20 years just now to some speaking for them and, it was a lifeline.
::Hamish Noah
There's no other way to describe it. It was a lifeline. I didn't know what I was going through. I was all over the place. All these questions thinking my life was over. And to have someone who could kind of put an arm around me in that moment, even through a phone line and, and just give me the facts, and help me understand what was happening that was just, amazing.
::Dan Hall
this might think, well, it's: ::Hamish Noah
Did the the first thing I'll say is I experienced stigma and I still to this day, stigma and, discrimination from people very close to me. And that was really damaging. And it's still, it still hurts a lot. And it's not based on science or the latest stuff. It's just cultural conditioning from, unfortunately, some cultures, very homophobic and have set views around HIV and they're very, very difficult to change.
::Hamish Noah
And, and there was a there's a lot of other stuff wrapped up in that, and then and the other reason was I hadn't accepted myself as bisexual, at the time of my diagnosis, I still hadn't accepted it. And again, that comes down to, being made to feel I was, wrong when I was young and, not being in, in, spaces where I less very would feel accepted.
::Hamish Noah
And so I didn't know how to cope with the those feelings. I didn't know how to process them. I didn't know, how to live openly at that point with not just HIV, but just with with everything, with my addiction, with my sexuality. I didn't know how to, live openly.
::Dan Hall
It's curious hearing this because I'm a generation older than years and my perception of of sexuality and sexual living amongst your generation is one of freedom and openness. And there, you know, far fewer problems than we have. You know, people in their 50s are constantly wandering around saying how much harder it was for them than it was for me.
::Dan Hall
Anyone who's younger than you. But it sounds like that simply not the case, that you absolutely had your own journeys and challenges to go on.
::Hamish Noah
As I do to this day. I'm half half of my background is from, conservative African country. A lot of the people in your life are coming from a culture that is very homophobic and not accepting, and not a liberal of things like, queerness and HIV and, yeah, it's it's a it's a real struggle.
::Dan Hall
But that must have been so very challenging for you to be happening at a time when you've also removed a lot of your coping mechanisms. Admittedly, you're learning better and healthier ones, but to some extent, you know, they're still in embryo and will be for years.
::Hamish Noah
The thing that's helped me the most is to face developing my own relationship with myself. And getting to a point where I, I know it's, it's a them problem and not a me problem. And that's the, the thing that I found difficult for so much of my life is I felt, I didn't accept myself. I didn't accept myself, fully.
::Hamish Noah
And I didn't, and I, I altered my way of living my how I how I, thought of myself because of other people's opinions and other people's warped and twisted views. Just, you know, you start talking about something that means a lot to you, and you just get shut down. You know, HIV activism means a lot to me.
::Hamish Noah
And it's like someone doesn't even want to hear about it. It's really tough.
::Dan Hall
And I think people who haven't experienced those micro aggressions, all those little moments of constant silencing, absolutely don't understand the the massive effect of them. You know, they they'll just see the one event and think that someone's getting pointlessly wound up over something that's so petty. And what they don't see and don't realise is the culmination of lots of these many little things create something that's much, much bigger.
::Hamish Noah
Well, there's two types of trauma that I, as far as I'm aware, this there's acute trauma, which is, as we start off talking about the plane I was on, that's an acute trauma. That's a single, traumatic, major life altering event that people understand that concept very well. Someone being at war and being under attack or, rose a major injury, a car crash.
::Hamish Noah
These are acute traumas. And then the the other side is complex trauma. And this is often, it could be it could be a whole series of acute traumas over the course of years or decades. And I'm talking about, like, major traumatic incidents happening again and again and again and again and again over years or decades, feeling you can't change your situation.
::Hamish Noah
You can't get away from this person. Like you need to have this person in your life, or you can't get away from these people. For example, school is a is a great example of that. You're just in school and you just have to go and be there with these people every day. And if you're bullied at school, you're made to feel like you don't belong or you're made to feel invisible, or you're made, you're silenced and you're and then you have to spend five more years with these people every day.
::Hamish Noah
That's complex trauma. That's that's actually changes your the fabric of your your identity, of your being. And it shuts you up for the for years or decades. And that, that is extremely damaging. And the, the, the the trauma lives in the body. It's stored in the body. And it comes and and the brain makes sense of it. And so when I mean, so I was talking about race going a bit off of HIV and, addiction here because the race thing came first for me.
::Hamish Noah
I understood racism before I went through all these things in my life because I saw it happening to my mum. I remember my mum being told to go back to Brixton, and I remember her being like racially abused when I was kid. I remember like running to get a cricket bat to defend. I was like, like I did not understand.
::Hamish Noah
I did not understand how people could do that, but they were just minimise it. Like it's not a big deal. And I, I saw then what my mum might have had to go through she because she's a black African woman marrying a white British man and moving to a white British country. And when she did and, and, that builds up each little thing you go through.
::Hamish Noah
And it could be really little things, and it is stored in the body and it's stored and it comes out, it manifests a stress. It manifests as, anxiety, fear, risk responding, finding it more difficult to respond certain situations. And that gets passed down through generations. And I'm most certainly taken some from my mum, from some of the stuff she went through probably when she was younger.
::Hamish Noah
And she, we've taken stuff from her parents and so on and so on. Being from a former British colony and, this is this is not spoken about enough. The, the, the, the complex trauma that's happened for generations. And hundreds of years before. And I'm not talking just about race. I'm talking about in society, in people in general.
::Hamish Noah
It's passed down generation to generation. And it is actually dictates your biology, your physiology, the way your body responds in situations.
::Dan Hall
me of your diagnosis in early: ::Hamish Noah
I learned about it in those early days after after my diagnosis, early weeks. I didn't know about it before, but, it took a while for it all to sink in. I didn't it took me a while to, to believe that the treatment was that effective. I didn't know if I really actually believed what the doctors and, the peer supporter were telling me about.
::Hamish Noah
Oh, yeah. You can live a long and healthy life. You can live the same life as anyone else. Once you, if you remain, system recovers and you stick to treatment.
::Dan Hall
So you were thinking that maybe they were just being nice?
::Hamish Noah
Exactly. I think there was that there was an element of that. And I'm saying this not as you know, I'm. I'm. I wouldn't necessarily have thought that. I wouldn't have thought that if it was someone else telling me this information, you know, from someone was telling me, oh, yeah, I'm here with you. I'm on treatment. I can't pass it on.
::Hamish Noah
I think I'd absolutely trust someone telling me that if it was that. And I googled it and I saw that information online, I'd be like, oh, wow. Cool, right? That's just normal life. But because I was going through drug and that just life withdrawals, sort of changing my physiology, my, my mind and body were going through a lot at that time.
::Hamish Noah
I was going of majorly going through anxiety and that was that. I was I was starting on three pills a day, taking two grams of medication a day, and I was going through all of this simultaneously while not talking about what I was going through. So my mind was going to the worst possible scenario.
::Dan Hall
So there's huge amounts of changes in your life. You've experienced Covid, you're emerging out of addiction. You're you have this new HIV diagnosis. You're getting all sorts of data in from all sorts of places, which you later realise are true. But, you know, you're starting. You find yourself thinking, oh, is this really going to be as effective as this?
::Dan Hall
Am I absolutely going to be untranslatable and all these things? And also you're not telling a lot of people because you're still very much managing your own relationship with the news that you've got. But four years later, something changes and you decide to start talking. Why?
::Hamish Noah
n. I, I went through a lot in: ::Hamish Noah
o I was doing that throughout: ::Hamish Noah
And I went through a lot that year. I went through a big Break-Up. And as I say, for the first year out of my or coming out of my previous career, but I also had, some coaches that I worked with that year, a life coach, recovery coach. I got, I got, some support around my camp sex struggles.
::Hamish Noah
So I was it was a really pivotal year for me. And as I reached the end of that year, all of that stuff I've been learning and all that sort of this new phase I've gone through, kind of, I think just paves the way for me to, to talk more about what I was going through, what I'd learned about, really the the impact of not talking about things on me, a lot more.
::Hamish Noah
I started to realise that although always talking about some things now I was talking to some friends. I realised I needed to open up and it's not the same for everyone, but for me. I realised I needed to open up about things I didn't know when, I didn't know how. But it was a, it was one little thing after another.
::Hamish Noah
then it was, world Aids day,: ::Hamish Noah
And that was the first time I'd spoken to more than basically more than one person about my diagnosis, about my status.
::Hamish Noah
it. And so that was December: ::Hamish Noah
And that was the start of this whole new chapter. And I kind of was like, If I'm going to do if I'm going to be a recovery coach and I'm going to do this, I really kind of feel it's helpful for me to to share why why I'm doing this and watch what triggered it all was my diagnosis.
::Hamish Noah
What what what initiated this entire phase of my life?
::Hamish Noah
Hey.
::Hamish Noah
But the thing that pushed me over the edge. I've never shared this publicly, but I'm going to. I'm going to share it with you now. Is I have I have a condition called cluster headache. And it's one of the most painful conditions known to science. It comes on for me every couple of years, for a few weeks, and it's completely debilitating.
::Hamish Noah
ot it. And I had them in late: ::Hamish Noah
They can reduce the severity, reduce the frequency. These are these attacks of pain. You get day and night for weeks on end. Not in 90% of people. It kind of happens that way. And I would, I can't explain how how debilitating they are. They are so extremely painful. It's indescribable pain. And you would do anything to stop it.
::Hamish Noah
through this at the start of: ::Hamish Noah
To help me cope with the pain, to try and stop it, I got hold of some psychedelics, some LSD and some mushrooms. Psilocybin, which I literally took for medicinal purposes to try and ease the pain. And actually, when I told the neurology department this, they were like, we know in a way, it's like we know, the benefits.
::Hamish Noah
days I took some LSD in early: ::Hamish Noah
And I've never had this in my life. So clearly, so clearly. And I was I remember where I was in my living room. I was on my own. I was I was feeling totally at peace and total clarity. And I was like, of course I'm going to share my story. Of course I'm going to do that. And I wrote basically the 90% of the the post that I then shared on social media.
::Hamish Noah
A couple of days later, I wrote that.
::Hamish Noah
LSD, psychedelic, helped me to get in touch with myself and open up this new phase of my life, and I have not touched LSD since then. It's just gone past the what the to two and a bit years since then. I haven't even touched it since then, but in a way I'm like, it. Could it ever could I?
::Hamish Noah
It could ever be that beautiful again. I mean, because I was using it to help me with pain for something else. And yeah, it opened the doors to this new part of my life. And that's actually what is being studied now in the field of mental health and, and trauma and, that, that the, the profound impacts, the psychedelics can have on someone's, sense of self-acceptance and, connection with themselves and the world.
::Hamish Noah
And it's no wonder as being psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, which is magic mushrooms, MDMA are all being studied, trialled and in some cases prescribed now for treatment for anxiety, depression, PTSD, addiction, and even eating disorders. It's made me a better person. It's made me, more balanced and and a loving person. And it's it's helped stabilise me.
::Hamish Noah
It's it's done the complete opposite of what many other drugs were, were doing. I mean, this the things I say this to everyone this that there's certain contexts where drugs harm you and certain drugs that harm you, and certain drugs that can help you in certain contexts. And for someone who does experience things like anxiety, depression, PTSD, addiction, there are instances where drugs can help you.
::Hamish Noah
And that is that is not even, it's not even debateable. That is why, you know, as someone who's lived with PTSD symptoms for, most of my life, that is why, for example, MDMA is being prescribed and assisted in Australia. You.
::Dan Hall
When you shared your status publicly, you you spoke earlier about how there were members of your life who were close to you, who were not so supportive, would you were you concerned how such a public sharing might affect them, or how they might feel about you being so open about something which they maybe felt you shouldn't be open about?
::Hamish Noah
Yeah, I was very aware of how, opening up about my own story could affect other people. For example, I've spoken about the, the African side of my family. Like, culturally, this is what I did in opening up publicly about my status. Is is much more difficult to do, for for someone in, living in a culture where my mum grew up and so, for example, I was very aware of how it might impact, if I continued living my life, glossing over it or keeping it bottled up and keeping it in silence.
::Hamish Noah
I mean, it would prevent me from doing all the great stuff that I feel I've able to do today. It would have prevented me from doing that. It would have helped me back. And, so I just see it as a net benefit. There's always there's always going to be challenges. There's always going to be challenges. It's like it's a B, it's a it's a you weigh things up and and actually I have a I had members of family, extended family, friends.
::Hamish Noah
People were a lot of people like and it's been overwhelmingly supportive messages and support with a few judgey people in there. And there might be very big judgements and there might be people who, horrible, angry, violent people in the world. But for the most part, my experience is it's it's not brought on as many problems. And we're never going to address the, the, the or the negative things in the world by, by like again, going back to what I said earlier, by adjusting our behaviour and ourselves to fit them like I am like, to be honest, when I shared it, I was like, I'm prepared for whatever pushback I get from this.
::Hamish Noah
I'm prepared for whatever comes from it. I'm just going to do it.
::Dan Hall
Your existence isn't for the convenience of other people or their comfort. Exactly.
::Hamish Noah
Exactly. And that's how how am I going to how how is it helpful to to stay silent and, and, and not talk about it? I mean, it ultimately it's it's just it's just, you know, the silencing and, changing, how you talk about it is really just for the comfort of other people. And that's not to help anyone.
::Dan Hall
ssive journey of change since: ::Hamish Noah
Oh, yeah. That is, is absolutely how I feel. I feel like I've been through a, I, I when I look back as a, some 37 in a couple of months slip back to when I turned 30. I just cannot believe what I've been through in these six, seven years. And, the place I'm in now is I feel I've now settled into my, my new career as a coach.
::Hamish Noah
When you full time career as a coach, I've settled into HIV activism, advocacy and, I feel like they are established parts of my identity. As you say, taking on new identities and shifting identities is a huge thing. And for a long time, it just didn't quite feel real because I spent so long working my previous job in the charity sector.
::Hamish Noah
So long being a DJ. I'm still, I'm still, like that, part of me that, the, the musician part of me is still there, and will will, rejoin the party at some point. But the the having to put that on pause has been a real challenge for me. Music. Music is my creative outlet, and I found that in other ways I express myself through the content I share online, expressing myself through writing, and in other spaces, in other ways, in other ways in my life.
::Hamish Noah
But it's been a where am I now is I'm finding new ways to to tap into that creativity that I found through music. And I'm also finding, ways to, develop my work and, coaching, recovery coaching and HIV advocacy. Now that I feel a bit more settled, I think I've just spent the last couple of years like, whoa, this is a lot.
::Dan Hall
In your research notes, you've spoken about, how you count yourself to be very lucky.
::Hamish Noah
Living in, Malawi, growing up in southern Africa really changed my life. I was nine, ten years old, and it was the first time in my life where I, I experienced a profound sense of gratitude and also, and just for, for, literally for just being born into the life I've been born into, i.e. having everything I would need materially, having the ability to, to, to travel, having, being, being living in a society where we've got free health care, we've got free education, we've got pretty much, you know, everything functioning that we would need and seeing destitute poverty.
::Hamish Noah
And, and at the time, it was one of the poorest countries in the world. And I was I was seeing that every day and having to, to navigate there's feelings of guilt of like, why is the world like this? Why are there children on the street with no limbs and no food? And I'm. And we're here going to the supermarket.
::Hamish Noah
And I was I remember just being in tears with my dad. It's saying I don't want to donate dinner. Can you give it to them? At nine years old, I was I was in absolute bits at the supermarket in Blantyre in Malawi, not understanding why I'm living a comfortable life. And there's literally an entire street full of children and people outside who are struggling to eat who, have, untreated, major untreated health issues.
::Hamish Noah
And Malawi is one of the highest, HIV burdens in the world as well. At the time, I mean, lot of these children would be would have been living with HIV, with no treatment and no, no prospects of treatment. And, the that experience shaped me. And then I then when, when, when my, that was working in Kenya and I said about the hijacked panels on these work in Kenya and I during that period, the airline he was working for at the time, they were funding an HIV and Aids project in one of the, the largest slums in Africa as its second largest, I think, and, informal
::Hamish Noah
settlement settlements. And, and I mean, we went to, we went to a, a community centre there where they were, they were funding work. My dad said, look, I want to take you boys alone. People's homes are made out of metal sheets, and, there's no plumbing. There's no electricity. That there's it's it's open. It's exposed to the, the environment.
::Hamish Noah
I mean, it's it's very, very crowded. It's very, very difficult living conditions. I don't think, you know, for anybody who's been somewhere, where there are, people living in such conditions, you understand the impact it can have on you. I was driving for 20 minutes through this route, this place, and got to the community centre, and it was just.
::Hamish Noah
So I was in tears again. I think I spent 11 at that time, and I was like, in floods of tears and surrounded by me and all these children who were living with HIV. And I did not know at the time how much that would be a part of my life. I had no idea. And I was just, meeting all these children who again, were, living with a life threatening illness and, and I sense of gratitude and just I'm just lucky to live the life I live and be born into.
::Hamish Noah
I could have been any one of those children. And we could be born into any life. We're just lucky to be born into a life we live if we've got all these basic necessities. I just feel lucky every day to live the life I live in. I feel a sense of duty to, to to help other people, to, access the freedoms and stabilities.
::Hamish Noah
I'm so lucky to have.
::Dan Hall
So then, Hamish, we're coming towards the end of the show now, and this is the final portion and this is the section of the show, I ask you to share with us someone who you'd like myself in the audience to be in remembrance with you about. Who is that person you'd like us to remember?
::Hamish Noah
diagnosed. I was diagnosed in: ::Hamish Noah
But I will never forget when I first saw this video of this young girl. I can't remember how old she is in the video, but she's, I want to say like 6 or 7. Maybe she's really young. On the Oprah Winfrey Show in the 90s, this young girl with Aids, or who was who? It was, I think she was born with HIV and and had survived Aids.
::Hamish Noah
She was there on The Oprah Winfrey Show this enormous, I think, the biggest TV show probably in the world at the time, and was there sharing about HIV in such an eloquent and is making me emotional thinking about it now, actually,
::Hamish Noah
Wow. Yeah. I think of all the people who messaged me every day.
::Hamish Noah
I think of how I felt when I was diagnosed. I think of.
::Hamish Noah
The 40 million people who have died because of this virus. I think of the 40 million people living with this virus and this this one young girl who as of best, survived what was taken, as I say, 40 million lives. And it's just speaking. So powerfully. And it just completely took my heart and I, I and she passed away.
::Hamish Noah
I think it was last year or the year before. And, I just, I just think what an incredible being and the number of lives and perspectives that she would have changed through doing the, and that is who, that's who I wanted to talk about at.
::Dan Hall
Hey, Miss Noah, if you could write a postcard to the world, what would it say?
::Hamish Noah
Oh, that's that's a really difficult question.
::Hamish Noah
Do the things that really matter to you open your heart and try to be the best person you can be.
::Dan Hall
Hey, Miss Noah, thank you very much for guesting on HIV the morning after. It's been fantastic talking with you.
::Hamish Noah
Thank you so much. Thanks for having.
::Airport Tannoy
Me. I'm.
::Airport Tannoy
So.
::Dan Hall
If you were moved or informed by what you heard today, please help spread the word. Subscribe to HIV the morning after and leave a rating and a review. It makes a huge difference in helping others to find it. Your support helps to amplify these experiences. If you'd like to get in touch, you can email me at [email protected].
And remember, if you encounter HIV stigma and a bar, call it out. If you encounter it at work, call it out. If you encounter it online, call it out. Because if you don't, you're part of the problem.
The theme tune is by Paul Leonidou at Unstoppablemonsters.com, and many thanks to Moray Laing for his continued support. And thank you for listening. Join me next time for another important conversation on HIV the morning after I've been Dan Hall.
