4. RC (2013-2016)

Steve was one of the first people I met when I moved to London in 2013. We met at an event run by the New Economics Foundation, where Steve worked at the time. He said he had a spare room, and I was looking for one, so my friend and I moved into his communal house. I thought he was awesome, he had my dream job at the New Economics Foundation, we had amazing conversations about politics and he knew this brilliant crew of people who combined partying and activism. I was new to London and looking for friends and connection, so I slotted into his life and his circle of friends became my community very quickly.

In 2013 Steve was already consuming drugs quite regularly, and had poor boundaries around consent and communication with others in relation to drugs. He would leave drugs in our shared fridge, such as LSD or hash brownies, and not tell anyone or leave any notes. Sometimes I would come back from work and find him tripping on something, sometimes with others, in my room, without my consent. At the time I thought nothing of it, we were in our 20s, partying a lot, and I thought he was the bees knees and he was at the heart of my social world. 

At one point, an unhealthy relationship dynamic emerged between me and another housemate, who was male and a close friend of Steve's – let's call him J. J had slept with both me and my roommate, whilst having a girlfriend (without telling me or my roommate he had slept with the other one) and the girlfriend had got upset. This resulted in me and my roommate being blamed and kicked out of the house, without much discussion. The women were blamed and J remained in the house. It was Steve’s decision, Steve who called the shots. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but it is clear to me in retrospect that this was the first moment I understood that Steve was the one who held a lot of decision-making power within our house and wider friendship circle, and that if I wanted to stay part of the circle and popular I had to remain on his good side or there would be consequences. 

A year later, in 2014, Steve, I and others created another communal house. Steve found the house and was wealthy enough to put down a deposit, something the rest of us could not afford to do. This was around the time he started the Psychedelic Society, and our house became the epicentre of his dogmatic obsession. It started off slowly at first, but it continued to intensify, and at a certain point, Steve was talking about psychedelics most days, continuously pushing them on us, encouraging us to take them, talking about the benefits and transformative experiences they could bring. Gradually he created a culture where they were the thing you did, the more psychedelic you were the cooler you were, if you weren’t on board then you were left behind. I remember feeling scared that if I didn’t take them I might be dropped from the group, made less important.

I’ve lost count of how many parties, birthdays and gatherings we had where things would be going relatively smoothly and then Steve would bring out the drugs and chaos would break loose. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we would have great times together, and whilst many of these substances aren’t for me I am not inherently against drugs.

But increasingly it seemed Steve was taking drugs to escape not connect, he would go off for hours on his own and leave us (often women) to deal with the mess and emotional support of others having bad trips as a result of taking his drugs. I also started to notice a clear pattern of Steve giving drugs to love interests he had, and that began to worry me. 

In 2015 we did our first camp at Nowhere festival (the European Burning Man). I have always known I am very sensitive to and need to be careful with drugs. I had been offered psychedelics  many times in the past and always said no, but in 2015 against my intuition and better judgement, I took LSD at Nowhere because I wanted to be included and I was taken in by Steve’s grandiose narratives about it changing my life. Add the fact that we were in the desert, it was 40 degrees and there were all sorts of intense interpersonal dynamics going on and it just pushed me beyond my limit. This trip really traumatised me. 

At this festival, a friend who was volunteering as a first aider, confided that during one of her night shifts a frightened couple had come to her looking visibly shaken and nervous, saying that a naked man and very intoxicated man, who it turned out was Steve Reid, had approached them in a forceful way. The man from the couple said that he was glad he had been there as he was afraid of what might have happened if the woman had been alone. (6) 

After this summer Steve started to act more and more strangely. At festivals he would go off and take drugs on his own, we wouldn’t see him for hours, and he would come back to the tent in the middle of the night behaving in distressing ways. Each morning he would act like nothing had happened or say he had a great time. In day to day life it started to become hard to work out whether he was high or not, he would do things like suddenly stop in the street and start praying on the floor, or go to a meeting high.

In October that year we put on our first party as a house – Jurassica Spectacular. It was a joint birthday party but of course it came across as ‘his’ event. At this event Steve combined a serious amount of very strong drugs and I witnessed him behave in some of the most distressing ways I’ve ever seen in my life (note it did not involve harm to others, but rather himself). The next morning he acted as if nothing had happened, and as I was high too, I wondered if I had dreamt it, if what I saw really was real. It was my second traumatic experience and totally messed up my sense of reality.

I know now these were the two specific instances that traumatised me, but I think I am traumatised by the whole experience . Steve was one of my closest and dearest friends at the time, I loved him dearly as a friend. I trusted his intelligence and judgement and believed the grandiose narrative he built around the power of drugs. I began to trust his version of reality more than my own and to see him go crazy was very distressing. At many times during my recovery process I have felt like I am leaving a cult. I let his constant manipulation and brainwashing get into my head, the power he had to make things happen so easily. This is one of the things I feel most ashamed and stupid about.

After Jurassica in late 2015, the women who lived in my house were very concerned about Steve, so we staged an intervention (5). Two of us confronted him about his behaviour, as well as the incident at Nowhere festival (6). He outright denied the incident and any problematic behaviour and soon after he moved out of the house.

I had no idea I was traumatised by this at the time, I just remember a huge sense of relief when he left the house. Three months later I had very bad insomnia and started getting regular panic attacks. A few weeks later I had to take time off work and could hardly get out of bed. I thought this was just standard activist burnout, but I was very quickly diagnosed with depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue, put on medication and eventually had to leave London and the company I co-founded as I was too unwell to function and couldn’t afford to pay my rent. For those first 6 months I felt like I was in hell, I was a total mess, and had to continuously talk myself out of taking my own life.

For two years I thought I had depression and anxiety, and tried to move on with my life as best as I could, take my medication, manage my anxiety, not work too much and rest frequently. But looking back now the trauma is obvious, I didn’t trust people, constantly thought people were trying to drug my food without telling me, I stayed away from London and so many of my friends there, I wouldn't touch a single substance that would alter my mental state (eg – coffee/booze/drugs etc).

Eventually I found a new therapist, one who was trauma informed, and I was finally diagnosed with PTSD by her and then the doctor. For two more years the PTSD continued to decimate my life, to the point that I couldn’t work, found it hard to sleep, got regular flashbacks of the traumatic events, and could barely leave the house. I felt deeply afraid of Steve and what had happened and found it very hard to trust myself and others. 

I am on the road to recovery now, and working with a therapist, and connecting with others who have also been harmed by Steve’s behaviour made me realise I wasn’t alone in what I experienced, that I wasn’t going crazy, and didn’t need to feel so ashamed. 

I am sharing my story in the hope that I can stop more people going through the pain and distress that I have experienced. 

RC (2013-2016)