Cheshire Shaun Attwood learned how to trade in the UK stock market at age only 14
But age 30 he was a millionaire living in Arizona
USA
A lover of the UK rave scene he wanted to bring the rave scene over to America and started distributing
ecstasy on a large scale
Shaun was arrested and told he would serve 200 years in prison.
In the end he served a total of six years in a high-security
prison, amongst murderers and gang members
Shawn holds myself psychologist Dr. Becky Spelman his story about drug use
anxiety and surviving prison life
Shaun it's great to meet you. Thanks have me on Becky
How did it all start for you? When the rave scene started in the UK
I saw it on the news as like was all this about young people break into work houses and stuff
And I tried ecstasy and it melted all that anxiety away from me previously I wouldn't dance
I was too self-conscious wouldn't come talk to people
But on ecstasy I was just dancing and hugging people and making friends with strangers all night long
It had such a profound effect on me that I pledged
in concert with my other goal to go to America make a million in the stock market, if I did that I would try and
transfer that rave scene over to America.
And I did
Ten years later, I'd made a couple of billion in stock market. I was emotionally immature
Money went to my head. I started to throw these rave parties
But the ecstasy was cursed. I'll have people importing it from Holland
That's where I went way beyond the law when and America was good to me
and I abused it and may 16th 2002 SWAT team smash my door down. Wow that must have been terrifying for you
Going into a jail were it was run by the neo-nazi Aryan Brotherhood prison gang
If you're a white person you come under control and not only where the gang man was murdering the prisoners
But even the guards and murdering the prisoners
it was absolutely terrifying but
It did prove to be the education opportunity of a lifetime. Six years in prison what happened in that time
various stages of adaptation so when you go in
You gotta get used to the sounds of people's heads getting bashed against toilets, people's bodies getting thrown around
People getting carried on stretchers, look like they are dead
and you go into shock
If you ever held a little animal like a bird on a mouse and you can just feel it's heart ging ding ding ding ding
for the first couple of nights my heart is going like that all against the mattress all night long
And I can't sleep
And then the prisoners start coming up to  you saying you've got to get that look of shock off your face
or else you're gonna be the one getting your head bashed against the toilet next
because any expression of weakness is exploited so six months later
I've got what's called dead eyes where you're completely
not showing any emotion at all because by now you know I've just seen
violence almost every single day ranging from
standard someone, just getting beat up and carried out on a stretcher.
So you just have to become immune to it. I mean internally yeah, you know you're adrenaline is still going and
so to this day if I go to a restaurant, I prefer to sit with my back against the wall because I
feel safer because I'm conditioned from this environment of constant danger
So you learned quite quickly strategies to survive in prison. You know I have to think
who can help me, who kind of make alliances with and who could possibly harm me
So everything you think about in your everyday life. What would I do this evening? What am I gonna eat. What am I'm gonna to watch
It's all out the window it just becomes raw go into raw survival mode
Were you traumatized by being in prison?
Yes, I was too busy trying to adapt to
understand that at that point in time, but toward the end of it
My guardian angel was a therapist. He was called Dr. O, he was into neuroscience and Eastern philosophy, and I really clicked with him
He's the one who helped me go inside myself and address my anxiety and he also explained "Shaun
to go from an environment like this
where the laws of society don't apply, the rules in here everything's upside-down
it's gonna give you a resilience that's gonna last you for the rest of your life"
So that goes back to me now looking back at this and seeing it
Get me off the drugs. Give me a new value system and strengthening me
To deal with things that as an anxious person. I previously couldn't because on ecstasy I was the life and soul of the party
But it became my crutch for 10 years
I was going out every weekend taking drugs club drugs because I thought I wasn't an interesting enough person to be around
I had this anxiety
But when you're living with hundreds of people in prison many of whom I wouldn't have chose to be around
When you then come out into society the world seems like a safe place so to someone who has anxiety
that anxiety has gone way way down because I
Have to be in a dangerous environment. It is a safer place that come to
How high me good how high did your anxiety levels go when you did go to prison?
Off the scale because I couldn't sleep
My second year was the worst when they told me I was facing a maximum 200 year sentence
They said every time I spoke about drugs on the phone code five to ten years. I had 20 plus charges
They would stack all my charges up to 200 years if I went to trial and lost. I'd been moved in with
Mostly murderers in maximum security because they doubled my bails at 1.5 million cash only
Cockroaches were crawling all over me every single night because it was infested they literally
lined up in the cracks in the wall at 10 o'clock at night they knew when the lights are about to go out and
They would just flood the room get on your feet
Legs tickling your hands trying to get any ears the earwax getting in your nose mouth
After about four or five nights of cockroaches crawling on you unable to sleep you start to hear voices, and you start to hallucinate
They stopped my girlfriend and visit me at the time
I had all these bleeding and itching skin infections and bed sores
I had a pink eye infection my eyelid was drooping there was yellow pus coming out my eyeball and
They said 200 years
thinking I
Don't think I can take much much more of this and that was at the point where I just planned to kill myself, so
That was when my anxiety was at its highest, so you're actively making plans for suicide. Yep
I was just gonna slash my wrists after a guard did the security walk and bleed out
And what stopped me was
I looked at the seven photos of my family. I wanted to say goodbye to my family
Not in person, but just by looking at the photos of them, and then I started to think
My mom was gonna get a call saying. Your  your son slashed his wrist in a jail cell
and I couldn't bear the though of doing that and even now it makes me feel sad just thinking about it, but
It was that love of my family that stopped me from killing myself, so
When you're on drugs for ten years all you care about is getting high and having fun with your friends at the weekends
It's slowly erode your conscience
It's really interesting because ecstasy
They say can play on people's empathy it can really turn it on and heighten it and and it sounds like your
Empathy was quite dampened, and then it took this huge experience to actually help you learn perhaps real empathy without substances
That's a really good point and I would like to qualify
Something there I
Went from just taking ecstasy to taking club drug cocktails
and I would say that ecstasy is an empathogenic drug and when I was on it I
really felt
How other people were feeling around me and to this day
I still think that I still feel more how people are feeling because of my experiences on ecstasy
but when you start to mix it up with crystal meth and ketamine and cocktails of
Mexican pharmaceuticals
and
GHB
Then you lose that you completely lose that you just go into the dark side of drugs
So I crossed the line where I actually lost that empathy genic thing
that's where I was in the dark side of drugs and hanging out with gangsters
But there was points where I was just doing drugs for the sake of doing drug
I'm wondering what happened in early life for you to
Go to drugs in drugs in the first place and want to try and activate empathy through substances
I think I was going through a normal period of hormonal teenage changes and anxiety
When it
Got to the point where I had the incident with the drugs, and what happened was I just passed my driver's license test
when to fill up my mom's little red car with petrol and
Then these four big guys started to behave abusively towards me
And I'm thinking it's brave to stand up to them
You know I've watched movies like Rambo and stuff, and that was a big mistake and they surrounded me
Knocked me down started kicking me, kicking me in the head and all I could do was curl up in the fetal position
and
The pain was increasing intensifying
And my body was starting to get warm and numb
And one of hit me in the face of an iron bar knocking pieces of my teeth out
which is why I got these veneers and
I
Was seeing stars
And it got to the point where my body went so warm and normal I couldn't feel the pain anymore
So I thought they'd stop hitting me so I open my eyes
And they were still hitting me, and I'm thinking oh my god. What's going on here?
This is this what dying feels like they're not just beating you up
this is, you about to die and I couldn't I couldn't escape from that situation I
Just felt completely helpless a I thought my life of slipping away and then
I'd blacked out actually I went unconscious, so I woke up in a pool of blood and
They'd gone
Smashed my car windows police car went passive its siren on, I thought it was chasing them, but I was so embarrassed
I just I managed to drive home my vision was blurred. There was a hole in the window
parents freaked took me for medical treatment
but I was all that was broken was my teeth so after that then if I went out I
Wouldn't go out and talk to women. I was too self-conscious to dance. Wouldn't that to strangers and
It was like that until I started taking ecstasy ecstasy made it go away. Yeah for the weekend
but once I was off it I
Didn't feel like people would want to be around me cuz that anxious person again
So it was a cycle then for 10 years. Were you anxious before the incident just
Just at a normal, you know
Conscious you're a teenager and you're conscious of your parents and anxious about that kind of thing
Yeah, self-esteem is made up a lot by our early life experiences, relationship with parents
But was there anything that your parents that you wish you could they could have given you and they
They didn't quite manage to give you, that could have maybe fed in to some of their anxiety issues. I can't think of anything
The only thing was the fear thing that caused me anxiety as a little kid was the arrival of my sister
How old are you?
She's 5 or 6 years younger than me. So I remember
Going to see my mom
she was in the hospital she given birth, and they won't let me in I come to see my mom and
Then I had a lot of rivalry with my sister growing up
So that's that's the only other thing I can remember from my childhood. Did your parents treat you differently?
Well, I would tease my sister a lot
I guess it perhaps it stemmed from that jealousy of this new arrival getting the attention from my mom
This is going way back, I mean this it's so young it's like
Well, I guess these things
Lay things down and effect you later in life. Don't they! Ya how did your parents deal with us? You're teasing your little sister?
Well, I would get to hold off a lot and
Sulk and then it got to the point with my sister would stitch me up for things I hadn't even done now get blamed
But but I was a bit with swine for teasing. I should have been doing all this. You know I should have been given her
Brotherly love instead of having this rivalry with her. And It wasn't till
Later when we were teenagers and I was a rave and she was in the into the indie scene that we really got to know
Each other as people and we're friends and all that teasing them was over
Yeah
What happened with family when you were arrested and and sent to prison? How how did that go?
My family I had planned it so if I got arrested
My mates would bail me out my family would never find out cuz I was one of the biggest four years
Did you feel you would never get caught?
When you're on drugs the drugs is telling you you missed a cool guy. You're living out of a movie like below
You're above the law
It's telling you're all these things and until you sober up. You don't understand like how ridiculous that all is
But once I was in there sober
Had to call my parents because the police were smarter than me. They'd arrested all my friends with me I
Couldn't there was nobody else to turn to so
Having to call them and just hearing the heartbreaking their voices. Do you remember that phone call and Guardians like if X?
It's etched in my head. What did you say I?
Already knew their name because my aunt had told him
and
How did your auntie know?
Because I was allowed to I knew I figured out to make a look a local collect call from the jail to her
So I was bracing them
And it was just like I just felt completely sick sinister look like to come from a family who supported me encouraged my further education
Give me nothing, but love come and visited me
To see me when I was successful living this big house in the stock market and then
To basically be like you know yeah, to admit I was dealing ecstasy on a large scale
And some serious crime they had no idea
and then there's the hearing the pain and in their voices
I was just
How did they respond
They were in shock
They just said that they had my back, and they loved me unconditionally and whatever trouble I was in they would support me
it was just
Relief washing over me then
Were you scared of being a victim in prison? You know it's really big
The fear is if you end up in prison you're gonna get raped
And the kids at the school this one most common questions. I get asked this did you drop the soap in the shower? Am
I Held on very tightly to that so but never happens to me had people protecting me
I made alliances with the right people but rape is so common you
Have to go to a rape class in prison where they teach you how not to get raped
And you watch videos
They're a bit lame really, but if someone can learn them power to them
They show predators in the dayroom young people coming in predators offer sweets
Don't take sweets on the Predators predator
Give sweets to some young people and then they owe them sexual favors and the conclusion of the video was if rape happens you have
To report it. If you report anything you're a snitch snitches KOS kill on site by the gang
So no one reports a thing there were times. I would go in showers with soap bars of soap in towels
Just ready to smash one in the head if anyone tried anything
Did they fear go away. Yeah over time what happens is
in the beginning you're terrified of the
gang rules
You're terribly getting rape you're terrified of the guards rules you think you got a and the gang rules in the guards rules contradict
So you got all this coming at you and you're thinking how on earth am I gonna get through this
But over time you learn how to play
around the rules and you make friends with the right people and you get a certain degree of security so in my
situation
a
Guy came into my life who protected me I'd been attacked
By the new cellmate and he he got his mate to attack me. They didn't like me from the get-go
What happened was I'd moved into a new building. It didn't know anyone
My cellmate was a serial home invader torturer
He'd been breaking people's houses and his preferred method of torture was taking hammers to people's kneecaps
And when I moved into him he said I've got a padlock in a sock
I could smash your brains in while you sleep. I can kill you whenever I want
So he got his mate this 20 stone, California biker to attack me
Just when my parents had flown
5,000 miles to visit me for Christmas your parents have seen you after you had been attacked? Yeah, they saw me after got attacked
Yeah, I was on the way to the visit. He walks up behind me in a crowded car. No. He's like
I'm starts kidney punching me gang rule is you must hit back and also you're a punk never ones gonna pray on you
But if you do it back in the guards see it, you're arrested and sent to lockdown you lose your visits
So I had no choice if all the prisoners watching, I had to hit back so I start hitting back
It was like hitting a big bag of cement. I mean this guy was huge and
He was training kickboxing so he smashed me knocked me down. I go off to visit all injured and the response to your question
Yeah, my mom's like what's up with you, and I can't say because she's already a nervous breakdown on my situation
So I didn't manage to get moved out of that cell it took my family calling the British Embassy
To get me moved and eventually had to tell him. I felt this guy was gonna gonna kill me, my cell mate
and then
My new cellmate then introduced me to a guy called to Tony's I knew he could protect me
What was it like the day you got released
Going in and getting released are almost as equally mind-bending, but in different ways
So going in you've got the trauma of the new arrival. You're thinking something Shawshank is gonna happen to you
and
You adapt over time and you settle into
A position where it was almost like in my cell I was running an office because my writing
Was going on the internet and all these prisoners were getting letters and books sent them from people from around the world kind blog readers
So my thought process had gone from panic and shock
To settled but then they start to go
Anxious again as you get close to the gate, and there's a word for it's called gate fever becuase you're thinking
How am I going to function the outside world. With people want to cross the road because they know I've got a criminal record
How am I gonna get girlfriend women not gonna want to date someone who's been in prison?
How am I going to get a job with a criminal record. I've got no money. How am I gonna rebuild my life?
These are the things that then starts to keep you up at night
And it gets more intense then as you get closer to the gates
Mom sister crying and
Just gave him just it was just so nice to just just give him big hugs and
And just think I'm free. I'm finally free and right away. They took me for Indian food
Which is my favorite but I got the gag reflex because of the
There was a meal in the prison called Red Death, but sometimes had dead rats
And it was a mystery meat slop so to this day, I got the gag reflex from chicken tikka masala, so
to this day, I've stayed vegetarian yeah, but yeah, who's
Adjusting then my mom said I was like a puppy dog falling around the house waiting for orders
so it took, it
took me a year to stay at my parents house and
Before I felt confident enough that I could
Not I'd adjusted enough to get back to normally and a Harley Street
therapist drug council had
He'd offered me the opportunity start speaking the skills when I did that first talk so nervous I wasn't able to eat my breakfast
Paste like a prison in a cell at the front of the stage
Soaked in sweat this raw nervous energy just crackling off me
When I got out I called mum up I said they before I was a lunatic
I'm not cut out for public speaking, and I thought that was over and then I was getting
semi, depressed because I've got a criminal record I
can't get a job, out
Of the blue I got an email from the school about a month later, and they said our
kids
voted you the best talk of the year, we get public speaking every week
and we were very much like for you to come back. So you know
That helped me get my confidence back up
Where would you be if you had never been arrested?
If I'd never been arrested
Because I was addicted to that lifestyle. I could have very well done myself in with drugs
I mean there's points on club drug cocktails where I'd overdosed on
GHB for example as well as being on other drugs, and I was I was flopping on the floor like a fish
And I instructed all my mates never to call any
health
Backup because the police would get involved it would all get arrested, so they would just leave me there
Am yeah, it was
The road of drugs leads to the prison police or death
What's next for you Shuan? Okay so I've learned now
to stay on this trajectory of slow and steady progress
I started in the stock market. I was 14  made of first my first investment was 16 double my money in British Telecom
made of first my first investment was 16 double my money in British Telecom
And they ended up worth about 2 million in the stock market by 30
Didn't need to be getting involved in the drugs. I was so addicted to being the man and the attention
The lifestyle was was even more addictive than that than the substances themselves you know if you don't throwing a party for
10,000 people got your own bouncers running around
That surge of excitement and power all these people come up to thanking you so
It was it was it was getting over all of that and
Realizing that by making that decision to get into that lifestyle cost me everything
Fast cash excitement. Yeah, but if I hadn't have done it and stayed in my slow and steady programs
I've been worth probably about 10 million right now in the stock market instead. I had to rebuild my life from scratch
but that lesson is sunk in so I started to apply the slow and steady progress to writing I
And I never set out to be a writer
When a guard said to me in the jail I asked him about the human rights violations
You know dead rats in the food cockroaches, guards murdering mentally ill prisoners
He said the world has got no idea what's going on in here
so my writing got smuggled out got put on the Internet it went on to attract international media attention into the conditions and
That led to me then over ten years, I wrote my life stories a trilogy, and I've presently got
seven books out now seven true crime books and
My Pablo Escobar. What was the best seller on Amazon so this month I am setting up my own publishing company
And that's a credit to slow and steady progress
And I said I take I say to the school kids if you got a goal at your age you stay on that path
persevere
People get jealous they try and trip you up, or just just stay on that path so that's what I'm trying to do now
Shaun that's a remarkable story, thank you so much for joining me
So Shaun can you tell us the next
Interesting person that you have nominated to be interviewed by us and the reason for your nomination
The next person I'd like to nominate is Giles, Dooley
Because I do talks across the country. I sometimes get to hear all the speakers and all the people I've ever heard over the years
His talk brought tears in my eyes now in a nutshell Giles is a humanitarian
Photographer he goes to the war-torn areas of the world
Speaks to the kids the families that have been brutalized
goes and speaks to street kids in Ukraine
And he feels in his hearts that these are the people whose stories need to be heard
It's such an important thing to go out there and do this
when he was in Afghanistan Giles stood on a landmine
It blew up three of his limbs
He was told he was gonna die he was told he was never gonna be able to work again after having dozens of operations
Giles survived he picked up his camera and to this day still going around the world now speaking to all these vulnerable people
these brutalized people in these areas of the world and
You'd have to have a Dark Soul basically if his story doesn't bring tears to your eyes
That's why I'd like to nominate Giles, Dooley. Thank you so much for that nomination Shaun
Mom can you take a seat for a moment
I need to tell you something. I'm a pick up artist? Oh Noooo
The Police are at the family home
and they kind of beckon me in and
Tell me to sit down
That they've got some tragic news
That my sister has been
murdered and I
Thought this can't be right this
obviously
releasing more more information to me that
The guy that she had been dating this she meet on one of these
Dating websites had had killed her
