Jack JP laps Fan Solar System. This is Dicky Bird here from Australia. The date today is the twenty fourth of December Christmas Eve on twenty twenty four, and it is exactly ten years to the date that I first listened to an episode of The Lapsed Fan. That episode was the WrestleMania X seven episode. I can't remember how long it was. I want to say it was like seven hours long. It was probably not even that long, maybe just because it sounds like the short end of
a twenty twenty four episode of The Lapsed Fan. Nevertheless, it is a day that I will remember forever, and it is an episode that I will remember forever. Funnily enough, I was actually put onto The Lapsed Fan through Twitter by someone called Simon Miller, and probably a lot of people know who this is. He's actually a wrestler now and for a long time was a contributor on What Culture, but at the time he was none of these things.
At the time, I listened to a podcast where he was the editor of a video game website, and I listened to their podcast which he was frequently on, and I followed him on Twitter and on Twitter. Ten years ago today, he wrote, if you've ever had any interest in WWE slash F, you need to listen to the latest The Lapsed Fan on WrestleMania X seven. It's an audio documentary for your ears, and that piqued my interest a lot.
I checked it out.
And the one thing that I was immediately taken by was the duration of or should I say, the length and girth of the episode. Of course, you hear a lot from people saying, oh, it's too long, and da da dah and blah blah blah, But the truth is I was actually looking for a lengthy podcast at the time. I needed to listen to podcasts to go to sleep, and a lot of the podcasts that I listened to,
you know, they were like thirty forty minutes long. And it wasn't that I couldn't get to sleep in thirty or forty minutes time, but the idea that I only had thirty or forty minutes to get myself to sleep created enough anxiety that I would not be able to get to sleep in that time, and often my phone would then play something else afterwards that I probably didn't want to listen to, so I would have to stop trying to get to sleep, put on the next thing, em ronson repeat, do this.
So whether it was.
Three hours, four hours, five hours, seven hours, you know, the truth is once I found this, I slept a lot better because I did not have any anxiety about what if I'm still awake at the end of this episode. But what was actually more interesting is what happened about a week later. Exactly a week later, my girlfriend at the time, who is now the mother of my children, she was living in.
Melbourne, had you know.
We had we had met each other, and then she decided that she was gonna move there, and we were still kind of like, you know whatever, seeing each other, and I was going to go and.
Visit her for New Year's Eve.
New Year's even Melbourne is absolutely delightful.
I recommend it to anybody.
It's a beautiful city and New Year's Eve there is it makes it even better.
But yeah, I was gonna like leave my job.
My contract on my job was like expiring in six months anyway, so I was like, well, you know, if we're still together by then, I'll just move to Melbourne. So I went down to visit her, spend a couple of days in Melbourne and New Year's Eve. And so New Year's Eve rolled around and we.
Went to a friend of hers place.
And the friend offered me some speed.
And I took that speed.
Because I, you know, if I'm going to do drugs, they got to be uppers, not downers. And it was a great time to be had. Went hard, drank my weight and alcohol, sniffed my nose off and in speed, and then you know, the sun started to come up and we were all caked out of our brains on the front porch of this house in Melbourne, and you know, you know that feeling. Maybe you don't, some people will know that feeling where it's just like you know that you know this is the end of the party, the
end of the good time. It's coming to an end. You don't want to let go, but your body cannot give anything else.
And then her.
Friend turns to me and says, would you like a tab of LSD? And at this point of course I should have said no, because I've never had LSD before, and I've just been on a you know, twelve hour drinking and drug fueled binge.
Probably not a good idea. Did I say that? Fuck No?
I took that LSD and as soon as I took that LSD, I just said to myself.
I'm quite tired.
I'm going to just have a quick lie down, lay down. Immediately fell asleep, which I would not recommend doing after you take LSD before it's kicked in, because when I woke up, it was in full effect. And I cannot describe this feeling to anybody, because it's not just oh, I took LSD. I took LSD at the end of you know, abusing myself so much. The only way I can really describe it is that when I woke up, and I was asleep for a couple of hours, so I did not get enough sleep. But I woke up
and I was in a hole. I was in a big hole in the ground that I could not get out of.
It was very.
Difficult to walk, it was very difficult to talk, it was very difficult.
To make any decisions or anything like that. And I had.
Made a very big mistake. So we get ourselves. You know, my girlfriend at the time, who had done the exact same thing, by the way.
So she was fucked to I was fucked.
It's like midday the day on New Year's Day, and we are just trying to survive, and we get ourselves an uber to get back to her place so that we can just collapse and.
Just try and ride this thing out.
I at one point told the uber driver to pull over because I thought I was going to die inside of the Uber, but my girlfriend is just like, hang on, it's okay. It was, you know, it basically like fear and loathing in Las Vegas, except like really lame and in the back of like a mini van on the way to just a a suburban in Melbourne. Get back to her place, and just thought, okay, it can relax,
just chill out or whatever. But every time I closed my eyes, I would see things, and this made sleeping or recovering very difficult.
And this would last for forty eight hours.
So I was no better now that I was like in a bed trying to relax. In fact, it felt worse. I many times thought about just running onto the street, onto incoming traffic, but there was one thing that saved me.
And I listened to this episode of WrestleMania X seven over and over and over again, and for whatever reason, the one thing that I remember the most is Paul Hayman not I don't specifically know what where, But when I just think back to this time, when I have you know, an LSD flashback or something to that point in time, it's Paul Hayman and his baseball cap and you know, skull, scullet ponytail that I can see during this time, and I just, yeah, I just listened to
this episode and wrote out this extremely terrifying and terrible experience. And it's a shame because a lot of people I've talked to afterwards have been like, what are you talking about? LSD is great, and I'm like, yeah, I probably would have been great ifight have, you know, taken it with clear mind and healthy body, But I did not, and I have never done it since, just because there was a traumatic experience. But yeah, that was that was That was how the lapse fan got kicked off for me.
And you know, there's it seems to be since then for me, like a story for every you know journey, some some Some journeys last quite a while and have a few different stories associated with them. But I think most importantly is that you've been there through times that were quite difficult in my life, that you know, it really came in handy something that genuinely. I don't think a thirty or forty minute podcast would ord do.
A review series.
On you know what happened on Raw last night? That's not probably gonna be great either. You know, these were like just they were really your podcasts were.
Really calming effect.
Because they just they took their time, you know, and they were just they just felt it just felt like home.
You know, other things as well, like I.
Needed very invasive sinus surgery and I was in a public hospital for seven days while they continued to pump me full of penicillin to make sure that, you know, that the infection didn't come back. And I shared a room with three other people and it was hell, but I had the LABS fan there. And this was during the WrestleMania journey still as well, and just remembering the episode of you.
Know, how how You'd.
Book I think it was how you'd book the nWo in WWE.
Or something to this effect.
But yeah, it's it's it's just something that I can't stop thinking about every time I think about a journey or something like the T and H journey. You know, my son was born during this and I even remember, you know, messaging my friends in my group chat with a photo of me holding my son. What did the caption say? It said dialed in. I mean that is a real, you know, screenshot, that is a real snapshot of time there. And you know, of course the first
response to that was turkey dude. So you know, that's how much that you've that you've really penetrated everybody that you said that you were going to.
You say that you go hard and you penetrate, and you really have.
My ass and many other things, most importantly the other things. You know, So ten years, you know, a lot has changed for me in ten years. I feel like you guys are still exactly the same. Your podcasts are a bit longer, the journeys are a bit longer, but I feel like that's just more of an evolution than anything. And yeah, I just wanted to send this in on this exact date. I've been thinking about it for a while.
Seeing you guys, I've seen a live show of yours and meeting you on person this year was a bucket list especially on the tenth year. That was a bucket list item that I'm so glad to have been able to achieve.
And you know, now I run.
Chop teas with some fucking hilarious looking TLF merchandise. But you know, even that is a way of me trying to open up a stream of revenue for the people who have kind of been there for me in the times that I've needed them. Not that they knew that, but you know, I run the chop Teas website to give back to people like yourselves for helping me not run in front of incoming traffic. So yeah, that's pretty much all I wanted to say. You know, big fan
of everything that you do. Obviously, as you've heard, and you know, I guess I wanted to also shout out the solar system.
I think that there's really never been a.
Cooler group of people than the laps Fan Solar System.
And I interact with a lot more of them than I.
Used to because obviously when people have questions or just want to send feedback or have comments, you know, they always get in touch and they're always very very nice. And you know, thank you to anybody who's ever bought anything of chop Teas. I really appreciate the messages people
saying just love the concept and the idea. And to anybody who's gotten this far into this rant, and if you're if you like the merch, I will say that, stay tuned because pretty much the first week of next year there is going to be a huge lapsed fan drop and some stuff that you will not want to you will not want to miss, so keep it dialed in and yeah, hopefully, hopefully, here's to another ten years guys.
If not more, god knows what the fuck you'll be talking about then, but I guess there will always be more wrestling, So until then, Bye,