From Addiction to Redemption: Jack Gregory’s Journey

In this episode, we explored navigating difficult truths with Jack Gregory. Jack was born in Scotland and taken away from his family at a young age. He was raised in a mining town in West Yorkshire, and on his 8th birthday, his foster parents revealed that he wasn't legally their son. This news led to an existential crisis, and Jack began to mimic people and act out. In this episode, Jack discusses his struggles with addiction, his journey to sobriety, his experience in prison, and his newfound faith. He also talks about his work in film and television, his work with survivors of human trafficking, his book, and his work as a podcaster, The Accidental Journalist. We also explore how his involvement with a local church has helped him and his family.

Chapters:

 0:00:00 - Navigating Difficult Truths with Jack Gregory

0:14:45 - Forgiveness and Healing

Chapter Summaries:

(0:00:00) - Navigating Difficult Truths with Jack Gregory 

This episode features Jack Gregory, a former criminal and homeless addict who, by the grace of God, was able to turn his life around. Jack was born in Scotland, taken away from his family at a young age, and raised in a mining town in West Yorkshire. His foster parents told him he wasn't legally their son on his eighth birthday. This news led to an existential crisis, and Jack began to mimic people and act out.

0:14:45 - Forgiveness and Healing

We follow the story of Jack Gregory, who was an addict and experienced a major transformation in his life. Jack discusses his struggles with addiction, his journey to sobriety, his experience in prison, and his newfound faith. Jack's story is of survival and resilience, punctuated with loss, grief, and healing. Jack talks about his experience working in film and television, his work with survivors of human trafficking, his book, and his work as an accidental journalist. He also talks about his involvement with a local church and how it has helped him and his family.



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Transcript

0:00:00
My guest today is Jack Gregory, a writer, actor, director, and producer from the United Kingdom. He is a former criminal and homeless addict who turned his life around by the grace of God. Jack now works under the mantle of The Accidental Journalist and has a popular live webcast called alive and undrawn. He interviews celebrities former criminals and people in recovery. He is living proof that you can change. So get yourself a cup of coffee tea or a beverage of your choice because Jack's story is one you do not want to miss. Hi. I'm Ruth Hovsepian.

0:00:42
Welcome to the Out of The Darkness Podcast, where we help you navigate life's trials. Welcome, Jack. I am so happy that you are able to come back. And for those that don't know, this is our second round. We believe that Satan really didn't want this message to go, but Jack just told me that there are forty plus people praying in the UK. I have several people here praying for us as well, but thank you so much for coming back, Jack. So let's get right into it. Tell us a little bit about your childhood, especially that that day where your parents after a birthday party told you life shattering news. Yeah. So it's good to be good to be here. Unable to reset this You know, like like we said, we've got people praying on this, so not what should go wrong. Yes.

0:01:50
So I was born in Scotland in 1977. In a place called Glasgow. And I was brought out of Scotland, and I was about six months old. This is what I've learned in lighter in life. My mom struggled mentally. She was only she was under eighteen, so she wasn't very old. She struggled with what we now know to be dyslexia. Another sort of mental ailments that they didn't really understand back in the nineteen seventies and didn't really start to understand until, you know, the past ten, fifteen years. So she moved here after the death of her father, who I'm named after, my Christian name is actually William. If you move to England with her sisters, and brother. And when I was six months old oh, sorry. When I was about sixteen, eighteen months old, I was taken away from some of the other children from the other sisters were taken away as well around the same time. Into care. So I didn't know any of this.

0:03:22
I was I grew up in a small mining town in West Yorkshire, a place called Normandy. I grew up in a nice house. My dad worked for British Rail when he was nationalized. He was a civil engineer. My mom worked for social services. They own their own house. You know, when we lived in a decent part of the town, they were well well to do family, you know, known throughout the town. Yeah. I remember.

0:03:59
I it was it was around my eighth birthday. I'm not entirely too short was my eighth birthday. It was nineteen eighty five, thirteen for May nineteen eighty five. So it might have been the Saturday. But I remember having a really nice day of pop and crisp It was a really nice day.

0:04:21
You know, I remember getting a wigwam for the garden. To play in. I was quiet. I was the weird kid. I didn't have many friends. I was shy and weak and physically weak, but awkward, pretty socially awkward. And yeah.

0:04:48
I remember being sat on my mom's  lap and without dad sat on the sofa, brown leather sofa, and reading his paper. I don't know. He was wearing a white shirt  And looking over his glasses reading the daily star newspaper.

0:05:18
My mom sat on her chair. Although I remember sitting on the knee, you have Nicole. We've always very close. It's always a mommy's boy. And I just remember the look in her eye and she, you know, very strong woman though doesn't cry very much if at all, but I remember seeing a tear in her eye. And I look at sadness just on her face. And she said, you know, we love you down here and I'm my all year. Of course. You know, you know, me and that. And it's like, yeah. Well, we are in more than that. We weren't. You know, we were your foster parents. Until a few days ago, and we actually got you, you know, how you know, legally action. We love you very much. And I guess from most kids that would knowing that they'll love that would be something great, but from my divergent brain is when the light went off. For me. Mhmm.

0:06:42
And I'm eight years old and I'm having a extra central crisis. I don't know why. I didn't know why it was anyway. I was, you know, either on the developed brain. I wasn't able to read alright properly. I was saying as a bit fake. I was broken.

0:07:00
Do you do you do you think that the news that your parents gave you that they change the trajectory of your life where you are headed? Yes. To an extent. So, yeah, it did change that trajectory of my life of where I was going. I think that I would have and I not know I might have just carried on being mister NICE, but them. But it didn't some something switched in my brain.

0:07:39
I'm caused this existential crisis and I'm eight years old and don't know who I am. And that carried on up until only, you know, a few years well, eight years ago, really. Eight years ago this week, you know, this is the time when I would have gone into a hospital. And talking about it with you. So, you know, it does help. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about you know, the the time, you know, when as a teenager, when you start to act out and you know, it leads into certain events into in your life. Yeah.

0:08:21
So I guess the outcome of this existential crisis was that I discovered that I could mimic anybody. I could be anybody. I thought well, if I'm not the person that I thought I was, I'm not even William Gregory. You know, I'm William Busy. Everything's working busy here. You know? So I didn't understand any of this.

0:08:46
And this is back in in in the days when adults really didn't talk about this sort of stuff. You know, my mom and dad were old, older parents back then. In the eighties and nineies, you know. Right. I had with Bon Joey in the war. So, you know, they they they were older. So I just you  know, there  was never any social worker there. There was only school. I would act up at school.

0:09:22
I learned to lie and I learned to lie very well in certain parts, but I also was seen as a bit of a joker because I would lie about these most. Things that couldn't even be true. I was bullied terribly in the special floor system by the other kids. I came to him and, you know, a loving family in a nice house, went into a town that was more affected than that town. Because it was one of the main in towns. Now we'll just go well in that town. And a lot of the kids were from broken homes and broken families. You you know, products of divorces. So there were kids that really didn't understand, sort of, from the dynamic that I had. So they bled me, and I was very physically weak. So I learned July and I learned July very well. I I I learned to make money. I could do it very well.

0:10:25
I would buy his get cigarettes, pay protection on occasion with these cigarettes, and I remember getting an arm, actually, kicking behind the shed one day and like I said Trevor Scott his name was just said to me, we turn up for this fight. I promise you nobody will ever bully you again. And I turned up for the fight behind the sheds. He hit me once I hit the floor and the rest of the class started laying into my head with their feet. I remember being in hospital for a few days and the police being involved and stuff like that. I never got bullied again.

0:11:03
But, you know, I was being abused by let's say, adults in in in in the system, within the educational system and the care system. Sexually by male and female. Which causes an identity crisis as well. They would give me gifts and they would buy me cigarettes and stuff. They would say because I visualize like a mask and they would say, you know, nobody'll ever believe you. Anyway, if you say anything, You're just getting trouble. They'll lock, you know, they'll lock you up. They'll put you into psychiatric care. So I went through this for years. Years of sexual abuse. How dare you deal with that? You know, at least I was get do I ask her at least I was getting some attention? You know? And once it had happened a few times, you didn't really hit any more headlines after deal with it. Many, many, many, many years.

0:12:29
But that was a sort of a catalyst to a lot of other different behaviors. One thing I learned that day when I was had to live in hell kicked out of me. Was that do you know why I wasn't made of glass and I wouldn't break? I could take a punch and I could take if I could take twenty boots to the head and still stand up and I'll feel a bit dizzy and and and I'm walking to the staff room. Then I got, you know, that that was gray. I was running knock off VHS, bootleg VHS. I would make money by doing that and I would run dope and other things for local dealers and I made money, and I left school at sixteen. There were no sort of GC see is what you call GEDs. I would go away on weekends with some of the teachers. You know, and we know what would happen  in the privacy of tents. Mhmm. I don't know if it ever happened today any of the other kids. I like to think that while they were doing it to me, they weren't doing it to other kids.

0:14:00
What was the lowest point in your life, Jack? And how did you start that climb back. I mean, I've had several low points in my life. There was a guy It was one of the he was a son of one of the teachers. Actually, one of my teachers from the high school, one of my teachers from the special school. They were a couple. And he  captured a Steven Wormold, and he was killed in Bosnia. He was kind of a father fig well, a big brother figure to a lot of kids in the area. He would come and, you you know, talk talk to the kids a lot. He was killed in Bosnia, captain Steven wormholes.

0:14:45
So that was sort of my first losing some one. I actually thought something of Wilos Kali for himself in front of a train after a mushy bender. In front of me. That I watched my big brother, friend, mancha, Darren. Who was the first one to get me clean and sober. Got me sober for the first time, which starts teaching me to read them right. He knew that I love poetry. So I would take it to the poetry jams where I got to do poetry with people like Carl Dallas, Philly Bluffs, you know, some of the bigger names that you assuming that your English listeners would know. And then he died in nineteen ninety October nineteen ninety nine.

0:15:41
So I moved away from I tried to move away from there. I ended up in prison after losing my temper and a night club. And nearly killing some guy. Back then, prisons were quite Victorian. They still are to a certain extent, but it was pretty much twenty four hour lockup called VITARIAN cells, noting V's, radio if you were okay. I did it without any sort of friends or family. I got out and moved to Parsmuth, which is at the upper end of the country.

0:16:24
Got back into drinking and I wanted to get sober so I joined this thing called the construction projects. And I got to thirty days sober and we went one of the mentors from there, took me on a film set because they knew I love Phil. When I fell over film, I was working as a comedy called magician. I was learning how to be a sound technician. I was about six months sober, I graduated from that, and then I moved to Norfolk to county that I'm in now. And I had about ten years of eleven years of sobriety, which was absolutely fantastic.

0:17:05
I started writing a fell based upon some of my earlier exploits, loosely, I might add. That took me into a deep and murky world and I ended up starting to drink again. I wasn't just addicted it to drugs. I'm an addict's heads, drugs aren't just my pro you know, drugs are my solution, not my problem. So I found myself in a crack house and couldn't take it anymore. And I said, oh, god. I don't even know if you exist. Not anymore. I think he did, but if he don't, he might lose out mid. If you do exist, take away this one with this first for drugs because I can't stop or take away my life. Let my family heal and let them gel with their lives, let my daughter heal.

0:18:05
And I fell asleep. This was about ten o'clock at night. Twenty seven twenty six for June two thousand and fourteen. I woke up about somewhere between two and five minutes past twelve thousand and fourteen, and I haven't used the day since. He took away that that hunger that first. He took away that one. And I was grateful. Don't get me wrong. I was absolutely grateful. And I love God. But I knew the next step would be to take Jesus into my life and to do that. I would have to stop some of the bad behavior. And I wanted at least the option to still be naughty a bit. And I won't contribute my daughter from her mom's for the weekend.

0:18:52
I fell ill. I was weighed about eight and a half stone, nine stone. I found myself in hospital. I got very, very yellow. I'd been shaken.

0:19:03
About half past four, my health started taking turned for the worst in the hospital by half past seven hours of dead. Type two lung failure, tuberculosis, chloracy, some environmental disease that they haven't seen for thirty for fifty years. I remember convulsing on that But before I I I passed on four minutes, I I I was dead, near enough. So when I came back, I came back very broken, And it was a dark few weeks. I wouldn't see my daughter. I wouldn't see anybody. I guess that was my lowest.

0:19:49
What gave you the that that strength to turn your life into So have been this one doctor who I believe who have been an angel. Now I know that in some places in America, doctors are allowed to pray with patients that has extremely frowned upon, hey, you can lose your medical license for it. You can't even wear the crush and show it. You can wear the crush better. It has to be on D. R. Mhmm. Under our clothing, but she would let me look at it and smile. And then when she would hear someone come in, she would cover it again.

0:20:29
I said, you know, god. I know you just crushed you did that from me, but Take me. Please take me. And there's like, I can't I can't live like this anymore. I don't know what to do anymore, and I just felt this voice saying, you know what? What to do. And I said, alright. Okay. So I said, Jesus, I accept you into my life. And, yeah, they won't believe  I'd come literally out, you know, out of the darkness show up on this card out of the darkness, and I've been in there for such a long time. Some of it to which I'm dealing still dealing with today eight years on. You know, I started going to church. I'm still learning. Still learning who I am. I called myself a hooligan. To be UHL again because I didn't know who I was. It's only now in this past few years that I've just that discovering my identity, who I really am, you know, I I came out of that darkness very much into the light and I started getting better and going to church and becoming part of the community.

0:21:51
I wrote personal apocalypse, which was based around the poetry of my life. And and then a few months after that, I was asked to go and speak to her a British based Hollywood director who was doing two films called the souvenir that would be in front of Biomart, Scarsesez. And I spoke to the director, and after speaking to the director, She normally brought me on as an actor, as a supporting actor with a very young scene of my own up opposite. Tilda Swinton's daughter, Anna. I became the authenticity consultant for the film. Then in went and spent six months working with the escapees of human trafficking, sexual slavery, and exploitation. And that's when I started looking at my own trauma around my own sexual abuse. So when I started to heal, After hitting all these stars, I wrote a book about a call between street lights and red lights, which is now sort of it's doing better in America than it is here.

0:23:07
In twenty seventeen, Easter. I lost my biological mom at home, and then two months later, my sister had a baby. For whatever reason, a partner Lee and Dean, while my sister was sleeping in Betty, he'd be Luna unconscious. She was taken into hospital with severe brain damage and lots of other things and passed away at five days old. He was put in prison for life for murder with a minimum of ten years. He was twenty one when he went in. Then was to a year into his sentence. His soul mate murdered him in the middle of the night.

0:23:54
Over a relatively small group that I believe. Unleft the family, not only grieving, but not able to answer these questions that we had. I was very much in faith then. But I was really struggling. But I had a whole church behind me. It came to the funeral, which took a year pretty much. And he wasn't allowed if you enrolled until we had one for Luna. And in the end, his was a clandestine funeral that nobody was allowed to go to.

0:24:43
And I was taken by one of the elders from Mathieu, which I didn't wanna go alone. And Yeah. He he was in there, and I I came out of the came out of the comatrade, but I was back in the days of my smoke, and I let her cigarette. And I felt I chapped on my shoulder, I turned around, and his mom just flew around around there. And I froze and I broke. And I sat to well up and got into Chris' car. And I said, what's going on? I said, I need to forgive him. Wait. What? I said I need to forgive him. I said, takina. Need to forgive the money to forgive his I need to forgive his dad. I know he's dad, but it's gonna turn me apart if I don't. And we prayed about it. And that set me on this journey. And that I'm on so that I'm still on to this day, really.

0:25:51
Yeah. I got home and I twenty twenty. I got involved with the daughters of a man that was murdered by a hitman in Place called Manchester, which is on staff, and I helped them write a book. And we helped each other grieve because she was round about the same time. You know, there's a twenty fifteen a month with twenty seventeen, but you know, we still have given a lot, so I have them write a book and then hovered it.

0:26:24
And everything went, you know, bump up and, you know, and it was like the world was ending again. You know, I still managed to get out because I'm the primary career in my family. I was going to the shop every day and still going out and still doing things at church and stuff like that. So it didn't really affect me that much, but it was October, really October twenty twenty when the second lockdown here. Nobody knew the backside from their elbow. Nobody knew what to do. But I didn't know what to do. I was sort of I started struggling a bit mentally again with my it should start getting depressed and down and I was starting to feel a bit broken again.

0:27:13
And I was speaking to a friend of mine, Jason Edwards, who's hossed his negotiator. And he said to me, why don't you do a podcast? I said I wouldn't even know where that. I said, well, why don't we do a podcast? Me and you, you interview me. And we did. It was called shed x. My wife had just bought me the shed that I'm now in, but it was very very cold. It was winter coming up to winter. So I was doing it in the house. But both Jason and I have been turned down for Ted Charles. So I called we called it Shadex originally to which I got asked to kind of change the name and then that became live and then drove and so January twenty twenty one. But yeah.

0:28:05
And I started into viewing all these people, and then I started healing. And I started listening to all these people's stories, and I was given a clear prophecy at church by several people that didn't even know each of her or really even know me saying that I was gonna become a voice for the voiceless. And I was like, yeah. I've been nice if it happens, but, you know, I could never have dreamed that become this, you know. Several hundred podcasts down the line. I'm also a hundred of my own speaking about my work, in film and television, speaking about my books, help in trafficking survivors, you know, like myself, being a voice of people that feel marginalized I'm very much a man of faith.

0:29:12
We live in faith. I became the accidental journalist. But I properly became the man that God wanted me to be. Sometimes God changes our names. When we reborn, I was reborn. And yeah. It  was but the reason I became Jack is that I It wasn't long after I got sober and I'd start, you know, we're seeing Joe, really, even just before that, I knew I needed to be something else. And William Gregory, Will Gregory, Bill Gregory, Bill Gregory. Bill Gregory.

0:30:07
We're always that person that people walk across the road to get away from, It was always that screw up at home. It was always that disappointment. To his parents, to his family. He was always the black sheep. With Jack, Gregor, there was a blank slate and he could become anything. I became Japanese because I was a jack of all trades and master of none.

0:30:36
When I was baptized, I was baptized as Jack Gregory, and that is who I've been ever since, and that is who I am and that is who God has led me to. That's the man that God has helped me go into. And I have to take some credit for that myself as well. I give God all the credit, you know. But I've put a lot of hard work in myself. I didn't admit that for such a long time and I gave it all to God and, you know, I realized that actually God wants me to be a proud of myself at times. And I looked back and that old person seemed so far away and would be so easy to step back into it. Thought God took that away. He took that one away.

0:31:27
We don't have a lot of money as a family. Government isn't in the greatest of shapes. Osteria is on the rise. And good families are going hungry. I'm very blessed to be a part of a church that really as a hat for families and we do food clubs and things like that. And yeah, I guess that's where I am.

0:31:58
Now, you know, I occasionally get to speak to people like you and share my story, my testimony. A testimony is a powerful thing. But we persevere, and we keep going, and we keep plugging in, and As you said, our testimony is very important and we really need to get that out to people and people need to hear it. You are welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your story, and I wish you the best and God bless you. Thank you for joining me to stay connected Follow me on Instagram and Facebook. If you like this podcast, can you help me find new listeners by leaving a rating and review? This small step takes only a moment, but really helps grow the listening audience. So let me thank you in advance. I hope you have a wonderful day and until next time. Let's continue on our journey as followers of Jesus Christ. I am Ruth Hovsepian.