Melinda Ferguson — Bamboozled, In Search Of Joy In A World Gone Mad

Once more it is what's involved and as always so good to have you along with us. Special guest today and I was just saying before we actually started here I was saying to you know I know of her as a publisher but never as an author never crossed my mind for some strange reason and then I got the latest book and I went oh goodness I now have to read all of them. Who am I talking about? I am talking about none other than Melinda Ferguson. Her latest book called Bamboozled in Search of Joy in a World Gone Mad. Hello Melinda welcome. Hi David lovely to be here with you. It is so good to have you as well and to chat with you. First and foremost I need to say what a book. It's quite simply mind-blowing and yet you know it's a great story but it's just so human and it's something that I think you've put into words what many people have actually been going through in one way or another. But before we dive into that tell me a little bit about Melinda. How did you grow up? How did you grow up? Because as I said I knew you first as a publisher so let's start right at the very beginning. Okay I hope we've got lots of time. I'm going to try and keep it brief. I was born in the scintillating town of Ermalo to be honest. I don't even know what province Ermalo is in anymore.

Maybe it's in Pumalanga. Where is it? Anyway it's a small god-forsaken town. I was fortunately six months when I left and I went to Joburg. Grew up in Joburg, naughty child, clever child, rebellious. I started smoking I think when I was four, drinking when I was nine. Had a very tumultuous childhood. My mom was an alcoholic. My dad died when we were very little and I think she just couldn't handle four kids and hit the bottle. I was following suit very quickly. By the time I was in high school I was a teenage alcoholic. You went to all the dirty bits I think David. By the time I got to high school I was a teenage alcoholic, started smoking dope, got to university, went to UCT, did well. You know I studied drama. I was one of those little drama queens at university in the state of emergency so it was also tumultuous time back then. Then when I was 23 I was offered heroin for the first time. Instead of going no no this is terrible oh my word you know like most normal people would I went oh my god this is the most exciting thing I've ever been offered let me cry. Long story short I soon became addicted to heroin and crack cocaine and in my first book Smacked which I don't think you've read and you really should because that's the really dirty book.

It's not just about it's not just about the dirty bits let's be let's be clear on that but I absolutely should read them because going by this one wow. Yeah so Smacked you know I then became a full-blown heroin and crack addict from being a hopeful intelligent young woman. I became totally broken. I write about it a lot in my in my first memoir Smacked but I mean I landed up on the streets of Hillbra. I was gang raped. I lived with dealers. I lost my two little babies temporarily because of my addiction. I really went all the way David and when I finally got clean on a homeless farm in 1999 I literally had the clothes on my back. I had a couple of outfits donated by the church. I had nothing to you know I had nothing left. I had literally destroyed my life using drugs. My children were gone. My husband had left me for a for a blonde that he had met in rehab and I literally crawled on my belly back into the world and full of shame, full of regret. I mean I think that people don't understand how absolutely you know harsh and and how depressing it is when you've lost every single thing in your life and you have to kind of face the world with all the recrimination, all the judgment and all but most of all the self-hatred that comes with having absolutely trashed my life and that was in 1999. Do you want to ask me something about that because I could just go on for eight? No no I'm happy for you to go on because for me chatting to somebody like yourself and somebody who's not afraid to say look this is this is where I've been this is what I've done warts and all I find that amazing and it's it's one of the things that I do and I do on my show is talk about real stuff and real things because all the fluff and marshmallows and pretty clouds in the world it's nice but you know nobody that I've come across really lives like that you know. You can't you can't believe everything you see on Facebook and Instagram etc etc and I often think you know one of my sayings that I've lived by for a long time is blessed are the cracked for it is they who let in the light and you know you're speaking to a fellow cracked soul here so yeah I'm happy that that you continue because we're going to get to the part where you ended up having this massive vehicle accident and then after that so so yes take me quickly up to that part and then we'll take it from there. So so as I said I got clean in September on the 1st of September 1999 that the light finally dawned on me that actually I was in trouble you know the denial system an addict works with is immense I mean it's fascinating actually how many lies one can tell oneself and blame everybody else and that was where I was at before I got clean when I got clean on this homeless farm I just had to actually wake up to the fact that I'd messed my whole life up and that I'd hurt so many people and more than anybody I'd hurt myself but I mean I had I'd abandoned my two babies as well because I was just a glutton for drugs and so I crawled out of this terrible situation and one day at a time one hour at a time I managed to stay clean and sober and and you know that was I suppose the miracle that happened to me back then on this farm is the light came and I started looking for possibility rather than for the darkness and I looked for the light and I turned my back on the back on the on the on the hopeless and on the darkness of my soul and so the slow recovery happened and I started you know waitressing working trying to collect money I didn't have a rich family that could you know sort of support me and by the time I was sort of five years clean I managed to write my first book which was called smashed and that's the one which is the kind of dark journey of my heroin and crack addiction and then things you know started brightening up I managed to buy a place I collected money I saved money and I started working at true love magazine which I spent about 11 years there and along the road I decided I wanted to become a motoring journalist I loved cars I drove cars very late in my life I was only 33 when I got my license in fact and I sort of crowned myself the motoring editor of true love and for the next few years I was traveling on the world going on motoring shows doing all that stuff and in 2013 I was given a Ferrari not forever just for the day and I was given the keys I was celebrating my 14 year teen birthday and I was given this Ferrari California a 3.2 million round car and told enjoy the car for the day bring it back by four o'clock well I had the time of my life and at about half past three I decided I better take it back to Bigletti in William Nickel on William Nickel Drive well what happened then was a god almighty crash and something that I you know I still relive that accident in many ways because it was one of those errors of judgment I mean if you're in a car like that you shouldn't be making errors of judgment and I've had to live with that I overtook a truck that was slow moving I accelerated to about 60 and landed up in a what do you call it an intersection a robot which I hadn't seen had turned red and I landed up being t-boned by a major huge pajero that elicited absolute chaos in my life I mean I not only did I have PTSD but the expense of of smashing up writing off a 3.2 million round Ferrari was actually mind-blowing no one was hurt not me not the people who were driving with me and not the occupants of the other car but at that point all I could see was the absolute horror of what I'd done

long story short it took about six months to sort the thing out legally I got a lawyer I managed to get the company who I was working for to actually pay which was a miracle but what I was left with was extreme anxiety I mean it worked so bad David that I actually couldn't stop crying I mean I think that people who've had trauma in their lives will relate it was as though like my world had collapsed I was crying all the time I couldn't sleep I was I was tormented by the spinning of this car over and over and over again I booked myself into a clinic for three weeks because I was having a nervous breakdown walked out of the clinic with a whole bag of psychiatric meds I'd been diagnosed with bipolar 2 the psychiatrist had put me on all this medicine and I'd basically I mean you know when you go to a clinic you kind of trust the people who are scheduling you into labels and drugs and yeah I walked out of there now taking these kind of bipolar medication things yes no being being done that right you know I'm one of those people pretty much like you yeah I discovered that rock bottom actually has a basement so yeah for me for me I felt obliged to go and explore the basement as well but I can relate to to the PTSD and what you're feeling and exactly that I mean when when I was going through my long dark tea time of the soul compliments of Douglas Adams I also you know you you go to these people you think okay I'm going to professionals okay they can tell me what is wrong and how to fix what is wrong in my experience though not so much not me neither you know and I think that I want to say this there are people that have to take psychiatric medication it makes their lives manageable and I'm all for that if that's what it does for them for me I think they misdiagnosed me I was actually traumatized I mean we don't even want to talk about having discovered my boyfriend at the time in bed with a Dutch lesbian I mean that's another whole story um but so I mean my heart was broken I'd had this major accident and my boyfriend had betrayed me so there was you know enough reason to be crying and but instead of them really delving into the real things that had happened they just quickly wants to put the plaster on and I left up after those you know after getting out that clinic my whole life I suddenly realized I was just like a zombie the meds were making me so depressed I was literally working on a kind of like half a half a cylinder a half a cylinder with no kilowatts or any Newton meters and I just felt like is this life was I gonna now just be the zombie and fortunately at the time I decided to go on Tinder which is like a long story as well you know just as you as you think you like really have hit drop bottom why don't you look for love and so I found love on Tinder and he came in the form of a psychiatrist but thankfully this man who I'm still with by the way and he's called Stolmet in my new book Bamboozled okay good good yes he he is a maverick psychiatrist who can't stand the former cause of this world who he believes are just scheduling people who are just putting people onto meds that it's just the easy way to get out of actually having to engage so he got me off the meds he took me quietly and slowly off his bloody pill and by about January 2015 in love with my German psychiatrist and author meds he he suggested to me that I should try and go on a psychedelic journey in that with the name of psilocybin which is otherwise known as magic mushrooms to try and address my PTSD and anxiety and on that note Melinda I'm going to say to you we'll be back in just a little bit because I want to talk about this because this is something near and dear to my heart okay I kind of feel like reading the book you know you'd been reading my mail but anyway let's let you when we get back we'll we'll get more into that it is what's involved my special guest is Melinda Ferguson her latest book called Bamboozled we'll be back in just a bit

and we're back with my special guest Melinda Ferguson talking about her latest book Bamboozled so just before the break you were saying that and and this I find most interesting your your your maverick a psychiatrist the soulmate said you should try psychedelics in the form of psilocybin now immediately there's going to be people that are going to go you want to do what yeah exactly considering where you've been and you've managed to eventually turn yourself into a human being now and now you want to go back there and this is just another excuse he says talking in the third person but never mind what happened tell me about it oh you've just expressed that that self-doubt that I had so well you know when he first said to me do this I went are you insane haven't you read my first book I put it next to the bedside table I mean you know where I come from why would I want to go and take drugs at that stage in my life I knew nothing about psychedelics in the form of how they are presently being seen in our world as as really effective ways to do deep healing I was horrified I told him no and you know he carried on just suddenly saying to me I think these things are going to work then I met this and I call her my spiritual mother and I call her also the mother of mushrooms in South Africa and her name was her name is Monica Kromhot and you know how synchronicity happens David where you you meet someone and there's just something in your heart that gets loosened and she was so wonderful kind gentle loving in my interview that I did with her for city press because I mean there's a long story she had been arrested for having magic mushrooms in her house during a soma it's called soma ceremony and and so I did a story on her and after that interview this this little door sort of started opening and said maybe you must read up about this stuff a lot of research I did before I decided to go on my first journey I read about the John Hopkins uh universities absolutely brilliant results with people who suffered from anxiety and depression I read many papers that well-respected psychiatrists well-respected neuroscientists were delivering which was saying that psychedelics especially in the form of psilocybin were having amazing results so backed by science because you know science is the big word especially in lockdown um backed by all the scientific evidence um I started thinking maybe I must do this and then the big the thing that really changed my mind was when I discovered that Bill W the man who had created the Alcoholics Anonymous program the 12-step program he himself when he was in recovery when he was sober he had also lacked a kind of spiritual meaning in his life and he had embarked on work with LSD back in the late 50s and you know David I thought to myself if Bill W my absolute hero could actually do this then wipe on little old me also venture into this area that I was so afraid of and that's how I went on my first journey now in terms of this because I'll relate a little bit of my story as well but in terms of this um once you've done all the research and you say you went on your journey so this was a facilitated sort of process that you went for you didn't you know meet somebody on the corner of the street and go hey listen but give me I don't know does it come in pounds grams kilograms whatever it comes in grams I mean

I know that now but I'm saying I'm saying you know that that you this was a proper ceremony now I remember for myself the first time that I did a mushroom journey as well is

yeah yeah absolutely I've been a I've been a bit of a wanderer I've often been referred to somewhat of a fringe dweller so I like that the first time I took some that that that part of me that is the sort of addictive wild child personality was screaming are you insane why are you doing this this is just another excuse you shouldn't do this and then it was like oh goodness me but what happens you know I've now taken the stuff because I'm a big control freak and I'm like not in control and you know somebody's gonna launch some of these dark festering pools in me and all of the stuff is gonna come flooding out yeah I was terrified going into it and even sort of when I felt it kicking in I was like uh oh and that's the thing though about Shiloh Sahib and magic mushrooms is you can't fight it once it's once it's there it's there and the best thing to do is to relax into it how did it work out for you you've said it so brilliantly I mean I was I write about it in bamboozled I mean if I could have run out of that room and it was a very safe space and I would only ever ever advise people to do it with like trusted and and and responsible and watches we like to call them and people that know what they're doing where you're safe and you're not just going and having a couple of shrooms on your own because that's not at all what I was doing I was doing this to get in touch with my wounds and so when I finally took the five grams which is the therapeutic dose yeah you know I was so scared that it took about an hour for me to go over and when I say go over I meant through the doors you know the doors that Elders Faculty writes of maybe Jim Morrison you know the way the doors were Jim Morrison speaks a lot about you know his his his work or maybe he was just getting tripping up there but who knows I I was so resistant control freak completely you know and finally I write about this in the book as though it felt like I suddenly became Buzz Lightyear you know and I wooshed through this veil of dreck that had been part of my life for so long and on the other side it's very hard to describe what what goes on in a psilocybin journey but on the other side was a universe a multiverse something so magnificent where I became completely connected with who I really was where my ego was put to the side where all the lies that I told myself about myself we were destroyed really in that one night and what I really realized about four hours or five hours later when I came back to planet earth when I came back to planet earth I realized that the huge lie that had been told about this particular substance and I don't want to call it a drug because I think it's a medicine oh yes absolutely absolutely it's a medicine and what it the lie that had been told you know in the war of war on drugs the supposed magnificent war on drugs to keep all of us safe which has been a big lie really and that this this substance can sit besides heroin and meth on the scheduling table it's just the most absurd idea there was no part of me that wanted more there was no part of me that had any craving in fact the exact opposite had happened I was full I was calm I had peace peace beyond understanding the the the the kind of phrase they use often in the but no they use often in the bible I think it's only once in the bible where they say you will get a peace beyond all understanding well that's what I got and that David made me realize that something really special had happened and so over the past seven years I've probably taken journeys maybe twice or three times a year I've always been very specific about when I want to take a go and do a journey because this stuff is hard it's not just about having fun I mean absolutely I would love to discuss this in depth with you because I mean what I've discovered in in the work that I've been doing is that we are shown our wounds we've shown the darker side of ourselves the pain we've maybe caused ourselves and the pain we've caused other people the lies we cannot as human beings these are profound and incredible and lessons that you cannot I believe get through sitting one-on-one with us with a therapist because we always are filtering what we say in the real world we never really get to the bottom of our souls and well I don't think we do unless we've actually in a way led through the doors that are beyond our own understanding yeah you know I look at it as literally you know the process of the ceremony and of taking the medicine is is it does it takes the the ego part of you the the you you think you are and it just gently it gently sits it on one side and says all right let's have a chat we're gonna chat more though my special guest is Melinda Ferguson we are chatting about her latest book Bamboozle this is what's involved we'll be back in just a bit and we're back it is what's involved Melinda Ferguson my special guest we're talking about your journey and and how you have experienced the sacred ceremonies and you've experienced what Salasaben did and what I wanted to just touch on before we carry on is in most people's experience that I've come across that have that have used mushrooms in a therapeutic way it is it's work okay it's not something that you go well this weekend I'm gonna go and you know suck back a couple of grams of mushrooms and I'm gonna have a whale of a time for me every single time it's work and it's not just work while you are going through that journey because afterwards there's so much stuff that still happens and you you've got to assimilate so much stuff because whilst you're going on the journey stuff is happening at literally the speed of thought and sometimes even faster than that so that is that is my experience but how did that first journey lead into this this this place where you are now because you said you've taken it a couple of times but I mean did it help how much did it help pandemic then came and slapped us all upside the head where was Melinda during this cool I was really struggling with the lockdown I mean I had so many questions a lot of the lockdown made no sense to me we had so many different people telling us what was going on I lost a lot of faith in what was being told to us and it was also very difficult David to actually voice one's confusion or voice one's disagreement on things like social media because if you said things like um we acting like a bunch of sheep wow I got lambasted so many times I mean I happen to think that Djokovic was correct when he went into Australia because he got permission from the Australian open people to come in unvaccinated I mean I don't even want to say the word vaccine at the moment but there I've said it and you know I put up something on Facebook like go Djokovic and my own brother my own brother then put up pictures of Serbian genocide and saying that Djokovic was a supporter of the Serbian genocide Joe Rogan was lambasted I mean anyone who was saying let's have a discussion doctors like Robert Malone it really terrified me that during lockdown it felt like we were being mass manipulated and it seemed like people were all in a way not everybody but most people seemed to be going along with whatever they were telling us so I went through a lot of trauma and and I on my own because we couldn't do any journeys during that time with psilocybin because we weren't allowed to be in the same room with each other and everyone was wearing masks I landed up taking twice during lockdown I did journeys on my own linked with zoom zoom travelers we did journeys on zoom you know I mean it was insane like everybody was linked from their home onto a zoom screen and there we just took our own sacraments and and we did stuff in our own homes but those journeys oh my god I mean there was one that I write about where I'm showing the suffering of the world and it's a very dark journey that I go on that night where I see salmon plague suffering of the human race from the very beginning of time it was one of those epic kind of biblical journeys where I really got to the the feeling at the end of those five hours that I was deep down in the in the bottom of my soul I came out of that journey and I had a very strong sense and I even actually it sounds like I'm crazy but I heard a very a very deep voice say to me the age of money is over all that is left is your search for joy and freedom and that David was a major turning point in the way that I saw lockdown I started going in with and I started realizing like whatever we do now we need to be free in our heads we need to find a way to to find joy again because joy seemed to be as precious as oil or gold we were all I think deeply depressed I mean there were some people I don't think they even cared and I think they enjoyed lockdown but I mean helle you know goodie for you I did and I could not handle the suffering and the broken economies and the starving and the poverty that this thing in all its irrationality was causing on our planet it's it's amazing because before before we went into to the COVID thing and the lockdown and everything I was saying very often on my show you know that I'm sensing there's a change in the world people are becoming more aware people are becoming more focused on you know the stuff that counts and then lockdown happened and there was I was I was right in there I mean to this now recently I just just to remind myself I got a t-shirt that said please do not feed the fears because I was I was caught in that and in in lockdown I hit a wall I hit an absolute wall because now there's nothing you can do there was no way to hide and it was it was both terrifying to me but at the end of the day I think more good will come out of it and I don't want to get into the debate of should be vaccinated not vaccinated this that the next thing I want to look for for the silver lining now your silver lining was finding a beautiful home and then getting smacked upside the head by the universe just because yeah just because I so I mean I had somehow been one of the few lucky people well I suppose there was quite a lot who worked for Amazon and all the big tech companies but I had amazingly been paid money that was owed to me and fortuitously it all started getting paid back to me during the first year of lockdown so I kept on just seeing my bank account going ping ping and while everybody was like losing jobs I was getting paid for the money that was in fact owed to me by the end of that year just before I did the the pain of the world journey I thought to myself this money I thought was lost so let me just do something that is really something I want to do with it and I started looking for houses well I'd always been looking for houses but during this lockdown I really felt like escaping from Cape Town I mean Cape Town is where everyone from Joburg escapes to but I needed to get out of Cape Town the discrepancy of of poverty and those who were suffering I just could not handle this the city and there was a lot of um a lot of kind of police manning things and I felt like I was in the Handmaid's Bloody Tale so I went and I found a cabin in the middle of nowhere in the Mathruzberg Mountains and I bought it got a bond not a big bond I met I managed to pay quite a substantial amount of this of this house and three days before it gets registered a woman is murdered two doors away from me where I thought I'd found my place of safety and freedom and my heaven from the lockdown I suddenly was faced with being absolutely devastated that this beautiful woman who I'd never met but who lived two doors away from me had been brutally murdered one night and now I own this house so it was a bit of a mind I won't swear on your on your podcast but I will say it was a bamboozlement of note yes I can only imagine Melinda we as always I mean I ran out of time I wish I could talk longer to to my guests but um when we come back uh let's uh look at wrapping it up and putting a bow on it for this time but I just you know what let's let's let's make an execution and I'm gonna say to Gina and I now feel obliged to read the other books and then we can talk again you see it's all part of the plot uh this is what's involved my special guest is Melinda Ferguson it's an amazing book I'd now say yeah you got to read the others but bamboozled is just a brilliantly written book and it's literally the bearing of of one's soul and one's experiences we'll be back wrapping it up with Melinda in just a bit and we're back what's involved it is my special guest is Melinda Ferguson talking about her latest book bamboozled so Melinda just before the break we said that you'd you'd sort of gotten this beautiful idyllic cabin and then the woman two doors down uh from you was was murdered and that obviously brought up all sorts of bits and pieces how did you deal with that I mean it's again you know I refer back to don't feed the fears but but where were you in this I mean I must say that working with psilocybin really had and I'm talking about the last seven years had really helped me with things like this because I think that fear in many ways is an illusion and there's a lovely acronym fear stands for false evidence appearing real and I think fear is a state of mind and it was very evident to me that fear was being fed to us on major levels during lockdown and maybe not intentionally you know who knows but we were all crippled by the fear that was happening where we're going to die there was this virus going around fear for the future fear for our family fear fear fear fear fear and I realized that with this terrible fear that I'd now inherited from this woman being murdered quite you know just around the around the block from me and that it was now up to me to start really working on this in my mind so I strangely have always done this David I've used tragedy I've used disaster as an opportunity to conquer that which is hard and so I use this opportunity of this poor woman dying as a way to actually address my deep fear about death about our planet about the future and slowly you know I just started finding my heartbeats a bit slower I started realizing that the possibilities of us happening again were very slim I started realizing you know what death is what happens to all of us if I'm going to be murdered in the middle of nowhere well so be it I know that's quite a hectic thing to say but it was it gave me peace to accept my own mortality and in a way I think her dying was calling on me to understand that life and death are all part of the same cycle absolutely absolutely now it's amazing when you said that and let's get back to the fear thing false evidence appearing real now my my mentor and possibly one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met sadly passed away a little while ago he was a governor of David patient he was one of the longest surviving people in the world with HIV wow and and he used to often say to me it's either false evidence appearing real or face everything and recover or the f-word everything and run and he said the problem with it's with with I mean the problem with becoming more conscious is then you realize you're a choice so what are you going to choose to do and I was like huh I'd like to go with number three but I guess number one or two is what I need to do so just just doing that and and fear is such a massive thing and and especially in our country that's why to my mind we have we have the problems we still have today it's based on fear and and as soon as we can manage to step aside from that fear and see each other as human beings and that's the other thing I could talk about for hours the the difference between a human being and a human doing the better it is for all of us now you came to realize that there's a part as well where you talk about the money issue because so many of us are motivated by money and we make our we make our value judgments and and societal judgments and everything about money how much do I have how much can I get hold of and that then means that because I've got more I am better and that's not necessarily true it is so not true and I've had to be I've been faced with this lesson for so much of my life I mean I came from a home where my mother had a really a widows mentality after our dad died and so she counted every penny and she made us very scared financially um and I inherited that and my a lot of my life has been looking for abundance and of course one thinks that if one has enough money you're going to feel abundance but that's not the truth abundance is a mental state again it's about having enough within and being enough as a human being in order to be full and it is about fullness of spirit but of course we also need money in this world so I think it's all about balance in the end because I'm not trying to say oh you don't need money because if you don't have money you are thrown to be a way to be a caste or and a person in great suffering on this planet so I think it's this beautiful combination of knowing that money gives you freedom on a certain level but that if you don't do the inner work you will be as empty and as poor as a beggar absolutely and and you know the the amazing thing for me personally if I if I take a step back and have a look is with me in my life the harder I fought for money and the more I valued money and wanted money the harder it was it was like trying to trying to grip and hold water um it just it just wouldn't happen and and I would literally rise to the level of my own insecurities and as soon as I started to do well at something then the old programming would kick in and I'm like oh but remember the watchers are never going to be rich the watchers are destined to suffer and what would I do I would sabotage it these days um I don't worry as much about money sure there are concerns but I always and I actually was speaking to my fiance just a little while ago about this is there's this miracle of we always have enough there's there's always enough business will come to you at the last moment things will happen where we've got enough and that is enough um I don't necessarily want or need more so um I think that is an amazing amazing uh place to be able to be in and the fact that your journey has led you to where you are today I think is it's it's inspirational and I'm glad that you've had the courage to share the journey because you know it's not all bells and whistles not everybody's attorney robins and you can just say yes I can all sorts of things like that um because I also got very disillusioned with all of these self-help gurus at some stage it's like yeah dude I don't hear that the the the the nitty gritty the no the the sort of lying flat on your face and and and you know hoping that something is going to happen or that you don't hear that and that's what I want to know I want to know other people have been where I am or where I've been and they have managed it those are the people that that I would look up to uh Melinda before we say goodbye couple of things okay so during this process and where you are now in your life what have you learned is there is there hope for us is there hope for humanity oh gosh you know some days I think we yes and then other days when I see the new British Prime Minister saying she would definitely push the nuclear button if if asked to I think oh my word our world is in a terrible terrible terrible crisis but we as human beings each one of us are incredibly strong and I think that if we can all try and focus on developing our own selves in order to be better people surely we will have the power to be able to overcome the darkness and so I'm a big proponent of of becoming and trying to spread light and and alerting people to the darkness that we are in because I think that to pretend that we're not in a dark time is very myopic but we have as I've experienced in my life we have the amazing ability to transform and that's the magic of being human and we can transform our thoughts we can transform our situations our circumstances we need to believe that we can and that is the big thing and I think that if anything I've been you know taught over the last two years is literally it all happens in our heads and we've got to just get our heads sorted out absolutely and on that note Melinda the the book Bamboozled do yourself a favor just get the others as well but Bamboozled specifically in search of joy in a world gone mad um we haven't even gotten onto the doggy story onto the dog oh my god I rescued a dog I mean he was a puppy and and I'll just say this quickly to end it on a high note is this little boy who came to my life has taught me more about myself about being a mother about being a nurturing kind human being than any other human being has ever taught me I thought I rescued Joe but Joe ended up rescuing me yeah and you know what there's certainly stories like that I without the the two dogs that I had and the older one was a Ridgeback Cross Alsatian her name is Jasmine she passed away a little while ago but I promise you her and the little Jack Russell Daisy who's lying next to me as I'm chatting to you now um they literally and I mean quite literally have saved my life on more than one occasion and when things were darkest and I was trying to look for some joy they were where I started so they rescued me right back as well Belinda the book available all good bookstores and online exactly all good bookstores also on take a lot and on amazon for South African listeners um it's only available in southern African territories as an e-book okay perfect but listen I mean I'm an e-book fan but I've been more of a real book fan as in you know there's something about having a book and reading a genuine book so go out and get it um last question for you Melinda what's next in Melinda Ferguson's life well you know as you know I'm a publisher so I am publishing a storm of books I've got an amazing book coming out called Samurai Sword Murder about Mone Haramsa that's coming up next um I've got a whole bunch of books planned for next year of course I want to carry on writing writing is what I really love doing and who knows maybe in another three years I'll have another memoir oh I'm looking forward to that thank you thank you thank you for taking the time out and having a chat to us uh we wish you all the very best and what a what a great story and what a fascinating life you've led thank you David there we go wraps it up for this edition of What's Involved my special guest there was Melinda Ferguson the book is bamboozled in search of joy in a world gone mad go out get it read it it will definitely resonate with you on some level as I said it wraps it up to each and every one of you Look after yourselves, take care and thank you for listening.