Who I am, and why I started this blog
‘Fade 2’ above is by Adam Neate and you can buy it here
My name is Steve Langsford Beale. I’m a blatantly middle-aged British journalist who was diagnosed with adult ADHD in January 2021. The accompanying psychotherapy and medication has put life in sharp perspective, and prompted shifts in my mindset.
At least that’s my current justification for enrolling in the first Vital Psychedelic Training course starting 19 April 2022.
The programme will actually bring depth to my writing work in the areas that I wish to pursue in the future: not only psychology, spirituality, philosophy, performance and health but also alternative art, music and culture too. I’ll be blogging here but my focus, naturally, is on lived experience not staring at a personal device experience. I’ll cover my studies on the Vital course itself, and where possible developments in the psychedelic space, integration ideology, and the culture of consciousness expansion. I hope to fit in some interviews, immersive reports – what the suits call ‘Top Gear-style stunts’ – and enthusiastic, studenty hypothesising too.
Moreover through Vital, I can explore my long-term aspirations to a healing or teaching practice of some description. To that end I’ve embarked on minor work experience, getting a vew on potential areas for development and/or catastrophe.
Besides my ADHD ‘journey’ I have family experience of addicition. I’m taking this opportunity to tell anyone involved that I love them, I forgive them, and I hope they can forgive me.
While I may drop some details from my own life on this blog, I won’t be discussing or divulging other people’s stories. This confidentiality applies to the students and teachers on the Vital course also; this website is not a ‘behind the scenes’ account of my time studying. Neither is it officially affiliated to Vital, nor should the content be taken as representative of the cirriculum as a whole.
My background is lifestyle journalism, which isn’t the most transcendent arena. In the print era I enjoyed diverse roles, including fashion director of FHM, editor at large of The Face, and the dating columnist at Marie Claire. But I snatched opportunities to engineer chaos where possible: over the years I’ve interviewed authors Michel Houellebecq and Grant Morrison, artists Banksy, Kelsey Brookes and Cleon Peterson, film director Paul Verhoeven and The Venus Project’s Jacques Fresco (RiP). Plus a bunch of musicians, including Bill Drummond from the KLF. The interview was conducted over the telephone and he was driving; I pictured him slicing through the Scottish countryside behind the wheel of the band’s signature interceptor.
I’ve written about mental health since my award-winning column ‘Steve Beale is Unwell’ ran in Arena magazine during the mid-2000s, and up until much more recently in for example Mr Porter Journal. I write with mental health professionals including clinical psychologist Dr Stephen Blumenthal, who appeared in ground-breaking 2021 BBC documentary Joey Essex: Grief and Me.
In 2020 I wrote a science fiction short story for Dazed & Confused magazine’s Lockdown Special that landed me on the writing team for Milkblood, a music and ‘ARG’ (ask your teenager) project from JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot studio and Tap Music Management. Other clients include art dealer and immersive event pioneer Steve Lazarides, plus spiritual teacher Jason Louv. See more on my agency website or email me here. And if martial arts, boxing and wrestling are your thing I urge you to check out another project, Battles of London. Men’s Health magazine calls it “the brand making fight clothing cool.”