Doug – northlondonhippy is the internet’s favourite fake hippy. He’s also the world’s only online fake hippy, which makes that first claim totally valid. He’s been a fake hippy for over 20 years now. He’s not sure why either, but these days he does it full time. 

Besides being a fake hippy, Doug was a journalist for several decades, working for some of the largest news organisations in the world. He gave it all up all due to ill health. He regrets leaving the industry, because he did it without having the full picture of his health problems, but there’s no going back.

In 2016, Doug published “Personal Use”, which tells the story of his first 35 years of drug use. Most of what you think you know about drugs is wrong, as you will discover when you look at recent drug law reforms around the world. Doug risked his job at BBC News to write and promote “Personal Use”., because of his passionate dedication to bringing drug law reform to the United Kingdom. When he left his job, he outed himself as a fake hippy. That’s why he can’t go back.

Doug now has a secondary title, #EpilepsyHippy. That’s what prompted him to give up his career, only it took many seizures for him to receive a proper diagnosis. Doug thought he was having a breakdown, as well as brief blackouts. Both symptoms were eventually attributed to partial seizures, simple and complex. That only came to light after Doug had several incidents of tonic clonic (grand mal) seizure clusters, that nearly killed him. There were three years between Doug’s first documented partial seizure, and his eventual diagnosis of Right Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Those years, that time, was some of the hardest of Doug’s life, and it changed him, and his circumstances in ways that he still hasn’t totally grasped. 

Doug says that there are a lot of upsides to being a full time fake hippy. He is his own boss, he makes his own hours, and does whatever he wants to do, every day. The downsides are that the pay is terrible, and the boss constantly sexually harasses him for handjobs. You forget he said he was his own boss, didn’t you? Boom tish. He also occasionally writes things in the third person, and this is one of those occasions. And when he does it, it’s super weird, so I’ll stop now. 

PS – I rewrite this once in a while, and it’s been a while, so here I go again. Be grateful, the last version was really long, and tedious. Much like my life 😜 

You can find Doug – the northlondonhippy on Twitter: @nthlondonhippy and a host of other platforms.