After ‘The Gowns of Radley’
(From syringes, cardboard and courts to Government Advisor)
His crime fuelled days lead to a series of probation orders and suspended sentences, regularly escaping custodial terms using what he referred to as ‘the public-schoolboy-gone-wrong-routine’ but eventually this failed and he was sentenced to 3 years in Wandsworth prison for robbery, burglary and theft. He says prison saved his life because it removed him from the circles he was moving in, taking him away from the people and places that maintained his drug addiction.
After his release in 1982, he started attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings. The following year, he checked himself into a rehab clinic and became free from drugs. He trained as an addictions counsellor and then spent more than a decade working at various drug treatment centres across the country.
Chip continues to be active in the addiction/counselling world with a thriving private practice in Harley Street.