Table of Contents

• In The Beginning – Before My Illness
• How Do You Work When You have A Long Term Illness?
• Then Came the Spiral.
• The Turning Point – Mold Illness Recover Using ChatGPT
• ChatGPT I Think You Can Save My Life – How I Used AI To Recover My Health and Business
• How To Use ChatGPT in a Different Way
• Building Something New – Mold Illness Recovery Using ChatGPT
• Reach Out – By Helping You – I Can help Myself
• Behind the Curtain – How This Blog Was Made

In The Beginning – Before My Illness

I went from Mr. Reliable to Mr. Unreliable in less than three months. This is how I began my mold illness recovery journey using ChatGPT.

One day I was running a business. The next, I was too sick to reply to emails, let alone chase leads or handle clients. I was living in an old condo in Bangkok. The condo had a roof top pool. The pool must have been leaking for years. I would later learn the building was infested with mold.

Once I started to get sick the deterioration was fast. In a three month period my health fell apart. I could no longer think or function. At the time I had no idea what was happening to me. The doctors told me I had anxiety and Covid. But, I knew this wrong.

There was a time I could handle anything. I was a closer, a professional, someone people relied on. But then, I became erratic. I couldn’t handle simple tasks anymore. I became confused, frustrated, and angry.

I couldn’t track conversations. I started getting simple words wrong. I would sit there, knowing what I wanted to say, but nothing would come out. My mouth stopped doing what my brain told it to. I experienced a full physical and emotional collapse.

How Do You Work When You have A Long Term Illness?

Business is about communication. If you can’t communicate, then what?

One day, I picked myself up off the floor and realized I had all the symptoms of a man who’d had a stroke, and was suffering with Parkinson’s. My body was broken, I had dropped to 47kg (103lb) in weight. I was having body tremors and fits. I could no longer walk in a straight line.

My mind was scattered, I was losing thoughts, forgetting where I was, and becoming more and more confused. Oh, and my business was in the toilet.

I used to sell things for a living. I was a strategic thinker and creator. Now, I was losing my mind, and strength. I could no longer complete simple thoughts, or tasks, I was physically and mentally unstable and it showed

My days were no longer focused on completing tasks and making money. My days were about surviving, feeding my self had become a full time job, Work and business, were becoming a distant memory. How do you manage a business when you have long term illness? If you are alone, you don’t, it’s impossible.

Then Came the Spiral.

I got angry with people for not understanding my medical condition. My mental and physical health had collapsed because I had been living in a building with toxic black mold. I found it hard to accept that mold could have destroyed my mental and physical health.

When people did not understand what I had trouble accepting myself. I lashed out, and that created a spiral.

I became physically weak and emotionally desperate. When I tried to work I made mistakes. When I interacted with people I would snap and become aggressive. When those things happen in business, it is over very quickly.

I would later learn that I had inflammation of the brain. Looking back, it is a miracle I am alive. Looking back, I am proud of my determination to keep going. But, it was a mistake. I should have stopped everything. As my desperate determination came with a big price. That price was my reputation.

When clients start walking away, you start to panic. You scramble to replace them, but your brain’s not firing right. So you panic more, creating a spiral that felt like it would never end. The more you do, the worse the situation becomes.

Within six months I was critically ill. With no clients and no income.

The Turning Point – Mold Illness Recover Using ChatGPT

When you can’t work anymore, you’ve got two choices. You either lie in bed and panic, or you get up and start learning.

For the first nine months I chose panic and my bed. After all I was too sick to function. I was living alone in a foreign country with rapidly depleting savings. I did the only thing I could. I moved into a cheap apartment and hoped for the best.

Every day I would listen to podcasts. Every day I would try and write something in my journal. I would write my symptoms, and my thoughts. I wrote hundreds of pages through loneliness and desperation.

What I did not realize at the time was this. Through writing my thoughts and fears I was retraining my brain. I was fighting back. I was slowly healing myself.

After nearly a year of isolation, I had my first social encounter. By this point I had moved to Vietnam as my visa for Thailand had expired. I was apartment hunting, and accidentally found myself at birthday party.

This was the day I was introduced to a very animated Frenchman. Who started talking to me about AI. ChatGPT 3.5, to be exact. He wouldn’t stop, he kept saying the same thing over and over:

AI is the future. AI is the future.

This animated French man kept telling me to use AI. He used the same words over and over. AI will save you, AI will save you. I did not realize it at the the time. But, this animated French man had planted a very important seed in my mind.

A few days later I found myself sat in a coffee shop staring at my computer screen. Thinking about how I needed to somehow restart my career. I was still bouncing between periods of being completely incapable of completing tasks, and having some energy and mental clarity.

So, with the animated French mans words still ringing in the back of mind. I decided to try ChatGPT and see if AI was as revolutionary as people were saying.

At the time I had no idea what prompts were, and I had no tasks that needed completing. The only thing going on in my life was illness and a feeling of desperation. So, I just started chatting with AI. I starting asking ChsatGPT what it could do, and how it worked.

Then the conversation moved on. I started talking about my illness, and my problems. I started to tell ChatGPT about my previous achievements.

As I was lonely I wrote as I would talk to another person. I sat in the coffee shop for hours telling ChatGPT my life story. As I was explaining myself. ChatGPT presented my thoughts back to me in a structure I could understand and process.

This made me think. Could I use AI to help me in my life? If I gave ChatGPT en emotional hook and motivation, Would it go above and beyond, and actually help me on a personal level. Rather than just spitting out standard responses?

Looking back this was naive. But, it was also clever. Because in a way, my plan actually worked.

ChatGPT I Think You Can Save My Life – How I Used AI To Recover My Health and Business

AI is not a magic machine. ChatGPT didn’t fix me. But it gave me something I hadn’t had in a long time. It gave me structure. It became a mirror image of my former self.

I had laid it all out. What I had been doing before my illness. Where I felt I had been succeeding. Where I had been failing. I outlined my symptoms, how the illness was affecting me mentally and physically. I even told ChatGPT what the doctors had told me.

Then I told ChatGPT the one simple human requirement I craved: I just wanted to be happy again.

While I was having this conversation, I didn’t realize it. But, I was building a system that would propel me forward and provide the foundations for my next business.

How To Use ChatGPT in a Different Way

Most people give AI tasks. They either ask questions or write “act like” and “do this” prompts. I use AI in a different way. I have conversations with it. When I have a question that needs answering, or I have task that needs completing. I always start with a conversation.

When I asked ChatGPT to “help save my life.” What i did not realize at the time was this. I had already given ChatGPT context, and AI feeds on context.

When I had that long conversation and told ChatGPT everything about my life and illness. I had provided it with an understanding of who I am. I had outlined my skills and weaknesses. I had give it my goals and ambitions. Without realizing it. I had give ChatGPT everything it needed to work with.

I didn’t see it at the time. But, I had built a systems for myself. A systems that would help manage my illness, organize my thoughts, and plan my next business.

I also started writing. I started writing about everything that had happened to me, and everything I was doing. I wrote tens of thousands of words, and I gave them all to ChatGPT.

Most people who use ChatGPT for writing, ask it to write something. I don’t do that. I give ChatGPT what I have written, and ask it’s opinion. I don’t let it rewrite. I ask it to help me organize and improve what I have written.

Without knowing it at the time. My writing had given ChatGPT even more context to work with. Over time, it started to suggest things I could do. It started to teach me new skills.

Yes, people are doing these things with AI everyday. But, they are asking. These interactions were organic. AI took what I was, and helped me rebuild.

Building Something New – Mold Illness Recovery Using ChatGPT

My illness had not only been devastating but long. When you lose everything including yourself. There is no quick fix. There is no Instagram reel or accelerator group that can propel you back to how you were.

You have to rebuild, day after day, task after task. Working with AI helped me in many ways. I will explore the ways AI helped me in this blog, and on in greater detail on my Substack page.

So far, I have been able to build an AI Blog Mill. Now, I know what you are thinking. He is churning out AI garbage blogs, right? Wrong, I have built a system based on my previous writing. Where I can now run three prompts and dictate my thoughts. Before seeing it all magically become a solid well written blog post, that reads as if I had written it from scratch.

I am now in the process of creating an AI Automation business. That can help people with long term illness. My aim is to help other freelancers and small business owners keep their businesses alive using AI automation, at a time when they are too sick to work.

I am also taking the thousands of words I have written and turning them into a book and Substack blog. As well as developing the concept of Psychological Coding as a way to improve AI automation.

I have not fully recovered or reach 100% physical health. But I have experienced enough recovery to have the motivation and energy to work. Along my journey I have leaned more than I ever expected. I have grown as a person, and turned tragedy into hope.

Reach Out – By Helping You – I Can help Myself

I’m not a health guru. I’m not a tech bro with half a million followers. I’m a man approaching 50 who found himself starting over.

This isn’t the first business I’ve built. And it won’t be the last. Because now, I help people rebuild theirs.

Back in the 1990s, I was selling publishing when that world was brutal. I didn’t just survive—I thrived. I became a sales director, a consultant to leading IT firms trying to break into the UK public sector.

In 2002, I took off with a laptop, a mad business idea, and no clue what I was doing. That made me one of the first digital nomads—before the term even existed.

Now, I am trying to rebuild one written word, and one conversation at a time. If you know someone who is going through long term illness, send them this blog and ask them to contact me. Not so I can score a business deal. Just so they can chat with someone who understands.

If you need content, support, or someone to sell your product. I am considering all offers. If I feel I can achieve something for your business, I will offer my services. If I fell I have nothing to offer, I will decline.

When your saving are gone, and you have no business, you start again. I have been told that my story is the best marketing tool I have. If I am hones, I would rather have not gone through this. But, I have been through it. So, here it is, this is my story.

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Behind the Curtain – How This Blog Was Made

Would it surprise you to know this article wasn’t typed out line by line? It came together through a mix of prompts, voice notes, and a few sharp edits. The process is part human, part AI — a collaboration that saves time without losing personality.

If you’re curious about how this workflow works, and how it could help your own content production. Drop me a message