This is not an inspirational podcast.

No redemption arc. No motivational music. No tidy resolution.

This is the show where the same guest turns up every episode, tells another chapter of a story the medical establishment stopped knowing how to explain, and does it in the least heroic terms possible.

Survival. Spite. Spreadsheets.

This is Surviving Purely Out Of Spite. New episodes every Wednesday. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

For the full story, head to TheTenaciousCyclist.co.uk

He lives with Baroreflex Failure, Global Dysautonomia, Borderline Stage 3 Intestinal Failure, Classical type Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Stage 4 bone-on-bone osteoarthritis across eight joints, and a gastrointestinal system so compromised oral medication is structurally unavailable.

His Garmin suggested a rest day.

He accumulated 252 intensity minutes.

In a heatwave.

His record is one thousand, four hundred.

He recovered in 72 hours.

This is the episode where the data stops making sense and the spite starts making everything else make sense.

Content note: chronic illness, severe pain, autonomic dysfunction, PTSD.

Today’s episode follows decades of undiagnosed Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, daily joint dislocations, opioid dependence, medical gaslighting, and the deeply modern experience of remaining professionally functional while your body quietly falls apart behind the scenes.

Because apparently: if you answer emails quickly enough, society will overlook almost anything.

Including catastrophic pain.

This episode is about:

• surviving on twenty percent relief
• performing wellness convincingly enough to stay employable
• shrinking your life around exhaustion without anyone noticing
• and becoming so accustomed to suffering that you start describing medical horror stories in the tone of someone explaining parking regulations

It’s darkly funny, brutally honest, and uncomfortably relatable for anyone who has ever:

• gone to work in severe pain
• minimised their own suffering to avoid becoming inconvenient
• or continued functioning purely because stopping was never a realistic option

This isn’t an episode about triumph.

It’s about endurance.

The exhausted, absurd, darkly hilarious bureaucracy of remaining alive inside a body that keeps raising formal complaints against you.

And if your nervous system is currently being held together by caffeine, pharmaceuticals, customer service voice, and spite…

Congratulations.

You are exactly the target audience.

From being told “it’s just growing pains” as a child, to enduring hundreds of thousands of dislocations, failed surgeries, opioid dependence, and years of medical gaslighting, this episode explores what happens when your body is screaming for help while the healthcare system keeps replying with a shrug and a leaflet.

It’s dark, funny, furious, heartbreaking, and unfortunately very relatable for anyone who’s ever been told: “Your tests look normal.”

Expect:

• catastrophic joints
• Victorian levels of medical suffering
• NHS emotional damage
• the psychological horror of being called “clumsy” for 40 years
• and Jack aggressively coping through humour because therapy is expensive and sarcasm is free.

If your body feels like a hostile work environment, this one’s for you.

This episode is dark. Like genuinely dark.

If Trainspotting was narrated by a sleep-deprived hospice goblin with a podcast setup and unresolved medical trauma.

But underneath the dark humour is one of the most brutally honest stories about pain, dependency, survival, and human endurance we’ve ever covered.

This is not a recovery story. It’s a controlled demolition.

And somehow… something survived the fire.

Sleep carefully.

What follows is:

psychological collapse

tectonic bowel activity

national embarrassment

and a bathroom event powerful enough to concern the United Nations.

Welcome to Surviving Purely Out Of Spite.

Tonight’s episode: Agent Picolax — The Brown Apocalypse.

His joints dislocate hundreds of times a day.

His blood pressure swings from stroke territory to cardiac arrest in seconds.

Doctors repeatedly believed he wouldn’t survive.

And somehow… he still rides.

In this episode of Surviving Purely Out Of Spite, Jack tells the story of one man surviving catastrophic illness, impossible physiology, medical trauma, and fifteen medical emergencies a day, while refusing to let the diagnosis write the final line.

This isn’t inspiration porn.

It isn’t motivational speaking.

It’s dark humour dragged through medical horror at 3am.

Featuring:

• duct-taped cycling
• “shit shakes”
• emergency McDonald’s trips
• a nervous system resembling a failing Soviet power grid
• and enough medical chaos to make reality itself sound fictional

“Hosed the deck down after shitting myself at sea” sounds less like a medical event and more like rejected dialogue from a pirate documentary.

“My nervous system resembles a failing Soviet power grid but we’re clipping into the pedals anyway.”

“And in the middle of all this he’s drinking elemental amino acid formulas described as ‘shit shakes.’”

Editors would cut scenes saying:

“No one survives that many catastrophes.”

Meanwhile reality’s sitting in the corner smoking a cigarette saying:

“Oh sweetheart. You have no idea.”

Darkly funny.

Brutally human.

Existentially uncomfortable.

Welcome to Surviving Purely Out Of Spite