BRYONY GORDON: This week I suffered a horrific OCD episode that left me fearing I was a psychopath. This is how I dealt with it - after years of numbing my intrusive thoughts with drugs and alcohol
My husband had left for work, my daughter for school and I was alone in the house when my brain began to go to war on me.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Tourist killed in Puerto Rico had flown over for Bad Bunny concert
A US tourist visiting Puerto Rico for a Bad Bunny residency has been fatally shot in the early hours of Sunday morning at La Perla, a well-known seaside community, according to police. The victim has been identified as 25-year-old Kevin Mares, a New York resident. The shooting occurred at a nightspot named 'Shelter for Mistreated Men' within La Perla, a coastal area that has long grappled with its troubled past. Homicide detective Sergeant Arnaldo Ruiz stated in a phone interview that the incident unfolded when an argument broke out among several individuals near Mr Mares. A firearm was then produced, and at least three people, including Mr Mares, were shot. Two other men, residents of La Perla, sustained injuries and are currently hospitalised. Ruiz said Mares was an innocent bystander. He was with three other friends who told police they were in Puerto Rico for one of Bad Bunny 's 30 concerts, which have attracted tens of thousands of visitors to the U.S. territory. Mares was shot on the left side of his abdomen and was taken to Puerto Rico's largest public hospital, where he died, authorities said. Ruiz said police don't yet know what the people were arguing about and don't have a description of the shooter. 'We have very little information,' he said. Ruiz added that Mares' three friends also were from New York. He didn't have their hometowns. La Perla is located on the outskirts of a historic district popular with tourists known as Old San Juan. A couple hundred people live in the shantytown, which once served as Puerto Rico's biggest distribution point for heroin and was known for its violence. Police used to avoid the community, which used to have a sign proclaiming, 'Not open to visitors. Do not enter.' But violence eased when hundreds of federal agents raided the slum in 2011 and arrested dozens of people, including a well-known community leader who was later convicted. The neighborhood became even safer and more welcoming after Puerto Rican singers Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featured it in their hit, 'Despacito.' But isolated, violent incidents persist. In February 2023, three tourists were stabbed after police said a person told them to stop filming inside the community. Then in April 2024, a 24-year-old tourist from Delaware was killed and his body set on fire after police said he and a friend were attacked following a drug purchase. Police said the victims were trying to take pictures of La Perla after being warned not to do so. The island of 3.2 million people has reported 277 killings so far this year, compared with 325 killings in the same period last year.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
JD Vance unwittingly sparks new wave of calls to release the Epstein files in Fox interview
Vice President JD Vance 's latest attempt to shift the narrative away from the Jeffrey Epstein furore over the weekend has only succeeded in inspiring fresh calls for the release of all federal files on the late pedophile. Appearing on Fox News 's Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Vance sought to kill off the uproar that has raged ever since the Justice Department and FBI ruled in early July that the deceased sex trafficker left behind no 'client list' and died by suicide in August 2019. That verdict enraged President Donald Trump 's supporters, who continue to demand answers and allege a 'cover-up' to protect influential people. 'I have to say, Maria, I laugh at the Democrats who are now all of a sudden so interested in the Epstein files,' the VP told Bartiromo on Sunday. 'For four years, Joe Biden and the Democrats did absolutely nothing about this story. We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with left-wing politicians and left-wing billionaires. 'And now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this. And yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years.' Vance's comments only succeeded in reviving calls for full disclosure on Epstein after a clip of the interview was circulated on social media. 'Fine. Release all the files,' wrote Defending Democracy's director Bill Kristol. 'With victims and survivors' names and PII redacted. But no redactions of clients, enablers, and see-no-evil associates.' 'The thing about people on that list that bothers me is not their political leanings or their bank account,' said newspaper columnist Brigitte Pellerin. 'Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files and JD Vance has been plotting with the AG and FBI Director to cover it up,' alleged Pod Save America host Jon Favreau. 'Release the names! Democrats, Republicans, billionaires, or not. What are you afraid of, JD Vance?' Trump continues to face questions about his past friendship with Epstein, but has not been accused of any wrongdoing and is currently suing The Wall Street Journal for reporting that he once sent the sex offender a 'bawdy' doodle for his birthday. It has been reported that the president was briefed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who stated that his name appears in the files, but this does not imply misconduct. Trump is known to have become increasingly frustrated at the story's continued dominance of the news agenda over the past five weeks and has even lashed out at members of his conservative coalition for obsessing over Epstein. 'Look, the whole thing is a hoax,' he declared impatiently in the Oval Office last week. 'It's put out by the Democrats because we've had the most successful six months in the history of our country. That's just a way of trying to divert attention to something that's total bulls***.' His attempt to dismiss the matter did not satisfy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, for one, who commented: 'Trump's disastrous handling of the Epstein firestorm last month was starting to die down and now he has let the corporate media bait him into re-launching a new Streisand effect.' Jones was referring to the phenomenon through which a public figure's efforts to suppress an unwanted story only succeed in drawing more attention to it.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Dawn Dusk review – handbag designer deals with grief over murdered sister and dead friend
Chicago-based Chelli Look, the subject at the centre of this diffuse documentary, seems like a nice person, with a talent for designing and making minimalist leather handbags. Not long out of high school, the best friend with whom she planned to start a business died in a car accident. Then her elder sister, Megan Henneberg, was murdered in 2007 by her husband Brian, leaving Chelli, her parents, siblings and extended family to deal with the harrowing loss. And yet, no matter how much sympathy you might feel for Chelli and her family's trauma, or interest you might have in her bagmaking skills, or engagement with her as a person, somehow those core components don't coalesce to make this feature-length documentary feel vital or even especially necessary. A self-described introvert, Chelli herself is a pretty opaque figure although she speaks quite expressively and intelligently about her approach to design. We only get tiny glimpses of her home life with husband David, so she's not really developed as a 'character' sufficiently to carry the film. Meanwhile, the story around her sister's murder has something of a shroud around it, which is understandable to an extent, but then turns the film into a strange fan dance, alternating revelation with concealment about the facts of the case. In the end, the fact that Chelli found a way to forgive her brother-in-law in a religious sense, seems to be the big takeaway, but the wafty haziness around the whole issue reduces the murder to a brutal but incidental noise off-screen. The most engaging parts of the film are the scenes where Chelli is at work at her fancy industrial Juki sewing machine in her alarmingly tidy, sepulchre-white studio. The hum of the machinery is as seductively lulling as an ASMR video and watching Chelli buy leather hides is pure shopping pornography. Even more visually lush is the sequence where Chelli goes off to Florence to take a course in leatherwork and design to refine her skills, offering the film-makers a chance to shoot one of the world's more photogenic cities at crepuscular times of the day. All of which makes the surprise ending even more baffling, denying viewers the redemption–through–small-business-ownership ending the film appears to be striving for. Dawn Dusk is on digital platforms from 15 August.
