Former mega popular disc jockey Greg Been, who once went by the name “Techno Sound” is thanking God for hauling him from the brink of destruction caused by his own success.
In an hour-long interview on RTC’s Wednesday FLOW in the Morning show ‘Bourne to Lead’ with Leo Lightbourne, Been, a once prevalent DJ in the Turks and Caicos Islands, said this his own success caused him to almost ruin his life, losing his family, which plunged him in clinical depression.
He told Lightbourne that he always lived on the edge, describing his life as being a driver exceeding all speed limits driving on the wrong side of the road, but noting this his mental vision was so corroded that he could not see the destructive path he was headed…and it only took losing his family to realize.
“At my highest point, I knew that there was something more for me than this (high life). I would get up in the morning and the first thing I would say is say, ‘Lord, thank you'.
“But I would go about my day with this impression of myself and this confidence in my own self, confidence in my abilities, confidence that what I had going was as good as gold, comfortable and ahead in life. But not knowing that I was missing something,” he said.
“There was something tragically missing in my life. I didn’t even know what it was…that’s where a lot of people are…missing a lot of stuff and don’t know that something is missing in our lives. Having missing pieces in our lives and thinking that we are whole, that’s where we are blinded.
“I was such a broken piece of junk that I didn’t even know. Sometimes we would have a lot of mess, and we would wallow in our mess and you enjoy the mess, but God didn’t design me like that,” he added.
Been told Lightbourne that there were times he would wake up and wondered if he was still alive based on his recklessness.
“I didn’t really expect to see (age) 30, because of how fast I was living. I was living fast, I thought I was reckless. I felt like I was driving a car doing 250 miles an hour on the outer bound, and I was driving into oncoming traffic.
“If there are warning signs and other things in life that you should be avoiding, and you don’t want to, what’s going to happen? You are going to have a head-on collision.
“That was happening, and only in retrospect I really see it, because when you are living it and you are enjoying it, you don’t get to see it as you should because you are just living through life…but you are heading into oncoming traffic,” he warned.
“That’s why I have to thank God for his Grace, because it was only through the Grace of God that I got to live through all of that. He kept me through that and allowed me to get to a point that I realized that the crisis that I was going through in my life that I needed to change.
“I had to have a change in perspective. It was pertinent that I do that. If it wasn’t for that, I would end up dying, that’s what I believe, you can die prematurely.
“I believed I would have ended my life some stupid way. I was getting into things that I shouldn't have gotten into,” he recalled.
The former DJ stated that the life he was living was not influenced by anyone. As a matter of fact, he said he was actually the influencer.
Been said he loved the recognition, the limelight, but it came with a great deal of downfall.
“After a while, it had an effect on me mentally. I lost my family. When you lose your family, and you get an opportunity to sit back, and sit down, sitting in a place all alone, and you then start thinking, and you have got nothing…there is nobody else around you, there are no distractions…and God gets to deal with you, then it all hit you.
“And that’s when it starts to hit me, and then I had to go see a psychiatrist because my mind was not right. I was clinically depressed.
“I had no desire for music. I did not want to hear another song…I didn’t want to hear anything in my head. I literally became a barren ground. Everything felt dead to me. I felt as if I had lost some of the greatest parts of me.
“And I realized that it was not music (that I missed). So then, I was in a deeply depressing state of grief. I felt like so much of me had died,” Been recalled.
He said during that period of emptiness, party promotors were still reaching out and paying him to play at their various venues. But because of the lack of enthusiasm for music, he began to refund deposits collected.
After attending the psychiatry sessions, Been said his life took a turn for the better. He said after that period, his ultimate desire was to get his life in order and to seek God, noting that on a Friday afternoon when everybody was at happy hour I was at home on my knees, praying to God.
“I was saying, ‘what’s wrong with me?' Thinking something was wrong with me. But those are the things that helped me to build back. All of a sudden, a new desire was birthed in me.
“I start to read more…I start to read my Bible more, and out of this desire was a hunger and thirst for righteousness,” he said.
Father Bernard Been, former rector of the Anglican Church in Turks and Caicos Islands, he said, played a pivotal role in his life.
“He was like a mentor. I received so much information from him. Whenever I was at home, he would check on me to see how I was doing, and so, I gradually came out of it,” he continued.
Recognizing that he has ‘led so many people astray', Been said I was not his to Christ.
His advice to current DJs is: “Even if you remain in the industry, don’t let it get to a point where you get so hungry for conquering the market or industry that you lose the things that are valuable to you. You have family, kids and loved ones…don’t sacrifice them on the altar of your ambition.”