"My name is Michael and I'm an addict, grateful to be in recovery."

"Just for today I'm sober."

"I am thankful."

 

"Sobriety Date:- 11th September 2026"

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This is the book of life of the Golden Princess.

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For years, I treated the star like a secret. Not because I never mentioned it, but because I expected no one to understand. A secret is something hidden. A sign is something read.

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At some point, the memory shifted from one to the other.

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I stopped asking why nobody else could see it and began asking what the experience had taught me to see since. That question opened the memory. It made the star less like a locked box and more like a small lamp.

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Here is what it showed me.

• Attention changes the world you inhabit. The same sky can be blank to one person and alive to another.

• Not every true experience becomes evidence. Some things matter without becoming facts that can be filed.

• Wonder and doubt can live together. Doubt does not have to destroy wonder. It can keep it honest.

• Loneliness can sharpen perception. Being alone with a sight can make it painful, but also unforgettable.

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I still do not know whether the star was rare, ordinary, external, internal, or some mixture of all those things. I no longer need one answer to carry the whole weight of it.

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The memory has become part of how I move through the world. I look up more often. I pause before dismissing what I cannot confirm. I trust that a life can contain small mysteries without needing to turn them into grand claims.

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 A child who is sexually abused at seven is not “too young to remember”. The body remembers. The nervous system remembers. The child may not have words for what happened, but fear, shame, confusion, anger, and self-blame can settle deep.

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When abuse also involves pressure to harm another child, the damage can become even more tangled. A seven-year-old being coerced, groomed, threatened, or manipulated into sexual behaviour with a younger child is still a child in danger. That situation should trigger protection, careful assessment, and specialist help. When it goes undetected, the silence can follow that child for years.

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This text discusses child sexual abuse, coercion, trauma, and suicidal thoughts. It is informational only and cannot replace professional mental health or safeguarding support. If there is an immediate risk of harm, call emergency services on 999. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be reached on 116 123 at any time, Child-line are always available on 0800 1111.

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At seven, a child is still learning what bodies, boundaries, trust, and danger mean. Abuse at that age can distort all of those lessons.

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A child may learn that adults cannot be trusted. They may learn that saying no is unsafe. They may feel responsible for things they could not possibly understand or control. They may also become watchful, withdrawn, angry, overly compliant, or unusually anxious.

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Some children show obvious signs. Others look “fine” because survival can look quiet.

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Common effects can include:

• Nightmares, bedwetting, or sleep problems

• Fear of certain people, places, smells, rooms, or times of day

• Sudden changes in mood or behaviour

• Sexual knowledge or behaviours that are not age-appropriate

• Shame around the body

• Difficulty trusting safe adults

• Trouble concentrating at school

• Stomach aches, headaches, or panic symptoms with no clear physical cause

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These signs do not prove abuse on their own. They do show that something needs attention. 

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Some life stories refuse to fit into a neat line from mistake to lesson. They move through fear, loyalty, illness, addiction, violence, regret, survival, and belief. Michaels Conquest is presented as that kind of story, a memoir of how Michael Ezare Barrett experienced his own life, through his own eyes.

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At its centre is a man diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia, F20.0, since 2007. That fact matters, but it does not reduce the book to a medical case history. The story reaches into cocaine addiction, drug dealing, alleged undercover work for the Metropolitan Police, a later break with them, claimed links to the Italian Mafia, imprisonment in the UK, and a life-saving moment inside HMP Pentonville.

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This book discusses mental health, addiction, crime, and imprisonment. It is informational only and does not offer medical or legal advice.

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The story later enters the UK prison system, including HMP Pentonville, one of the country’s most notorious prisons. Pentonville has long been associated with overcrowding, pressure, fear, and the harsh realities of custodial life.

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In Barrett’s account, prison is not only punishment. It becomes a place where character is tested under extreme strain. Among the most powerful claims is that he saved a life while inside HMP Pentonville.

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That detail matters because it resists a simple reading of the man. A person can have a criminal past and still act with courage. A person can be broken by addiction and still protect someone else. A person can live with paranoid schizophrenia and still make a human choice in a moment of crisis.

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This is where redemption enters the story. Redemption does not erase harm. It does not excuse crime or addiction-driven damage. What it can do is show that a person is not frozen forever at their worst point.

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Perhaps the most unusual part of Barrett’s self-portrait is his proclamation that he is the mythical Golden Princess as described by Nostradamus.

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Taken literally, that claim will challenge many readers. Taken symbolically, it opens another way into the book. The Golden Princess can be read as a mythic identity, a figure of survival, destiny, transformation, or spiritual meaning. For a person living with paranoia, trauma, addiction, and imprisonment, myth can become a way to organise pain that otherwise feels impossible to hold.

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Michaels Conquest is not a comfortable story. It brings together mental illness, cocaine addiction, crime, secrecy, prison, and a search for redemption. It asks the reader to sit with contradiction rather than rush to a simple answer.

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Michael Ezare Barrett’s life, as presented here, is marked by damage and danger. Yet the book also points towards recovery, self-examination, and the possibility of change. That is the human thread holding the story together.

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The takeaway is not that crime should be romanticised, or that suffering makes a person noble. The clearer message is that even the most troubled lives contain choices, turning points, and moments where another future becomes possible.

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For Barrett, that future is named through recovery. It is also named through the act of telling the story in his own words.​

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