Christopher Francis Dines was born in 1983 in the London Borough of Harrow, England. He is of Anglo, Irish, and Kenyan heritage. Dines took up DJing in 1994, performing at private house parties. His father bought Christopher his very first records back in the late-1980s during the acid house and rave movement in England. Christopher’s mother encouraged him to pursue his passion for music and bought him his first DJ mixer.
Christopher was privately educated at Stanborough independent primary school in Watford and Pinner Park middle school in Harrow. Christopher then attended Nower Hill high school in Pinner, and it was at this tender age that his love of music resulted in him hosting local school dance parties on a regular basis. He ceased pursuing further academic education at the age of fifteen to work in the late-1990s London dance music industry. By then, Christopher had gained a significant following among nightclub enthusiasts in North West London.
At fifteen, Dines got his first break DJing on London’s underground dance music pirate radio station, 103.6 Flex FM in South West London. As a Flex FM DJ, his credibility among ravers and serious clubbers was elevated almost overnight. Simultaneously, Christopher aggressively promoted UK garage artists, The Genius Cru and DJ Deekline, in Northwest London, for a couple of years while hosting events in the West End of London. Christopher left Flex FM and enjoyed a short spell DJ’ing on 88.4 Ice FM, another impactful house and UK garage music pirate radio operating in West London, before quitting pirate radio altogether to focus on breaking into the mainstream house music scene.
During this era, Christopher succumbed to addiction to alcohol and illegal mind- and mood-altering substances such as cocaine, cannabis and MDMA. His late teens were fraught with deep depression, weekday benders, broken personal relationships and suicidal ideation, all of which almost destroyed his chances of making a career in dance music.
However, Christopher got sober on August 30th, 2004, and has remained abstinent ever since. He attended twelve-step support meetings and group therapy and made drastic changes to his lifestyle. Christopher took a three-month break from DJing, focusing rather on attending support groups and recovering from burnout.
In January 2005, he was invited back to DJ in Thailand and relaunched his music career in Asia. He regularly DJ’ed at 1/5 in Hong Kong, Q-Bar in Bangkok, and Mint Bar in Koh Samui. The Mint Bar became a laboratory for Christopher to experiment with alternative genres in dance music, giving him a boost in confidence otherwise lost towards the end of his time suffering from the effects of untreated addiction. Christopher learned to meditate at the Big Buddha Temple in Koh Samui, kick-starting a trajectory of self-examination and contemplation.
Under the pseudonym of both Kris Lopez and Chris Lopez, Christopher DJ’ed at Ministry of Sound in London, City Loud at Turnmills, Defected In The House at Pacha, Axis Discotheque in Malta, London Fashion Week, Paul “Trouble” Anderson’s Loft, Hippodrome, Gas Club in Leicester Square, Dungeons nightclub, Garage City at Bar Rumba on Shaftesbury Avenue, and had a residency at Fez Club in Chelsea, before his 22nd birthday.
In 2005, Christopher co-founded a deep house record label called SuCasa Beats, operating as the head of A&R from 2005 to 2006. He signed Afro Medusa, Marlon D (Defected Records), Steal Vybe (Vega Records), Andy Daniel (Defected Records), and Pablo Martinez (King Street Sound), promoting the record label at Plan B in Brixton, South London. Christopher remixed Afro Medusa’s smash hit records ‘Beautiful Thing’ and ‘Pasilda Part 2: Come a Little Closer’ and produced his own records, such as ‘Addicted.’
In June 2006, Christopher retired from DJing and went on to facilitate mindfulness workshops teaching addicts and alcoholics and those suffering from mental illness how to meditate and incorporate mindfulness into their daily lives. He has published eight books on mindfulness, addiction, and self-actualization.
Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School, wrote the foreword to Dines’ book Drug Addiction Recovery. His latest book Super Self-Care has been translated into Vietnamese. The American venture philanthropist, Eileen Rockefeller, endorsed Super Self-Care and has supported Christopher’s works in recent years. British Conservative and Labour Parliamentarians Richard Bacon MP and Peter Kyle MP have both endorsed his books. Christopher co-authored The Kindness Habit with Dr. Barbara Mariposa (Riverbank Book UK, 2016) and authored Mindfulness Meditation and Mindfulness Burnout Prevention.
In his mid-30s, Christopher took up adult education and was tutored by Professor Piers Bursill-Hall—Cambridge University, studying the history of science and pure mathematics. Dines is an ambassador for Project Eileen charity based in Brighton & Hove in England, and facilitates private mindfulness sessions for the luxury rehab Addcounsel situated in Knightsbridge, London.
In 2023, Dines co-founded Word Aptitude with his partner Mary McGahan, providing copywriting and editorial services to companies worldwide. Christopher Dines is currently writing his debut novel under the pen name Francis Dines.
Published by Mark V.
