A Head Injury Made Dave Foley Quit Alcohol & Anti Depressants | Joe Rogan

We'll be able to get in stores. Well, yes. In California, they're trying to do that. I'm past medical psilocybin for therapy. Yeah. Well, here's... I've been on antidepressants since news radio days, and I'm just actually just went off at this month. This month? How are you feeling? Good. You look great. Good. Yeah, I'm feeling very good. I love shit. And part of it was because I had this head injury a few years ago. What happened? I had a... Well, I don't know if you remember this. I used to drink quite a bit. I do remember. Do you remember that? Now, I... You do? One night, about four years ago, I went out, got really drunk right before Christmas, and wound up, I guess, at a bar called the Must downtown right around the corner from my apartment. And I fell down on the patio, just fell over like that. Yeah, I would call it a... Like a cartoon. I would call it a dead fall backwards. Yeah. And it landed on the back of my head. Oh, my God. It was a dead fall. And hit my head on the stone patio with enough force that my brain gave me a black eye from the inside of my head. It's called cerebral hemorrhage, I believe. Yeah, and I had a subdural hematoma. Subdural hematoma. I was in the ICU for four days. Get this red eye, had one of those bright red blood eyes. Yeah. You have pictures of this? Yeah, I do somewhere. Put one in this camera. No, I guess my tab of this... That tab of this... Oh, Jesus. Sorry, they can edit this out. Can you edit that out in my memory, though? Can you edit this out? Can you edit it? It's just like total recall where you can just remove things. But, no, Chrissy has the photos of all that. But the weird thing was... And then I decided, I said, all right, well, I said, all right, I gotta quit drinking. And I thought, this, you know, it'll be hard, but I'll do it. And I kept waiting for it to get hard to not drink. And it never did. Like, I'm now four years, I haven't had a drink in four years. Is that heroin? Yeah. Did you do anything? Nothing. No pot? No. Nothing? I wish that, because I don't like pot. I wish I could enjoy pot. What don't you like about it? And it makes me very quiet and paranoid. That's my favorite part. For real, that's what I like about it. I like pot. But you seem very lucid when you're on pot. Yeah. You seem very communicative. Yeah. Whereas when I smoke pot, I can't put a sentence together. Oh, yeah, it makes me friendly. Yeah, it makes me very withdrawn. Alcohol makes me friendly. Right. It does that for me too. Yeah, I always say the one thing I miss about drinking is, you know, the liking people. Right. Oh, yeah. You used to like me more. Yeah. Yeah. That is a thing, right? Because of this brain injury, it never was hard to not drink. My urge to drink was gone. From getting knocked in the head? Yeah. And also, I noticed over the couple of years, I said, I haven't had any depression. And so, just before, I guess, in like November, I said, I talked to my doctor, I said, I want to go off the antidepressants and see what happens. And so, I've been like gradually weaned off, and just this month, took like the last antidepressant about a month ago. So, how long is the weaning process? About three months. How do you do that? How do you do that? Because you're really addictive. Yes. And how do you do it when you're weaning? It's just gradually reducing the dosage, the daily dosage, and then doing it every other day, and then it's gone. But they have a protocol? Yeah. Yeah. And so, did he discourage you? No, my doctor was, he was excited about it. He said, that's great. Congratulations. Good. Good. You know, and said, but you know, keep in touch and let me know. He was a real doctor too, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, I guess so. He had a reflector on his head. That's all you need. That means he's a real doctor. He had a blood lab coat. Yeah. And he was like, you know, and he's like, I think he lives in the neighborhood. He's always walking around outside. That's him. Yeah. That's a doctor. So, we did it. And so, now I'm about a month in without any antidepressants. What is the difference? I don't really know yet. I mean, it's hard to gauge it. You don't feel different? I definitely feel more emotional. You know, I kept crying at the Oscars. Really? What parts? All of it. What? You could have had Kevin Hart host. Yeah. You fucked it up. But, I think I'm more emotional. You're more connected, baby. Yeah. And, you know, supposedly you have some, you know, hopefully, I mean, I'm part of it, I was thinking, I hope it will help with writing because I felt like I was having trouble coming up with story ideas. Yeah. You do hug me too long now. Yeah. I do. Yeah. Oh, I've become a predator. Well, that's what it is. Yeah. But, I feel good about it. This is the important thing. So, the only thing is emotions and you feel more creative? You feel more in touch? I don't know yet. I don't know yet. And, I don't even know if I feel, I just know, I definitely know there's a heightened emotionalism. Has it affected your improvising? It's a little while. And, it doesn't seem to have. I was worried it would. I was worried that I would be, like, I might not be able to go out and do those shows because I'd be more moody and, you know. Yeah, yeah. But, so far, it hasn't affected them. Because I went on them and used radio because I couldn't work at one point. I got to the point where I just couldn't work anymore. And, that's when I started going on antidepressants and it saved me. So, I totally believe that people should get on meds and stay on them.