Joey Diaz on Quitting Xanax

When I was on the Xanax, it was basically during the pandemic. I had 10,000 of those things at the house. 10,000? Because he was sending me 90 a month from 2012 on automatic monthly. Was it stock filed? They were just going in the closet. They were just going in the fucking... When did you take it? 2012 was when I got it prescribed. When I had my little situation at the comedy store that we goofed about, that was not good. There's no way I should be on a standing walking 10 count. That's what that was that night when I had to follow Morgan Murphy. A standing walking 10 count? Doug, I asked Paulie Shaw, I told you this story and we laughed about it, but Doug, now thinking about it, I should have done something. I went to the comedy store, I'm in the back, you weren't there. I think you were coming in later. Yes, you were coming in later. Because on Saturdays, I used to close the original room. Uh-huh. Talking, bullshit with Paulie, everybody's in the back. No refill, maybe a joint before I got there. You know, Saturday night, just look at the girls. I get there, they say, Joey, you're up next. I walk to the thing and as I'm walking, I walk up the steps to the original room and Morgan's on stage and Paulie's standing there laughing at her. And I walk up and I'm like, damn, I don't fucking feel good. Like, this is not working. I was starting to get anxiety. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't breathe. But I went to look at that window for years whenever I had anxiety in the original room, I had a window when I'm on stage. I got a window on the right, remember? And we could look out the sunset, I was always good. That day, particularly, when I went in there, I didn't see a fucking window. So I was waiting for Morgan to get off and all of a sudden I got this anxiety, Joey couldn't breathe. I couldn't fucking breathe. So I walked down the stairs just to look at the door. And I got worse, I got worse, I couldn't breathe. I thought I was gonna fucking have a heart attack. I go, Paulie, I can't get on stage, I'm having a horrible anxiety attack. He goes, I just went up, dude. And I walked up there and I told you. But I didn't explain it to you correctly because I was cracking a joke. I woke up at the 12 minute mark. I remember walking past Paulie and that's it, Joe. That's it. And then I remember waking up on stage and people laughing and I was probably an automatic pilot. I had a bit that it was an automatic pilot. That was a little scary. So that's when you got on Xanax? No, it was a couple weeks after I went to the doctor and he goes, what was that? I kept having these little panic attacks. Kept having these little panic attacks, little panic attacks. But I was okay, I wasn't gonna go to a psychiatrist. We were working our asses off. We didn't know what the fuck was going on. So I started taking the Xanax. And it would help in a little bit. I would take it on the road if I went on a plane or something like that. What does it do for you? You gotta remember, too. It was, you were walking contradiction. I'm talking about myself because you said it best. I'm eating 2,000 milligrams of THC and scaring the fuck out of myself, right? You're walking around fucking scaring. Then the Xanax, I would take the Xanax to calm me down off the anxiety. Come on, man. That's not gonna work. Those edible weed sessions, when you do too many of them, I do think they make people very anxious. I think they just shift the pole of your brain. I brought some water. But now I eat them more to sleep. I got them on a, my big problem, Joe, is still to this day asleep. So now, two nights, three nights a week, I drink a bodybuilder sleeping thing. What do you, do you have a hard time sleeping because you're not tired? Do you have a hard time sleeping because you're thinking? I'm tired till 9.30. And I look, come on, man. The comedy timing. I don't wanna go to bed at 9.30. Do you know what I'm saying? I never wanna go to bed at eight o'clock. That's when you know you're almost done. I wanna bed at eight. Fuck you, man. I'm not looking to stay up till four, but I'm not going to bed at 9.30. So I'm tired about nine, but I push the envelope a little bit. I like to read, maybe listen to music. 11, 11.30, I like you. I like to read shit on the computer. 11, 11.30, I try to read it now. I turn the TV off. Once I go up there, bro, I'm thinking about the guy who came to my house who asked me if he could take an orange, but he took three instead. He took nine. He took nine instead. Yeah, and you're like, that was 11 years ago, Joey. I think about the time I bombed in the original room following down my railroad, like does it matter? I think about the time I ate a bucket of dicks in North Carolina and Chapel Hill. Does it matter? Does it really matter that you ate a bag of dicks? You know, I think of stupid shit. And I fall asleep eventually. I'll tell you what help, whoop. I got the whoop watch to help me with recovery because I was lifting and going into jiu-jitsu and my back would hurt. So I want to figure out what kind of calories I could do and I won't go over those. If I could do those five days a week, that's fine. But I can't go in there, burn 800 fucking calories in jiu-jitsu and expect a deadlift the next day. I don't have that. So I got the whoop watch. The whoop watch put me on to sleep. It's helped me sleep better because I finally realized, go, you slept four hours last night. No wonder you feel like shit. So now I'm in contest with whoop. So I got it up from four and a half hours of sleep to eight hours pretty much. Last night I only slept like five because of the flight. But I'm sleeping eight hours now. That's great. Yeah, now I'm sleeping 1130 to eight. Don't get me wrong. Once every two weeks, I have a little hiccup. I go upstairs, I think of something. I go back down, I smoke some pot, I read and I go back up and I'm all right. But when I was doing comedy, there was no sleep, Joe. Do you want me to tell you why? Why? Eight cups of espresso a day. You know, everybody thought I would leave the store because I was going to do something bad. Do you know why I was leaving the store before midnight? Think. Why? Because Starbucks is open till midnight in Studio City. And God forbid I didn't catch my flat white before midnight. God forbid I didn't catch my grande flat white before midnight and then I'll call you tomorrow and tell you how I didn't sleep last night. So you were drinking coffee late into the, we would always have espresso after dinner. Yeah, no, now I have an espresso at five and I'm not sleeping. That's so weird. I could sleep right after having one. Oh, I loved it because in my world it takes you up. Yeah. I'm not catching on the way down. I eat a chocolate something. I can't fucking sleep that night now. Really? I really focused on my sleep the last couple of years. Especially since I got this whoop about 16, 17 months ago. That's what's really improved in my life is the sleep. And I've been taking naps too. If I go to Jiu-Jitsu, I do the blue belt class, I need a napjack. I need a little nap from five to six. That's where I am. But when I started popping the Xanax, the pie point was maybe May of during the pandemic. Like I couldn't leave the house without popping the Xanax and then when I get in the car, I pop another one. And it would stay in your system. Thank God I wasn't drinking. And what was that doing for you though? What's the feeling like? It calming me down. I can't take sleeping pills and I can't take the strong Xanax. So I have to take the little footballs. But I was taking eight to 10 of those motherfuckers a day. Jesus. And then when I landed in Jersey, what had happened was, you know how you and Tom had that conversation about my tolerance? Yeah. Okay. That tolerance, dog, I think, as you could tell, I think a lot about this shit. Yeah. You had a conversation with me a couple years ago about your Romero getting punched in the face in his eye socket. And when he got into the green room, when the doctor saw him after the fight, his eye socket was healed. It was healing. Healing. Okay. Yeah. I think about what you were talking about, my tolerance with the edibles and stuff. Now let's get back to early Joe Diaz. When I was a child, the doctor would have to come to my house two days in a row for years. They'd have to shoot me a penicillin on Monday and then come back on Tuesday and shoot me again because I would never take the penicillin. You know, I had a lot of problems with my throat as a kid and whatever, fucking tonsils and shit. So I was always in the hospital as a kid. I was a sickly kid till I was about eight. All those years, Joe, they would always have to shoot me two or three times with penicillin. The same penicillin they would give you one shot of that have to shoot me. So I don't know which. So you've always had a high tolerance. Always. Interesting. Except for alcohol. Mm. And even alcohol. Cause I could drink something with Jamie right now and I won't fall over. I don't want to do it. But that's what's always pissed me off about alcohol. That I could drink a few alcohol shots, feel okay, but then if I push the envelope, that's when I feel shitty. But my tolerance with alcohol and with cocaine and alcohol, shit. I could drink a case of Budweiser, you know, cans. My friend Johnny, you had a coke problem. I always used to have to take him to the corner store, the liquor store, to get 40 ounces. Yeah. He would calm himself down with like a big malt liquor. Go, I would drink. He was always trying to like, clean himself down. 22 beers. 22 beers and it would calm you down. So when the Xanax finally, what I realized when I got the jersey that, yeah, I got the jersey August 9th or something on your, August something. Two days after I got the jersey, I had something like a weird mild heart attack. My heart didn't stop pounding. And that was because the Xanax turned on me. I didn't realize that till I went to the knee surgery. And one of the assistants caught it. Because I couldn't sleep and they tried to give me something to sleep and the chick goes, you're withdrawing. Oh, from Benzo's. She goes, you're withdrawing naturally. That's why your heart beats going up. That's why you fucked up. It's very dangerous for that. She told me you have to flip it. So I had to read a journal about this, about transitioning. You just can't quit. You can't quit alcohol and you can't quit Benzo's. Yeah. It's that, you know, you could die. So what I had to do was take whatever I was eating, which was eight of those things a day and work myself backwards. How long did it take you? Six months. Wow. Worked myself backwards. Fucking tough to write, man. I'm sure. You know how it is with these fucking things. You gotta dig deep and ask questions. Yeah, book is a lot of soul searching too, I'd imagine. Yeah, no. While I was doing it, I was fucked up as hell. That's why I figured I'd do it then. You did it while you were getting off the Benzo's? Yeah, well I was just, I just moved. I did the knee surgery. It was like a thousand things. I didn't even know I was withdrawing. Like I said, until I went to, I did the knee surgery and something happened with my heart. And one of the doctors came in and we started talking and he kept looking at me weird. He was a Spanish dude. And I fucking, he gave me his card and I called him when I got out and he goes, "'Come see me, something wasn't right that night." And he did a physical and I went back to see him blood, that type of shit. And he goes, everything was right. You know, everything was okay. I don't know why he put me on a heart monitor. And he goes, your heart's fine. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. And his assistant said, are you still taking the Xanax? And I go, yeah. And she goes, that's what's going on with you. Look at the charts, doc. He's been on them since 2012. And I go, no, I just been using them since the pandemic started. And that's when she goes, no, you gotta stop withdrawing. I didn't even know. I just had a horrible fucking feeling. How long do you think it takes when you're on those things before you're addicted? Two weeks maybe. Really? Well, I didn't, see, I would take them and then forget about them. I would put them in my top pocket and then go to the store and not take them. And then I would just wash them. There was a lot of times I would take them, I would bring it with me in case I got like a little fucking, you know. But Joe, the funny thing about this, if I tell you this goes back to when I was a kid, in the simplest way, you ready for this? I was a little fucking fruitcake when I came from Cuba. You know I sucked the pacifier till I was six. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. So after like I was three, they took them away from you, but I'd hide them in strategic places. And whenever shit got danged, I'd go over suck it, put it down, and then I'd fucking go back to what was going on here. So when I lived in 88th Street in New York City, my mom had a jukebox at the bar. So every week the guy comes in and he gives you the old 45s. Is that what they call it? 45s? So I don't know what they were. They were all different types. Spanish music, you know, black music, rock music. My mother had a great taste in the jukebox. So I would have fucking boxes of singles. I lived on the third floor. And if you go to 205 West, even today, you pull up to it, you'll see where I live, where I grew up right there on the third floor, but you'll see that there's like a parking garage there. They never really, it's like an old building. Now it's redone again, they did something. When we were kids, we played back there. So whenever I had anxiety, I would go upstairs to suck on the pacifier. I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't cool enough to put them on the street yet. I would, later in time, I would put them on the street and I would suck on them when I was playing basketball or something. If things, if they called the file on me and I would panic, I would go upstairs and I had a window that they couldn't see from below because it was the back of the building. So it was like an indentation and all our windows. You can't see that from there. So I would take those 45s and I would whip them. They're like fucking boomerangs. I would just sit there for 10 minutes and just whip them, whip them, whip them. And I'd hear people downstairs, what the fuck? Stop it, you fucking scumbag. What's going on? And then I run downstairs and all these kids would be holding onto their heads and shit. They're like, where'd you go? And I go, I went upstairs to go to the bathroom. You missed it, the crazy guys throwing records at us. Do you know how long I did that for, I did that for about a year. I threw records at those motherfuckers. I cut them, I did so many things to those kids. They never knew. It was me, but back to it. That's how I started going upstairs to suck on the pacifier. So I always had something, you know what I'm saying? Like I always had my little. You wanted something to like help you out. I always had something to smooth in the humps and the bumps. I didn't know that shit existed.