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Jeremy Renner is an actor, musician, philanthropist, and author. His new book, "My Next Breath: A Memoir," is available now. https://www.instagram.com/jeremyrenner
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James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
Jeremy Renner, My Next Breath: A Memoir
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
What's happening, man?
What's going on?
It's great to see you.
Yeah, good to be seen.
Boy, what a journey you've been on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I started listening to your audio book.
It was giving me anxiety.
It gets better, right?
It takes a minute, but there's a relief for the reader.
Well, the relief is seeing you healthy, walking around.
Well, the relief is also you kind of know the end of the story, right, before
you go into it.
Right.
So then you can really kind of dive into the actual detailed narrative that I
put out.
Yeah.
There's no other way to do it.
But, yeah, it's tough for a minute.
It's like, wow, my sister, it took her a while to read, and anybody that was
kind of involved in the incident takes a minute.
But, you know, it took me a long time to kind of get through it, right?
Yeah.
It's anxious for me, too.
So how long was the actual recovery?
Because you don't even walk with a limp.
Yeah, yeah.
It's quite – there's a lot – some things are pretty miraculous.
Some things can be explained.
And I tried to figure it out as I was writing the book, you know.
A lot of people ask questions.
I ask myself questions.
Some things were on my own will.
Some things were otherworldly of some sort.
But, yeah, I was given, you know, I was supposed to walk with a limp because
pretty much a lot of titanium.
And then it was certainly not running.
And I'm doing far beyond all those things.
Don't know exactly why.
I can pontificate on why, you know.
What do you think of those?
I think it's – will is a really special thing.
And the love and fuel to fuel your will, I had in spades.
I can – I feel like I can pretty much do anything if I set my mind to it.
When it was my essential part of my life, my recovery, was a 24-hour day job.
When typically I do many, many other things, right, as we all do in our lives.
But when all my focus, like even parenting, was out the window until I can get
better.
So I had to do that first.
So that being the central part of every thought, every fiber, every cell in my
body was geared towards a one-way street recovery.
Oh, I'm getting fucking better.
So I just got better.
And there's no – what's the alternative?
Wow.
You know, I was brought back somehow, someway.
And it would be a disservice to not do all the things I'm supposed to be doing
and want to be doing.
So it just took a lot of effort.
And it looked a lot of support.
It took – heck, dude.
I mean, there's hundreds of people involved in helping me not die again.
You know, but then it was – but at the end of the day, the recovery, as you
know, everybody's injured in some sort of way.
It's a lonely road.
It's only you.
No matter how much help you have or PT you have, if your tendons go or whatever
the heck happens, you still have to put in the work every day and endure the
pain and manage the pain and mitigate it.
And it can be quite lonely, but I always found that my daughter and my family,
as I see their faces, when I get better, I could stand up, let's say, or not
pee in a jar.
I could get in a wheelchair and go – any sort of milestone, I'd see their
faces get a little bit less horrified, even relieved, even quite joyful even.
So as much damage as I did to my family and their hearts, me getting better can
relieve them of that burden.
So it was an easy one-way road to recover, and that's why I recovered fast, and
I attribute it to my love for my family.
Wow.
So let's bring it back to the day of the accident.
When exactly was it?
It was New Year's Day.
New Year's Day.
New Year's Day, 2023.
Yeah, and I host my family at my house up there, like 25 people every post-Christmas
to New Year's all the time.
Family, friends, whoever, just kind of come up, and we can celebrate the
holidays together, go skiing, all these type of things.
But we had a big kind of snowmageddon-type snow event that, you know, shut down
the mountain that I live on at the top of Lake Tahoe at about 8,000 feet
elevation,
and we got just tons and tons of snow.
But it happens often, maybe not that intense of a storm.
But so much so where we were cut off from anywhere else, we're snowed in, fine.
I'm prepared for that stuff.
Three days without power, prepared for it.
It's fine.
We can have fun.
It's actually a relief.
All the cell phones go off.
All the iPads go away, computers, and everybody's just playing card games with
headlamps on.
And, I mean, it's a riot.
So we had a good time.
You know, the food supply was still good.
But, you know, it's New Year's Day, and we're getting a break in the weather.
So I decided I needed to clear the roads and see, come out for air, essentially.
And in doing so, that's when the accident sort of transpired.
And it's not, it's more of a routine type of thing to have a half-mile-long
driveway up there.
And I have to maintain it myself, so I have a snowcat and a bunch of other snow
removal type equipment.
There's a bunch of vehicles, snowmobiles even, things that got stuck in the
driveway because it was a lot of extra snow.
And some of it was very light, and then it got very icy and hard.
So you're sinking down like three or four feet into it, and it was a hot mess.
So I had to try to dig all that stuff out using the snowcat, pulling this stuff
out.
This thing, a snowcat, to describe it in words, is pretty difficult, but it's
like a tank.
It's probably, I don't know, 12 feet wide, the tracks on each side, so it spins
like a tank, like a skid steer.
There it is.
Yeah, there we go.
That's a small, tiny version of one.
But, yeah, it's something kind of like a Star Wars, you know.
But this minor or metal track, it's more like that one right there.
Oh, you got one like that?
Yeah, that's it.
It's exactly like the one I have.
So it's about like 16,000 pounds or so.
And it's very nimble on the snow.
On the snow.
Just to see it physically, put it back up, see it physically and to know that
that's what ran over your leg?
Oh, my whole body.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
It was, so you have to step on the tracks, you see, to get into the cab to
operate it.
So stepping on the tracks is a normal thing to do.
You just don't do it while the things, you're operating it, right?
You're in the thing, you drive it, and it's just easy.
The thumb go forward, reverse, and you're neutral, and that's it.
It's really easy to operate.
But it was just, the accident happened because you have to get in and out off
on those tracks.
And I hit the thumb thing, and it threw me off, and it was going towards my
nephew.
So I had to jump back on it and try to stop it from killing him because it was
going to crush him between the truck and that big blade that I have.
You see that thing?
Yeah.
It's a few thousand pounds, that thing.
It's gnarly.
But, so, my instinct was to jump back on it and try to stop it.
You know, obviously, it didn't work out.
And it got ran over, and there you go.
How much of your body did it run over?
The entire, all of it.
Oh, my God.
I was, because I went, if the tracks were here to jump in the cab, I leaped up
and over to try to grab onto it and got sucked under the whole thing.
So the whole length of it just kind of, so there's like a set of wheels.
That turn these tracks, you see?
And there's like six wheels.
So it, so it undulates.
So I felt all the undulate.
The first one was the worst, like the pressure and the skull crush and all that
stuff.
And then it releases because then the undulation of the tire and the track.
And you're awake for that.
Just like, by the sixth undulation, just like, all right, all right, just kind
of finished already.
And you're just like, it's almost like, you know, you're like you're drowning
and being struck by lightning and bleeding out.
It's like all the things all at once, man.
It's like immense pressure and a movable object.
And, you know, my skull kind of lost out but still survived.
Your skull kind of run over.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, it's like, you know, yeah, it's everything.
It's like, it's 38 broken bones and eyeballs out.
Oh, my God.
And it's a...
Shout out to medical science.
I know, right?
And, yeah, I mean, all the doctors were like, dude, I don't know how your eyes
still operating or still working.
But I think because I was on ice, because I did see it.
I'm like, well, maybe I'm going to put this eye on ice and just kind of rolled
into it.
You know, because I saw my eye with my other eye, right?
And I'm like, I'm going to be able to keep that thing.
Because I'm on, like, an icy asphalt driveway that's off of my driveway, right,
at the top of the road.
So it wasn't really great for impact and getting ran over.
I wish I was on a snowpack.
It would have been maybe a little bit easier.
It would push me into snow, right?
But it wasn't.
So I just kind of rolled onto it, just like maybe I could kind of put the eye
on ice until I could figure out how to breathe.
Oh, my God.
And I said, you know, I had to sort of laugh at it, because it's weird to sort
of think about that, you know?
Wow.
So 38 bones?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was like a lot of ribs and all my spiral fracture and my legs.
All my joints were broken, all my ankles, my lees, none of my spine.
And I only got a laceration of my liver from one of the ribs breaking in a
couple spots, and I went down and kind of stabbed it.
But it didn't really mess it up too bad, so that's okay.
But all my organs, my brain, I don't think there's any brain damage.
I'll use that excuse later, I guess.
You know, yeah, and my spine, that's the miracle.
It's like, how did I break 14 ribs, right?
And I crack my skull and every arm and leg and finger and thing, but my spine
was spared.
Oh, my God.
And all my organs were spared in my brain.
So, like, it's kind of almost no harm, no foul at the end of the day, even
though there's, you know, probably 20% titanium in my body at this point.
So, how many pieces of titanium are in here?
Well, the guy that invented this procedure worked at the hospital in Reno
because there's a lot of crushing injuries that happened to all the ski resorts
and mines that are in the area.
So, I got really lucky to get this doctor.
But it took four doctors to get to this guy.
So, it says my family.
I was out in a coma.
But once they found this guy, he was on vacation.
The mayor of Reno actually called him and said, you've got to get back and help
my friend out.
And so, he rushed out and he's just like, this is what he does for a living.
He's like, oh, this is easy.
I can't wait to do this for this guy.
You know?
So, relieved on my family.
They were such relieved because they were like, oh, he's going to lose his eye.
We're going to cut off his leg.
I mean, all this kind of tragic sort of prognosis, whatever you want to call it,
right?
So, this guy comes in.
No, no, it's fine.
We're going to hammer this thing in.
We're going to do this.
We're going to do his face plate and do a thing.
We're going to do this.
And just lucky that the orbital bone that broke and the cheekbone that broke,
they only wanted to do that because my face as an actor made me want to save my
cheekbone, I guess.
Not that I cared about it, but yeah, he fixed up all my ribs and they used like
this mesh and he has this sort of weird way to kind of handle.
If you fix one or two of the ribs that are all broken, the rest will kind of
fall into place.
The body's pretty miraculous.
Just give it a little direction and then it heals on itself and it'll grow the
bone.
So, it's not as much titanium in my ribs as one might think for all those
breaks.
It's only, you know, it looks like rebar, right?
You get a scan.
A lot of my body's like, what's that?
Do you have an x-ray of your body?
Yeah, somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, somewhere.
Is it online anywhere?
Well, we can see it?
I don't know.
Do you have it on your phone or anything?
No, I don't think so.
I could ask my sister for it.
She's been showing everybody that thing.
It's pretty remedial looking, you know?
It looks like, you know, like I had a hammer and a 2x4 and some nails and that's
what this
looks like.
It's very like, why is there a nail and two screws?
And, you know, it's carpentry 101, you know?
There's nothing like, you know, I think the guy that, because I had like screws
in my skull
and my jaw, because that broke in three spots, and the guy took it out with
something that
he got from Home Depot.
It literally, it's like some, you know, just, he just took it out.
I'm like, dude, it's squeaking like it's in wood.
He didn't numb it or something.
I almost knocked this guy out.
It's just like, it's unbelievable, unbelievable.
And I was always kind of half in the bag mentally, just kind of, because it
takes
so much mental, um, to deal with like pain management and, uh, it's emotionally
exhausting
to deal with like so many different things in your body.
So I'm always kind of half paying attention to things, you know, my, it's, I'm
much sharper
mentally now because I don't have to mitigate so much inflammation, pain and
all that all the
time.
So I can kind of be here and laugh with you.
Uh, but back then when this guy was, I almost sucked this guy so hard, dude.
Um, but, uh, yeah, glad that was, I was really happy to, um, it was a great
milestone for
me to get these screws out of my skull.
Jesus.
But, um, but, um, that was, uh, that was worse than getting ran over by the
snowcat, dude.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
In terms of pain or just discomfort?
Well, no, it wasn't so much the pain.
It's the haunting images of feeling my, um, gums wrap around this screw as he's,
and it's
pulling out.
It's a lot longer than I thought it was.
And then there's three more to go.
Uh, it was more the, the visual is in my mind, um, kind of what makes it
terrible, you know,
the visual, because I'm a pretty visual guy.
Uh, so I don't think anything, um, hurts me so much in a physical way, but the
visual is
a pretty haunting image.
And the sounds, dude, it vibrates your skull as he's taking it out.
Oh, and it's like, uh, this is what horror films are made of, right?
This is like Saw or something.
Is that the only thing that they had to take out is the screws that were in
your head or
did they take them out of your body as well?
No, no, they have to leave those in for the most part because why risk
infection and open
you up to, for something.
But, um, yeah, so all that, all the rest of the stuff stays in until those
screws come
loose.
At some point, they will.
They start backing out, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You think you'd put in a locking screw, right?
Uh, I've had friends that have had broken arms and starts poking out of the
bone.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just doing now.
And they have to get another operation and get it removed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So how many different plates do you have?
I, I think I got, it's only a couple in my face and they went in like
underneath my
cheek, a plate for my, uh, orbital socket and then for the cheekbone.
They put, I think a plate or two over there to hold that bone in place.
Do you feel it?
Um, I, I feel the, the lack of, um, feeling in it.
It's still, still numbness to that, this whole side.
Cause they had to cut all these nerve endings, right?
To get in through your mouth.
So even the side of my, um, face is a little, slightly little, little, little
numbish.
And the rest of them, do you feel like, how much do you feel in all your
different bones
and joints and all the different things that got repaired?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's, there's lots of scar tissue to work through all the time.
Um, it's, what's great is like, it's not any one spot.
It's like, it moves around, you know, even if you're not injured, it's like, if
you just
twist your leg wrong and then it goes up into your hip and then it's in your
shoulder, it
moves around your body.
It kind of, it moves it around.
So you just kind of stay on top of it.
And there's always something to, to work through, you know, in your body, you
know, and it's
just, you know, look, I already have to do it anyway.
I'm 54 and I'm going to have to take, take care of my health and I just have to
make it
a very central part of my life.
So, and so now do you have full range of motion, full mobility, everything is
back to
normal?
I don't know what normal is, uh, you know, uh, I'm going to be, you know, I
feel like I'm
maybe 110% just because spiritually, mentally, um, I'm so much better.
I got so many gifts from dying and coming back that, yeah, I'm, I'm 150%.
My body will always be, look, my body's aging.
So I have to fight against age.
Well, recovery is age reversing.
It's the same, same stuff that people are doing just to reverse age.
I just do it just because it's my recovery and I have to for the rest of my
life just to
prevent inflammation and discomfort and swelling, things like that.
So when you have so many broken bones and so many broken joints, what is the
recovery
like?
Like how did they even get you moving again?
Day by day.
Day by day.
Yeah.
Instantly, as soon as I got home from the hospital, um, yeah, PT there and
working to just move,
keep things moving.
You have to, otherwise you lose it.
You'll lock up or you'll lose it.
Seeing you walk around today in the studio, I would have no idea.
Yeah.
You look totally normal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's great.
It's, it takes a lot of work and it's still working.
I was having to stretch in your studio.
You know, I have to, I have to, I have to move quite a bit.
So I don't lock up after, after a good night's sleep.
It's like, eh, it could be a little stiff in the morning and I have to do some
stretches
and things like that.
But I think if I didn't get in the accident, I'm 54, I'd probably have to do it
anyway.
Right.
So, um, it feels good to have to be, to force the stretching, I think.
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And so just day by day.
So you're completely bedridden initially.
And how long does it take before you can sit up?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's pretty – it moved pretty quick.
Randomly with the punctured lung and all this broke, the shoulder, the collarbone
dislocation,
all this stuff.
That healed pretty quickly.
But that doesn't require gravity and force under your legs, like your legs have
to take,
right?
So that took a little bit longer.
The legs, both ankles, right?
Those are under trauma and plates in those.
You know, this is all a pipe, essentially, a piece of rebar, my whole lower leg.
So that took a little bit longer.
But the ribs, ironically, it was only painful for, I feel like, a couple weeks.
I also had these, like, plastic suitcases for my lungs because I had to let it
bleed out
and this stuff was going in.
I don't know what goop was in that thing.
But I had to carry those things around for a while.
Once I got rid of those, I was kind of sitting up a bit more.
And I felt good once I was kind of sitting up.
But there's still, as you can imagine, so much trauma in so many places.
But I think the longest was really getting up to stand up, to walk, to get all
your joints
to work properly again, to relearn to walk, relearn to move because you really
kind of have to.
A lot of atrophy, as you can imagine, that happens.
But I was standing up and moving around.
I got into a chair probably, you know, by February after, like, three weeks.
Wow.
And the more I can move, the faster you heal.
You're getting more blood flow.
You're getting your body to work better.
Help with my attitude and will to get out and sit up.
You know, all the things.
Each of these things are, like, milestones.
And I would just, like, yeah, and then move forward to the next thing and set a
goal for myself.
Even if it was just, like, to sit up and, like, turn.
Or I didn't have to set such big to reach too far to keep my confidence high.
Because I'd keep reaching these goals and just kept going and going and going.
And I'd find myself, again, it's 24 hours a day.
So what do I have to do today?
Well, I don't even have to ask.
I just got to get better.
And, you know, it just kept going.
And whatever thing.
And there's so many things to attack to get better.
It's like I never got bored.
I just had all these bands and stuff.
I remember being in a wheelchair and I'd wrap around, like, this desk.
And I'd be like a leg press.
You know, all these, like, interesting ways just, like, to try to strengthen my
body and get better.
Whatever wasn't, you know, anything that would work, I would do it.
I'd say no to nothing, say yes to everything, and let's try it.
Let's do it.
Took in everything.
Took in everything.
You know, they say that is one of the more difficult things with stroke victims,
is the will to do the exercises to force yourself to recover.
Yeah.
Because so many people just, they have never done that before.
They've never pushed themselves before.
They don't, and there's this tendency to just kind of give up.
Some people have.
Yeah, yeah.
It's part of the reason why I wrote the book, because maybe people, because it's
a lonely place where people are struggling in recovery.
And when it's a lifetime recovery, too, you know.
I hope they can find something they can grab onto.
Like, if this guy can get overcome this, I can get out of my own way here.
And maybe not, maybe think of it a little differently.
The only thing we have control of ever in life and perpetuity is our
perspective.
So, you know, what's my, I could easily just go be victimized and, you know,
cry about it and like, oh, my career is over and that.
I mean, it's not, it's not even part of the narrative.
It's part of, it's not even in the conversation.
It's like, I'm getting better every day for the rest of my life.
That's it.
Wow.
There's only one way to go.
What's the alternative, Joe?
Right?
What is the alternative?
I keep saying that to my, what's the alternative?
I'm not going to stumble around through life.
Right.
I wasn't brought back here just to suffer.
That's not happening.
I'd say unplug the machine.
I'm done.
I'm out of here.
It's way better than being dead.
You know what I mean?
I'm not going to come back and just waddle and limp my way through life.
It's not going to happen.
What's crazy is if you didn't approach it like that, you probably wouldn't be
able to walk.
Correct, correct.
Yeah, because there have been a lot of people that have been gravely injured
that never come back.
Yeah, yeah.
You have to push it, right?
Anything that's in your life for excellence, you have to obsess at it and risk
everything for it.
You have to or it's not going to happen.
No one's going to do it for you.
But what else are you going to do?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Again, like I said, what's the alternative?
Yeah, this sucks, but like so does a cold plunge and so does this and so does
that and so does that.
You've got to really test.
We've got to test our bodies, our limits to really have real growth and
especially in recovery.
You have to.
What else are you going to do, man?
You're going to take pills?
Right.
That was, again, one of the harder things, worse than the accident as well, is
getting off Oxycontin.
And I got off pretty quickly.
And that's gnarly stuff, man.
I'm glad it was there for, you know, the pain for me.
But, like, I wanted to get off it as soon as possible because it's highly,
highly addictive.
And coming off that stuff was gnarly.
It's so hard.
And you have a really strong will.
And some people don't.
I know.
And they put all people on that stuff.
It's crazy, dude.
It was really – ironically, I was supposed to be doing a movie about the Sackler
family.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
But it was supposed to happen, like, literally that April or just that spring.
Obviously, that got canceled because I had to take Oxycontin to kind of get by.
But then I had to get off that stuff real quick, you know.
It was really interesting, too, how people treated that drug, you know.
Everyone, like, was monitoring, counting the pills.
It was a half a thing or this or that.
Like, everyone was on it.
Like, dude, what?
You're treating me like some sort of drug addict.
Don't give me this stuff.
I don't want it.
Jesus Christ.
It's terrible.
Wow.
But it's pretty powerful, powerful stuff.
And I don't ever blame sort of the drug.
I just think sort of how maybe it's free to use and it's even supported in
school systems.
And, you know, that family kind of got away with a lot of stuff to promote that
stuff.
To put it mildly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a whole other –
You've seen Peter Berg's thing on Netflix, Painkiller?
Have you seen that?
It's a docudrama documentary.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matthew Broderick.
Yep, yep.
It's gnarly, man.
Gnarly.
Gnarly.
Yeah, that's an evil family.
Yeah.
What they did to people and just support the idea that, you know, hey, you
could just be on
this and you don't have any pain.
Don't worry about it.
And it's not even addictive.
Yeah.
Just –
Yeah, it's the knowing part and then double-downing and selling it and really
getting it out there.
And promoting it as a thing that you could be on forever, which is just insane.
So you're on it and how long did you have to be on it for?
I, again, always working to get off of it.
And I think maybe it was around – if I got home on January 13th, Friday the
13th, and I think it was probably less than a month, probably like beginning of
February, because I had all my molars and stuff got pushed in.
And so my mouth's a hot mess, my jaw's broken, but I'd have night terrors, as
you would, being awake through that trauma.
So – and I bit down and the tooth was just in a certain spot and just cracked
my molar.
And it goes down to the nerve and that.
I'm like, oh, I feel that pain.
But I'm on all this OxyContin.
I don't feel – hmm, maybe I don't need to be on that shit.
So I had to go get that emergency extraction and get a post put in on my back
molar.
And I said, well, I'm going to – I'll take it one more time just for the
tooth pain or whatever even what the dentist gave me.
I think I took the dentist stuff, whatever that was, and cold turkey off OxyContin
and Gabby Penton.
Ooh, cold turkey.
Yeah, I didn't know.
You didn't know how hard it would be?
No.
Oh, no.
I was just so adamant –
Did they tell you to taper?
No.
I don't really listen to the doctors.
I don't listen to the doctors, man.
You know, so, yeah, so I started crying for about three and a half days
straight.
Wow.
Even during my PT, I'm just like – not that I'm even sad, but like full
crocodile tears, just tears.
Tears.
Wow.
24 hours a day, right?
Just going.
I couldn't stop crying.
And I was shivering.
So this is all just withdrawal?
Withdrawal, yeah.
I wasn't thinking anything other than like, why am I crying?
I didn't know it was withdrawal.
Even – because my mind's not there.
I'm in – my mind's in recovery and getting off this stuff and focusing on
holding my body up.
It takes just a lot of mental acuity to just exist, right?
So I wasn't thinking that, yeah, of course.
I look back on it.
I was like, of course, I'm coming off fucking heroin.
Oh, Jesus.
So, yeah.
And then – and so I – I call my sister and thing.
I'm like, I don't know why I'm crying.
I can't stop crying.
She's like, well, let's – let's call – I had these different doctors that
we'd Zoom call
with when I was at home.
And so we called the pain management doctor and she's like, look – I told him.
He's like, what are you doing?
You've got to taper off that for like – it takes like two weeks at least.
You can't just cold turkey, Gabby.
It's no wonder you're feeling all cold and all this stuff because that's all
nerve stuff.
So I started feeling gravity.
I started feeling temperature.
I started feeling everything.
It was like on fire, right?
So –
Why did you make the decision to go cold turkey?
Because I didn't want – I didn't – I don't like the feeling of being on
pain meds.
I don't like – you know, I want to have my mind.
I mean, I was always using the humor to find my sobriety.
If I could land a joke, that means I'm reading the room and I'm hitting the
timing right,
whatever it is, you know, right?
So I wanted – I needed my mind.
I needed my wit.
I needed my will to recover.
I needed sleep and I needed my brain.
And the drugs kind of numb my brain as they would, right?
As they numb your whole body.
So I just wanted off of them.
And I don't like how I feel.
You feel muddy.
And I just didn't like the feeling.
You know, it came with a price.
But I got the okay to like take a little fiber of oxy to sleep on if you needed
to mitigate
some pain just so I could sleep.
I'm like, okay, maybe I'll do that if it happens.
And I did once or twice or three times maybe after that moment.
But I got through it.
And I got off of it.
But I got off it because I cracked that tooth.
And that I felt pain.
Like that is like – that's not going to let me sleep at all.
It's a heartbeat in my brain.
My face is just like throbbing, right, as you would.
For anybody.
So I said like, oh, then I don't need to take the pain meds.
So I'm like, that was my excuse to get off the pain meds.
Right.
Because if you're feeling pain and you're on the pain meds –
Yeah, I would have been on that shit much longer if I didn't crack that tooth.
Wow.
Because I wouldn't have the will and say like, oh, let's get off this stuff.
Yeah.
Right?
But it took that.
I'm like, okay, well, I don't need it.
I had knee surgery in 93 and they gave me something.
I don't – it was either Percocet or Vicodin.
I don't remember what it was.
And then I took it one time.
You puke or anything?
I felt so bad.
I felt so stupid.
Yeah.
I remember being in my apartment in New York just feeling so dumb and just
thinking I'd rather be in pain.
Yeah.
And so one day.
I took it one day and I'm like, that's it.
I'm done.
Yeah.
And then I sold it.
I sold my pills to this guy, Jeff, at the pool hall.
It's a dirt bag.
It was this dirt bag guy that I used to hang out with at the pool hall.
He had a bandana and long hair.
He was a hippie.
He always sold drugs.
And I sold them to him.
He's like, I'll take it.
What do you got?
Yeah, yeah.
What do you got?
And then I had surgery again.
I've had a bunch of different surgeries for jujitsu injuries, martial arts
injuries.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The second time I had surgery on my knee, I had a knee reconstruction again on
my other knee in 2003.
And I didn't dig anything.
I'm just like, I don't want nothing.
I'm just going to just deal with it.
And it was okay.
Yeah.
Maybe anti-inflammatory or something.
And it's really one of the...
I didn't even take that stuff because I don't think that's good for you either.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, you're going to be in pain no matter what.
It's just going to dull it a little bit.
I'd rather feel it all.
I agree.
Accustomed to it and deal with it.
Yeah.
That was like back when I...
Even when I had my wisdom teeth pulled out when I was like 20 or something.
You know, that's pretty gnarly surgery, right?
And they give you like a codeine or something, you know?
I just puked on that and said, no way.
Took one pill and I never took...
Didn't sell it to anybody.
Isn't it astonishing that some people like it?
Yeah.
People party on it and they'll go drinking.
Oh, yeah.
Like too viking and all that stuff.
I just...
It's just the opposite for me.
I just can't.
It's just my body doesn't agree with it.
Yeah.
I just...
And I'm glad I don't like it.
I had a friend of mine who was a musician and he would write all his music on vikonins.
And I was like, what?
How do you do that, man?
Like I took it...
Whatever it was that I took, I can't remember which one it was.
But I felt like a moron.
I just felt like I had like 20% of my brain.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was just this dull, like wet cotton stuffed in my head.
Yeah.
But I mean, I guess maybe it's just like different biology.
Maybe different people react to it differently.
For sure.
Yeah.
It wasn't for me.
Yeah, I agree.
So how long did it take for the withdrawal to subside?
By the time I got to the Zoom with the pain management doctor, he said like,
well, don't do that.
You should taper off.
Like, well, I'm already off it now.
I'm like, I've come off the crying train.
Especially because he also made sense of it for me.
It's like day four by the time I talked to him.
And it just helped me make sense of like why I was feeling the way I was
feeling.
Because it felt like a setback.
Right.
You know, because there are setbacks in recovery.
But this felt like a real setback.
Like I couldn't grab of why.
And I'm pretty in tune with like my body and my emotions and my everything.
And I just couldn't grab why I was, when it's so obvious.
Yeah.
But then, you know, I don't, I'm not the one really administering this stuff.
My mom's just giving me the pill and doing peptide injections for me and, you
know, rebirthing me, you know, taking care of me.
What peptides were you on?
Oh, man, if I look back, I don't know, I was getting three, three ml, so three
loads.
And they were all mixed up, so as you would.
Probably a lot of the same ones that I'm on now that I continue.
And I rotate in and out of different ones.
BPC 157.
BPC 157.
TB 500.
Yeah, all those.
Yeah, yeah.
AOD and MOTC.
And I have to do a lot of blood work because my hemoglobin was at two.
Whoa.
Yeah.
That was what it was going back to work.
Whoa.
Back to Mayor Kingstown.
Crazy.
Yeah.
It's like the blood of a dead man, essentially.
I just got no energy.
So then I started really working with all my blood panels.
Big, giant, wide, 16 vial blood panels.
And that started to be my new course of recovery, of a cellular way, in a blood
way.
And that's where I really started to get strong.
I was moving around.
I was mobile.
All the bones are healed.
By this time, it's like a year's gone by.
But now I started working on cellular and blood health.
And that's when I got to, like, my skin started to look great.
Because your blood tells you what your body's producing and not producing,
right?
So that was a great report card, a barometer of where I was at, why I'm not,
you know, where
my mitochondrial levels are at, anything was at.
So it was a really, really great part of my recovery.
And that's what I'll continue to do and still continue to do today.
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Did you use a hyperbaric chamber?
Oh, yeah.
That must have helped.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
What it did for me, it's not something, I don't think there's many things in my
recovery that you do that feel good.
It just doesn't make you feel as shitty.
Right.
It's like you're building a mountain, one layer of pain at a time.
Yeah.
So, but hyperbaric is great.
It helps with lactic acid when you're working out.
As you know, it's all the oxygen you put in your body is a great necessity.
It's, again, they're one of those things that are even age-reversing.
It's kind of also disease preventative.
Right.
It's amazing, this thing.
And I got one that was, you can sit in and do multiple things.
I can't just sit there for an hour and a half in the chamber and, like, I'll go
crazy.
I have a busy brain, you know.
And so I get a computer or whatever, email, whatever I can do to kind of
continue to do it, to make it a part of my life.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
And then I go into, like, a red light bed, a high-powered red light infrared
bed.
Then it moves all that oxygen through my body even more so and gets deeper into
the tissue.
It's amazing.
Yeah, I use both of those things.
Yeah, those are huge parts of my life.
Yeah.
But I would imagine for something like what you went through, it's imperative.
Yeah, yeah.
For tissue recovery, and, oh, man, huge, huge, huge.
Faster for repair.
And so from, so a year later, you're walking around.
Yeah.
I was walking by, my daughter's birthday was March 28th.
So I guess a few months later, I was walking, but it was assisted, very
assisted week walking with cane or a walker.
So that had to be amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
And then I was, like, by the summertime, I stopped doing recovery, the intense
24-hour-a-day recovery.
I would do, like, a 12-hour-a-day recovery and then go walk in the sand in Lake
Tahoe.
Lake Tahoe is the world's biggest cold plunge.
It's a freezing-ass lake.
So I just go dip my legs in that lake, walk in the sand.
It's great for instability in your ankles, your joints, your hips.
And I would just do that kind of stuff, even ride a jet ski.
I was riding a jet ski in June.
Wow.
Yeah, taking it easy and not doing any nuts, but just, like, you know, just
living life.
Right.
You know how good that is for your mental acuity, your spirit, your emotional
body, and all that stuff.
So I was out in the sunshine getting vitamin D.
I was in, you know, nature.
I was with friends.
I could do life stuff.
Wow.
Like, I'm back in life stuff, you know.
Now that's a great confidence builder.
Yeah.
So I kept trying to do those things.
And then, of course, I have to go back into all the recovery stuff, and, you
know, that I always do.
But I'm just happy I can do it.
What does the cold water feel like with, like, I mean, you have a rod through
your tibia?
Yeah, the cold water, that's not the issue.
It's when it's cold weather.
Yeah.
Like anybody, you're stiffer, your blood slows, and all that stuff.
So it doesn't help us.
I need circulation in my joints.
Tendons don't get a lot of blood flow.
I really got to work at getting blood flow in these joints.
Otherwise, they'll stiffen.
And I'm just slower going.
Everything just feels a little bit more robotic.
What do they have to do to your—
But I think that's—before injury, it's that for anybody, right?
Also, elevation.
I mean, 8,000 feet elevation in Tahoe.
So all those things aren't really kind of helping to my recovery.
But my body will respond in those oxygen-depleted environments and all that
stuff.
So maybe it did help.
Maybe it didn't.
I don't know.
But I did most of my initial recovery in L.A.
And then when I could, I got out to Tahoe to be in my sort of happy place in
nature.
Did they have to reconstruct your knees?
Did you—
No.
No.
None of that.
They—there was cracks in my ankles, and my foot spun around a handful of
times.
There was a spiral fracture in my leg.
So they had to hit a rod down into my knee, and they had to screw it, screw it,
you know,
with plates and all that stuff.
So I didn't sure I'd just move those things.
So I don't know.
There wasn't full, like, reconstruction, like people get a new knee or a new
hip.
It was just a lot of breaks.
My pelvic broke in three spots.
My hips.
You know, but you don't fix that.
They even said, you broke your asshole.
I'm like, is that what you say as a doctor?
Is that how you say it?
Come on.
That's hilarious.
I think there's another word for it.
I think he was trying to make me laugh, and I did.
And Eric makes you laugh.
He's like, you broke everything, Jeremy.
He even broke your ass.
I'm like, all right.
That's cool.
Wow.
Wow.
And so you've gone through the 12-hour, now you're in, like, this 12-hour day
recovery.
Yeah, it's summertime.
Yeah.
So I got to do, like, just life stuff.
And that was really my first shot at allowing myself to think that there's a
future,
and I'm not going to live a life of full-time recovery for the rest of my life.
It's like, oh, I can actually go do some other things that I enjoy doing with
people
in kind of a normal way.
So I was, without a cane, without anything by the time, by June and summer came
around,
so I'm moving around.
That's pretty nice.
I'm moving around with, you know, inflammation and getting downstairs very
slowly, but as you
would, as long as you're patient, as I was, as aggressive I was with my
recovery, I allowed
patients to also live within that aggressive attack on each joint or each
inflammation or
wherever it was.
I do allow patients, because I allow myself to push hard, hard, hard, hard.
I listen to my body.
The body says, fuck off.
I'm like, all right, I'll chill out for a second and then, you know, keep going.
But I got to live life, and that was so rewarding to my spirit and my
confidence, which, you know,
you need in that kind of those kind of dire times, and I keep going.
And then, like I said, when we got to getting back to work, because I got so
ready, maybe
I'm down to like four hours a day of recovery by the end of that first year, I'm
like, I'm
going to go back to work.
I need to get back out into the world and use life as my recovery and still
only spend
four hours a day on hyperbaric chamber, red light, whatever the heck I could do
to, I mix
it all up.
It's a bunch of different stuff.
A lot of heat, a lot of vibration, power plate stuff.
That was really great for numbing the nerve endings, my back of my knees, back
of my ankles,
that kind of stuff.
I don't know if you ever used that stuff.
No, like, what are you doing?
I used to have this thing, God, what is it called?
It was a thing you stand on.
It's like it would shake you with different vibrations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, and it would slow it down, make it fast.
It's like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that really was great for numbing, like, the back of my knees, that
really still
ache, and back of my ankles, just so it's not quite so sensitive.
I don't know if it floods the nerve endings with blood or whatever the heck it
does, but it
just kind of numbs it out, and I can go to sleep on it.
It's great.
It's beautiful.
I used to have one of those at my house in LA.
I don't even remember what it's called now.
It was just some machine.
It had a bunch of different programs.
Yeah, yeah, it's power plate.
It's probably a power plate.
Well, power plate, I think, is the one that you work out on.
You can.
Yeah, yeah.
This one was a little different.
This one would just shake you at a bunch of different frequencies.
Oh, interesting.
You would stand on it, and it was supposed to just do a bunch of stuff for your
hormones
and endocrine system and all sorts of different stuff, just by the vibration.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it helps me a lot.
Interesting.
For sure.
And are you doing sauna and stuff like that as well?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I usually use just the red light bed.
Sweat, it's shaped like a coffin or a Channing bed one.
It's just as effective, I think, as you're going to the sauna.
It doesn't take so long to heat up or anything.
You just get in that thing and cook.
It's amazing.
And it's amazing that even an LED light like that or infrared light could warm
you up so much,
but it's intense.
I love it.
And then after a while, do you start lifting weights?
Yeah, yeah.
I started training as soon as I got the – when I started doing blood work
because my hormone, my testosterone was at 200.
My hemoglobin was at 2.
Everything was –
Your body's just wrecked.
Oh, it's wrecked.
And I'm going back to work.
So I had to attack why I was falling asleep during workouts that I'm trying to
do or whatever.
They only scheduled me to leave maybe six hours a day on set because, you know,
I fell asleep in the middle of a scene.
Oh, my God.
They're like, who's going to wake that fucker up?
Oh, man.
So, yeah, so I had to really work on that.
And once I got – I think it was really the testosterone.
Once I got that level to, like, 700, 800 constantly, then I had more energy.
And that allowed me more energy in the gym.
And once I had that, that got me more energy.
So it just started feeding upon itself.
I was doing blood panels every week.
And I just saw progress, progress, progress.
And then I just started lifting.
And I had so much energy.
And I felt better.
The more I lifted and moved and stretched.
And it just kept compiling, just like most things in life.
And it got easier, like most things.
With oxygen chamber, that's better when you can pile on it.
Same with red light stuff.
No one time at anything is going to do anything.
But if you do it often enough and make it a central part of your life,
it's like, oh, I was on fire.
It's great.
I started running.
You can run now.
Yeah, yeah.
Wow.
For distance?
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know where I'm running to.
I was never a distance guy.
I was always a sprinter, right?
I was a sprinter from high school and college.
Yeah, so.
Does it hurt when you run?
It feels like if you're, if you have, you know,
if you've ever been in a car and you're on the freeway
and it has a misalignment or it's a little shaky.
Yeah.
Yeah, or you've got a flat tire.
It feels like I've got four flat tires when I'm running.
It looks great.
It looks like, oh, this guy has no problem with this guy.
Just boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
And it feels like the wheels are going to fall off.
Wow.
Mentally or something.
It just feels like it's, because there's like,
it's a lot of pressure to put on all these joints, right?
I haven't sprinted really much in a while.
I haven't really worked on that.
I've been working on other things, you know,
blood and cells and that kind of stuff.
So, I mean, sprinting is not, you know,
what am I doing?
What am I going to do?
Sprint?
54, for God's sakes.
Maybe like for, you know, because you do stunts in movies
and maybe at some point I'll have to sprint.
I don't know.
Or maybe not.
Maybe just don't do that shit, you know?
Yeah, well, maybe you can, though.
I mean...
Sure I can.
I think you can.
I already have.
I believe it.
I just don't know if I want to make that a central part of,
you know, the acting experience.
Maybe I can...
Well, that would be an absolutely phenomenal turnaround
to go from where you were to going back to action films.
Yeah, yeah, to go play Hawkeye or something.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Yeah, that'd be a good test.
Or born identity.
Yeah, that's tough.
That would be a tough one.
That was in excellent shape for that one.
That would be a challenge.
Yeah, I would imagine.
I don't know.
Do I want to tax my body?
Yeah, I don't know.
Probably should.
Is it taxing your body or is it strengthening your body?
Yeah, I don't know.
This is the question.
I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean...
How many miles can you get on this stuff, right?
Why titanium?
I think it's forever.
I think it's permanent.
I mean, everything you have just reinforces the recovery of the bones, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then you just have a plate there that just keeps the bones in order.
Yep.
And it's essentially...
I mean, all the titanium in my body is useless at this point.
It did its job and the bones grown, but so it just stays there now.
Is there an argument that the titanium hinders you at all?
Well, I mean, it is foreign metal in your body.
It's not rejecting it, but there is a point where it could.
You know, just like allergies, you know, you don't get allergies sometimes for
40 years in your life
and all of a sudden I'm allergic to down.
It could reject it.
Who knows?
You never know.
I'll cross that bridge.
I'm worrying about today.
I'm here with you.
I'll worry about that shit later.
It's just so impressive.
Yeah, it really is.
It really is amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
Because at any other time in history, you're dead.
Yeah, yeah.
Any other time in history.
Oh, yeah.
20 years ago, you're dead.
Goner.
Yeah.
You're a goner.
20 years ago.
It's insane, right?
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
What a great blessing to have all those people that even the EMTs and all the
people that were there,
the life-saving stuff that did all the stuff that they had to do, man.
So much.
And I'm really known in that community, especially in the EMTs and all that
sort of stuff.
I have a lot of firefighter friends and all that stuff.
So it's just like a, you know, you're just getting a little extra juice and
love from these people.
You know, like I knew one of my best friends is a firefighter in that area,
Jesse, and he's just retired.
And he got the phone call from his buddy who had to, like, stab my chest and
release the pressure from the lung and da-da-da, like on the ice.
I'm like, and he's the one that says, look, dude, Jesse, Jeremy, he's in, we
did the best we could, dude.
You don't want to get to the hospital.
Wow.
And that's like code for, like, gone.
He might be gone.
He's gone.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
But, I mean, but they're like, you know, I talked to them all later.
I saw every nurse.
I saw every doctor.
I went by every ENT, even the pilot that flew me up there and just had to give
everyone the biggest squeeze and apologize if I was a pain in the ass or
whatever it was, man.
It's that, reminds me of just why I'm back anyway and what the only thing that
you take with you is love, man.
Yeah.
The beginning of the audio book is your daughter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was the one I had the hardest time with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because it's, you know.
Can you imagine?
Yeah.
I can't imagine, you know.
Dude.
Does this, I mean, it must forever change your perspective on life because you've
crossed back.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it just made it easier.
It's, it's, it's ripped away all the white noise, things I gave credence to,
things I gave value to.
It's just fucking meaningless.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit is gone.
Yeah.
And I just don't.
Sadly, I'm in a spinning rock with, you know, people and capitalism and stuff
with things.
Yeah.
I just don't, I just feel like I belong.
But I do.
I just, it's a lot of times I just don't feel like I fit into a certain, how
things, how things work or seem to work down here.
Or, yeah, I just, I just, I just don't do things I don't give, give value to.
I only do things that are valuable in my life.
That's it.
That is it.
I do nothing else.
It is amazing how much time and energy people put into things that ultimately,
at the end of the life, they're not valuable.
Yeah.
They don't mean anything.
Yeah.
And they occupy most of your thinking.
That's right.
Or even your time.
Yeah.
Or like your career.
Uh-huh.
Right?
Yeah.
How many people do careers that they fucking hate?
Yeah.
Whether they're in a marriage, they just fucking despise, you know, all this
stuff is spending too much time doing what?
Right.
Why, why, why?
Because you get trapped.
Because of fear, because of fear, you get trapped and it's too difficult to get
out.
And, you know, they get too deep and buried into, into some place that they get,
I don't know, paint themselves on a corner.
You know, it's, it's quite sad.
Yeah.
You know?
It is sad, but it's also.
I mean, there's an amazing example that you, you can shine to the rest of the
world that maybe people don't have to go through what you went through to
realize that most of what you're thinking about all day, especially if you're
one of those people that's wrapped up in social media, most of the things you're
thinking about all day are just nonsense.
Yeah.
Just total nonsense that's stealing your life.
Yeah.
I mean, it's one of the reasons why I wrote the book is I hope there's things
that, um, that I learned and the gifts that I received from, from passing and
coming back and overcoming, you know, huge obstacles.
And a lot of, a lot of people can identify with suffering and struggle, um,
doesn't have to be a physical struggle, but, you know, there's, it's a certain
way to think and perspective that to work your way through it.
Yeah.
Because it is a lonely, lonely place.
And I think there's something beautiful about the narrative of an author to a
reader or even just audio, which is even more intense because you get the 911
call and it's kind of dramatic in that sense.
But like, it's, it's pretty intimate.
And you can, I think you can really move the needle for somebody.
Yeah.
The more open and honest and vulnerable I am in sharing the narrative, the
maybe more I have a chance at connecting with the reader or listener.
No doubt, you know, there's the thing is about when, when you're in the middle
of a struggle, it never seems like you're going to get out of it.
Yeah.
And you're trapped.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You feel it.
And it's so difficult for people to trust the process or to trust that it will
get better.
And this is unfortunately why a lot of people end their lives because they do
not think it's going to get better.
And the, you, you hear it from so many people that almost took their life or
failed when they tried to take their life.
And now I realize, oh my God, I was so wrong.
It does get better.
I am better.
Everything's better.
And I just didn't see the light.
I didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I thought there was, there was just nothing but this feeling that I couldn't
endure.
Yeah.
That hopelessness.
Yeah.
That weighs heavy, doesn't it?
Whew.
Ooh.
You can't afford that.
You can't, you can't give that power.
You can't give that power.
You can't.
It's just, I think anybody can sink into that, right?
Anybody can sink into that.
Yeah.
Anybody can sink into that.
It's just so hard for people that have never gone through something before.
If your life has been really easy.
Yeah.
And then all of a sudden you're tasked with one of the most difficult burdens
ever, overcoming
the fear and the, the, the, the, the, the feeling of wanting to end life
because you can't
take it.
Yeah.
I've been there.
I mean, Jesus.
Um, I, well, look, I think, um, people need to suffer.
It is an actual requirement of life.
And this is the fiber, the DNA of love, real love and true love and perpetuity
can't exist
without suffering.
It's impossible.
We don't appreciate it.
Yeah.
It's it.
You have to have suffering and suffering doesn't have to be looked at as a
negative thing.
It could be looked as a beautiful thing.
It's where real love comes out of, you know, all my suffering, there was real
love in there.
Everyone around me just in this recovery or in a loss I may have had from an
uncle or grandparent
or whatever, you know, there's, there's real love that comes in that suffering,
you know,
even though it can be a lonely experience.
I mean, I look at it that way and not as a negative, terrible thing because it's
just
temporary.
And it's, it's, it's not, it's counterintuitive though.
What's that?
It's counterintuitive.
In a negative term of it.
Right.
But we all have to suffer.
Right.
I mean, it's part of the human experience.
Right.
It's the Joe Rogan experience.
I'm not suffering.
I'm having a great time with you.
But you know, I don't think people welcome that or allow that to happen in
their lives
and let it be okay that the suffering that we suffer like that at the hard
times are the
building blocks to our, to who we are.
It builds resilience.
Yeah.
It builds character.
Yeah.
It builds all those things.
Yeah.
I remember one time, I mean, this is a minor suffering in comparison, but one
time I went
on this, uh, hunting trip on Prince of Wales Island, which rains like 350 days
a year.
And so we were up there for a week just getting drenched and you know, you're
camping.
So you're in a tent and you think, Oh, well, I'll be dry in the tent.
And you're not dry in the tent.
There's no dry.
There's no such thing as dry.
I remember I turned my headlamp on in the tent once cause I had to pee and I
was going
to step out of the tent to go to the bathroom in the rain.
And when I pressed the headlamp inside my tent, all I saw inside the tent was
water vapor.
It was just filled with moisture.
There was just water dot like droplets all flying around inside the tent.
I'm like, Oh my God, you're never going to be dry.
There's no dry.
And you know, it was just miserable, but fun.
I was with good friends and we had a good time.
Then I came back to LA, uh, you know, a week later and I remember I called my
friend Steve
Rinella.
I called it cause he's the one that took me on the trip and I said, dude, it's
sunny out
and I've never appreciated the sun like this before.
I have, I'm, I'm like, I'm at a level of happiness that I don't think I've ever
felt before.
I was just sitting outside with my eyes closed, just taking the sun.
It was wonderful.
Yeah.
LA is always sunny.
Yeah.
You get so used to it.
Yeah.
It's like you're a trust fund kid, you know, like who can't appreciate.
money because you've always had it.
It doesn't mean anything to you, but now all of a sudden going, just being drenched
for seven
days and being in that sun, I was like, ah, and then it made me realize like,
oh, you need
to suffer.
You need to suffer.
You're never going to appreciate this life.
Right.
And either you voluntarily suffer or you will suffer involuntarily because life,
regular life
will make you suffer.
Yeah.
Very true.
It's, it's, it's not, it seems sort of, um, anti-human to want to do something
to make
yourself suffer.
Right.
It doesn't seem very sort of characteristics of, you know, we always want to
take the fastest
route to get somewhere.
Yeah.
It's, you know, it's just innate in kind of human nature to, to do that sadly.
And it doesn't, and it, that, that leads to a life of complacency and mediocrity.
Well, if you look at life today and if you look at society today, we have
unprecedented
levels of depression and unprecedented levels of anxiety and unhappiness, yet
it's probably
the safest time ever.
And it's probably the easiest time ever.
It's so easy that poor people are fat.
That's how easy it is.
Like that's never been the case all throughout history.
Poor people were starving and poor people are fat now.
Like that's how easy it is to live just to exist.
So, I mean, not, not saying that being poor is easy.
It's certainly not.
This is certainly a struggle, but it's way easier than starving to death.
Like this is like an unprecedented easy time.
And because of that, and because there's this narrative that people have to
constantly seek
comfort, to seek vacation and relaxation and retirement and all that bullshit.
And so that's in your head.
And there's this softness to existence.
And so everything that comes your way is overwhelming.
Somebody said this once, and it's like a great quote that I remember.
The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever
happened to you,
regardless of how small that is.
So if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is like, I remember my
girlfriend broke
up with me when I was 18 and I was like, Oh, I couldn't believe it.
I thought I was going to be with her forever.
I was so sad.
Yeah.
And then I think back, like, Oh my God, that was the best thing that ever
happened.
She was a nightmare.
But back then I thought, I was probably a nightmare too.
But back then I thought like life was over, right?
Yeah, of course.
But you have to get through that in order to appreciate life, to really
appreciate life.
But we have this bizarre narrative in our head that you shouldn't suffer.
I know.
Where does that come from?
I can't.
Well, because it used to be so difficult to live.
And so you would try to find a time where it wasn't difficult.
And so then it became the thing that everybody focused on.
Focused on chilling, relaxing.
Yeah.
You know, and the people that I know that don't do anything and don't take any
chances and don't
take any risks and don't exercise and just seek comfort are the most miserable,
anxiety-ridden
people I know.
Well, that's, yeah, they're pretty much dead inside, right?
Yeah.
That's complacency.
And it's, that's the definition of complacency.
But again, it's counterintuitive, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Because you think comfort is easy.
It's relaxing.
It's nice.
Yeah.
But it's only relaxing if you've earned it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Correct.
You've got to get through something in order to appreciate just chilling on the
couch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's why I always do, I have to fight my, I have to trick my own behavior
into doing
things I don't want to do all the time.
You know, if I don't want to do it, I'm like, oh, I'm going to do it.
Don't even think about it.
Just go do it.
Right.
Because I know the lazy mind just wants to like, oh yeah, let me just, let me
skip the gym today.
Or let me not do PT today.
Or whatever the heck it is.
And I don't want to get poked and prodded.
No, just do it.
Just go do it.
Right.
The thing you don't want to do is the thing you probably should be doing.
Almost always.
Yeah.
And that's why I pretty much always just do that.
It gets me out of my way, out of complacency, just like laziness.
I just, it doesn't exist because I do the opposite of what I want to do.
Well, that's why you're happy.
And that's why I'm so full of joy, dude.
I'm so happy.
I've never been happier, more connected to humans, more connected to my
daughter, more
connected to myself, more centered in my spirit, where I am right now, where I'll
go, where
I'll be, where I always am and always have been.
It's beautiful, man.
Yeah.
It's beautiful.
You got to conquer your inner bitch.
You do, man.
That's what it is.
There's an inner bitch inside of everyone that's like, oh, let's just do
nothing.
You got to go shut the fuck up.
You have to have like two minds.
Yeah.
Well, you got to surround yourself with others, too, that can inspire you, too,
right?
So then you do things as a, even as you and I, to go work out, do something, it's
a lot
easier than going to the gym by yourself, right?
Right.
You try to create, because we are social creatures, so let's do things that,
like I'm doing,
like I'm building a whole rehab recovery center at my house.
Like, well, maybe I kind of open this to the public and make this a communal,
cool thing
so everyone has access to this stuff.
Yeah.
And I'm still considering doing that, but like just make it a place to be and
hang so it's
everyone can do it.
And I'm not, it's not just me.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Separating myself from other people, whatever it might be in my life.
There's, I try to find ways to make it a communal thing, so it just makes it
easier
to continue this in perpetuity.
That's another counterintuitive thing.
It's like, you have to understand how important community is.
It's like a vitamin.
Yeah.
Big time.
It really is.
Yeah.
Well, that's a shared experience too that comes with that, negative or positive,
in the
tent with your friends.
And if you're alone in doing that, right?
Yeah.
It's a fact that you have no one to share that misery with, but at least you
shared that
experience with somebody.
You're like, dude, I never thought I loved the sun so much.
Remember when we were fucking eating ass, sucking on the rainwater in that tent?
You know, but it's like even a negative experience can be, but it's shared.
It's still quite beautiful.
And it's a map, a milestone, a part of your life that uses barometer to change
your, or
appreciate the sun more or whatever it might be, right?
So those shared experiences I think are invaluable.
It's the only thing I chase in my life is that.
For people that ever want to start a fire when everything's wet, Fritos.
You know, little Fritos, little bags of Fritos?
Yeah, yeah.
Those little motherfuckers are so toxic that if you light those things, they're
like little
fire starters.
No way.
Yeah, man.
Fritos are crazy flammable.
They stay lit for a long ass time because they're just soaked with oil.
Oil, yeah.
Yeah.
So whatever oil, whatever horrible fucking seed oil, whatever fucking
industrial lubricant
those fucking things are made out of.
But when you light that, they're essentially some sort of a corn byproduct and
oil.
Oh, right, right.
And so if you light those fuckers on fire and then you get some semi-dry sticks
and light
them, light those.
And we started one fire one day because one day it didn't rain.
So that one day it didn't rain.
Me and my friend Brian Callan, we were determined to start a fire.
And so we just found like the driest possible, well, nothing was dry, but driest
possible sticks
and twigs and started it and then dried some logs out.
And it was, they were hissing and steam was coming off them as we were lighting
it.
And I was like, you know, I was just going to say, I was just going to say, I
was just going to say, I was about to eat this shit.
Yeah.
Which brings me to another question.
Like how much did you alter your diet after all this?
Because I would imagine like anything that causes inflammation, it then becomes
an issue.
Yeah.
I didn't go down so much that route.
I'm always eating pretty good.
I didn't, it didn't go into like things that I haven't gone into that even yet
to like, oh, what causes inflammation?
What, what, what am I eating that does that?
I, I haven't really gotten that far into it yet.
I'm still, I'm sure I will, but, or, and there was a doctor that also helped me
stuff and I have people cook, prepare some certain things for me.
But I don't, couldn't tell you what causes inflammation that I put in my mouth.
Um, could not, I mean, maybe if I have wine probably does and a little bit,
yeah, you know, what does for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, but I, again, I don't do, I, I really am good at, uh, moderating all things,
all things good and bad.
So, um, my body has a chance to sort of exist and it's not forced too many
supplements, too many peptides, too many, too many anything.
Right.
All good stuff.
I sort of just moderate.
So, um, once I got my blood right.
Cause I was like 205 pounds.
I'd never been more than a buck 65 and it's just all this surgery weight and
all this stuff.
And it's hard to get off when you have a, your, your hemoglobin is too.
Right.
I just had new energy.
So also you probably have to eat a lot too, because your body needs calories in
order to help you recover.
That, that, and the, uh, it's good proteins too.
Proteins.
Yeah.
And also it's difficult to eat.
Cause again, my molars got pushed in.
It's hard to chew.
I look fine, but to chew it on a steak and asparagus thing, it's like this
tough, it's tough for
me to get through.
Still to this day or no?
Yeah.
It'll be forever.
I can't fix it.
If I start to move those molars again, they'll probably fall out.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And I'd rather keep them and just be uncomfortable.
So they just, they got pushed in.
Yeah.
This side.
Um, yeah, it's usually a sort of like, just like an arc to your thing.
So my bite just kind of arcs and then goes straight back.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
All these got pushed in and broke, broke the jaw three times here.
So, and then just breaking the jaw, it doesn't ever really heal right.
So biting down is quite, it's annoying.
It's a, it's full chaos in my mouth, but I don't bitch about it.
I just sort of accept what it is.
And, um, it could have been so much worse.
Could have been so much.
I have all my teeth.
I have a smile.
It's great.
Yeah.
You know, I feel great and, and, um, I'm walking and breathing and I have love
and
joy in my life.
So, you know, who cares about what happens to my mouth, man?
Right.
Right.
I mean, yeah, no, that's, it's, it's really kind of an amazing story and it's,
it's just
amazing how these stories can be so inspirational for other people too, which
is why I'm really
glad you wrote your book because these stories, they're like autobiographies,
especially of
people that you admire that you've seen in movies before.
It's like those, those struggles, they're so real.
And when someone's going through something themselves and they can turn to your
book,
it can give them a lot.
It's fuel for people.
It really is.
Yeah.
It, for me as well.
I mean, I'm, I resisted writing it because I still don't know how or why it can
and will
inspire people.
I can only make assumptions and I think it's so particular to the actual reader
and the person,
but so I can never sort of pontificate on how or why it's important or not.
But it is like, there's an achievement for me to get through it word by word
that I didn't
want to do, to relive it.
And then cause it's in my body and I talk about it all the time.
It is, it is a part of my narrative as part of my life is just recovery.
It's just, it's just my life and I love it.
I enjoy it.
I feel better.
I look better and all that stuff, but it's like the book now is a tangible sort
of, this
is, this is a great dialogue that we'll have as long as we want, but it's just
a dialogue
that exists.
But now this is a tangible object with words.
The words don't change.
They stay there.
Right.
And something kind of interesting about that is like a milestone or a tangible
thing that
now it exists in the world.
Right.
And psychologically that says a lot to me.
So like, even when I do die, that's still there.
So maybe it can help somebody even when I can't be there to talk with them or
whatever it might
be, or even exist.
Right.
Yeah.
It's pretty, it's pretty interesting.
Cause I do movies and things like that, or music.
Those are like the same thing as a conversation.
They just sort of exist in the moment, like, you know, it's great going to a
concert, but
then it's over.
Right.
And then that's it.
Well, what happened?
Well, I could tell you about the concert, but something about something
existing beyond
your, your, your life is something pretty interesting.
What was the process like of writing?
Did you physically sit down and write things?
Did you, how did you do it?
Initially, I, I have a ghost writer who helped me.
Cause I've never written a book.
Um, I've, I've written a lot, but I've never written a book.
It says, so we wanted to get the format, right?
And so we would work through this format.
It's almost like an outline.
And then, so we just do interview by each of the sections of this outline that
we put out.
And so then we would just talk like this and like, so let's talk about this
thing.
Take me moment by moment in the accident.
I'm like, all right, let's do that.
And we meet every day for like two, three hours, however long I could sustain
going word
by word on it.
And then we recorded all the things.
And I would write on my own cause it would kick up new memories and started
writing about
the Lamaze thing.
And, oh gosh, that came up.
And let me, that became a whole chapter in the book, uh, about breathing,
breathing excellent.
My, my, my awareness to breathing and how it became so important in my life.
Um, anyway, so I just kept going and writing and writing and writing.
And then I would do talks to, to companies, I would speak to kids at schools.
I would, all this was part of the writing experience because you can ask me the
same question and
then, but we're in this environment.
But then if I'm with my family and I tell the same, answer the same question,
it's a different,
it's the same kind of answer, but different.
And so I kept learning more and more data and information was stored in my
brain and my heart
and my spirit and had to unearth it and put it down into words, which is, which
I found
to be the most difficult thing.
Because as we speak, like I'm doing now, it's, it's, it's, it's free to speak
as whatever
you want, but to write down the words, oh wait, there's accountability to the
words because
they're written and you didn't have more, you have more word choice where my
brain doesn't
operate as fast as I'd, I'd like to for my vocabulary, I'd probably drop way
too many
F-bombs instead of like really great words that I do know, you know, so, uh, it
was nice
to be able to take the time and spend the agony to really kind of express a
word by word through
it, you know, in a, in a very real honest way.
It's like, it's more like a, like a diary, a recounting diary than it was
trying to, um,
be fancy with words and, um, overcomplicate something that's really quite so
simple.
What was the process like of going over the words and deciding what to keep and
what to
edit out and how to, how to format everything and what, what order to talk
about things in?
The, the order always was working for me from the beginning.
It allowed for flexibility for what would come up in conversations in, in the
writing.
It allowed for fluidity, but there's a beginning, middle and end to this.
We already knew the end, already knew the beginning.
And so it was, it was the branches off of, I didn't know I was going to talk
about Lamaze
in this book, didn't know that was a huge, um, milestone in my life that got me
to understand
what conscious breathing was and mitigate pain.
Cause there's a whole thing about Lamaze.
I was taken at 12 years old, my mom was pregnant with my sister and she said,
put down this,
the cleat son, you're not going to soccer practice, just grab a pillow.
You're coming with me to the class.
I'm like, what class?
It was Lamaze class, the YMCA.
And, uh, my stepdad was out driving a truck or something.
And so my mom, she needed, also needed me not to be alone and she needed, you
know, whatever.
So she brought me the oldest.
And I laid there with a pillow between her legs and teaching her how to breathe
and short,
short breaths.
And then they pulled down a screen and they showed this midwife birth at home
in a bathtub
and squirting out water and this whole thing.
And then they were like, what's going on?
I'm 12 years old.
I'm mortified.
I'm like, what happened?
Is that a whale breaching?
What was going on?
You know?
And, uh, so that came up in just sort of, uh, me and my partner talking about
it.
And he's like, dude, you don't realize that?
I'm like, yeah.
Well, that's why the book's called my next breath.
You know, it's all about breathing and breathing was such a essential part of
my recovery.
My essential part of my, you know, not dying.
And to get through each and every moment, uh, the perspective of breath.
And it is not a conscious thought.
It is right.
It just, it just, it's reflexive in our body.
And when we make it a consciousness, when we invest into our breath, what you
can do with
your mind, with your breath, right?
It opens up.
Like if you, the more you breathe, the more you get oxygen in your body.
It's just feeding all of it.
It feeds you.
It only feeds you, right?
Cause like yawn people yawn.
And I say the example of like, Oh, you know, you're tired.
No, you're not tired.
It's your body that you know that you need to breathe, get more oxygen in your,
in yourself.
Right?
So it's, you're not tired.
You just need more O2.
That's all.
Yeah.
Body's making that happen.
You're saying that everybody breathes.
So everybody thinks, Oh, breathing.
What's the big deal?
It's like nothing.
Have you ever read James Nestor's breath or it's actually breathe, I guess.
But it's an amazing book on breathing techniques and the history of breathing
techniques and
all the different things that people have achieved with breathing techniques,
including holotropic
breathing, which achieves psychedelic states of consciousness and all these
different feats
of incredible physical endurance that people have achieved through breath work.
It's a pretty amazing book.
Yeah.
He was a guest of mine on the podcast a few years back, but I read his book and
started
really getting into it and really trying to practice different breathing
exercises and great,
you know, there's a bunch of breathing exercises you can use for anxiety, for
overcoming very
stressful situations.
But when you say that to most people, Oh, breathing, they're like, Oh, you're
one of those
guys.
Right.
You're concentrating on your breathing.
You're concentrating on blinking, you know, cause it's like, you know what I
mean?
Yeah.
It's like, you can minimalize it.
Yeah.
You could, you can, you have the reductionist perspective where you don't think
it's anything
big.
And especially if you've never practiced it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you, you know, especially with like yogic breathing, you can achieve some
bizarre
states of relaxation and consciousness through breathing.
Yeah.
Big time.
Yeah.
And you could, you could, I always try it whenever I explain it to somebody, it's,
I just,
I say like when I use it, I just think I don't do it like on a daily basis.
I mean, maybe now I do too.
Um, but it's like, it's, I did it for, like you said, for anxiety when I was
like nervous
in an audition.
Hmm.
Uh, how do I get out of this situation?
Like I'm not in my body.
My heart's going like this.
I'm like, I'm not, I can't read these lines.
And I hear like Sean Penn in the room and I'm supposed to go there and be
better than
this guy.
Like, Oh, I'm freaking out.
I'm sweating.
So I said, screw this.
I leave the room.
I go out of the building.
I go out into the street, like on sunset Boulevard somewhere, find a tree that's
rooted in this
damn earth.
I'm going to, you know, it might look ridiculous.
I don't care, but the courage to go down on your knees, go by the route, be in
this earth.
I just take some deep, 10 deep breaths as cars are honking and data on sunset
Boulevard.
I don't give a shit.
I'm back in my body.
I'm back on this earth.
Here I am.
That's fucking go.
Yeah.
Back up in that room and I smashed that audition.
And I don't remember if I got the role in that, but it doesn't matter.
I was back in my body.
I was back in on earth.
Right.
It wasn't like in the state of hysteria or nervousness or that, you know, cause
I don't
like that feeling.
So I found a way to overcome that feeling.
Yeah.
Some people might just live in that feeling all the time.
They might like it.
I don't know.
I don't think they like it.
Yeah.
I don't think anybody likes it.
Yeah.
I think the problem is you just get trapped in that feeling and then the moment
something
comes up that's very difficult.
Yeah.
That causes you to spiral again.
You just, you lose control.
Yeah.
You're out of your head.
Yeah.
Pain.
It's one of the most difficult things about this whole audition process that
actors go
through is that, you know, there's this golden carrot that's at the end of this
stick.
And if you do a good job, you might be a fucking movie star.
You know what I mean?
Which seems impossible, right?
Right.
I mean, it must have seemed impossible before you pulled it off.
Right?
It was never like something I was ever aiming for, really.
What were you aiming for?
Truth.
In everything I was doing.
Truth.
Yeah.
Honesty and truth.
How did you get...
Because if I don't believe it, then how do I expect someone watching me to
believe it,
you know?
I have to ensure that everything I'm doing is truthful and honest and
courageous and bold
and, you know, all the things.
So, it was never to try to be a movie star.
I just wanted to work.
Always.
Right.
I never wanted to be famous.
How did you acquire that perspective?
Oh, I don't know.
It's...
I was clear about what I wanted.
Very clear about what I wanted.
I didn't move down to L.A. to be famous.
I moved to L.A. to be in a movie.
Be in a movie that was big enough that I would play in Modesto, California,
where I'm from,
because you don't get all the movies there, right?
Right.
And being a part in that movie that I wouldn't have to tell my family, you know,
I'm the
guy in the red shirt waving in the background.
It's a part big enough that you would just know I'm in the movie.
You'd talk.
Yeah.
And I got that, all those goals, in the first job I ever did on camera, in this
National
Lampoon Senior Trip movie.
So, then I had to recalibrate, you know, new goals to also get myself, and I
was working
enough.
So, I never...
My goals were always to...
Like, then I wanted to be, you know, the lead in a...
You know, by the time I got like Dahmer, and then Hurt Locker, and all these
kind of
stuff, it just kind of made...
I was ready for that stuff.
But I was like 38 by that time.
I was like the new guy in town at 38.
Right.
So...
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
I was just ready, and you know, I did my journeyman stuff.
Dude, Hurt Locker's fucking amazing.
It was one of the most complex movies about a very bizarre psychological state
that people acquire,
or that people fall into when it comes to war.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What was it like getting into that mindset?
It was interesting.
I got to spend, you know, I was at Fort Irwin for about a year learning how to
build bombs,
and render them safe.
For a year?
Yeah, yeah.
You got to spend time with the guys and gals off campus, off base.
Interesting.
I love the whole experience, you know.
And then got to go shoot the movie, and that was on the Iraqi border in Jordan
during the war.
And it's 135 degrees in a 100-pound bomb suit, you know.
You're just...
It's not even hot anymore.
It's just sort of like, you let that go.
It's just...
You just are.
It's kind of a spiritual sort of place you have to go in that kind of heat,
right?
Yeah.
And also, you're drinking enough water.
Like, you know, how am I drinking all this water?
And you're not even taking a leak.
And like, oh, I'm so dehydrated.
Got to be careful.
And that's, you know, yeah, pretty interesting.
Pretty interesting experience, you know.
What were the conversations like when you were talking to the people that
actually did that?
Well, most of them look like, you know, school teachers.
There's like one or two guys that...
One guy was like, kind of built like huge, big guy, brawny guy.
The rest of them were like, you know...
The guy that I know did three tours.
He just looks like he's totally out of shape.
His stomach is way bigger than his chest.
He's just kind of...
This guy did three tours.
This guy's no joke.
It's all mental.
It's all such a mental game.
Because you have to be cool in those high intense situations.
Because you're dealing with 155 explosives that'll blow this building off the
block.
And the level of intensity is really interesting.
Like they were so comfortable around C4 and all these things.
And you got to be careful.
These blasting caps and all these things that people were getting injured all
the time.
They got really uncomfortable when I took them to a bar in LA.
Why?
We were sitting at the bar and I asked.
I'm like, what's going on?
It's the big guy.
I can't remember his name.
He's like, I don't like where we're sitting.
Like, what do you mean?
He's like, I need my back to the wall.
I need to know where the exit's at.
Right?
And it's interesting.
Because I sit like that as well.
I don't like to have...
I don't think it's a trust issue.
I just like to kind of...
I'd have my back to somewhere.
I'd know where the exit is, where the bathroom is.
I'd look for the most dangerous man in the room.
The hottest girl in the room.
Just do like a Terminator checklist.
Right.
And that was supported by how these guys thought.
And it's that same kind of thing.
They just noticed everything.
Just data.
Okay.
Now I can go be here.
I assess the room.
Right.
And I feel safe.
Situational awareness.
Yeah.
Situational awareness.
I always had that.
But like really doing that role and spending so much time with these crew of
amazing people
just heightened that for me.
I've always been a quiet and observer.
And that's where I just got in from me.
I could tell you the color of the hinges if they match the finish on the doorknobs
in places.
And it's just how my brain works.
Mmm.
Always.
Yeah.
Well, it's awesome.
I'm a home builder and designer.
So I kind of pay attention to that kind of stuff anyway.
But it sort of just kind of helps me out in life, I guess.
And so when you were preparing for Hurt Locker, was it your decision to spend a
year doing this?
Well, no.
It wasn't about the amount of time.
I think I was maybe to go for maybe a few months.
Katherine Bigelow, the director, just sort of introduced me and said, all right,
they're ready for you out at the base if you want to go.
So I kind of went out and just kind of did it all on my own and just waiting
for the movie to kind of get up and get green it and go.
And it just took a little bit longer.
I think we're waiting for one of the actors that was doing another job to
finish and then we could start.
And then it wasn't an easy independent film to kind of get up and get rolling.
But once we did, we were rocking.
But, yeah, it didn't meant to be like a year, year and a half.
She just called me and says, are you ready to go?
I'm like, yeah, like I'm getting deployed.
Like, yeah, let's go.
I'm ready.
And then I also like we didn't even have a like an EOD sort of tech on on the
shoot.
I had to be the person that I had to call back.
I'm like, I don't know.
This doesn't look right.
They set up these these 155s and it's electrical and it should be dead cord and
all these all these things that I learned.
But I wasn't an expert by any means.
I just wanted to make it look authentic in the movie.
So I had to call back and call me back.
Let me take a picture of this shit.
I don't think it's right.
Oh, wow.
And, yeah, so.
Well, that's fortunate that you had so much experience.
Yeah, it was great.
It was great.
Because if there's anything in that movie, especially for people that actually
did that, that takes you out of it.
Yeah, you don't.
Yeah.
And I wouldn't want to do that because we wanted to be very authentic to what
we were doing.
Yeah.
We are still making a movie, but let's live in this world.
And look, the narrative is that the characters that live in this bizarre world
in a very relevant time in this war that we're in.
And also the struggles of, you know, soldier and civilian life.
And because they were civilians and now they became soldiers, they'd be put in
prison for life for doing the shit they're getting paid to do now.
Right.
And that, you know, and that was a wonderful sort of outcome of the movie of
how it bridged that sort of gap or the struggles with PTSD and coming back from
this harrowing sort of existence and war.
And then coming back and like the cereal aisle.
Right.
That example of like, oh, really?
Like, you know, or in the rain and like, you appreciate the sun.
It's just, it's just such a polar opposite.
And like, this is my existence.
And it became such a really, a wonderful sort of starting point for like, wives
to deal with their husbands that came back.
And like, they can kind of understand a little bit of what they might have gone
through just in general.
Like the, the broad strokes of how hard it is and then to come back and then
like, you know, change diapers and do the thing.
You know what I mean?
Right.
It's a, that became such a powerful thing in that narrative that I found after
we did it and we're showing it to all the military bases.
And it's, it's always going to be a special experience in my life.
And I'll always be connected to a lot of soldiers because of that.
Well, it was a really well done movie.
And it was the way you could, well, there was a thing about that movie that
made you think in a way or made me think in a way that I don't think I ever
thought before.
Like, oh, I never considered what this transition to civilian life is like
after dealing with the unbelievable stress of being in a war zone, defusing
bombs and then wanting to go back.
Yeah.
Like it, but it made you understand.
Yeah.
It made you understand it.
Like, oh fuck.
He wants to go back.
Like, oh my God.
Like watching the movie.
Oh, when a movie can do that to you, when it could take you into that
psychology of the person that would be in that state.
Yeah.
And, and make it make sense.
Like that's, that was a great movie.
Yeah.
I'm just happy to be part of it.
It was more than just, you know, it wasn't just a story.
It was like you're, you're documenting a very real condition that, you know,
through art, you put words to these people's existence where they don't, you
know, they don't have anybody representing that.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
That's why it means a lot to me.
And, and they let me know it means a lot to them.
And that's the most special thing.
Like fuck it.
The movie part of it.
Yeah.
The dialogue for a lot of broken families or, and, and united families better,
or.
Yeah.
Like you said, it's a, a greater understanding of like that difference of
soldier civilian life.
It's a great bridge for it.
Yeah.
I remember.
I'm very proud of that.
I saw it and then I went back to the comedy store and, uh, I, I said, uh, oh
man, we saw Hurt Locker last night and my friend went dude.
And I went dude.
And that was like all we had to say, like fuck man.
It's like that, it was that kind of movie.
That's just like, oh my God.
Like it just gives you anxiety.
And it also, it also just makes you like really reflect and, and think about
what war is.
And the, and the requirement that you're putting on human beings to try to get
them to transition from this insane chaos back into civilian life with no real
guidance.
Yeah.
Just you figure this out.
Now you're, now you're back in this, in the cereal aisle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're going to Starbucks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
How do you decide like what roles to pick when you, you know, you're at this
sort of stage in your life where you're so well known, you know, you, people
come to you with things and you have to decide whether or not this project is
something that resonates with you.
Well, now it's different.
You know, the, the central part of my life for, for so long was my career.
And then my daughter came around and then she's number one.
So then I would do the job that would allow me still to be a father because I'm
not going to not be a father because my job takes me away for long periods of
time.
Right.
And I'm just not doing that in far places.
So I would, so I'm not, I'm not working out of the country anymore.
Once my daughter was born.
So I always had reach and access to my daughter, you know, as fast as I needed
to be.
And then now after the incident, I, it's even tightened up more and loosened up
more because my daughter is now 12 and she doesn't need me as much.
She wants her friends a little bit more.
Right.
Right.
It's a little bit lower in the totem pole.
Just temporarily.
I know.
But, um, and also I can, I can travel.
Like I just worked last summer on a job.
There's a movie called Knives Out.
Um, and then they got, I got brought my whole family with me.
Knives Out was great.
Yeah.
It's awesome.
Yeah.
So this is going to be a really good one too, but I was able to bring my entire
family out.
Like 15, 15 people came out cause they, a lot of them not well traveled and I
got to see a lot of Europe.
Took my mom and my daughter to the Olympics in Paris.
Dope.
Got to spend a couple of weeks in Italy and it's kind of celebrate.
Yeah.
So we can do that kind of stuff now.
So I did the job essentially just to have a summer vacation with my family.
Oh, nice.
So that's kind of how I decide.
And also I did love the character.
I did love.
I mean, come on.
All that has to line in there too.
I'm not just going to do a job for a job, but it just lined up.
But my family has to be involved.
My daughter has to be involved.
Um, uh, friends have to be involved.
Otherwise I'm not going to remove myself from all those shared experiences with
people in my life.
Just so I can go do a movie.
I don't want to do any movie that bad.
So, um, that's my limitation.
Well, that's, that limitation is real success too.
Did you really choose things that you're actually passionate about?
Yeah.
That fit within these parameters and allow you to live your life the way you
want to.
Yeah.
And work with people that inspire me and I think, you know, I'm just not going
to do a job.
Like you can't pay me.
Maybe you could put a trillion dollars in front of me.
Go do this.
You only need you for two weeks.
I'm like, eh, it doesn't fit.
It doesn't check all the boxes that have real value.
Right.
The shared experience, the joy with my daughter and my family and my friends.
And, you know, then it's just not worth it to me.
You know, I don't need to go act for, to do a job.
I don't.
Right.
You know?
You do it cause you want to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's, that's to me what retirement is.
I'm doing what I want to do with who I want to do it with.
And I'm still always going to be busy and work all my life.
I'll do that.
Yeah, but it's not retirement.
It's just a better life.
Well, it is in my mind.
I'm a busy guy and I like, I like to, I like to contribute.
I'm very busy doing the renovation foundation, right?
Which is a huge, big central part of my life with my family that runs this,
this charitable foundation in my community in Lake Tahoe for foster youth and
disadvantaged youth and giving them opportunities that they don't have these
poor kids.
And that's great.
And I love that.
I love, I get, but is that retirement?
It's like, you know, it's, it's going to keep me busy for till I die.
And then it's weird that you have to frame things and it's like career or
retirement.
It's really just life, life and passions.
Yeah, exactly.
But I don't think a lot of people are doing what they want to do in their life
anyway.
Um, but yeah, I, I'll always, always work, always do the things I love to do.
And I'm still continuing to do the things I love to do just on my own terms,
right?
I wouldn't be able to start this foundation if I wasn't living life on my own
terms.
I am satiated beyond satiated.
I don't need anything.
I require a shared experience on this earth.
And that is it.
Is this more so now since the accident?
Uh, well, it's always been that, but there was a lot of things in the way or
things I allowed to be in the way or things I put in the way.
Allowed to be in the way.
Allowed to be in the way.
Yeah.
I allowed to be in the way.
And now I do not.
I refute it.
I push it away.
I am certainly clear when I put obstacles on my own way, when I get my own way,
we all do that shit too.
But, uh, so I, I'm just very, very, very clear.
And I keep, I oversimplify life because life is just that simple.
If we complicate it, then you're going to have an overcomplicated life.
And it's just not as valuable.
I think I live both.
Yeah.
And the wonderful oversimplification has allowed me to, again, use the word
retirement in my mind.
I'm just living a life that I want to live.
Right.
That I deserve to live, that I choose to live and not be limited or rabbit hole
or victimized by society or the country I'm living in or the neighborhood I'm
living in or the job I have.
You know, I'm just not, I don't have any limitations.
Right.
Because I'm, I'm making manifest everything that I have in my life.
And it feels great.
And, you know, I'm the captain of the ship.
That's amazing.
It might take a minute to turn this bitch around, right?
But I'm the captain of this damn ship.
It's called my life.
And I think everybody has the capacity to do so.
Well, that's another beautiful thing of living life by example that can inspire
people.
Yeah.
Because that's really what people want to do.
They want to live a life where they feel like this is great.
Like what I'm doing is what I want to do.
They don't, most people, they don't live like that.
Most people, they have this dream in the future.
One day I will be able to live the way I want to, but I'm not doing it right
now.
Right.
Right.
I think, I think that's a trap.
Personally, I think you're doing it already.
The journey is there.
There's no end result besides, yeah, you might.
I know, but there's so many narratives that people adhere to.
There's so many narratives out there in culture.
Yeah.
Where they tell you, you should be doing this and you should be doing that.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yeah.
This is a concentrate on your 401k.
Right.
And you're this and that.
Right.
And what are your investments?
And brr, brr.
Yeah.
Brr.
And you fucking, at the end of the night, you need a pill to go to sleep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's even crazier now with social media and all that, all that.
That's poison.
That's this white noise of garbage, man.
I mean, I've been off it lately for like the last few weeks.
Yeah.
Where I literally just check it when I'm taking a shit and that's it.
Yeah.
Apropos too.
I look to see if there's anything crazy going on in the world, just so I know
what's happening.
Yeah.
I don't ever get involved.
Yeah.
I don't ever argue with people or post things and I just see people doing it
and I'm like,
you're losing your fucking mind.
Yeah.
And I've had conversations with friends and they're like, you know, you know
what, fucking
this and that and that and this.
I'm like, why?
Why are you paying attention?
This is like, let's go outside.
Look, look at all the birds.
Yeah.
Look, it's beautiful.
Look at the clouds.
What a lovely day.
You're alive in America in 2025.
It's like a magical time to be alive and you're concentrating on some shit that
literally
has no effect on your life and you're making it your primary focus.
Yeah.
That is the definition of madness.
Yeah.
I mean, it really is.
Yeah.
You're freaking out about things that aren't even here.
Yeah.
Well, that's where you get in your way.
You're giving that value.
You don't have to, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's just like perspective is a very difficult thing to earn.
And so...
It is.
It is.
Yeah.
How do we get it?
Experience, right?
Experience, overcoming adversity, developing character.
Serving.
Shared experience.
That's a big part of it.
Yeah.
You know, like with people that you love and you really connect with.
Who you surround yourself with.
Yeah.
So important, right?
That's most of the key to life.
Yeah.
Like if you surround yourself with really great people, you're forced to become
a really great
person.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This foundation.
Tell me how you started that.
It initially started with a show that I produced and put on Disney Plus, which
is called Renovations.
And it was taking, I didn't like to see a lot of vehicles go to waste.
Like purpose-built vehicles, like a city bus or a fire truck and all these
things that are
supposed to go a long, long, long ways, but they just replace them even though
they're perfectly
good vehicles.
So I wanted to repurpose those and help them help, you know, communities in
need.
And like, so it's taking, like I built one to be a water truck, like a box
truck to be a
water treatment plant to give kids in villages with terrible water and be able
to, you know,
reverse osmosis their water and give them drinkable water at their school.
Or take a, there's a, it took a city bus and turned it into like a dance studio,
a mobile
dance studio for these kids in Mexico.
And just these creative sort of things.
And it's kind of like pimp my ride, but with like real valuable things, you
know, just take
these really cool purpose-built trucks and staying in and make it something
really spectacular
for these kids, all kids driven to give them, um, what their, their needs are.
And then it just went into like, I didn't want to make it about just vehicles.
When I wanted to start the foundation, it became a wonderful calling card.
And then I started the foundation and my sister works for DCFS was child
protective services
in Los Angeles County.
And one of my best girlfriends in, in Reno, she also works for CPS child
protective services
there.
So I've been working with foster youth for many, many, many years, uh,
privately.
And now I just wanted to really get invested into the community.
So I started small in Northern greater Northern Nevada.
And it's in the, my sister now is running it.
And Shane is running it as well with me and the whole family's now gotten
involved.
And it's been really wonderful to come back from the incident, have this be a
central goal
for, uh, us to celebrate our time together as a family and to give back to
these kids that
are in great need.
And it is, it is a, been a dream of mine that I've been wanting to do for a
long time and
now do it publicly.
I've been doing it privately for a long time and to really make a big, big
splash and make
a lot of movement, um, for these kids.
And it's, I think it's one of the reasons why I was brought back outside of all
the other
things, but I think there's something working in my favor to, to come back
outside, just,
you know, my family.
And, and I think it is my reach to kids and my ability to have a great effect
for them.
And it's been a couple of years now and it's already been moved, moved the
mountains for
kids already.
And we'll continue to do so.
This is like me breathing.
This is easy.
I love this.
This is a part of my fiber, my body.
I'm the oldest of seven in my family.
I've been changing diapers and living as the oldest.
It's sort of my birthright to be able to do what makes it even cooler is that I'm
a Marvel
superhero.
So I have like a reach and access to these kids that they didn't even listen to.
Right.
They're like, Oh cool.
Let's go to camp with Hawkeye.
That's just dope.
And they all show up with plastic sacks.
Right.
And this is like all their valuables in their life.
And it makes me weep.
Right.
And this is all they're worth.
And they show up with hefty bags, all of them.
So we give them rollers with their names on it and a passport.
This is like a journal.
And they can, I'm going to change the narrative of this.
You're a traveler now.
You're a world traveler.
You're not carrying your trash around for all your worth in it.
Your worth is much bigger than that.
We're going to just planting seeds like that in their head and then creating
community for
them, creating opportunities for them, safe places for them, giving them more
educated
stuff.
We brought in a recording studio bus for them to touch all these instruments
that they'd
never have access to.
Who knows what that does?
I don't care.
Let it, let it have access to things, right?
Give these kids opportunities that they deserve.
This is the future of our fucking planet.
Why aren't we giving more time and effort to that?
It's the future of our world, man.
Let's give them, let's give them all the tools.
We need another, uh, Elon.
We need other super smart, amazing people, man.
We need that.
Yeah.
We need other leaders.
And you know, what do we give in our youth, especially our foster youth, man?
It's not a good look.
They haven't gone through a lot of struggles, these kids, man.
And they're not going to struggle, not on my dime, not on my time.
That's amazing.
So it's an easy for thing for me to do.
I love, it's a great focus for me.
That's, um, outside of, uh, it's things I enjoy, right?
I still do things that I enjoy.
I just get to do it with these kids and have, they teach me so much.
I learned so much to keep me in a really youthful spirit.
I, it's, it's harrowing to hear what they've been through, Joe.
I don't like to know.
My sister knows all about it.
Shayna knows all about it because they get the phone calls.
They have relationships with a lot of these kids.
They know, dude, I mean, I'd flip you, you would, you'd probably react like I
would.
You want to flip a table.
You want to hurt some people, you know?
And it's, it's so I'd prefer not to know how they got touched and who did it.
You know, this kind of stuff.
I just try to choose to focus on let's give these kids, plant some seeds of
hope.
And I'm good at that shit.
That's awesome.
And I love it.
So we're on jet ski, you know, talking about, they've never even been to this
lake.
And so whatever the heck it is, new experiences, new joy, new friends.
They're all crying at the end of this camp because they had such a good damn
time.
One of them was getting adopted and she was crying because like, I can't come
back.
Cause I'm not a foster kid anymore.
I've got adopted.
Like, no, you can come back.
You know, you know, you did good then when she didn't want to get adopted.
Like, ah, it means we're doing something right for these kids.
And we're going to continue doing it.
And we're doing it not only just as a camp, but we're doing like lots of
programs throughout the year to keep the community of the foster youth
community together.
A lot of these kids are brothers and sisters that never get to see each other
because they're in separate homes, separate cities.
One's in Vegas, one's in Reno, right?
Dude, you can't do that.
You can't do that.
So we're doing our best to unite community, right?
Unite.
We need each other.
These kids need each other.
Even beyond, they don't need me.
They need access and reasons to be together.
So it's helping the foster parents.
It's helping the kids.
It's whatever we can do.
We're going to start building youth centers as well.
We'll be building homes as well in the future with the foundation.
But we're starting step by step, breath at a time, brick by brick, and building
camps.
And activities and education for them.
And I love it.
You can see how much I love it.
I could talk about this for days, man.
It's incredible.
You lit up when you're talking about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love it, man.
We have these camps coming up here in June and July, so I'm pumped.
Can't wait to finish this job and go back home.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
It's kind of shocking that it takes individuals to be inspired to do something
like this
because society doesn't put any emphasis on this.
Well, it's like, look, states have foster programs, right?
But there's gaps in the system, man.
Yeah.
It's like kids are forgotten.
And then some of them are, you know, it's tragic.
But you put a spotlight on something, put energy into something.
It builds.
And I got a loud voice and a big heart.
And I'm very actionable in what I do.
And that's why the foundation's growing and making the moves and paving ways
for these kids.
So I'll keep doing it, man.
It's easy to me.
How long have you been doing this now?
Publicly, only a couple years.
It just started out.
So, you know, then it's like learning about all the nonprofit stuff.
It's like, oh, man.
It's like going out and asking for money.
So I don't do that.
I'll go do, like, voiceover jobs and, like, put money in their account for...
I hate asking for money for foundation stuff, you know.
I'll let somebody else kind of bother that.
I do.
I stay in my lane.
Well, that's great.
I work with the kids and work with the ideas and the programs.
And I let my sister and those guys on the board deal with, like, having to
raise money and all those kind of things.
It's just not my wheelhouse.
Well, unfortunately, when people hear nonprofit, they always think, okay, well,
where's the money really going?
Well, that's where it is.
And that's why we operate at 8%, I think.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah.
Nobody does that.
That's incredible.
That's the opposite of how they're usually done.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So, I mean, even if we got to...
Because no one takes anything except just basic operating costs.
And if we're operating at 8%, I think maybe 13%, it's like all the money is
going to the kids, man.
That's incredible.
All of it.
All of it.
So I'm trying to get to the bank account to be full so we only operate off the
interest.
Once we're there, then we can really start to move needle for building things
and doing some stuff in the future.
So I'm excited for that.
Are you going to expand this?
Yeah, it'll grow.
It'll grow.
Again, I think to keep effective for me is staying in the home area or just the
state of Nevada, at least.
And that's not going too far.
So because I still I'm very, very hands on.
And it's important for me to be the voice for the foundation and for these kids
and an advocate for them.
And so Nevada is kind of the goal for the least maybe the next five years for
sure.
And there's still a ton of kids that I have not reached and need to reach.
So I focus on that.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Then there's then there's then there's then there's like getting the these use
that the age out.
They're getting back into being counselors back in the camp.
There's a great thing with you and our day to get a free ride at the the the
university.
And a lot of them are going back into sociology and psychology and want to go
help kids and foster like this is so great.
So I want to give them opportunities to come back and help the youth and maybe
give them guidance.
That's awesome.
Self healing and cathartic in its own way.
Whatever we can do, man.
It's a it's it's a it's a it's a wonderful, wonderful life.
It's amazing because you light up when you talk about that like nothing else we've
talked about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is.
It's it's again.
I'm focusing my energy on all the positive stuff, you know, because, you know,
because I can't too sensitive to deal with the hardships that they go through.
So let me just be a guide, a guiding light for them or or someone to laugh on.
I think they sign my T-shirts, whatever they want to do.
I don't care.
I'm there.
I'm their playground.
I love it, man.
Again, I think it's I think it's the reason why I came back, Joe.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
Well, you could see that it means so much to you.
Yeah.
And that's just if you could find something like that in life, you're a winner.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, just think of the amount of positive energy you put out there in the
world.
Yeah.
That's it's pretty exponential.
And then also it comes back.
It cascades.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The ripple effect of that.
Yeah.
It's insane.
Change their life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's pretty what you put out in the world is what you get back, you know?
Yeah.
I see it every day.
And it's exponential, especially now since the incident.
Yeah.
The ripple effect of just...
Dude, this happened in my driveway.
It's a private experience.
I woke up and it was a global thing.
I didn't ask for that.
I'm so kind of glad it did.
It allowed people to see me as the man that I am and not the guy that slings an
arrow.
Right.
You know what I mean?
It's a fake arrow because it's CGI.
Right.
Right.
You know, so I'm glad it became a big public thing.
But, you know, the ripple effect of just this narrative of the recovery is...
Like you said, it can affect a lot of people.
And it's a beautiful thing.
It's a positive thing.
And like the foundation.
And I see it and feel it every day.
You really lead an exemplary life, my friend.
You really do.
Well, what's the alternative?
I know, but I mean, it's interesting that you have this perspective.
Like, I'm always curious to people that have such an amazing perspective.
Like, how did you gain it?
Like, how did you get to this place?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you have to, I think, you have to life in review, right?
Yeah.
You know, it's a life in review.
I think there's, I think, you know, there's birth order.
Right?
There's also being in the seventies in a small town where I was a latchkey kid.
Right?
Didn't, I had free reign.
I was seven years old and a key to the house.
I didn't have to come home until the street lights came on.
Right.
Me too.
You know, I broke windows and slingshots and stole shit and light up the
cigarette butt
and my mom's and all this stuff.
And I got caught.
And sometimes I learned, I reprimand myself.
I self-policed myself.
I was a very honest kid.
You know, there's a lot, a lot of, a lot of things.
You know, I had a bicycle and then that was like freedom.
That's where I began.
Like, oh, I have real freedom.
I got a fishing pole.
I got on my bike and just went off into another county.
Yeah.
Like that wouldn't happen today.
I would never allow my daughter to go.
Never.
Walk across the street.
I had a similar life.
I was a latchkey kid too.
And I just think the heart.
Where was this?
Well, I lived all over the place.
I lived when I was seven to 11.
I lived in San Francisco from 11 to 13.
I lived in Florida from 13 till 24.
I lived in Boston.
Oh, wow.
Then New York and out here.
Oh, wow.
And, well, LA rather.
And then out here.
Last five years.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that's a good mix.
Yeah, that's a good mix, right?
Well, the good thing about living in a bunch of different places, the bad thing
is,
I never really developed roots.
Right.
But I had to form my own opinions.
Because I couldn't count on the opinions of all the people around me.
I didn't have like a core group of friends.
Yeah.
So I always had to like sort of see the world for what it was.
Yeah.
Did that make you an introvert or an extrovert or both?
I think I was an introvert initially.
I don't think I ever, even though I talk for a living and I'm a public figure,
I'm not really an extrovert, which is really odd.
Yeah.
Like I don't really like attention, which sounds crazy for someone who gets a
lot of attention.
Yeah.
I don't need it.
Yeah.
That's probably why I get it in some strange.
Right, right.
Yeah.
Some strange.
Like I was very socially anxious when I was a kid.
Yeah.
I would get super nervous when I had to talk to a bank teller.
I remember one time I had to deposit money in a bank and I was like, why am I
freaking out like this?
This is so weird.
Right.
But eventually overcame all that stuff and then, you know, through martial arts,
traveling around all throughout my youth from the time I was 15 till I was 22.
So all I did was travel around the country and competing.
So I had a very bizarre life in that I didn't have like the normal high school
life of partying and hanging out.
And I was, you know, flying to California to fight.
Right.
It was weird.
Right.
It was a very weird life.
You know, so I, you know, I still wasn't an extrovert.
Like I didn't really learn how to talk in groups of people till I started
teaching.
I started teaching martial arts.
And then that's how I learned how to public speak.
Ah, interesting.
But I was publicly speaking about something that I was very good at.
Right.
So it was like I commanded sort of attention just by, because I would
demonstrate to them things that I was doing.
And then in demonstrating and talking, it made sense that I was able to talk.
And about something you knew very well and you're comfortable in.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's like I was really good at it so I could show them.
I'm going to demonstrate something to you.
And then I'd do it and they'd be like, holy shit.
I'd be like, I'm going to show you how to do this.
Yeah.
And then if you listen to me, like I taught at Boston University when I was 19.
And it was a real count towards your GPA.
It was like pass, fail, A.
And I'd say, all you have to do is show up and try and you get an A.
And if you can't show up, call me, tell me you can't make it and you'll be fine.
If you fuck off, I'm going to fail you.
But if you just try, you get an A and then it counts towards your GPA.
This is like a legit thing.
Yeah.
Like, well, all I want you to do is like this can help your life.
And I'm not thinking you're going to go and fight and compete, but I can teach
you something
here.
Yeah.
And it's difficult, but you'll get better at it.
And through getting better at it, you'll learn how to get better at other
things.
The discipline.
Yeah.
So that's like how I got into comedy in the oddest way.
Like learning how to talk to people.
Yeah.
Because I wasn't comfortable talking to people.
I always felt like a loser and a weirdo.
I always felt like an outcast.
Yeah.
So to learn how to talk publicly, like that's how I did.
Yeah.
You know, but all that traveling around just gave me this very bizarre, like
rootless sense
of who I was as a person.
Is there anything that you grabbed from that experience that you hold on to?
I mean like to, you know, from there's just some positive things that kind of
come out
from that.
Right?
Yeah.
Like I went to a different school every year of my life, at least until I got
to high school.
But I was in the same town.
I didn't move around a lot.
Maybe just in the town I did.
Divorce and all that sort of stuff or schools were full or whatever it was.
Right.
So I had to either engage with people, all brand new people, each grade, new
school, new grade.
Yeah.
And then, you know, you're growing up.
I was more shy and I think more like you, like an introvert.
And so either I was very gregarious or I just was an observer and I just
watched.
So you just make choices and that's why I became an observer.
But with that, I don't know.
I liked that part of me.
And I can be extroverted like I'm an actor in a thing, but I'm still more insular
and quiet.
Yeah.
Even though the two quiet guys are yapping their jaws off for hours.
I mean, you, it was hard, but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
Yeah.
Because I think it made me different.
You know, and I think there's, unfortunately, if you are in like a small town
and you grow up in that town and you never leave that town, your perspective is
very limited.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Big time.
And I moved around a lot.
And I think that was very uncomfortable.
I hated it when I was a kid.
Like, fuck, we're moving again to another state.
Yeah.
Like, this is crazy.
But that made me who I am.
And again, it made me form my own opinions instead of adopting a conglomeration
of opinions that everybody around me had.
Yeah.
You know, and I went from very liberal and progressive San Francisco in the
1970s during the Vietnam War to living in Florida.
Right.
Where it was like completely the opposite.
Yeah.
Like super conservative and kind of retarded.
Yeah.
And I remember just being around people like, why do they even, why do they
even think like this?
This is crazy.
It was so strange to me to have this like complete juxtaposition, almost like a
cultural 180.
But it also made me realize like, wow, there's a lot of different ways to think.
Yeah.
There's a lot of different ways to engage with life.
Yeah.
You know?
Well, is it, don't we like, especially growing up, right?
You're saying like seven, eight, 13, 14, all those years, we, those, we look to
our friends and friendship groups.
It's sort of like kind of help develop ourselves and kind of be a reflection
upon ourselves.
And if you don't have it, you have other things that you're, you know, you turn
to.
Yeah.
But you know, there could be, like you said, it could have been a terrible
thing if you stayed in the same place and you had the same core four dues.
And then how limited your life would have been to staying in San Fran or, you
know?
Yeah.
So it could, it's like you said, there's a real good positive thing to take
from being removed from stability, removed from, right?
That's all anxiety inducing.
Yeah.
Or it could be the perspective, right?
The perspective could be, but if it's a positive perspective, you know, to lean
on.
Yeah.
Like you said, I like how I came in a thing and it drove you into all the
things that you probably like about yourself today.
I think it's pretty interesting.
Yeah.
And it also, like, I got picked on a lot too, in which that's what drove me
into martial arts.
Yeah.
Boston days?
Yeah.
I was like, I hate being scared of people.
Yeah.
It just drove me nuts.
I didn't have friends.
So like a group of guys would fuck with me and I didn't know what to do.
Yeah.
So I was like, okay, I got to fix this.
And so I became obsessed with martial arts.
And then once I started doing that, it was like the first thing that I ever did.
I was like, hey, I don't think I'm a loser.
I just think I never figured out how to get good at something.
And now that I'm really good at this one thing, I'm like the opposite of a
loser.
And then I became obsessed with winning, you know?
And then that was like my whole life until I was like, I don't think I want to
do this anymore.
And then I transitioned to other things.
But that period of time wouldn't have happened if I lived in a comfortable
environment where
I wasn't fucked with.
Yeah.
And where I didn't get bullied.
Yeah.
I wouldn't have that desire to like do something that was completely terrifying.
Because I was scared of physical confrontation.
So what do I do?
Spend my whole life getting involved in like voluntary physical confrontation
with trained fighters.
Right.
Which is way more terrifying.
Right.
The most terrifying thing.
Right.
Right.
You know, but that.
But what's the alternative?
Oh, just be scared and be bullied and beat the fuck up.
That's what I had to decide.
Yeah.
Take the reins.
I had to decide that.
Yeah.
I just had to make this change, you know?
Yeah.
Fortunately, it worked out.
Yeah.
It's very bizarre the turns that life takes.
And when you look back, you're like, what if that hadn't happened?
What if I hadn't done this?
What if I hadn't?
What if I hadn't turned left?
Yeah.
The crossroads are so, so, so instrumental in who we become.
Right.
And I'm also in control of that.
Like we're not steering any ship at that point.
Right.
So much of it is luck.
Yeah.
Or whatever it is.
Or fate.
Whatever fate means.
Yeah.
You know what?
I mean, fate is kind of assumed once an outcome has been achieved.
Oh, it was fate.
Yeah.
In hindsight.
Was it really?
In hindsight, you can say that.
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
I do think there's a certain power to following instincts.
Yeah.
Which I've always done for whatever reason.
You know, there's a pull that you have towards a certain direction, even if it's
like massively
uncomfortable.
Like sometimes you have to realize like, okay, let's go.
Like this is what I'm supposed to do.
And that is very hard to do.
But once you do it a few times and then you start saying, there's a little
voice in your
head like, that motherfucker's never let me down.
I'm going to keep serving that voice.
Whatever that voice is, I'm going to keep listening.
Even though people are like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, I'm not going to listen to you.
I hear that a lot.
Yeah.
I think so do a lot of people that have accomplished great things.
Yeah.
I don't think anybody who listens to the advice of everyone around them ever
steps out of line.
Yeah.
You know, I don't think you ever really try anything crazy.
Yeah.
Because most people aren't going to want to support you when you're trying
something that seems
insane.
Whether it's trying to be a movie star or whatever it is.
Yeah.
Trying to be a martial artist or a rock star or anything in life that's hard to
do.
Most people are going to tell you don't do that.
Yeah.
Especially people that are conservative.
Conservative in a sense of like, do something that is going to give you a good
chance of
success.
Yeah.
Because the more fun things are very open-ended.
Yeah.
They don't really have a lot of success.
Like, what are the numbers of people that become successful actors?
Oh, I mean, it's just...
Is it like a tenth of a percent?
Probably.
It's probably not even that.
Yeah.
It's probably less than that.
I mean, if you could like get a chart of like how many people move to Los
Angeles to
try to make it in show business and how many make it, it's got to be an
astronomical...
Yeah.
The numbers aren't good.
Insane.
Those numbers have to be insane.
Yeah.
But some...
My thought was like, fuck, somebody's doing it.
Like, somebody did it.
Like, why can't I do it?
And then people would say, you're not...
You know what, with the odds you're going to make it?
Like, I don't know.
Why am I thinking about that?
Someone...
It can be done.
Yeah.
People have done it.
Like, you gotta...
But you have to be willing to just really fucking throw yourself into something.
Yeah.
You know that, especially in the beginning, there's no time to fuck off here.
If you really want to do something that's really hard to do, like, you gotta be
all in.
Yeah.
Because there's too many people that are all in.
Yeah.
And you're competing with them.
Yeah.
And you're competing with these, like, half-steppers, these people that are
kind of dipping in and dipping out.
Yeah.
They're there as an example for you to not live your life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, isn't there like a kind of a selective hearing that kind of has to happen
in anything for anyone?
We have to listen and really listen to engage and really listen to learn and
grow.
Yeah.
But then we have to have selective listening to, like, how many times I was
told no?
Yeah.
Or I was told I was crazy.
Oh, yeah.
Or to like, what are you doing?
You out of your mind?
I'm like, ooh, now I was on...
I knew I'm on the right track when I hear that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Because that's the words of a fearful person.
Yeah.
Those are the words uttered from someone who's scared and not courageous and a
lot of stuff's in their way.
I'm on the right track when people say that.
Well, not just that.
There are those people that would try to sabotage you because they don't want
you to be successful because they haven't taken a chance in their life.
Yeah.
So they don't want anybody who does, who's courageous to...
They want you to fail.
Yeah.
There are people out there that want people that are courageous to fall apart
because then it makes them feel better for their own choices.
Sure.
That's okay.
They got to live with that.
Yeah.
I don't, right?
Right, right.
They got to swim in that.
I don't.
But again, I think that those things are just like you need the rain to
appreciate the sun.
Yeah, yeah.
You know?
You need to struggle to appreciate love.
They have to coexist, otherwise they don't exist.
Yeah.
It's like a truth and a lie.
They both have to exist, otherwise everything's just fucking true.
Right, right.
So that you have to coexist together, otherwise you don't.
That's the hardest part of life to truly understand.
Like, why is there evil?
Right.
Because you need love.
Yeah.
You need good.
Like, why can't everything be love?
Well, it can't.
It can't.
There has to be evil people for you to appreciate loving people.
You know?
There really has to be kind people for you to, you know, to appreciate, oh,
okay.
Life is not just all cruelty.
And, but you have to know that cruelty exists for you to appreciate kindness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Weird.
Yeah.
It's a weird dance and it's...
It's strange.
Yeah.
Like if God is real, like what a strange game he's playing.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
But you can kind of, when it all works out, you see wisdom in it.
You know?
You're like, I kind of get it.
Yeah.
Like, life is not just utopia.
It's a strange mix of good and evil.
Yeah.
And love and hate and, and all these things that are in the way that you have
to overcome.
Yeah.
Those tests, man.
Those tests, don't they suck?
They do.
All the tests we have in our lives and everybody has them.
Everybody.
There's nobody that's exempt from it.
No way.
How much money, how successful.
Ah, you are all, we're all susceptible to great tests and great suffering.
Yeah.
It's how well you overcome that suffering.
Uh, it will determine how well you love and deeply you love in your life.
And also the people that have overcome the most are the most fascinating and
interesting
and complex people.
Aren't they?
Aren't they?
Um, have you ever met Amanda Knox?
Do you know who she is?
Yeah, I know who she is.
She's that woman that was accused wrongly of a murder in Italy.
Yeah, I remember that.
She spent years in prison and in Italy and she is so fascinating.
Yeah.
She's so strong and so interesting.
Yeah.
And I asked her about this.
I was like, do you ever think like you are this really unusual person with this
like fucking
cast iron integrity and character.
Would you be this person if you hadn't been wrongly accused and spent years in
prison and
publicly persecuted and then eventually absolved, like who would you be?
I mean, would you want it any other way?
I mean, I don't, I wouldn't wish that on anybody.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yet here you meet her.
She's so incredible.
It's like life is very, very odd.
Yeah.
And there's choices that she could have made right in, in that.
She could have been like resentful.
Right.
I don't know how she is.
So I don't know.
She's not at all.
Yeah.
And she could have been valid in any really kind of feelings she has about
things because
that's all sounds pretty shitty.
Yeah.
And, uh, but you know, again, what's the alternative?
You want to hold on to resentment and that kind of, is that the life you want
to live?
Because it's your choice.
Right.
I like, sounds like an interesting person to talk about, but, um, you know, her,
is it
a choice or a choice for her?
Right.
Did she feel like it was a choice?
Like, you know, what was her?
It certainly wasn't.
Yeah.
Did she feel like that that made her who she is and she's content with that or?
I mean, she's, she certainly resigned to what it is, but she's very happy now.
Right.
But not just happy, like complex, like a complex, compassionate, charitable
thinker.
What's the, what's the conversation if she's still in the, in the joint, you
know?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, she's still in the clink and there's no hope of her getting out.
Well, she learned a lot in there too.
Yeah, I bet.
You know, the people, like what the, the terrible choices that people make,
because most of the
people that were in there were guilty, you know, and the, and the terrible
choices that
these people make and like, what happened to you when you were young?
Like, why did you become a person who murdered your husband?
Why did you become a person who, you know, robbed a bank?
Why did you, what, what, what went wrong?
You used to be a baby, you know?
Yeah.
This is just something that I really, um, changed, one, being a parent really
changed
my perspective of human beings in a very profound way, in many, many profound
ways.
But one of the biggest ones is I stopped looking at people as being static.
I stopped looking at, Oh, Jeremy's 54.
He's always been 54.
That's how I know it.
Now I look at everybody like, Oh, you were a baby.
Yeah.
You were a baby.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, you know, I, I love my daughters dearly and they're very extraordinary
people, but
it's been fascinating to watch them as little babies become these really
complex human beings
and have conversations with them and talk to them and see how they interface
with life.
And, and then I, you know, meet people who are all fucked up and, you know,
angry and fucking
hateful.
I'm like, God damn, what happened?
Yeah.
What, what went wrong?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, what are the things that, and how do you get out of this?
You know?
Yeah.
It's interesting.
Yeah.
It's, you know, I mean, it's, there's so many trials and tribulations in this
wonderful
existence that we all share.
And I think we learn a lot through other people's, not just your own, but other
people's.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For sure.
Well, that's the hope.
Anyway, we can, right?
Yeah.
Well, I think a lot of people are going to learn a lot through you.
And without having to do it in a fearful way or scare tactics or, or, you know
what
I mean?
That doesn't really work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's used everywhere in media and writing.
Right.
Advertising and all that kind of stuff.
Right.
Right.
Right.
It's like, I hope I still learn by talking about my experience, right?
I still learn by looking through the book or listening to the audio.
I'll be listening to the audio soon when I have my daughter and all my nieces,
nephews
around.
They're going to listen to it.
We're all going to listen to it together.
So I'm not going to have them go off reading this thing.
It's too harrowing to do it alone, but like, I'll be listening to it.
I'm going to learn through it.
And with that experience in that exchange with these beautiful young creatures,
you know?
Well, you'll be learning for so long.
It's only been a couple of years, which is really crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll keep, keep trying and testing the, the limits of, of my body and, and my
mind and
my spirit and what I can pass on to others, what I can give on to others, what
they give
me.
I mean, it is a vibrant, high, high vibration that I'm living right now.
And I, I'm so blessed to have it and so much gratitude at every breath.
I almost feel like I don't have to walk anymore.
I sort of live it.
feel so lucky.
And, um, I think it's, has to do with, uh, all the love and all the, all the,
the goodness
that this world has to offer.
I think that's, it's gotten me through and the, the attitude of it, that
perspective of
that because it can be a very bleak, dark place.
Yeah.
You know, but I, I choose to, I choose love.
I choose action.
I choose, um, my perspective.
It is my choice.
And, um, I, I've been, I've been in dark places where it wasn't quite so
positive and
so lovely as well before the accident, you know, where it's just like, you know,
just kind
of grumbly and grumpy and don't want to leave my house.
And, you know, I don't want to go sign autographs.
I don't want to be around people or, you know, just kind of whatever, you know,
not a really
great, happy place, perhaps, you know, like everybody has the right to be, but
if that
doesn't exist at this point, you know, I don't get any more bad days, Joe.
That's amazing.
Right?
You're like, fuck, I wanted that.
Isn't that incredible?
I can gas up a snowcat for you one.
I can make it happen for you.
Isn't that incredible?
No more bad days, brother.
Right?
Wow.
It's a, it's a perspective that is mine and a truth and a reality.
It's a reality that is mine because I have a barometer to like, yeah, I know
what a bad
day is actually like.
Yeah.
And I was tested to my limits and I got through it, luckily, somehow, some way.
And it's, it's a, it's just a, almost science at this point.
It's a factual, that it's just not going to happen.
I can't, no matter if I tried so hard to have a bad day, it's just not going to
happen.
Yeah.
I can have a bad moment.
I can have, you know, frustrating times, but it's not, I'm just not going to
have a bad day.
And for the rest of my experience here on earth.
That's amazing.
And I think that experience, this, this perspective that you're sharing is
contagious.
I think so too, dude.
Yeah.
I know.
Actually, I know.
So I know.
So for a fact, it's, it's, it's a, it's sort of make manifestation of what your
existence
is.
Do you want it to be?
Yeah.
And you can do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Both those things.
I think that's why it's beautiful that you wrote this book.
Yeah.
My next breath.
Yes, sir.
Um, thank you, Jeremy.
It was awesome.
I really.
Yeah.
I really appreciate you.
Yeah.
Likewise, brother.
You, uh, you make me happy, man.
You bring out a lot of good stuff in me.
You reaffirm a lot of, of, of good things in me in a really, really meaningful
way.
And I appreciate you.
I appreciate you too.
Thank you.
It was a lot of fun.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
All right.
Go buy this book, folks.
Yes, sir.
Bye.
Bye-bye.