Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 422: Paul Gilmartin

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

Paul Gilmartin, comedian, healing force, and host of The Mental Illness Happy Hour, joins the DTFH! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Purple - Visit Purple.com/Duncan10 and use promo code DUNCAN10 for $200 Off any mattress order of $1500 or more! Shudder - Use promo code DUNCAN for a FREE 30 Day Trial. Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site.

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It is I, Detrusel, and this is the Ducket Trussell Family Hour Podcast, and I have reproduced again. The term reproduction is not the right word for it, though, is it? Reproduction sounds like something you do at a furniture warehouse. It doesn't really serve as a linguistic structure that can successfully encapsulate the entire continuum from fucking to birth. Reproduction? Who said that?

Sounds like the most boring square on earth came up with that term. We need a better word for it. It's some combination of the sound of rainbows turned into waters spraying against rocks made of trembling meat and blood. It is the collision of every single thing. Death, life, shit, blood, screams, excitement, joy, weeping, exaltation, depression, confusion, everything in between. It's in fact the fractal of all life itself is sort of compressed down into those moments

that a child is born into the world. When I was not a breeder, I had a completely different idea of the entire situation. I didn't know that what we were dealing with here was the forge of existence itself, at least on the human level. I didn't know that if you were going to be in a birthing room, you were going to be in some combination, Xanadu meets aliens. I didn't know that when you found yourself directly in the periphery of the sort of big bang that is the birth of any being, that you would suddenly experience energetic systems

that defy your ability to articulate them, which I don't really like that. I think I always refer to something Chokim Chomper Rinpoche said, which is that if you find yourself believing that because you can't describe something, you've encountered the miraculous, then you might as well burn candles to your own confusion. In this case, maybe I'll come up with the words for it at some point, but I just don't think there's right now good words, at least in the English language for it. I mean, we're talking about like the sound of a trillion whales blowing holy water out of their blow holes into the face of Jesus.

We got a great podcast for you today, Paul Gilmart and the host of the Mental Illness Happy Hour is here with us today. We're going to jump right into it, but first this. A big thank you to Purple for supporting this episode of the DTFH friends. I've got scoliosis and sometimes I wake up in the morning and it feels like Satan himself has been dragging his stinky, rotten, clumped up claws of doom across my back, which is why I can't just use a regular pillow. Purple has created a miraculous technology.

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Message and data rates may apply. It's backed by a 10 year warranty friends and it's free shipping and returns. You gotta try it out. This is something straight out of the singularity. It's like the singularity spit out a mattress. Thank you purple. Okay friends, let's dive into today's podcast. Probably most of you are experiencing some kind of madness right now or in one of the

most bizarre, turbulent, creepy, weird, exciting, annoying, irritating and inconvenient and terrifying time periods at least in my human experience. Most people I know in some way shape or form are a little wobbled so to speak. Which is why the mental illness happy hour is a fantastic resource if you find yourself feeling isolated or freakish or like some kind of mutant. It's nice to realize that lots of people, yours truly included, have some pretty intense glitches in their operating system. I hope if you haven't already subscribed to it that you will subscribe to the mental illness

happy hour. And now everybody, please welcome to the DTFH Paul Gilmartin. Welcome to the DTFH. This is very surreal and I can't recall ever doing this before but I was just lucky enough to appear on your podcast and now you're coming online. Five seconds later, here we are transitioning. Yeah, it's really, you know, that to me it was incredibly sweet of you. When I asked what do you think he'll do mine after his, I fully expected you to say no

and wouldn't have minded it all but wow. So thank you very much for giving me so much of your time. My pleasure. My pleasure. You know, I don't know why I had the big dramatic pause. I love it. My pleasure. Dramatic pause.

It's all about the dramatic pause. It's powerful. But you know, some time ago I think you invited me to be on your podcast and I was a little bit more uptight at the time when it came to, I don't know what it was, but I was going through a phase where I just didn't like the term mental illness. I found that to be a, oh God, I thought we needed a better term for it. You know, the mental illness. Something about the term illness, um, reductive, label, I'm not sick man, this is how I am.

But I think probably at the time I just didn't want to admit that I was like going through a rough phase and it is, it's okay to call it illness. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, but how did, for you, did you expect when you started this podcast that it would blow up like it did? No, no, not at all. It was kind of started by the fact that, and we talked about this when you were a guest on my podcast, that one of the ways depression comes at you as is, it tells you, you don't need to do anything about this.

You're just really kind of lazy and there's no hope for it. And I had been on meds since, I don't know, 2000. So this was around the end of 2010. And I did what I had done every couple of years as I thought, I'm fine. I don't need to take meds anymore. My psychiatrist says, oh my God, don't do this. And I say, no, I was pre-med. I know what I'm doing.

So I stopped taking them. And usually within about six weeks, and initially I would feel great. And then about six weeks later, the depression would come back and I would go, ah, fuck, I need to go back on them. But this time at the end of 2010, it went away for months. So when it crept back in, in that time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I thought, oh, it's just because it's between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I was at one of my support group meetings and this guy was talking about bottoming out

on crack and being in his van and slitting his throat and watching the blood pump up into the ceiling and saying out loud, father, I'm ready for me to take you. And I found myself being jealous and I went, wow, something, something seems to need addressing here. And I realized, oh my God, my life really isn't shit. It's my perception of it. And this is probably the depression coming back and maybe I should go back on my meds. And my, my digestion had shut down.

I hadn't shit for 10 days. I was losing weight. My extremities were cold. And within three days of going back on the meds, I felt better. And I thought, somebody needs to talk about this in a way that isn't academic, that isn't precious and new agey, that's unvarnished, that has fucked up jokes in it. And maybe somebody will relate to it. I don't want to be the doctor.

I want to be the hand in the waiting room that cracks jokes and tells people they're not alone. And it, it resonated with people. I was still a TV host at that, at that time. I was still hosting a show that I did for a number of years called The Dinner in a Movie. And I did not imagine this was something that I would do for a living. I just felt like this is something that the universe could maybe use. And it, it just kind of took off. And then as luck would have it, the show got canceled about six months later.

And I felt like the universe had just kind of opened this door for me to find this next phase of, of my life. And I, you know how when the, when the truth, you feel the truth rather than just a light bulb going off, but you feel it in your body is kind of a sense of, of peace. Yeah. I felt that. And so I just kind of went, okay, I'm going to experience some, some poverty, but this just feels right.

And I'm going to go with it. I just feel like the universe is, is, is talking to me. And lo and behold, advertisers started coming and people were kind enough to donate. And bit by bit, it, it's over, I don't know, maybe a year or two. It grew to, to the point where I could begin to support myself from, from doing it. Wow. What a risk. Did you feel like you were, when, you know, did you feel like you were sort of coming out

of the closet? You know, you have this show, but you're like, did you feel nervous that it would cause problems that work for you to suddenly be open and honest publicly? I did not. I did not. And people will sometimes say that so brave on your part, it, to me, it was never something where I felt like, oh, I'm, I'm fighting the fear. I think the narcissist in me so desperately wanted to be known for who I authentically

am. I felt like I had a burden that I needed to let go because I wanted, I just needed to be validated. I needed to have my pain reflected back to me. And for somebody to say, you're okay. Not that you're not suffering, but that your pain is valid. And I see you and I love you. That's what I wanted.

So it came from a place of not only wanting to help, but wanting to be helped because I had experienced that in support groups and dealing with my alcoholism and my drug addiction. And I saw how healing that was. So that was in many ways the template, but I didn't want to be the solution. I wanted to be the sense of community. Yeah. Wow. And you say you, you just are someone in the waiting room, but wouldn't you, you seem to

be some kind of healing force. You're healing. It's a, your podcast is healing people, your presence, your voice, your ability to listen. It, it's, I think one of the reasons outside of the fact that you're a brilliant interviewer, that you're, the podcast is so loved is because it's, it heals us a little bit. There's something in it that I know you must get emails all day long of people saying, you saved my life. That's more than being somebody in a waiting room.

Well, I, I appreciate that. And it's so hard for me to, to take that, to, to take that in because there is a deep, deep fear in me being a know-it-all that I'm going to start to believe that I'm a guru. And I know that, that that is the death of connection of the gifts of occasional moments of humility and, and being one of many, you know, my, my ego, especially before I started asking for help, thought that the answer was to stand out, to be special, to be exceptional, to impress people. And what I didn't realize is when your goal is to stand out, you're going to feel alone,

not because you have stood out, but because that's what you're seeking to do was to impress people rather than bonding over your shared fear, your shared experiences as human being on this planet and saying, I'm fucking scared. I feel like I'm fucking this up, you know, et cetera, et cetera, that, that that would open a door for them to say, yeah, I'm really scared too. I feel like I've blown it and I don't want to die alone. And then that suddenly there would be this catharsis and intimacy, which what was what I was seeking through trying to be exceptional.

Yeah. How wild is that? That's crazy. You were doing the very opposite. The exact opposite. It's like having a back scratcher and your back has a terrible itch, but you're scratching the wall or something, you know, like a hopeless situation when you now it's funny. You mentioned the guru problem.

I have a friend who's a Buddhist teacher. I won't name any names. I don't even, I don't think it's a secret though, but he at one point he was referring to someone who used to be one of the attendants, I think, of the Dalai Lama. And he said dismissively, ah, he went to India and became a guru. It's looked at like, like you like athletes foot. It's like, yeah, you don't, like it's a, like, don't do that.

You're going to do that. You're going to go be a guru. Don't be a guru. Please don't, why? Come on. And if you read Thomas Merton, he has a great autobiography and he talks about, in these monasteries, how there's this bizarre paradox where the most beloved monk is the one that is the least loud, the least, you know what I mean, the least of a eye and just fully merged in

to the community, the spiritual community. But do you think that your depression has a connection to this mistake that you are making over probably most of your life? Or do you think it's just a biochemical situation or some combination of both? Before I answer that, I just want to say that I have nothing against people who call themselves gurus, who are actually walking the walk and aren't in it for the power or the prestige, because there are people who are that and who have helped many, many people. Yes.

It's just for me, as a jackass that tells dick jokes, it is a very uncomfortable idea for me to look at myself as that. So that doesn't mean I don't think that I have helped people. It's just I could never be comfortable with the idea that I am somehow more knowledgeable than somebody else. I just want to be a part of a community because that's where I feel like if the universe is going to speak through me, it's going to speak through me because I've pushed my ego for a second out of the way.

And all of a sudden, much like when a great joke comes to you, you feel like something greater than you is speaking through you because you have said, I am no better or no worse than anybody else. Oh, this person is in pain. What can I share that maybe I have gleaned from my suffering? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's beautiful that you say that.

And I also love that you're pointing out, I have a guru. I'm not bashing neem Karoli Baba. I fully have connected with that being. And I have a great deal of love for that being. But it's some of the most profound things I have heard have come from people who are called gurus, you know, Pema children and probably mispronouncing her name. I am too. I don't know if it's Pema or Pema.

And she was Chogum Trumpa Rinpoche student. But the point is, what's beautiful about you is you are honest about that. That's all you got to be. The moment you just say that, just like, I'm not bad news and good news. I'm not a guru. What a relief for people. You know, it's a lot to be around someone who thinks they're a guru because the whole time you're going to be like, when are you going to try to hump my wife?

Like how long is it going to be? What? And I think any time you paint yourself into a corner where it's difficult to say, I don't know, you can be kind of, you can kind of fuck yourself. Because then I think people are, at least here's my fear of somebody ever calling me a guru or me thinking of myself as a guru is that I'm going to be afraid to say, I don't know. And the most pivotal moment in my life was when I sat up in bed after living years of being suicidally depressed and saying to the universe,

I can't do this anymore. Please help me. Which is, you know, the subtext is, I don't know. I've run out of answers. And that opened me up to make friends with reality and to listen instead of being the one who is the know it all that one of my coping mechanisms, mechanisms as a kid, was to feel that I was knowledgeable about everything that that would somehow save me. Because in many ways, being knowledgeable about some things had given me a life that I

was grateful for. But it's, it couldn't help me with everything. Right. I mean, yeah, it's, yeah, I could see though, like how people start thinking of knowledge in the same way people think of money, you know, like if you have a big bank account, or if like you have all these numbers in the right way, like that doesn't do anything. If that did anything, we'd be in a utopia. We would be in some kind of utopia.

Like you, there would be no war because the rich people are the ones who pay for the war. They're just be a beautiful piece, but it doesn't work. Sadly, it doesn't work. Now, and I, and I forgot what the question was that you asked me that I had to preface that. I think you've got, I think you've kind of answered it. It sounds like you had this really enlightened realization regarding your own self or whatever your sense of self and the sense that you discovered.

You know, my, one of my teachers, Ragu talks about it is going from the movie of me to the movie of we and that, oh, I love that cool. And that, that, that, um, that might be Krishna Dasu said that I'm not sure. I don't know. But the point is, I think society right now is doing that very thing painfully. So, and when, and maybe all of us are beginning to realize like, yeah, there is a, we can do a guru thing, but let's not do it with me and let's not do it with you. Let's do it with us.

What happens is the collective consciousness. Yes, that, that decentralized perspective regarding spirituality, uh, is far more sustainable than the old tentpole structure of some centralized generally male figure holding up an entire philosophical system. That's crazy. The linux of spirituality. What do you mean? What do you mean?

Wait, what do you mean? The Linus, you mean? Say that again? Linux. The, the, wait, what do you? The programming where it's open sourced and everybody can add to it. Oh God, I wish I did. I should have known that.

I should have known that. I got, yes, exactly. Open source, a general reconfiguration of the idea. And I think in podcasting, do you think that it's possible that you are encountering the guru in these connections that you're having with people via your podcast and all the community that's formed around it? Is it possible that that is your guru? Yes, I, I do believe that that the collective consciousness of people, uh, being vulnerable,

uh, the, the, some is greater than the parts, uh, of people being vulnerable. I love that distinction at any given moment. The world is filled with mothers breastfeeding their babies and crying and people finally telling somebody that they love them and they're sorry. And that forms some super organism of heat. What is it? Healing of love? I think all of the, I think all of the above.

You know, one of the, when I interviewed you, one of the, one of the things that I love that you talked about and I needed to be reminded of was that it, we need to accept the, we need to accept everything, especially where we are in the given moment, you know, to kind of get rid of the wood, the word should, uh, and, and just go, okay, where am I right now? It's okay that, uh, you know, I got up at 130 and I'm back in bed at three o'clock. You know, that's something that I experienced, especially in the fall when my depression, you know, I, I like to say that, you know, my fall depression is, uh, it is just so much more of a headliner than my opening act of depression the rest of the year.

You know, it's like James Brown. It comes in with a cape on and it has an assistant take the cape off is, you know, in October, as it finds its, finds its light, hit its mark. Oh my God. That is so funny. God, you're right though. Oh, the winter. Yeah, that, you know, just a November day where it, it, it just, you know, the sound of leaves

falling, it just, it just, I feel failure in my body with nothing to point to necessarily. Nothing has changed on paper, but it just feels like, like death, you know. And I feel like it's compounded by people being excited about the holidays because I have always felt dread or indifference to holidays. I don't ever remember being excited about Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas. I just would feel relief after New Year's that it was, that it was all over with, which then would make me judge myself more, which would separate me even more from my fellow man, because I would tell myself I'm different, you know, which is why I needed to

be reminded of what you said about just letting go of judgment. When I was a kid, I used to read Fangoria magazine and try to convince my Aunt Isabelle to buy me gore masks. And once I covered myself in homemade fake blood and lay on the doorstep of my grandmother's house until she opened the door and saw me laying there covered in fake blood. She screamed and she never forgave me for that, but that was the kind of horror fan I was and still am. And that's why I love Shutter. This is curated horror, like in the old days, when you go to that perfect, musty, creepy video store with yellowed VHS tapes that had been selected by the owner who more than likely was either a serial killer or someone who collected serial

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Shutter. Thank you, Shutter. You have this insight about yourself that's so wonderful and you're not trying to pretend you're doing great. You're not putting, you're not trying to, but also it seems like you are doing great. It seems like you found this practice. What you just did, that helps me because, mother fuck this shit, man. Every single winter, I think this will be the one where I make it through. It's not going to hit me this year, and then this year, because I'm up in the mountains for a while, I'm like, it's beautiful. Yeah, it looks like it was just LA or New York when I was living there, whatever the winter was before, but this time, no way. Then the leaves go and the trees are just scraping

bones in the fucking wind and everything's frosted and crunching and it's ice. It's like ice. It's the physical manifestation of the depression. The trees are depressed. Everything, dead, dying. Yeah, I know. The color getting sucked out of everything. You just talked about, you use the phrase, and you're doing great. It just occurred to me when you said that that it is possible that you can be doing great while not feeling great. That had never occurred to me until you said that. I learned it from that thing I told you, Chogum Trumper, licking the razor with honey. For me, and the Ram Dass teaching, the revolutionary shift for me was not that it annihilated the fact that sometimes I'm looking up at the mountains up here in North Carolina and

just thinking, that's the most hideous shit I've ever seen in my fucking life. This place is dead, death, dead, died, dead. What is this? Well, simultaneously being very happy. Turbulence, we have a baby coming. Our place is too small for all these three dogs and two little boys and a wife and a me and all the reality stuff. The thing I think with you, and I correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel like you have a kind of skeptical sense when it comes to modern spirituality. Am I wrong about that? No, no. But sometimes I think I limit myself because I get annoyed by people that I judge their version of spirituality as a kind of Hollywood navel gazing way of spirituality. And that's me being judgemental. And again, I didn't realize

that until I was interviewing you and you talked about any form of seeking is great, even if it's selfish and quote unquote wrong. Right. Well, yeah, because the idea is we have to open the door. That's it. Like we all are welcome. Come on in. Everybody's welcome. We want you all. You know, yeah. And I need to be reminded that sometimes the thing I'm looking for, I couldn't have found it unless I'd found the things that I needed to throw away on my way there. Wow. Right. Right. First, you need the first when you're writing a joke, you need you're going to get you need the fact that's why we have an audience. You know, that's the whole process. You got it. It's a process of refinement, I guess you could say that

being said, when up all may be welcome. But once they come in, you don't have to be like, you're awesome. That makes sense. And one of the things in modern spirituality that I find to be on one level just annoying, but on another level really dangerous is this portrayal of a human being is something where if there's legitimate, what they call you're being negative, can't you just see the beauty in the world, that kind of thing or this, and they don't say it that overtly. Usually it's a more insidious, toxic, subtle implication that you're a broken robot because you're not enjoying, you know, the thing where it's like, but when I see the winter trees, I think of the promise of spring. It's like, shut the fuck you fuck you really think of the

promises. I just see death and I'm okay just seeing death. That to me, that's where I feel cynical or skeptical about any form of so-called spirituality that doesn't allow for the self to simultaneously hate the winter and also love existence, love the whatever it may be, you know, and so the next question I had for you is what's you do you do you have some sense of there being like a divine mind or a God, what if you do you are you a God person? I use the word God for for shorthand. But to me, I believe it's a probably a really, really complicated law of the universe that I will never be able to wrap my head around. And so it's it's more like a source of energy. And I kind of view the universe as a big

tube of chemicals. And we've been given the ability to change our charge so that we interact differently with the other chemicals in the universe and that when our charge or our vibration, whatever you want to call it, is more accepting that pathways open up in the in the universe, you know, rather than a dude in the sky with a, you know, a Microsoft outlook and a frustrated secretary. Right. Yeah, this is the I like this conceptualization of things. And sometimes I do think, oh, whatever it is, it's going to be a trillion times weirder than your weirdest idea of what it could possibly be. But today, I was thinking about law, I guess, I was thinking like, God, it's so crazy that now marijuana is getting legal.

Like a law should be a universal thing, you know, it shouldn't be like, you know, I mean, there's not all of a sudden murders legal. It's not like all of a sudden they're like, ah, actually murdering is great. But marijuana, it's like, wow, like there's people who their entire lives were destroyed for doing a thing that now people are admitting isn't wrong at all. And then what's that feel like for somebody who's in jail right now with 10 more years to go on their marijuana sentence? Not great. It doesn't feel great, you know, the whole and it's someone who has loved psychedelics to suddenly see news stories about, oh, we're going to start researching DMT to treat depression,

psilocybin to treat addiction, all these things and having come up in the war on drugs where I was made to feel like a drug, a drug, a monstrous drug addict. Or even though I was intuiting from these things, there's some healing here, there's a possibility of healing here. I believe even the founder of AA was took LSD, which is a controversial topic. But that's not what I wanted to ask you. What I want to ask you is, so I was thinking about real laws, specifically, that law, energy cannot be created or destroyed. And to me, that means, oh, my consciousness, I might be immortal, like this, this, my body isn't, but there's a soul thing happening here, we might not get out of this.

The way we think we can, a lot of people entertain the idea, there's some escape route and escape hatch that happens when you breathe your last breath. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are in that regard. Do you, Ponder? I do think about that and it causes me anxiety, because I think to myself, what if reincarnation is real and my next life involves even more suffering than this one? And in many ways, I feel very lucky to have a lot of the things I have in my life. But there are also things that are a struggle and painful and that I'm just really tired of battling. So I would like to think that when I die, there's nothing more. Is that depressing? Oh, no, that's because you're very smart. That's a smart person.

Would think that. Like, that's a very intelligent thing to think. Now, many people, young people, sometimes when I was younger, if I'd heard that, I'd be like, what are you, race? Come on, man, this is a part of, we got to keep it going. But the, I mean, this was the, God, he was a philosopher, they poisoned Socrates, was a Socrates, they made him drink hemlock, I think, and he write, or was it Plato? I don't know. I'm not an intellectual person. I just like some of the things they say. But the point is, he said, if I drink this poison, this is his note to the people who are making it, or executing him, if I drink this poison, and it's like a sleep, like my deepest sleep forever, then you have given me my the greatest gift anyone gave me.

That must have blown their minds. I was the biggest philosophical fuck you because other But then he said, but if there is an afterlife that I'm aware and I'm myself in it, that I'm just going to keep doing the thing that you're executing me for. So fuck you. You're fucked. A huge thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH Squarespace, it has everything you need to create a beautiful mind enlightening website, not just that, but it helps you create emails that you can send out to your clients or subscribers. I could go on and on about how great Squarespace is. I could talk about how their customer support is incredible, how easy it is to use their templates that you could mix

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Use offer code Duncan and you'll get 10% of your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. I mean, if there's eternal peace, like, you know, people describe that peace that have had near death experiences, I would love if eternal peace is the, you know, where we go after this. But the cynic in me is always thinking worst case scenario. And so I imagine myself coming back as, you know, somebody is suffering and just crushing poverty and never having enough to eat. Wow. Yeah, that is the, I think that is the, this is the, the, the Buddhist map is so funny because it like, whereas like in the Christian map of things, you get this, well, there's going to be this eternal paradise or this eternal hell, but the problem is the eternal word. That's where

a Buddhist looks at, looks at that and specifically, oh, you're going to be eternally in heaven. So how does that work? Are you still going to have a mind? Well, you have a mind in the heavenly realm where you can have anything you want and it's streets of gold. Because if you have a mind there with any preference, at some point you're going to wake up and be like, uh, fucking hate this time of year, the gold, the way it shines. You know what I mean? Like you're going to, you're, you're still going to be in the same situation. So I think Buddhism identifies the eternal nature, the possibility of an eternal, never ending cyclical relationship with reality as being a big fucking problem, a big, big problem. Do you, so it sounds like,

so I'm trying to get at, do you believe in reincarnation or is it just something you kick around in your head? Something I kick around. I try not to spend too much time looking for definitive answers of what it might be. I would say if anything, it's my hobby wondering what the matrix looks like rather than definitively saying it's this and then fantasizing about it. Now, you say the matrix, so you mean simulation theory. Like, that's the new modern take on everything is that we're existing inside a computer simulation. Wow. I hadn't thought of that. I was just thinking more of universal laws of nature that we can't comprehend or haven't discovered yet, whether it involves an afterlife, no afterlife,

reincarnation, all of the above, the unknown, the great unknown of, you know, where do we come from or is there no coming from? It's so hard to imagine no concept of time. I can't wrap my head around that. Well, me either. It's impossible. We're stuck in, we're in it. There's no way. I mean, you can't, it's like, where our heads are stuck, whatever we are, we're definitely stuck in the mirror of time. Clearly, we're in time. But there is this general, to me, one of the more torturous aspects of existence is this never-ending sense that I'm not all stuck in time. You know, it's the, it's the feeling like I only managed to get like the, so very tip into time. There seems to be much more of what I am, but I can only see time. It produces some confusion. But I want to

talk to you a little bit about addiction and depression. Addiction and depression, I know that there's a physiological component to both. But sometimes they get referred to as a soul problem, a condition, a soul sickness. Do you buy into that? Does that make any sense to you? I can understand what people mean when they say that, because I think our soul can be affected by untreated addiction, untreated maladies of the brain, because there is no separating the mind, the body, the spirit. It's a big tangled ball of spaghetti. But I don't believe that it originates in the soul. I think a lot of times, and I think this is what I experienced when I bottomed out on drugs and alcohol, was that my mind and my soul had been so depleted that it

wanted to take my body with it. So I believe that the soul or spirit wants to lead, because then the body and the mind are fed by it. Whereas if the body and the mind are the primary concern, it's hard to feed our spirit. I don't know. Oh, you do know. Yeah, that's to me, that's the trick. Look, we're in a fucking body. Why wouldn't you be selfish? You're in a self. I don't understand why there isn't more rampant selfishness and narcissism in the world than there is. It really is shocking that there aren't more murders, that there aren't more

fatalities. Yeah, sometimes I'll drive down the highway and just be like, how is this not littered with death? Yeah, yeah, how is it not? Just people, random people throwing grenades into traffic and then killing themselves. How is this not? This is one of the things that Thomas Merton says is, many people will say, if you want proof there isn't a God, look at war. How could a loving God allow war to happen? And Merton said, if you want proof that there is a God, the fact that we haven't destroyed ourselves yet in war is, to me, one of the great proofs. The fact that there does seem to be something in the world that is producing a miraculous lack of the amount of violence people like us who are honest with themselves recognize in our identity, the amount

of the self-destructive qualities within us. But yeah, that's a great- I believe that everything contains some form of its opposite and at least the potential for its opposite. Yeah, I've found so many times that the most beautiful gifts in the world that I have experienced have come in the ugliest wrapping paper. Why does it work like that? What is that? I don't know. I don't know. But I think one of the joys of life is realizing you were wrong and that this whole other plane of knowledge or experience opens up and it's like a surprise birthday party where you just get to go, oh my god, I had no idea. Yeah, I love it. And again, I feel like we've connected

on a few different levels here, the depression level, cynical. So I don't mean to fuck that up for you, but I have thought about that. The surprise birthday party thing where the thing you're dreading the most turns out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. The cancer becomes your teacher because you almost died. You got to once again reacquaint yourself with your own humanity, all those things. And then you're saying suddenly it's like in a video game where suddenly a new power is revealed to the character that you're playing. Your new world opens up. And I love that. But then maybe you could help me with this one. Then I started thinking, ah, so what are we? God jerking off? Is that what this is? Is this

some kind of masturbatory exercise that an infinite being is doing, constantly allowing itself to be confused by some delusion of impermanence or the horror of the world? And then, voila, it's not as bad as I thought. And then that's, you know what I mean? That's the money shot. You're like, ah. I don't think of it as that. I think of it more as, again, back to the chemistry and the energy that when we surrender, and I don't know if that's, you know, guided by the divine or it is a choice of free will, but that when we surrender and make friends with reality, then we can be in touch whatever the opposite is in the suffering, whether it's an insight or a new life experience. But that's kind of how I look at it. And that's why I think

humility and vulnerability are so important because we get to open that present if we're able to do that because we so often are able to connect with other human beings. And I think a lot of times that's where the presence, you know, like gifts are discovered, are in community in the very things that we fear. But I also think one of the worst things you can tell somebody when they're suffering is that this is just a lesson you're going through because I think in that moment, they want you to hug them. They want you to reaffirm that, yeah, this fucking sucks what you're going through. And I'm here. Are you good at doing that? You seem like you're good at doing that. I'm a failure in that regard. I don't know what it is that sometimes this thing just pops out of me that

wants to be like, what it like a boot camp person or something. And that is the worst thing you can do. Are you good at that? Are you good at just being with people? I had to learn. I had to learn how to do it. And I learned that from my guests who share their experience. And I realized, oh, yeah, I was doing that for me, telling them that there's going to be a lesson in it because I'm uncomfortable with them being in pain because I can't fix it. I can't be in control. And I can't be the guru. I can't be the know at all. And I think growing up being an emotional fixer in my family kind of trained me to think that I actually had the power to change people's feelings in the long run or to be somehow the sherpa of what they need. And I think that's a bit,

I don't know, pompous to think that. And so sometimes I cringe when I look back at the times I have felt like I'm somebody's emotional sherpa, rather than just fucking being there for them and just hugging them and holding them while they cry or saying, yeah, it fucking sucks that your dad's dying of cancer. It fucking sucks that you lost your job. Yeah. Yeah, I went, you know, my dad was dying. One of my teachers, Ragu, I called him and said, I'm all caught up in my own shit. And he says, and I say to him, I just don't want, I don't want him to suffer. And Ragu said, because he knew that he knew was probably that night he was going to die. He said to me, take yourself out of the picture.

And I realized, Oh my God, I've made my dad's last hours on earth. All about me. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want him. I don't want him to suffer. That's legitimate. But part of the reason I don't want him to suffer is because it's making me hurt. And so that that when that thing that you're saying is so wise is that moment you realized what you were assuming was a altruistic bend in your personality. A compassionate thing was in fact, a weird form of cowardice. In the sense that it is unbearable to be around people who are suffering. Yeah. It's unbearable. We don't want people we love to hurt. I get mad. I also noticed a couple of years ago that a lot of times when I would apologize to

somebody, I was doing it for me because I wanted to control how they thought of me. And that that was kind of painful to to realize that. But I was glad that I realized that. So I didn't become manipulative in how I apologized to somebody. Holy shit. You just gave me the thank you. Wow. That is I have not I hadn't taken the equation that far out, man. That's crazy. I have to remind myself that what somebody else thinks of me is is none of my business. And that's really hard because one of my deepest fears is not being liked, being ostracized, being left behind, being abandoned, whatever, whatever you want to call it. You know, the my biggest nightmare is a room full of people talking about me negatively.

And so you became a stand up comic. This is not crazy. Well, no, it would make sense for you. You want to grab the bull by the horns. You it was it was a it makes sense. But yeah. And have and have this shit midnight show where nobody's paying attention. It's an art form of pain. You can't you can't you have to fail in it. And you that so was that do you think that was healing or do you feel like you cut yourself on it? You know, sometimes I wonder, did I like do I have a limp because of I I think I needed to experience it to realize that it wasn't going to fulfill me that it's OK.

You know, I always go back to what is my intention and my intention when I first started doing stand up was not to try to create an original craft to bring joy to people. It was to get attention to get laid. Yeah. To gain power. And I quickly realized after I, you know, had little tastes of fame or recognition or money here or there that it wasn't filling something inside me that there was it may be exciting for a week or or so. But then I was always saying, where's the next rung on the ladder? I can't relax until I get to that rung on the ladder. I realized that I had this bottomless pit inside of me. You know, there's there was a moment. I used to drive down Sunset Boulevard. You know, you'd see people's billboards and and I would

always be filled with this envy and even because it just felt so official that they were in show business. And even though I was on TV at that time, the mean part of my brain would go, yeah, but it's basic cable. You know, you're you're you know, you're showing a movie. You're just the, you know, the little filling in between. And I thought if I could ever see my face on a billboard on Sunset Sunset Boulevard, then I would feel like I've arrived. Well, one year the show took out a billboard on Sunset Boulevard and I went and I looked at it and I lost respect for Sunset Boulevard. I wish I was kidding. But I suddenly went, it's not that big of a deal to be here. It's I mean, if they've it's like the Groucho Marx joke, I wouldn't want to be part of a

country club that would have someone like me as a as a member. You know, well, when you look into like this is a funny thing, the whole billboard, all the all those little like metals and medallions are business that are there. Yeah, they're there. I don't know if people who aren't in the that the industry recognize that also they are thorns, they are they are thorns that stick out of Sunset Boulevard that fellow narcissists cut themselves when they drive by I when I first came to LA, I didn't want to be a comedian. I got a job at the comedy store and I would work on the phones and I just I thought I was going to go to grad school, man. I was just like blown away by famous people and the Sklar Brothers. I was on the phone with one of the Sklar Brothers.

I can't remember which one and I remember saying to him, how does it feel, man? He's like, what? I'm like, you made it. How does it feel to have made it? And he's like, what are you? He thought I was being an asshole. Like he thought it was me. I think he must have thought I was being sarcastic or first second. He's like, is he fucking with me? But I legitimately they were on TV. As far as I was concerned, that was that's it. You did it. I didn't understand the business at all at that time. So in my mind, it's like, holy shit, that's it. And then they were like, no, we're not even close to being done. And then you encounter someone who's, you know, at an even higher level, and they're feeling bad. And then the net and then that just what

you're saying, you realize, oh, my God, there's no fucking finish line. It's an endless marathon. Somebody told me that something the prince said late in his career was, you know, talking about all the accolades and success, I've been to the top of the mountain and there's nothing there. That's the big scam, baby. That's the scam. That's the scam. And and but how do you I'm laughing about it like I'm but I'm all past that. No, I'm not past that. Are you have you found out? No, no, the last night I was just brushing up on on, you know, knowing stuff about you. And I did an internet search and I went on Twitter. Oh, fuck, I just realized I put out a tweet any questions you want me to ask Duncan. And I forgot

to check in to see what people said. We'll have to have you as a return guest on the podcast. But I saw how many Twitter followers you had and I just instantly felt less than I just instantly went. Uh, why can't I have that many Twitter followers? And and then I catch myself and go just fucking let it go. It doesn't define who you are. And that's pretty much my day is swinging between panic and acceptance. Yeah, man. I'm well, yeah, that old Twitter follower thing is just number one, the metric is just it's not like there's some board of people overlooking that metric. Like I know a huge number of those people don't go on Twitter anymore. I think that's an important thing to realize. It's that's like it's a it's a it doesn't really mean anything.

But yeah, and I understand how Kanye and like, you know, I think Ford thinkers are like, get rid of that shit. Why is that there? That's not cool. That doesn't mean anything. Number one, number two, it implies something that isn't even there, a kind of authority or some bullshit. You know what I mean? Like you see some with a million followers and they have you suddenly you imbue them with something that just is your own projection, you know, and but I love that you admit to feeling tormented by that. I'm torn. You know, I was talking to I was on your mom's house. Christina love those guys fucking to me. They're one of the people I love them. But I am I like look at their success and the dark part of me is like, God, I want that. I would love to have that.

Well, you see, they they are they're doing it in the most awesome way I want that. I went on their show and one of them said, I wish I had a Netflix show. And I was like, what? You have one of the top five guys of all time. And then but it's again, it's all symptomatic of this thing that we're talking about, which is there's nothing on top of the mountain or there's a Zen koan that Donovan turned into a song. First, there is no mountain and there is a mountain. First, there is no mountain and there is a mountain. Then there is first, there is a mountain and there is no mountain. It never ends. Once you get to the top of the mountain, it's not that there's nothing there. Maybe there is something there, a stupid award, a hot tub of orgy and some great MDMA and no more

worry over something you're worried about. You can pay your parking tickets now, who the fuck knows? But slowly you start realizing like, oh, wait, there's another peak. And then you're off to the races again. So what's your next peak? Where do you want to go? Where would where would you like to take it? My next peak is trying to appreciate the the place that I am right now. That's the greatest challenge. And when I'm able to experience it, and it is affected by by my depression and or anxiety. So it's more for me. While it's a spiritual pursuit to try to accept that it is also affected by what's going on with my my brain chemistry. But it's so hard sometimes to know what's fucking with you, you know, do I need to exercise more is is my diet not that great?

Am I self obsessing? And am I not being of service enough? What am I, you know, what what is it that that is eating at me? And sometimes I'll be doing all the stuff I'm supposed to do. And I still don't feel a vitality for getting out of bed. And I just have to go, okay, let's be nice to ourselves. You know, let's let's just still go about the day and deal with it. There's just no fix. You know, I think that's the lie out there is that it doesn't, to me, you know, when I first started working with my teacher, the first thing he said to me was I want you to I want to tell you what Chogan Trump, remember, she told me any minute. This is hopeless. Sopless. And I, that was when I was like, this is it. This is, this is where I'm going to be.

This is a good thing here. Because that is my experience. That it's hopeless. And that that hopeless quality of existence, for me, is the is the finally a place for me to land on with my depression and my cynicism and my, it's like, no, it doesn't work out. It doesn't work out ever. It can't. There's no way for it to work out of working out means some permanent situation. And so that to me is like, I think that's a wonderful thing for me to remember. Because I forget it. Sometimes it just sucks. That's the way it is. It sucks. It's that thing where you're like, it doesn't suck. I'm all right. This just a nap. Flowers will come in the spring. That's what eats you up, isn't it? I'm in the middle of a lesson. Oh, I'm in a lesson. Thanks for the lesson,

asshole. What kind of teacher teaches us by giving us cancer? And yet still we learn. And now this is a question I have for you. And I, I hope I lost track of time. So I'm going, do you have another five or 10 minutes? I have nothing going on. Okay, thank you so much. So you, I know that you are not a guru though, sometimes during this conversation, I thought, maybe he's a guru. The, you do though have not just many conversations with people about their particular what they're going through. And you are also part of a various communities of people who are working with each other and in the pursuit of healing. And I think from that you clearly have gotten some wisdom, some real wisdom, experiential, authentic wisdom that you

are really good at sharing with people. So this pandemic, for me, is I just knowing my own problems with depression, my own problems with my psyche. It's like, wow, yeah, of course you wouldn't feel the best right now. But I think about some of my friends, like Brody Stevens, who committed suicide, I'm sure you know, and what he would have happened to him, if he had made it through the pandemic, what do you have even made it through the pandemic? And I think of all the people out there who are really, really going through it right now. And I've, all I know is that I can't imagine how scary and bad this is for people right now who are already dealing with their own mental illness

and now are dealing with like no job and all the things that go along with it. And I know through the course of these two wonderful conversations we've had, you've presented a philosophy or sometimes it just sucks. But I was hoping maybe I could get out of you something for them, something you could say to them, to us. Why am I saying it to them? What, how can we, how are we going to survive this fucking thing, man? All those people out there were really on the cusp of just calling it quits. I think the best thing is to let them talk and listen. Hmm. Because for one, I'm afraid I'm going to say the wrong thing. And my experience with asking somebody, how are you doing? And then listening and taking it in and

not trying to change him seems to have the most positive effect, not, not unchanging them, but lightning their load, at least for a minute or two, or at the very least reminding them that, that they're not alone, which I think can lighten the load a bit. I think there's the perspective of knowing that there is a community of suffering that helps it be a little bit more bearable rather than trying to change somebody's perspective. I think listening the byproduct of that is what we're trying to do when we try to fix somebody. Does that make sense? Yes. And sometimes I get lost in the paradox of it. My mind will get caught up in that point of that point of like, wait, maybe am I still trying to change them by listening? But what you're

talking about is no, just listen, be there. This is what this is it. This is and thank God, that's it. Thank God, that's it. How fucked will we be if there was a right thing you could do? How fucked will we be if there's a little we say this and this and then do this, and then they'll be fine. But if you don't, then they're fucked. Then, you know, we would always feel guilty for not being able to do enough. But I think the simplicity of your instruction is quite beautiful. But what another aspect of it is you have this podcast, you get to have conversations, you're connecting with people, you have groups that you're connecting through online. And what about folks who don't like, that's what I keep thinking about. There's people

who aren't who haven't had a conversation with anybody more than like their Uber food delivery person for weeks, man. Yeah, I feel so much empathy for them. And the narcissist in me is like, so glad that I'm not experiencing that. You know, one of the things that I am ashamed of is I will enjoy watching a Hitler documentary just because I feel better about my life. It's, it's sad. It's really sad that that's how I elevate myself is by looking at somebody else's horror. But sometimes that's the only tool that will make me feel better about myself. And you know, it's fucked. Thank God you'd watch it. I'm glad you watch Hitler documentaries and don't think, you know, I haven't done enough. That would be way more fucked up. But yeah,

I love that. Just simple things like that. Let yourself have it, right? That's the idea, right? Let yourself have it. Because I, I get both. I get both. Hey, I'm a pretty good guy. And, hey, my life's not that bad. Yeah. From looking at both the, you know, both ends. Yeah. Compared to Hitler, you are a saint, basically. Yeah, life's on a curve, right? Yeah. Well, I, yeah, I love that. And I really hope folks listening will tune in to your podcast because just this encounter with you is just really open up some doors in my own mind of things I want to contemplate. And I am so grateful to you, particularly the apology thing. Like that's gonna, that's gonna be my number one. That's the next, that's three weeks, man. That's three weeks. Thank you.

That means a lot to me coming from you because you are definitely somebody who's insight and just experience with spirituality and learning and opening your mind. I admire. So that, that means a lot to me. Thanks. Thank you. And I'm really, really lucky that you gave me so much time to spend with you today. I really appreciate it. Is there anything, any, anything that you'd like to say to people regarding how they can connect with you? Is it just through Mental Illness Happy Hour? Do you have a? Yeah, I mean, you can go to the website. There's a forum there if you, you know, want to be connected with some community of people. Yeah, I think, I think that's, that's really about it. Thank you, friend. And fuck winter,

but we'll get through it. And the flowers will come once we've learned our lesson. Thank you very much. Thanks, buddy. That was Paul Gilmart and everybody. Make sure you subscribe to his amazing award-winning podcast, the Mental Illness Happy Hour. A big thank you to our sponsors. All the links you need and offer codes you need are going to be at DuncanTrussell.com. And a tremendous thank you to you for continuing to listen to the DTFH. I wish you well. I wish you joy. And most importantly, I hope you have a powerful orgasm this week. I'll see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna. With one of the best savings rates in America, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in

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