Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Corey Taylor: Extrasensory Experiences

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Corey Taylor (frontman for Slipknot and Stone Sour, NY Times bestselling author) opens up about his early drug and alcohol addiction and how he makes sense of his extrasensory observations with the paranormal. He discusses his difficult childhood, his process of discovering music and writing as an outlet, and his journey toward sobriety. Corey explains the depression he faced after suffering a severe spinal cord injury from a stage dive, using therapy to find healthier ways to parent, and how he was able to quit smoking cigarettes. He shares his intense experiences with paranormal intelligent energy and how he makes sense of the phenomena. Mayim breaks down the scientific understanding of Chi energy and its important role in medical treatment. See Corey Taylor on tour with Slipknot: https://slipknot1.com/events/ BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once you moved to Des Moines, did you finish high school there then? No. I was asked to leave. Okay. Well, I started a riot in the lunchroom. Like you do. I remember they would give us this very specific sort of pale white macaroni and cheese that I was convinced they were cutting with spackle. And I took it and I stuck it on the wall and it stayed.

And I jumped up on a table and I said, do you see what they are putting in our bodies? Next day, I went and got my GED, graduated class of Thursday, 1992. It was cool, you know. It's Miami-Bi-Ollic's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you because, you know, she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown.

She's going to break it down. Hi, I am I. And welcome to My Breakdown. This is the place where we break things down that make us break down. You chose that specifically today. Because I have a little breakdown. You do. I introduce myself. You want to introduce yourself?

Well, I just jumped my intro. You did jump your intro. I was going to say, here's my favorite Slipknot. Jonathan Cohen. Why did I say that? We have a fantastic guest today. He is the lead singer of Slipknot. And if you don't know who Slipknot is,

look up Corey Taylor, and you will find that he's not just the lead singer of a band that has sold like, I don't know, 30 million record. Like, it's a lot of records. Unbelievable. And he's a New York Times bestselling author. He's written, I mean, some really, really wild, and I don't mean wild, like, crazy.

I mean, like, he has written his life and he has a very specific speaking style, which you'll see in a very specific thinking style. And he is, I mean, I don't think we've had a guest use more four and five syllable words completely casually and not pretentious. It's interesting that you say that. I did not register to me that he was using language in a way that you're finding so impressive. He's like a Kaplan course in SAT prep. We've never had a guest. Speak about paranormal activity. I can't even.

And extra sensory experiences in the last third of the interview, we get into some stuff. I mean. And if you are only listening to this episode, you are missing Mime's jaw on the floor. lore for 25 minutes. She's terrified. She's crying. Her mouth is open. She's gripping her skin.

That just sounds like every other Wednesday. No, what I think is really important for people to know about this episode is this is a person that we are speaking to who is. Not woo-woo. Not woo-woo. Very matter of fact. I mean, like, kind of reluctant to even get into this because he knows exactly what people think. but I don't think I've ever heard anyone speak about this topic in a way that made me really kind of like want to examine it in a real way. Because I've heard stories like this and I'm like, wow, that's intense.

That's insane. Like people have had a lot to say about this house, in particular, the one that we film in. It creaks a lot. Okay. Don't make me cry more. It sounds like people are running on the roof on a regular basis. That's squirrels and maybe an occasional deer. The thing about Corey Taylor, he comes from a place where this wasn't, like, talked to.

It's not like he grew up in an environment of like, let's all be in tune with our energy. He also doesn't fully understand what it is that he, you have, this episode is blowing my mind. Tell us more about Corey. He is the front man for Slipknot and also Stone Sour. As I said, he's a bestselling author. He's also an actor. I mean, this guy needs his own show. he has a roaring voice.

He has millions of fans across the globe. I mean, like, name the thing, like, Billboard this, a rock album of the decade, this. Unbelievable. He had a book, Seven Deadly Sins in 2011, that occupied the New York Times bestseller list for four weeks. And that was kind of his exploration of his life as a musician and as a troubled young man and,

teenager. But he's also written, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven. You're Making Me Hate You and America 51. And one of those books is the one that talks about the paranormal and we'll be talking about that. He is a Renaissance man who can give a symposium at Oxford University and later that night headline

a heavy metal music festival. He's unbelievable. Also want to give a shout out to their Slip Knot's having a tour. and it's called the Nutfest Road Show. It starts March 16 in Fargo, North Dakota. He also has a new solo album, CMFB dot dot, dot, sides. So absolutely check that out.

That's, yeah, released February 2020. And that's B-Sides of covers. It's acoustic recordings. And very, very, I mean, just there's so many exciting things about him. But, boy, let's welcome Corey Taylor. Break it down. Welcome to our breakdown. Hi.

Thank you so much for being here. I have a lot of questions that might have nothing to do with anything else that we're supposed to talk about. I'm not supposed to talk about anything in particular. I'm going to already apologize for Jonathan because he's from Toronto. Do they have Slipknot in Toronto? They have Slipknot everywhere. Okay, just checking. But sometimes they just, they spend all their time with hockey.

We don't know. Well, between the hockey and the Poutine. I mean, it's a lot to do, you know. Well, here's the thing. I fashion myself, like, a real music person. And, you know, I'm a musician, as it were. And I grew up... Do you have as many singles as he does?

No. I mean, no. I'm not like... I'm not a real musician like that. But, you know, I grew up with, like, constant music playing. Like, my dad was the kind of guy who had, like, a different song for every year. Like, I could tell you in 1979 the record that he kept playing. You know, like, I grew up with... like music all around me and like blues, jazz, all the things.

You belong to a genre of music that I know very little about. Like I know, I know your music, but in terms of like, as a musician, can I form my head around it? It's just very hard for me. And so it's just really interesting because this not only is a very respectable and significant and important and awesome, you know, genre. of music, but there are many, many band members in this kind of band. So, like, I know what happens in an orchestra because I've played in one, right? Like, I know what happens even in a jazz band because I've played in one. What happens when you have this many people in a band?

We like to call it controlled chaos, basically. I mean, it's because we borrow so many. different elements from so many different parts of our genre. Like, we're not a very specific band. And maybe that's because we have so many different people in the band. But a lot of it has lent itself esoterically, musically, creatively, spiritually even, to the fact that in our little bubble, we can do so many different things. So with the percussion, we can build a song just based around a percussive beat and kind of build it from the floor up.

Or we can start with a riff and kind of build it more traditionally. Or we can use Sid to drop a beat that he scratches and kind of manipulates with all of his weird cosmic craziness that he does. Or we can base it around a weird hook that Craig, our sampler, comes up with that we then just kind of wrap a tune

around and his hook kind of comes in. I mean, we've even written songs around melodies that I've come up with. So there's so many different ways for us to write that it started out as an experiment with how can we make this music and be able to play it righteously live. So it wasn't just, okay, well, these guys, they have all of these elements and stuff. but you don't see any of it live. This was our way of, honestly, creating a sort of destructive metal orchestra.

We've kind of been calling ourselves the heavy metal Wu-tang for a very long time. That makes sense. There's so many elements and keys to it that without all of these elements, it doesn't feel like slip-knott. Like, if you took any of these elements away, it would only feel like one layer, you know?

Okay, so in theory, though, if I, are there nine of you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So one person is, does percussion backing vocals samples. Then another person does samples, media, keyboards, and guitars. Then it looks like there's someone who just does guitars. Oh, no, I think you, well.

I'm just looking on Wiki. That's okay. Don't go on Wiki. Wiki is very manipulated. Okay, but you know why Wiki's great? It's got this insane chart, and I don't know if you can say. And so I'm trained as a scientist,

and this looks like the human genome. That chart may be broken down on, like, like people who write as well, because certain people, you know, they may play drums in the band, but they also write so they play guitar, or they play, you know, so. What do you most do?

In Slipknot, I just sing. You just sing. Yeah, I've played piano on some songs, but when it's just me, I just sing. Do you write also? Yeah, absolutely. But then I give it to them. And then they write. And they make it better.

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for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention Miami-Biolix Breakdown to help support the show. Take us back. Let's talk about young Corey. Oh, boy. All right. There's a tremendous amount of stigma in certain parts of the world about this quote kind of music or this kind of lifestyle. Throughout history, there have been musical genres that have upset people, you know, in terms of like, oh, the lifestyle. I mean, jazz, you know, blues, punk, even do wave, you know, like, what was going on there?

But I'm interested sort of like how, yeah, I'm interested in kind of when you became, when we could identify that Corey was going to make this kind of music. So you grew up in Iowa. Yeah. And I've spent some time in Mason City. Oh, 30 minutes from Clear Lake. I used to live there. Are you serious? Oh, it's beautiful.

Anyway. Yeah. Okay, sorry. So you grew up in Iowa. and just give us a thumbnail sketch. Is your family like we've lived in Iowa for eight generations? Oh, well, some of them have, yeah.

There's like two factions of my family. There's the family I claim and then there's the family that I don't really talk to anymore. So growing up was very fractious. We moved around a lot. We were very poor. Kind of hand-a-mouth, dealt with,

I mean, it's a cavalcade of cliches, you know? I mean, it was a lot of addiction, a lot of hardship, a lot of psychoses. That's not great for a kid, you know? So I kind of trained myself to be a loner, you know? And the only real solace I had was in the art that I engaged in, music, reading, comics,

hanging out with my friends, you know, like who were into it. But I didn't have a lot of friends like that because it was Iowa, you know? So. Did you have siblings? Yeah, sister, we were close when we were young, and then we just kind of parted because she went one way and I went another, you know. And what did your folks do? I didn't meet my dad until I was 30. And, you know, we only really hung out for a full, a handful of years.

I haven't seen him a very long time. My mom, like I said, man, we lived hand to mouth, you know. It was difficult. It was a difficult childhood. But my grandmother was my rock. She was the center of my world, you know, and she was the one who I ended up living with after, I had a really bad overdose when I was 16.

And I ended up moving in with my grandmother, moved to Des Moines. And that became my kind of station. And she took me in, got me back in high school and stuff. for a short period of time. And she was, but she was always kind of like my stability, you know. And so she was like the one who kind of raised me.

Obviously, you're not only, you know, a musician and a very successful musician at that. You're a writer. And you have, you're a best-selling author. And you've written a lot about some of the kind of, I guess, most intimate and, you know, challenging parts of your life. you know somewhere between the the kind of you know difficulty how did we get to an overdose at 16

so if you can just talk us through a little bit like did you start playing music and that was a thing yeah I mean I would love to know if you're you know open to sharing I first time I got drunk I was 10 it was right around the time I started smoking cigarettes too first time I got high I was 12. First time I did cocaine was, well, back up, the first time I did speed, I was 13.

And I got into these things called white cross. For all the old people, they remember white crosses and stuff like that. And then me and my friends started stealing anything from TVs to cars to buy cocaine. We just, I mean, and it was just a downhill spiral from there. That's a very expensive drug for those of you listening. It is. Especially in Iowa at the time, man. Like it was very hard to get.

Sometimes you would have to deal with just crank, which is, you know, basically, you know, it kind of in the meth family, but it was a little more cantankerous, really. But we went out of our way to try and find cocaine when we could. But largely, it was so cut down that sometimes it would just, I mean, everything that was in it was more dangerous than the cocaine itself. You know, so it was, you know, it was just, that was all I knew, you know. I mean, I was living in Waterloo, Iowa, which to this day is still a very hardcore city, you know, it's brutal. We used to call it Little Detroit because it was so gnarly, especially back then. And that was just what we did, you know.

I went to a party one night, blacked out on drugs. I don't remember anything except waking up. I woke up in a dumpster. I was covered in blood. And I think what happened was I OD'd, and the people at the party didn't know what to do, so they just threw me away. Yeah, that was kind of a wake-up call for me, man. And I was just like, all right, well, I guess we're done here.

So I let go with drugs, but I continued drinking, you know. I guess I was the precursor to the California sober. You know, that's what you do. Well, I was going to say it's one of the things that, you know, we do in trying to get sober. We try and, like, find what's the least I can do to still stay numb, but not have it be as dangerous or ruining my life as much. But what happens for you that morning and, like, that maybe three days after you wake up in that state,

realizing that maybe the friendships that you thought you had weren't quite so tight as you I never spoke to those people again, you know? Like I ended up walking quite a long. It took me a couple hours to get home. I was a long way from my house. And I got there and I can remember going, I need to get out of this town because this town is really what's doing it, you know? Like it was not only the town, but it was the people I was running with.

It was the lifestyle that I accepted, you know? And I knew that I had more to offer than what was happening. And I knew it wasn't going to happen there. So I packed up what little I had. And I went to my grandmothers for the summer. And while I was there, I really kind of hyper-focused on the fact that I need to stay here. So I talked my grandmother into letting me stay. I had to talk my mom into signing over parental rights so I could go to

school. And then that was it. So, I mean, the first couple days was just this weird cold bath of guilt and incredulous reality, you know, especially for a kid. Yeah, you're still a kid. Yeah. I mean, even to that point, I had been through a lot, but I had never almost died, you know. Like, I had experienced abuse. I'd experienced like all of these gnarly things that kind of come with that culture. But this was like the first time I was like, oh, okay. So this is, this can happen, you know? So I, you know, for the, so for a few days, it was just me kind of collecting myself.

And I mean, I went through some serious withdrawal, you know, but I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I needed to feel the weight of it and be able to accept that I needed to do this on my own. I'm curious when you go through the effort that it takes to change your life, you know, getting to your grandmothers, convincing your mom to let you stay there, I assume you start to roll in school. Yeah. How long does that sort of like, you know, because you've made this huge change. So there's like an excitement, a rush of like, oh, you've pulled it off.

Right. But how long does it take before sort of, you know, the notion of wherever you go, there you are and you find your problems again? The drinking didn't get bad until well into my 20s, to be honest, because it was almost like I had this new lease on life, and I really tried to kind of expound on it. In Des Moines, I was not only with my grandmother, but I was surrounded by cousins who were the same age,

who I'd grown up with and really enjoyed spending time with. So I kind of, I ran with them for a while. I ended up making new friends in Des Moines, and they were so far removed from it. And I did that on purpose. I didn't want anybody who was in that sort of like new circle, you know, the same as the old boss kind of thing, you know. So it didn't once I'm weird in a weird way where once I make a decision, that's it.

And I just have to hyper focus on that and it keeps me going. It was the same thing when I quit drinking. It was the thing when I quit smoking. This is a lot. I mean, I have a 16-year-old. So, like, you know, he's still, like, is asking me to, like, help him register for his community college classes.

And I'm thinking of, like, the kind of things. An awareness, yeah. Well, the kind of awareness, well, and that usually comes from, you know, that's the school of hard knocks. Like, this is what, you know, my parents called street smart. I don't care if your book smart. You got to be street smart, you know? Right.

And that usually comes from, it's pain. Anyway, so. How do we give Miles more pain? How do I give my child more pain? so that he's more resilient. No, I'm just kidding. There's something about your brain and the things that you were interested in

that, like, you are known for using very big words. You've already used several words. Yeah, I apologize. No, do not apologize. I can't help it. No, I know. You're just, that's your awesomeness. But what I'd like to know is,

because not that that's necessarily the way that your path becomes different, but, I mean, thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of people deal with addiction, deal with the kind of trauma and abuse that many of us never even knew to speak about, and you and I are about the same age, and many do not have, I mean, many OD and wake up in all sorts of places, right? So I'm wondering, it seems like there might have been kind of like a different place in your brain or your soul that you had somehow kept

sacred that seems to have maybe been part of this ability that you had to see more than many kids would see at 16. So what was that place? Was it books? Was it literature? Was it? Even before I realized I was gifted at music, I just felt, I always felt different not only from the people that I ran with, but the people I lived with, you know? I mean, maybe it was the service. that was still going on that kind of kept me focused and away from that once I got out of it going remember there's a bigger there's bigger fish to fry here and you need to focus on that so kind of whittling everything away at one point I wanted to just be a writer you know but I realized that wasn't going to quench that thirst I it wasn't until I really played my first my first my first

real show, which was a basement party, when I was 17, 18, somewhere in there. It was like this, I was with this cover band at the time that I knew I wasn't going to be happy just playing covers, but I knew there was something about what I was doing that made me happy. And that's when I kind of started teaching myself how to play guitar just so I could write songs. So maybe that was what it was. Like I knew that there was something that I was destined for. for, you know? Let's play this game because, you know, I'm an actor person, you know, also. Right.

And, you know, in the words of John Popper, great blues traveler. Oh, yes. He says, if you want to hide, find a stage. And I'm wondering if there was something about the special, I don't know why I'm making myself cry talking about this person. But like, the specialness that you always felt in yourself. Right. That being differentness, when you find a stage,

you then have a place to mind that feeling. Yeah, I want to hear about the basement party, that moment that you sort of discover that. Yeah, it was, you know, honestly, it was a throwback to a moment that I had when I was 10 years old. And my cousin Lisa forced me out into the living room of my Aunt Susan's house and made me sing separate ways by Journey. It had just come out on vinyl.

And I was singing along to it. And she said, are you? Is that you? And I was like, yeah. And she drugged me out in front of my grandma and everybody. And she made me sing. And at the end of the song, they all were like clapping and like yelling. And it was the first time I had that feeling that I was good at something.

So fast forward to I'm down with these people. And they're like, well, what songs do you know? And I was like, well, I know everything. I mean, name of genre, I know everything. And they just started throwing out. We started with the Ramones. We went into Twisted Sister. I mean, and so, I mean, I'm just hitting all these beats.

And more and more people are starting to push into the basement. And I just remember going, oh, yeah. Like, and it wasn't just that I was good at it. There was a, like, this amazing sense of fulfillment that came out of it as well. And I think that's one of the reasons why my voice is so chameleonic is because I cut my teeth singing along to so many different genres that it just made it, it just made it really adaptable to almost anything that I write or attempt, you know? Jonathan, which, which neurotransmitters did he just describe? I have no idea. Yes, you do.

What did he say? It felt good and, yeah, it's this, though. That's dopamine. Is that dopamine? Yeah. That's it. I mean, that's a fix, right? I mean, you're getting a fix because it's not just that it feels good.

It's what can I do to keep this going? Well, I'm fascinated by these moments, which is like these transformational moments, and it's fascinating that that sort of connected back to obviously a big dopamine hit that you got when you were 10. But just, I'm curious about the prep. Like, where did you get your musical education? Was it like radio that you're consuming all this? And by education, I mean, I mean more exposure.

Like where are you consuming that amount of music? Oh, kind of everywhere. I mean, I was kind of exposed to so many different types of music. My mom made me listen to everything from Motown to disco. My babysitters all listened to 70s punk. I grew, I was a latchkey kid, so I grew up on early 80s MTV. Yeah, you did. So I'm getting all that.

I'm getting all of the great new wave pop, but I'm also getting Motley Crew. I'm getting Quiet Riot. I'm getting Def Leopard. So I, and my, and my uncle, my Uncle Jim was a fan of Itzhak Perlman. So I grew up, yeah, so I'm getting everything from everywhere. And I knew every year that if I wanted to make my Uncle Jim happy, all I had to do was get him an Itzok Perlman cassette. And he was like, well, thank you.

So, I mean, so I grew up surrounded by so many different. I mean, my great uncles were into jazz, so I'm getting, you know, Sunny Rollins, like all of these people. So I'm surrounded and I'm getting all of this stuff. And then obviously it's Iowa, so I've got like 50s and 60s country just belairing in my head. It sounds like you have a brain that just when you hear it, it's in there now. And like a brain for lyrics. And Miami has this too where I'll play the, I'll play the, I'll. throw Spotify on and she's like every lyric of every song. Right. And I know the chorus of every song,

but I don't know every lyric, but it sounds like you have one of those brains that you could get on stage and you know you've just consumed and almost internalized all of that music. Yeah. I mean, it's, and I don't know what it's, I don't know what it is, but, and I know there are other people who have it is where you listen to it and there's only specific people listen to music in a certain way where you can really like you're breaking it down you're not only analyzing the lyrics but you're listening to all of the layers of the

music that is going on so you're not only hearing the hook and the vocals but you're hearing the hook in just the little ear candy that the drummer's putting on or the little hint of synth in the background and when somebody plays it live

and it's not there you go and it's yep that's me Like a photographic for music. I mean, and also it feels wrong if it's not. Right. It's almost sonographic memory. Well, and it's funny because this kind of leads to my next question because whenever

people say to me like, oh, you're smart, it's actually more that I remember things. Right. Because a lot of like, like when I went to like, you know, when I went to college, like the kids who made it to med school, I couldn't. It's that they had a brain that held information in a way that I couldn't. And I thought I had a good brain for that. But what I was. do musically is also what I do with words when I read them in books or like I remember my SAT

flashcards I just know those words so that's what I was kind of like I think we're tapping into more of like Corey's brain as opposed to like Corey's a musician and he's also really like this is your brain is very special so what were you reading what were you exposed to like where did you get all your big words I I mean I tell you what I mean I grew up I started reading very early like I was voracious by the time I was about six or seven. I was reading novels. I remember I read Benchley's jaws when I was eight and scared the hell out of me. That's terrifying. Yeah. Oh, I mean, and to this day, it's probably one of the biggest reasons why I'm scared of sharks, like nobody's business. And I had the original paperback, which was even scarier than the movie poster,

because it's that dark background, and it's really just this highlighted. outline and this person's saying and it's just this shape which is even scarier and you're just like but um i mean yeah i just i read i would remember i would spend so much time at libraries you know because i mean obviously i couldn't have you know we couldn't afford to buy books or anything and the books we did have we held on to you know i mean my mom had stacks of harlequin super romances that i didn't go near i was just like that's too frilly but we would go to to the, we go to the library and I would just check stuff. I'd come on with stacks of books and read all those. I would get books at the, at school, read all those. I have, I'd collect books

now. I mean, I have so many, I've books coming out of so many orifices. It's just not even funny. Were you good at school or would, did you have kind of specific interest? It's, it's interesting. I, I retained a lot, but I was, and maybe this is my confrontational side. I, I, absolutely despised homework. I didn't understand it. I was like, wait a minute, let me get this straight. I know all the answers. I'm the one who answers all the questions in class.

I ace every test. And yet you're going to fail me because I didn't do 80% of the grade, which is all take home stuff. I was like, are you kidding me? It's like, I don't even know where I'm going to be living it. Then, you know, the next time I come back to this school. And you're going to sweat me on a notebook. Like, so that made me very kind of anti-authoritarian.

I threw a desk at my English teacher. She probably deserved it. Well, he, Mr. Burns, he was very sanctimonious and really condescending to the point of, you know, he made a just passing remark about my hair because I had long hair. And I just stood up and tossed it. even wait for him to send me. I just walked right out the door. I was like, I'll be in Mr. Johnson's reference. Once you move to

Des Moines, did you finish high school there then? No. I was asked to leave. Okay. Makes sense. Because I started, well, I started a riot in the lunchroom. Like you do. Largely based on what they were using in the foodstuffs, you know?

Like, I, there was, I remember they would give us this very specific sort of pale white macaroni and cheese that I was convinced they were cutting with spackle. And I took it and I stuck it on the wall and it stayed. And I jumped up on a table and I said, do you see what they are putting in our bodies? Are you going to let them pollute? Like it was just this whole, I was kind of looking for a door. You know, like I just needed an excuse. But the next day, I went and got my GED, graduated class of

Thursday, 1992. It was cool, you know. I mean, I'm going to ask a dumb question. question. So then what? I immersed myself in the music scene in Des Moines. I started working. This was right before my 19th birthday. I had already, I'd missed a year. I should have been a junior, but I was still a sophomore. And so I'd missed a year of school because of my life in Waterloo. So I was already behind. I was already older than everybody that was there. I didn't want to go to an alternative because I just knew it was going to give me reasons to not go, you know. So I just, I went and got my GED. I started working and I just started working on the idea for my first real band, which

became Stone Sour, which I started in 1992. And we lasted five years until I joined Slipknot. And what was your kind of recreational life? like at this time, were you still, let's say, drinking but not doing other drugs? Yeah, yeah. No, I wasn't doing any drugs, but, you know, obviously you're a part of the nightlife. And, you know, when you're out hanging and stuff, I'm a binge drinker. So, and, you know, depending on the money I have in my pocket, you know, it can be a boozy night or it can be a chill night, you know?

So, you know, I would have massive drunks, but then I would also have drunks that were just hanging out. So I'm going to ask another dumb question, but I think it's important, and I also just really appreciate you, like, you know, letting us kind of poke at you this way. But obviously, you know, drinking serves its own purpose and also is much more kind of, you know, socially acceptable, I would say. What was fulfilled in you that sort of was able to let you exist, let's say, without the drug portion of your life and sort of, because obviously you're still filling that like God-shaped whole, you know, whatever. Yeah, what was it like not doing all the drugs that you had done for quite some time, which of course is like, I mean, I don't want to say enjoyable because I don't want to glamorize it, but it's a lifestyle, but also it does something and lets you have experiences that you then are kind of not having. So I guess, yeah, what filled that? I mean, I don't really know. I mean, the cocaine just allowed me to stay out. And when I was drinking on cocaine, obviously you don't really feel it.

You know, it's just kind of a, you know, it's it's, it's that God button in your head. You're just like, I'm invincible. And you just kind of go. When I quit, I realized that I was really naturally super hyper. So, I mean, you think I'm bouncing now. You should have seen me 25 years ago. I was, they called me Super Bowl for a while because I would just, I mean, just, I would bounce off the walls. It was almost obnoxious.

And I don't know if it was because of the effects that the drugs had on my endorphins or whatever. Like, you know, they just kind of pulse, pulse, pulse. But the booze slowed me down. Got it. My brain was, even though I was kind of hyper-focused and stuff, I was still very chaotic. And that could have been because of age or whatever. But it was hard for me to focus. It was hard for me to settle down, you know.

So drinking nine times out of ten relaxed me. It's like my brain was always like this closed fist. Yeah. And it would just kind of let that go. So when did you get clean or sober or any of those words? I quit drinking the first time December 2003. And I was sober for about three years. years.

Wow. How did you get sober? I just quit. I had reasons to get it together. I had really gone off a deep end, like as far as like drinking was going. Like it kind of all, it was, it had caught up with me to the point where I had at least two bottles of Jack Daniels with me at all times. I would drink all the way up until I left the house.

The only reason I left the house was to go to the bar. And I would order four Jack and Cokes at last call just so I could drink as I'm getting into whatever car I decided to get into. And wake up, rinse, repeat. And it was gross. My health was bad. I was about 50 pounds overweight. My life was chaos. And I was losing my ability to do what I do.

My singing was really getting bad. And it was, yeah. I mean, life just wasn't enjoyable. So that was three years of that. And what were those three years like, generally speaking? It was, well, it was tough. When you eliminate everything that can distract you, you start to see things so clearly. And it made me realize there was a lot of things in my life that were lending itself to a lot of the reasons why I was unhappy, you know.

I was a joyless marriage. We married young, but we didn't, we weren't good for each other. We had a son together, my son Griffin, and I just, it just wasn't, it didn't work, you know. So that didn't last long. We got married after I got sober. At last it almost two years, but then it kind of fell apart. It was the first time I really kind of took stock of who I was. in that moment.

And you're just like, okay, and this is after slip knot. This is after Slipknot. This is after Stone Sauer, getting back together. So now I'm at this whole other place in my life that I have to kind of come to grips with, you know? It's like I'm, I have a career, I have family, I have, you know, responsibilities,

but I also have this ache that needs to be figured out by me, not by other stuff, you know? This is, you know, one of my favorite expressions. If you want to find out why you're using, stop using. Oh, yeah. That's great. That's good, yeah. Yeah, drinking is not the, it's not the thing that's wrong.

It's the thing that we try and do because everything else feels wrong. Right. And that's kind of that, you know, well, sobering is obviously the word. So, yeah, super dying to know. What happened after those three years? Well, I got divorced, started living on my own again. And there's that weird moment where you convince yourself. It's like, oh, well, it was because of all those problems.

Right? I mean, it can't be me. I can drink like other people. Exactly. I can't even say I fell off the wagon because I just kind of started socially drinking and it kind of slow and honestly it never got bad again. Yeah.

I stopped, I stopped drinking largely because A, I had lost my bass player. Paul died that year. That kind of refocuses you is that, you know, your mortality is back in the picture.

And it was a shocking blow. And after that, even though I was still drinking for a minute, I just remember going, I'm not getting anything out of this, you know, like, I miss my man. My hangovers are lasting three days. I'm like, I mean, how old am I? Welcome to drinking past like 28. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I was, God, at the time, I was 38. Oh, as you get towards 40, forget it. Dude. Oh, just the thought of drinking today. Yep. No. Oh, my God. I was thinking about this and I mean, there have been times in my life when I've definitely drank more than I should. It's not, that's not my allergy. Although I do have an allergy to alcohol, which I acquired. I blame you. But one of the things that I remember that completely went away, besides the calories that I wasn't just consuming for no reason.

Right. What started happening, even if I'd just have like a couple drinks, I would wake up hourly. I was like, this is not worth it. But I have to wake up to pee every hour. I don't know. I don't want that life. Anyway. And yes, a hangover, which you can get from two drinks as a grown.

Like, if you're over 40, one mojito will give you a hangover. For two days, I'd have like a migraine. I'm like, this is not worth it. It's not worth it. Well, that's largely the gin. You know, gin was just like, tastes like a Christmas tree anyway. It wasn't the cucumber and the mint. I'll tell you that much.

Yeah. Couldn't have been that, yeah. I wish, I really wish I had a better last day of drinking story. It's so sad. I drank two becks and I wasn't even, didn't even get drunk. I never drank beer anyway. And I just kind of did it out of boredom. And I was kind of on the fence where I was going to stop drinking anyway.

And I remember waking up the next day. And I thought I had the flu. And I was just like, oh. What the hell? And it lasted so long. I was just like, there's no way. There's no way it was these two becks that I drank. And I was just like, you know what?

I'm done. I just, you know what? Keep my tools. I'm never coming back to this job. This is stupid, you know? And that was it. Did you ever, have you ever worked a program or you're just a person who just does it? No, I, you know, I was in N.A. when I was a kid.

I went to Alatine meetings and stuff. But it think it was the day I showed up wasted that they asked me never to come back. You know, there's always that moment where nobody knows. Oh, that's got everybody snowed. And you can wake up and you're like, come on. It's so bad. I have nothing against the program. It's just for me, I just know when it's done, you know.

And once it's done, it's, that's it. You know? And I couldn't say that about the first time that I quit, but I could say it about that last time. I was just like, you know what? It's not for me anymore. And what other support have you, I mean, obviously your social group and, you know, being part of,

I'm making this up, but I have a feeling that like this kind of music also and this kind of like creating together and also the kind of energy that comes from this sort of organized chaos. Right. There's a, there's a real kind of community building, I think, you know, that that must happen. So that's like a, it sounds like a very good and significant support system.

But did you ever, did you ever go to therapy? Did you ever see a counselor? Yeah, I've done, I've done therapy. I've done therapy a lot, actually, over the years. Just to kind of sort out not only my, my various thought processes, but, you know, it's just to kind of to make peace with some of the stuff that I went through when I was younger. Those things creep up, whether you like it or not, you know, especially when you have kids. And, you know, and you're trying to avert the mistakes that, you know, maybe you grew up with the way it was handled.

You know, trying to sometimes doing the same thing that you were used to. And I've never hit my kids or anything, but I've definitely raised my voice. And I realized that that can cause so much anxiety that it's not good. But I didn't learn that until my wife, who is amazing, she read a couple of these books that really showed the effects that that can have. And, you know, talking about it with my therapist and realizing that, you know, it's not just me displacing things. I'm feeling because I can't control a situation.

It's because that ramps up and it feeds their anxiety and it's just it doesn't, nobody wins in that situation. So finding healthier ways to parent has actually kind of rededicated myself to finding a better way to be a better person, you know? How old is Griffin now? Griffin is 19. Wow. Yeah, he's going to be 20 this year and it's my heart just, yeah.

just, just, you know, and he's in, he's in a band that's doing really well right now. They're going, yeah, I know, man. I, as much as I tried to just let him, you know, free range and, you know, just be his own self. At one point when he was younger, he wanted to be a botanist and a video game tester. And I was like, hey, I mean, go, run with the bulls, make it happen. Yeah. And then he just gravitated right, right to the stuff, you know, and I couldn't stop him. You married again?

I did. Yeah. This is actually my third marriage. My last marriage, which was not the Griffin's mother. Yeah, yeah. So it's actually my daughter's mother. Got it. That lasted about eight years.

And, I mean, it was, I won't go into specifics, but it wasn't a good time. How old's your daughter? My daughter's seven. Wow. So, yeah. So I have, let's do the list. I have a high school daughter who is 29. I have Griffin, who's 19, and I have Ryan, my daughter, who's seven.

So I have to be careful every 10 years. Apparently, I'm very fertile. It's very weird. Do you like to talk about the 29-year-old? That's an old child. That's a grown-up. Yeah, Angie. You know, it's weird because her mother and I,

split up when we were very young, you know, and she went her way, I went my way, and it wasn't until the first time I got sober that I really was able to be in her life, you know, so I didn't come into her life until she was about 11. Wow. And even though we have so much in common and we look exactly the same, which, you know, I keep apologizing to her. I'm like, so sorry. I was her father, but it wasn't her dad, you know, and I had,

all the respect in the world for her stepfather. And, you know, you just, you try to develop the best relationship you can, you know. And, you know, it's been up and down over the years. Right now it's down. But at the same time, you know, you can't, you know, you have that love and that love is always going to be there. I'm curious when you stopped smoking cigarettes and why. I quit. Oh, God.

coming up on seven years ago, maybe even longer. I quit because it was just time. My ex-wife and their family, they were talking about quitting. And I've been smoking almost two packs of cigarettes a day since I was 10 years old. Wow. And, yeah, I mean, it is bad, you know. We would steal cigarettes just at 10. You know, we were like a little Dickens novel, for God's sakes.

But, you know, I kind of reached the end of my run with them. And I tried to quit. It was the one thing that I could never quit. I was, that's what I had a feeling you were going to say this. Cigarettes is, I mean, it's a very, very, very, very difficult addiction. Yeah. Yeah. I was able to do it with Chantix.

And I'm not going to turn it into a Chantix commercial, but I'm telling, and I think, I don't know if it was because you could continue to smoke on it. Yeah. And I don't know what it was, but it made every cigarette taste like garbage. Wow. Whereas before, every cigarette tasted like it was kissed by Jesus. I mean, it was so good. And I mean, I know I smelled like death, but I didn't care, you know. I quit.

It was actually right before my spinal surgery. And luckily, I had already been off cigarettes for a while because they were going to make me quit anyway. And I was like, your luck. You caught me at the right time. in my life because I don't have to do that anymore. What was your spinal surgery for? I had a collapsed, two collapsed discs in my C5 and six were completely crushed. We think it was from an injury where I fell off stage in 99 and I landed on my head

and it kind of hyper-compressed them. And then over the years, but then I didn't go get it checked out. Yeah, I was going to say. over the years doing the crazy headbang and stuff. Yeah. I mean, and I was, I could show you footage and you'd be like,

how does a neck even do that? Like, it's so stupid, but that's just what we do. The doctor told me that it was like the worst, it was the worst injury you'd ever seen. He was like, I've seen,

uh, MMA fighters with injuries that don't even come close to that. I had no strength on my right side. Yeah. I was completely off balance. I was borderline incontinent, which is so much fun. And now? After the surgery?

Now, yeah, I had a surgery. They basically, they jacked it up. They replaced the disc because the disc was completely gone. I don't know what it is. It was this fibrous material that basically adheses to or whatever. But they had to shave the bone out of my spinal cord because it was like growing into it. Yeah. Yeah, it was gnarly.

I still have a, I still have a narwharf. bruise on it that you can see in in x-rays. Wow. How has that impacted your performance and how is basic, you know, it's a young man's game to be that energetic. You're not wrong. Luckily, I still think I'm 28. It affected me for the first year.

It was tough, man. I had to wear a neck brace on stage to remind myself not to do all that crazy stuff. I gained a lot of weight because I was. was enabled because I was very athletic up until that point. I would work out all the time. And it's been hard to kind of find the balance with that, especially at my age. You know, once you hit a certain age, man, that metabolism, it's, you know, it's, it's damn near finite. So, um, so it triggered a lot of depression for me. Um, but, you know, at the same time, it was, you know, the further I got away from it. I did a lot of PT for it and everything. And I was able to

get the strength back on my right side. My balance is back. I didn't lose my voice, which was rad, because they had to pull everything to the side because they went through here. Oh, got it. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's good.

I'm fine now. That's an intense surgery. You have many books, as our research has told us, and what's interesting to me, more than the books themselves, that each one has a title, and then it also has an or, and in brackets, it has another title.

That was not my choice. That was, yeah. I hate it. Yeah. Well, this might not be great then because I'm going to dive into one of the or titles. Oh, I can't wait. That's my favorite one too. The title of the book is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven.

I knew it. I knew it was going to. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Or. Or? How I made peace with the paranormal and stigmatized zealots and cynics in the process.

And I'm very curious about how I made peace with the paranormal. and what that entails for you. Well, I mean, the whole book is about my experiences with what I call intelligent energy. A lot of other people would call them ghosts or spirits or whatever, which, you know, I mean, it definitely applies. But I was always hesitant to talk about that stuff because it almost always came back to religion. And I've never been a religious person. I've always been much more of a pragmatic, practical, more scientific, I guess, is to put it a better way.

So I always struggled with that. It was just like, well, I have all these things that happen to me. I've seen that I've experienced that I've been able to share with other people, but I don't know how to wrap my head around it. Like, what is it? you know, so the book was really my way of finding a thought process that made sense of all of it. And then that was it. So I mean, Corey, you've just hit like our sweet spot here.

So like, we need you to be really, really specific right now. Like, there's nothing, there's pretty much nothing you can say that we're going to be like, that's crazy. Like, we're, we're, we're out there. Right. So be really specific right now. Let's start with the experience of the paranormal and start talking a little bit about like. Before you had to make sense of it, you had to experience it.

Right. And we are not teasing. No. We are not. Like this is literally like you're in a very safe place. And I also think it's really important. Oh, trust me. It's, it's, I've been in hostile places.

It doesn't bother me. No, no. But I'm just saying like our interest is like a lot of what we do here. is trying to introduce, like, where is the science to a lot of things that people dismiss? Like, what is our cognitive and conscious experience? Like, there are things we cannot explain.

There are things that we cannot quantify. I believe that as a scientist, and we both are very spiritual people. So we're not asking because we want to be like, oh, he believes this. Like, we're legitimately interested in an intelligent, articulate person. Having experience with intelligent energy.

Because when we say it, people are like, they're nuts, but this guy. Well, I mean, I can, I'll give you an example based on one part of my life, which happened when, I mean, to give you a little background, like stuff like this has happened throughout my life since I was younger. I now think a lot of it has to do with the energy that I give off because everybody has different energy that they give off. Everybody's energy feeds off of one another, and it can feed different, feeds.

fields of energy from different planes, if that makes any sense. Like, it's certain bundles of energy are attracted to other bundles of energy. So they tend to circumnavigate them sometimes, which is what people would call being haunted. So when I was the first house I ever bought was... I'm going to cry. He just made me nervous. Sorry. Oh, you're fine.

No, no, no, it's okay. I was okay. You need to take a minute? I won't make it, I promise I won't make it too creepy, all right? The first house I bought was a Georgian, a Georgian colonial that was built in 1905. And I, we moved in. And, you know, I was, I used to things happening every once in a while at other people's places and stuff. But this was different.

Like, a lot of, you know, things, once we got moved in, especially when we had the kids there. And by the kids, I mean, Griffin was born in that house and my ex-ex wife's daughter, who would have been my stepdaughter at the time, lived there as well, up top, like between visits and whatnot. So it started slow, things being moved around and whatnot, which, you know, is you can shock that up and you can do whatever, you know. and then it got to the point where things were being thrown at us, like for real things being thrown. And just the whole lot, you mean like objects moving through space? Yes. So you're just sitting there.

Physical objects. Any time of day, it doesn't matter time of day. It wasn't really a certain time of day. It was just when certain people were around. Like it was because there's a lot of to do about whether there's a witching hour or anything or whether or not there's a certain hour when this stuff happens. I've seen things that would apply to that, but from my standpoint, it didn't really matter. It was usually when people are around and these bundles of energy either wanted to show off or they wanted to communicate in a weird way.

So what can they do? They move things or they throw things to get attention. It was never malevolent. Like it was never gnarly. It was intimidating, but it was never anything until. We discovered this one entity. He, we called it, we called him the shadow man. Okay, I'm never going to sleep again.

I'm never going to. You're not going to want to hear this. So my son, my son Griffin, he was, God, I want to say he was about three. It was about three at the time. And whenever I would come home from tour, he would beg me. He's just like, please, please, please, please, sleep. in the room with me, sleep in the room with me. And one night, I was just like, I was like, son, I can't, you know, you're getting to be a big boy, you got to sleep by yourself.

Why do you want me to sleep in here? And he said, because when you're in here, the shadow man doesn't keep me awake. Hold on. The shadow man doesn't what? Doesn't keep me awake. So that, I was like, oh, Christ. So I knew all this stuff that was going on in the house. There was weird things that were going on in the third floor.

There was a third floor attic that was basically another bedroom that guests would stay in for about three hours. And then they would come running out. They were like, nope, we're not, no, I'm not going to do this. Like people would have welts on their legs from being, yeah, I mean, it was gnarly. How long did you live in this haunted house? Up until I got divorced. And then we sold it and we split it. But some of those entities attached themselves to me, not the dark one.

But there were two younger entities that basically followed me, I think, because I was a father. And they were attracted to that energy that I gave up. How do you know they were younger? Describe it. Like, what does that mean to you? How do you know? I saw them. I saw them.

They would run in my old house. They would run across the top floor at a split level. So you would be walking in the door and up the stairs, you would see the second floor, right? And you could see about this much of the second floor because the ceiling cut it off. And you would see their shoes run across. I don't like that. They would stack Griffin's books in the middle of his bedroom. And then when you would put them away again,

you would come back and they'd have stacked it again. Do you know anything else about them? No, we never tried to communicate with them, you know? I mean, to me, I didn't want to know who they were. I just wanted to be able to live with them, you know? Like it wasn't anything where I was trying to get answers or dispel them because I didn't get gnarly vibes from them. So I wasn't worried about them hurting anybody because it was all childlike stuff.

Like they would, I would be making Griffin's breakfast and lunch in the morning before he, I would take him to school. And they would take his thermos and throw it across the kitchen. And it would hit the aluminum sink and it would and it would just, you know, I haven't had any coffee yet. So I'm just like, whoo-ha-ha-ha-ha-it would scare the Evalive anatomy. How did the shadow man keep him up? Did he ever, do you ever explain that to you? So the shadow man would stand in the corner and he would just,

he would stare and then he would come towards you. I saw this happen. So that night, I slept in bed with him. And I woke up and he had like this night lightish thing. It wasn't a night light, but it cast enough of a glow that it kind of illuminated the room. And we're talking about a call it a six by six. It was a little room, you know.

And I woke up and I'm fully awake. This wasn't something where it was kind of in between, you know, REM state and whatever. I was awake. And I looked up and I saw him. There he was. And I closed my eyes again and I opened them again and he was still there. He came towards me. He stood there and then he vanished.

And he just evaporated. What do he look like? In that state, is he solid? Is he translucent? Is he hologram? Yeah. What do he look like? It was this weird mixture.

Like it was solid, but you could almost, you could see through him on the edges. What is he wearing? Like, what was he wearing? What time period is he from? It was just, it was just kind of dark clothing. Like it was almost like a suit. Cloak. Oh.

It was a very, yeah. I mean, it was, if I had to put a year on it, it would have been something I would have seen 1910s, 1920s, somewhere in there, like a very rustic, almost like, I was. I don't want to say a preacher's suit, like a country preacher's suit, but something like that, you know. But like I said, it was very faint. Like it was one of those things where you could see the details. And I could see his eyes. But his mouth was just this thin line, you know?

Like he was just, it was just very thin. And yeah. Did your wife at the time, like what was her experience of this? Oh, yeah. she had to deal with it while I was on the road. And did she see them as well? Or was she like, because look,

it takes a little bit of having an experience like that. You're talking about it now as though like, oh yeah, that's just what happened. But when you're first experiencing that, and if you're not open to that as a possibility, or if two people in a relationship don't have that same understanding, there's like.

You would have to hospitalize me. I mean, like, I would literally be like, I, you have to, you would have to hospital. I could not. Well, you don't like anything that's,

not predictable. I'm crying just hearing it. I can't. So did these, did these entities, did they stay with you then? They did for a while. They honestly, they did right up until, I want to say until about six years ago, I feel like they started to kind of dissipate or they attached themselves to somebody else because I stopped spending as much time in Iowa. I was spending more time in Las Vegas. Maybe Iowa's haunted. The whole freaking state could be. I mean, it's, it's, it's gnarly enough, you know? I think it's because because I wasn't there, the natural attraction that that energy had started to kind of fade, you know? So here's an interesting question. Do you have other instances besides this of having a notion of kind of your energy? Meaning,

are there other, you know, I'm very curious, like, has anyone ever done like a past life regression on you? No, but my wife, my Elysia keeps trying to ask me to do that to see, like, if there's something that runs through. I'm going to say something super out there, but maybe you're totally comfortable with this. When I talked, maybe I shouldn't say this in front of him because I might freak him out. When I talked to somebody like this, right, and he has this like, you do, you have this kind of like out of place, out of time, you know, meaning like you've always kind of like stood out and you're just like really different. And, like, you know, like you carved all these paths that were like very different, different, different. And then when I hear things like this,

if you were to tell me that this person, if we were able to access, that his energy existed in another time, I would completely buy that. I'd be like, this is a person who was, who in this iteration, I mean, that's, in this iteration, this is the expression of whatever soul this is, we call him Corey,

and he's in this band. and he does all these things, but there's something about this, he's a special person. The essence of him has existed in different sort of... There's something very... Almost like an energy adherence. Well, and I'm thinking like,

I always say, a thousand years ago, 5,000 years ago, who's this guy, right? He's got some... I say this about you. Whatever, if this iteration is not the only one, in some past life, there's something... I mean, you're special in your own way.

But like, you have very special skills that I feel have existed. If you existed in other realms, they were, and I feel that way about this guy. Corey, when was the first time that you began to experience what we'll call paranormal, but really is maybe just extra sensory observations? I was 10, actually. My friends and I, we went to this abandoned house that was not too far from the apartments that I grew up in in Des Moines. That's when you started drinking. He started drinking at 10.

I did, but it wasn't around there. This might have caused the drinking. It was a gnarly, it was a gnarly experience, man. There was this entity that as we were coming up the stairs, we saw this glow kind of come from one of the upstairs bedrooms. You know, we saw it getting closer. I mean, it was starting to illuminate us. We shoot out the door and we see this thing coming towards us.

And we, you know, kind of scream. We didn't talk to it or anything, but we were so freaked out that, I mean, and this was back when, you know, 10-year-olds could sneak out at night and it wasn't like a weird thing, you know, like we were having a sleepover and we just decided to skip out, you know? Like, so we, but we were only like two or three blocks from my house, you know. And we all lived in the same apartment complex. So it wasn't that big a deal. But we came screaming back.

Dude, it was like an 80s movie. Like we were like, it was crazy. But the weird thing was, was that me and my one friend who I won't, I won't, you know, drop anything on him right now. Like we were the ones who we wanted to talk about it. And then our two other friends didn't. They basically spent the whole time convincing themselves

that it didn't happen, you know? And obviously, there's a fear there as you recall things from when you're younger to expound on it and to kind of fill in the blanks and maybe make it something that wasn't what you saw. But I've spent so many years not walking people through it. Like the most I ever did was in the first chapter of the book. But I've spent more time looking at it and not talking about it. that I've been able to keep it very fresh in that respect, you know? So that's the first time I really realized that A,

there's something that I can't explain and that is completely different than what's on this plane. And I don't want to not feel it, you know? I just want to understand it. I think there's a lot of people who use drugs and alcohol as a way to avoid extra sensory experience or who have extra sensory experience

who have no who feel overwhelmed by it or who can't process it and so they can't reconcile whatever that sensory experience is with their normal reality and integrate those two.

Right. No, you're absolutely right. Or they experience something and so they chase certain drugs, chemicals, to expand it. So it's almost like the flip side of that coin is like, what do you want to do? Do you want to forget it or do you want to chase it? You want to go down the rabbit hold or do you want to fill it in? You know, sometimes when, I mean, from what I'm understanding, and I know you have also

some experience in this, when you have access to something, let's say, that not only is unusual, but is, you know, mocked, ridiculed. and in our culture, for the most part, really not acceptable, right? Right. What does that bring up kind of, you know, like, you kind of walk around the world then, like I have something that people not only don't understand, but don't experience. Like, what does that feel like? Corey had to add in his book, he then had to stigmatize zealots and cynics in the process.

So I'm curious. So I think that kind of leaves in. And the reason I put that is because you're kind of stuck in the, middle because you have this thing that you're trying to figure out and so many people over here either want to deny it that you're lying or you misheard or it was a collision of sounds and lights that triggered something in your brain or there's people over here that want to say oh they're demons and angels and all of this supernatural stuff that I don't believe in you know so being stuck in the middle there,

again, it was almost like my approach to being sober. It's like, I got to figure this out on my own, you know, and do it in a way where it's not going to keep me up at night. I need to just make peace with it. Well, I'm glad you've made peace with it. You've now made me unable to sleep at night. And I'm going to take up drinking again. I'm not going to sleep anyway.

I might as well drink. Take NyQuil. It's the easy out. You just put your headphones on. You'll be fine. I can't. Have you taken that sensory awareness that you obviously have to be aware

of other factors around you? And have you looked at all at your own energy field? So for example, if you were to close your eyes, for example, and try to be aware of your own field as though you would,

this another entity, but maybe it's not throwing things at you. Can you like close your eyes and sort of see or either see or feel your own? energy feel? I can feel it. I mean, there are definitely times where I can feel whether it's, whether it's in the form of like a heat emanating or it's just something. Wait, wait, people, people more specific. Y'all are talking like this is just like a normal thing. Tell me what it is.

Is it something that just like happens like you're like, he's explaining. No, no, no. I'm saying, does it happen like you're going to the bathroom or like you're having sex or is it like if you sit and think when, when does it happen? Just any random time? Yeah, I mean, it's just, yeah, you just kind of become aware that there's almost like something coming off of you. Like wait, like, like you're almost like there's that peripheral side of your vision. You can almost see the waves, but then you look and you can't. But you're just, you're very aware of the fact that you're giving off, you know, I don't know whether it's body thermal units or anything like that, but there's definitely

something that is emanating from us that is one of the. reasons why we tend to group with people who we enjoy because I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the energy is similar. And when people, like you, you ever been in that situation where you're like, you know what? I don't like that guy. Different energy. All the time every day with everyone I meet. No, trust me. I could talk that all day. But yeah, I mean, it's, I'm very aware of it. And I don't know if it's because of emotion or if it's just because of my chemical makeup, but I definitely know that there's something I give off, I give good energy. Let's put it that way.

I guess, you know, it's the only way to say it. This is like when people say to me that I give the most reasonable explanation of God, right, like from a rational person, like this is the most, he's like an accidental, you know, It's not like he's like a hippie with like crystals and like he accidentally came across access to this thing that we don't normally associate, you know, with like a person who sings in Slipknot and writes books and is from Iowa. I got a lot of dogs in the fire. I don't know if you got that you're talking about. He's got a whole cupboard full of crystals just off camera. I do. I'm just like. I do want to ask a bit about your, the artwork.

on your body because I'm curious if this has been a long progression or I'm just curious if there's any particular significance if you have a theme if it's been a bit in there. It's almost like an accidental theme. A lot of my

pieces are kind of two sides of a coin that deal with duality. They deal with Yinn and Yang really without being a yin and yang symbol. My chest piece is actually the sun and the moon. You know, obviously it's the light side and the dark, which deals with the duality of

the soul. So a lot of my stuff is kind of like me being stuck in between those polar opposites. And then there's stuff like, you know, I have a tattoo with my wife right here. So that's pretty cool, you know. And she's like a superhero me, so it's pretty rad. But then I have, you know, I have David Bowie here. I have Hunter S. Thompson here. I have Keith Ledger here.

Wow. Yeah, I mean, I'm just covered in stuff. You know, this is actually a zombie bite that I actually have. Oh, got it. Like right here. And every couple years, I have my tattoo artist spread the disease up a little more, you know, just to creep people out. It's like, he's infected.

It's one of them, you know. What's on your legs? My legs, I have a tattoo of my late bass player. Paul as a tribute to him. I have a tattoo of a Griffin that I got right after Griffin was born. Oh, sweet. Corey Taylor, this was so awesome. I mean, I feel very bad that we didn't talk more about your really, really incredible musical life and career.

But there are so many parts. Exactly. Like, there's so many parts of you that this has just been such a delight. You are so, so fascinating. I hope we meet in many other iterations. because you're just super awesome. I'd love to do this again. This was a blast.

I appreciate it. Season three, he comes back. We do past life regression for all of us. We find out what time periods his energy has existed in. I mean, this is a man I want to literally send to a really good craniosacral therapist and be like, put your hands around this man's energy. Tell me what you see. All right.

That'll be another episode. All right. Scott is not convinced we're doing that. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. You are so welcome, guys. Thank you very much for having me. Okay, I'm going to tell you a story.

I feel like you're teasing me. Nope. I was in Los Angeles. You're going to be scary again? I was working as a property manager for an apartment complex. We had been there for a few years. It's a 50-unit apartment complex, and this single woman, she was a makeup artist in the industry, moves in. she's in her late 20s probably.

I don't like it. Super creative artist. And, you know, we're friendly with her. She's, you know, like young and hip and sort of we're friendly and see each other passing on the property. After she's been in her apartment for, I don't know, like three, two, three months, she calls me one day and she says, you know, I have something to ask. you, but like, I really don't want you to think I'm crazy. She goes, I think my apartment is haunted. And I say, no, that's not crazy.

You know, I haven't experienced anything specifically, but like, what's going on? She goes, I don't know, but I just, like, feel this weird sensation in my apartment and, like, I just can't shake it. And I don't know what's going on. And as the good property manager that I am, I'm not very good at, like, replacing ceiling fans or, like, fixing broken pipes. But she's like, when she says that, I'm like, you know what, I can help you. So I grab my sage and my incense and I go knocking on her door at, you know, it's like 10.30 on a Saturday morning. And I'm like, let's feel it out. And she's like very thankful.

And I light my sage and my incense. and I start going around each corner of the house. Who taught you to do that? Can you give us some context? I will, but I'm going to go this first. And I start to sort of feel out each section. And I'm lighting the incense and I'm sort of asking that the space be cleared and that only that which is for her highest good will exist in that space and that everything else be cleared out.

That this is her place and that we should move on. and I go through the living room and I go through the kitchen and we go through one of the her bedroom and then we go through actually sorry we go through the spare bedroom which was her office

but you don't want to tell people why you know how to do this I'm going to but I'm getting to this part first and then we go into her bedroom and she's standing in the hallway outside of her bedroom and we get to the last corner of the house and all of a sudden

this like extreme cold this weird sensation just like comes over me and I'm like, oh, that feels weird. And it's totally different feeling than anything else in the house. And I'm like, oh, okay, let's just pause here for a moment. And I like put extra focus and I'm like, whatever this is isn't supposed to be here. And as I start to like do that, all of a sudden, she rushes to the bathroom, vomits out of nowhere. The coldness kind of like goes like a flash like, it shifts. It stops. It stops being.

cold. She comes back. She's like, oh my God, I don't know what happened. We sort of process that together for a little bit. She goes, huh, I feel different. Now, she's just obviously had a physical purge. And we part our separate ways. And after that, she's like, the place felt totally different to her. You don't like that story. I don't like that story. But why don't you, can you tell us just a little bit about why you think about clearing space? What I was going to say is like, how old were you when you learned about Sage and that that's used to clear spaces? I mean, were you 12? Were you 18? Were you 34? I was 17 when I began to explore the fact that energy, for lack of a better word, I don't like that word because I think it is not

encompassing of what it is to have extrasensory perception. But I do believe that we exist in multiple forms. And when I was asking Corey about, like, can he see his energy field? I definitely think that there is, whether it's heat, whether, you know, what did he describe it as? You know, he had like a good term for it. Biothermic. Yeah. When you get a biothermal scan, you see levels of what is considered energy, heat, movement all around.

Yeah, it's molecules. There you have different movement. Yep. And so there are layers outside of our physical body that are surrounding us at all times. And I think that those can be out of whack. I've, you know, in my own mindfulness practice, have gone in and sort of just had a visualization and sort of brought my, like, when we think about being centered, what are we talking about? Like, my thoughts are all over the place and I'm sort of all out of whack and I've brought my

thinking to a slower standpoint and brought my. energy back together around me and sort of, you know, when people feel discombobulated, you can feel that. Don't try and use big words like Corey's him. It's not the sage that clears anything. It's us to using that as a tool to say, I'm going to sort of tune in to things that exist that I may not be able to see. I'm fairly fascinated by his visual experience and being able to, like, you know,

have a totally different perception of reality than most people have. I'd like to add, I'd like to insert one piece of information here. Make it some science. Well, yeah, I really hope people have stuck with us, you know, through this because I'm just going to, I'm going to say the word meridians because it is, you know, one of the, one of the kind of more, I don't want to say relatable, but it's one of the more kind of practical, tangible things that, you know, for thousands of years, Chinese medicine. you know, traditional Chinese medicine has worked from,

which it was, it falls into this category of things that people were like, hmm, that's bull, like, Chinese medicine. What's that, you know, because like, in the Western world, it's like, if I don't have a... You can't MRI yet. Exactly. You can't. But what we do know, you know, and I'm not going to go into the detail because we just went through a lot, but what we do know is that there are,

you know, there are tracts that run. along the body that have groupings of neurons and clusters of neurons and all sorts of, you know, receptors that, you know, have families, meaning there's families across your body, meaning a family is, it's like it's grouped together. And what acupuncture does is it operates, and reflexology, you know, to a lesser, yeah, to a lesser extent. But yeah, it is tart. It is targeting energy, chi. She's using air quotes here. I'm using air quotes. That moves along and through and around these meridians. And, you know, what

chi, like, there's a, there is a scientific kind of understanding of what that chi, what that energy is. And yes, a lot of it is blood flow. And, you know, there's very, very important oxygen that is carried, you know, as part of heme, you know, and hemoglobin. And you're, kind of, you know, circulatory system. It is opening things up with oxygen. And oxygen, you know, when we hear oxygen, it's like, oh, you breathe it. No, it's actually like it's a, it's a thing that has atoms that are rotating and revolving in certain ways. And there are, there's a charge to oxygen. It has an ionic presence in your body. And that makes me cry for other reasons, just because the body is amazing. I'll say one more thing about this. As, as we've talked about, I've had four

hernia and I've been cut twice hip to hip and I was shocked when completely Western surgeons that I was working with described to me how they were cutting through meridians and I was like oh meaning it is it's even making its way into not only Western medicine but like surgical medicine which you know is some of the most you know technical you know annoying in some cases detail oriented, quantifiable, you know. Yeah. And then of course the holistic, you know, healers that I've worked with have been able to find other ways that that cutting, you know, has interrupted. Blood flow, like all those things. And I also, you know, I have a section that I can't feel. Anyway, I have so many things to say, but that was incredible. And I cried because it made me

very uncomfortable. And I was looking up, why am I crying when I'm scared? Why is that? Why are you crying when you're scared? Why are you scared? I don't know. It's very scary. Is it scary because you can't quantify it? Your science brain is unsure of it. It feels overwhelming. It feels unpredictable. I mean, you know, one of the reasons people cry is because it releases cortisol. But why are you crying? So I don't like horror movies at all. I don't like being scared, but I'm not scared by this. So I guess where I'm going is asking you to push a little further and say, why is it that a conversation about extra sensory? Okay, but what is it that you don't, you like?

Is it that it's unpredictable? Is it that it's... Oh, I think it's like that it exists. Like, it creeps me out. It, like, a little bit makes me feel like, am I going crazy? I go to the hospital now. That's like, that's what it feels like. Like, what if there are, yeah, it's like there's a lot of what if and like...

It opens up a Pandora's box for you. No, it's not, no, it's not even the Pandora's. box, it's just like, it feels almost like what if I found out that like my parents weren't my parents. It feels like so removed from things that are comfortable. That's a Pandora's box, isn't it? It's just like, no, I'm using Pandora's box wrong, maybe. I mean, it's like, it's like you're ripping. Maybe they didn't have mythology in Toronto.

You're, you're basically exposing the matrix. You're showing that there could, you could be living in a reality that is not fully formed. And that, right, and that makes me, yes. And the fact that. understood. Right. The fact that it is so far outside of like, yes, not just my scientific knowledge, like our understanding of the world, very scary, but also not dissimilar from like when I find something out like that the government's been lying to us about something. I get that it makes me feel jittery and unstable. If anyone listening has had an extrasensory experience, let us know

at Bialik Breakdown on Instagram. Send us a message or post and tag us. very curious. And also friendly reminder that Slipknot, they're going to tour. I mean, now I feel like I need to see him in concert because I need to see. Maybe I become his biggest fan. Then I start stalking him and he gets scared. And we don't joke about stalking. Their Not Fest Road Show begins in Fargo, North Dakota, March 16th. Also a reminder to check out Corey's new solo album, CMFB.com.c.s. Gosh, from our paranormal breakdown

to the one we hope you never have or maybe that you do have if you're okay with that sort of thing and it doesn't make you cry. We'll see you next time. It's My and Beolic's Breakdown. She's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two.

One fiction. And now she's gonna break down. It's a breakdown. She's gonna break it down.