Modern Wisdom - #937 - Jeremy Renner - How To Overcome The Worst Pain Of Your Life

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Jeremy Renner is an actor, musician, and an author. From Hollywood’s biggest star to a near-tragic ending, Jeremy Renner’s comeback is a story of pain, recovery, and incredible resilience. How did the Oscar nominee fight to bounce back, and what’s next now that he’s fully recovered? Expect to learn the real story of what happened to Jeremy during the snowplow accident, what it feels like to get run over and see your eyeball fall out of it’s socket, how Jeremy was able to recover so well and look as just as he did before the accident, how to deal with excruciating amount of pain, how Jeremy’s meditation practices came in handy during his darkest hours, what it was like being a part of The Avengers & the craziness of being one of the biggest stars in the world, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you sick of people asking you how you are? No, no, no. I mean, it's, it's, it's, well, there's a real honest answer that comes behind it, right? Whether they're asking or not, you know, you get a real honest answer. And, and sometimes it's in the inopportune times. I remember doing a podcast and, but it was over Zoom, right? And the technical issues that were happening to set it up and the thing and what might to use and how to use this. I was I'm not the tech guy. And I was getting very frustrated and I was getting probably pretty angry. And like the beginning of this podcast was pretty awful. I was quite, quite a cunt. But but they asked you to look, I'm sorry,

I'm just gonna work through this and thing. I'm'm not going to attack. And I just have this real, realist, honest way to kind of live. So I'm not sick in the long way to answer this. I'm not really sick of people asking how I am because I just really do tell them. And if they do care about, you know, if it's about the recovery or if it's about just sort of my health or even mental health. You know, I don't care how they intended it. I just sort of explain kind of how I am in a really truthful, honest way. It's quite beautiful.

Have you always been like that? I've always been pretty direct, but I don't think I'd be as open and revealing. I'm much more open and revealing because of having to focus on myself so much. Why do you think that is? No time to obfuscate or sort of play the social moray game? Yeah, I was never good at that, man. I'm like, I'm in a crowd of people, I all get anxiety and, you know, I'd have to like, medicate with like, you know, alcohol or something to sort of calm the nerves of being around so many people. I always think that it's gonna be a fire, so many people are gonna die and people are gonna get hurt. People are kind of terrible to each other in large crowds.

The more people in a room, the respect level for humanity kind of diminishes. Yeah, the more humans they are, the less humane they are. Exactly. And I just refuse to be in that environment because I think it's disgusting. That behavior, I'm very affected by it and very sensitive to it. So I just choose not to be in those environments. It sounds like you've got, I don't know, a little bit of a nervous disposition. I think I would say that that's my kind of background too. Thinking, sometimes overthinking,

looking for potential errors and issues, and maybe being a little bit sensitive to the energy of what's going on around you. Definitely very sensitive, I've always been an observer, and quite insular in my thoughts and things. I'm not a talker of small things. I can't really have any quite small trivial talk. I certainly can have a good time until jokes and da da da,

but most of the conversations I have are quite in depth, they're quite thoughtful or spiritual or psychological, emotionally driven, connective sort of tissue, not just sort of like, let's just talk about whatever, the Starbucks order. I mean, I just don't belong in that conversation. But that's just me. When I know those things about myself,

I just try to put myself not in those situations, so I don't set myself up to fail. Is there a challenge with wanting that level of openness, that level of emotional connection vulnerability, but also having an additional level of scrutiny. Lots and lots of attention, press, people caring, so these are kind of two things that are a little bit at odds there. Yeah, but not now. It used to be.

Because the platform was to be a famous person talking about a movie or some work you did. This is not that, right? I, I'm here today to talk about health and wellness and overcoming obstacles and it's nothing more human than. So it feels much more personal. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it's more, I think exciting because I think there, there are willing ears. I don't have to force, Hey, I'm here to tell you about this Avenger movie. And here I put a lot of willing years for the Avenger movie. Yeah, there was a lot of willing ears, but I couldn't really talk about anything. And then, you know, you're kind of not, you're selling something, but you're kind of selling something. This I'm not, man.

I really am not. And it's there, there, there's, I think, I still am not sure how and why there is interest in something and me dying coming back perhaps. You know, I don't really know what's interesting. I can tell you why it's interesting to me. When you want to see me, is that I'm not fucking dead. That's why it's really cool, man. I don't know for anybody else.

They're still alive. They're all doing great. For me, I'm happy just to kind of keep moving through my days and getting better. That's why it's really cool, man. I don't know for anybody else. They're still alive. They're all doing great. For me, I'm happy just to keep moving through my days and getting better. That's really exciting to me. That makes me feel quite alive. Did it feel, it sounds like one of the byproducts of movie stardom is a bit of constriction then. A level of constraint that must be day to day,

hello sir, you need to be awake in the trailer at this time, we need to have you in hair and makeup by then, these are the lines, these are the scenes, this is sit in the seat, hang on, sorry, the DP's fucked it again, you're going to have to sit back down for another 90 minutes while he tries to fix the lighting. Yeah.

But then as you spread out into the public world as well, it's pretty carefully controlled, we need to be focused toward the movie, like box office, box office, box office. In that way, has this been a sort of break glass moment that's allowed you to sort of really step outside of yourself and not feel so constrained by just being the movie person? Yeah, yeah.

And it's been that way for a minute, but now there's sort of a sort of byproduct of this change, but now there's sort of a sort of byproduct of this change, this shift from, you know, being famous for XYZ, whatever it is for people. And then now it kind of wipes away, at least temporarily, that it's more about the man that I am, where I've overcome some obstacles, and not that I have a fake bow and arrow in a movie.

It's something much more real and something really quite tender and beautiful. I get these amazing exchanges on the street instead of like the rude sort of in the middle of spaghetti dinner with my daughter taking selfies that I owe them apparently. It's now like, we're glad you're here. You fought through something really amazing, whatever, it's like really thoughtful, amazing, almost like sort of fortune cookie lines of like just beautiful sentiments that are connective and not like, I deserve a selfie.

It's really flipped on its head. It's quite beautiful. It's... See you, not the character. Yeah, yeah. And that's what CEO, not the character. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what makes this kind of exchange so great. I don't know. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about or have anything really to say. Except I can have a conversation about real things.

And if you have certain things, you know, you write down like, I think this is interesting or let's talk about this. And, um, I can do that because I, I because all I have to do is be me and that's the coolest thing to be. But I don't typically get to do that because I'm out like you're saying. Is it some other sort of kind of like when your life's planned out every 10 minutes and you know you get a bathroom break and I can be me and go to the bathroom. Your bathroom breaks are scheduled.

Yeah. You're kidding. Sometimes they're not. Right, okay. Just hold it in. Press tours and things like that. Yeah. Yeah It's pretty it's pretty crazy. But you know Do the things you love man, that's it Just do the things I love don't worry about it. I

I Wonder how many I? Wonder how many other guys and girls from your industry have this sort of odd cathartic daydream of something happening to them that kind of relinquishes them. I'm not sure. Yeah, I get a few of the guys that get one. What is it that you really admire about Jeremy's career? Well, you know, the Avengers thing was all right, but that bit where he got

run over by the snow plow, that really was peak. Yeah, it is, it really is, man. I mean, I highly recommend it. At least if the outcome is my outcome. Yep. I don't recommend it, right? It's excruciating. But the amount of gifts that came from such a thing,

I think are, I guess to me, I mean, it's all my life is and what it was filled with gratitude and love and truth and pure joy. It's just really clear like all the white noise is gone and for someone to have that in their life. Do you have to die to do it? No. It's part of the reason why I wrote the book. There's a lot of things I did learn and maybe other people can't. There's a lot of people that struggle. I got maybe other people can't. You know, there's a lot of people that struggle.

I got some life hacks to help you with struggle and pain and pain management. All those type of things. Like, even as a famous person, there is some, like, probably, I think could be some envious things too, like you said, from it. Because there was a lot of great things that came from such a horrific moment. But I'd again, I'd do it again in two seconds for the right reason. I'd probably not jump back on that machine this time. I don't know what I'd do. What were you actually trying to do?

You were trying to stop it from hitting? To crush from crushing my nephew. Nephew. Yeah, from this big giant snow blade and just going towards him and he was at the truck that was perpendicular and just gonna crush him. So you jumped up to get the cockpit? I jumped up to try to stop it. Right. To pull some... Yeah, it knocked me off and it hit the wrong button. It knocked me off and it went forward on him. I'm off from, off on the scene, some machine's running on its own now.

That's never happened. So yeah. Yeah, so I probably wouldn't jump back on the machine. Or maybe I would, you know? You don't get the opportunity to think and reflect back on what you do, you know, you just do it or don't. And then I'd rather be me than my nephew. You know what I mean? I don't want to deal with like the haunting images

on New Year's Day, my nephew split in half, you know? Yeah. It's strange thinking about these people that come up to you and they see you. They see something that's really true to you. And I don't know, I wonder how many people, how many other people, even if it's not as performative as being an actor, have this sense of having to show up as someone. And when someone comes up and says, well done, there's a degree of hollowness to the praise because this is me, but it's me as a performer. It's not me, right? Right. I'm aware that this is an artistic outlet for you. It's a calling that you have in life.

Somebody's a musician. Somebody's a presentation, a coach that goes into businesses. Somebody's a presentation, a coach that goes into businesses, somebody's a PT, whatever. I really loved what you did with my wife's transformation for her wedding or whatever. Thank you so much. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but like, what about me? There's a need. Yeah, yeah, well, there's that.

You just have to, yeah, look, there's great things that come with being famous and allows a lot of freedom and a lot more choices as hopefully doing something you love to do. Hopefully you're not famous for like being a serial killer or something, right? and allows a lot of freedom and a lot of more choices as hopefully doing something you love to do. Hopefully you're not famous for like being a serial killer or something, right? But you know, in the world,

if you're a famous football player or whatever the heck it is, you just have to sort of take, you know, yeah, that's gonna be a feeling. You're not gonna be seen and witnessed, but how they see you, like, I like to be, I'm glad I'm seen as the, at least they're picking out the right roles. Oh, I love you in this, I love you in the Hurt Locker, I love you in the town, you're not picking out something from, you know, back in

94 or something. You're picking out the right ones. I'm like, good, I'm glad you like me for those ones. I'm happy about those movies too. And yeah, there's, there's, I don't take emptiness with it. Like, I look at it from like, it's, it, you have to sort of filter through, uh, this is what they know you as. You know what I mean? And not, and, and then you go at the end of the day and there's too much of it. You're like, okay, look, I just need to, I can only have much tolerance in to, to deal with, okay, I'm still a human being.

I can't, I'm just not this cardboard cut out of me, right. That people know me as. So that's why, you know, I just, but I make decisions about that. Like I'll stay home more often, or I have, unless I have a lot of tolerance in my tank of tolerance to like, so I can emotionally accept this and have my time and I'm touched and pulled and fingered and all sorts of weird things happen. Is that a, you got to have enough tolerance to be fingered.

Yeah. To be figured. Now I don't get, I don'tered. Yeah, to be fingered. Now I don't get, I don't, yeah, it's not so bad now. I think people look at me, or I feel like they look at me with more fragility, so they don't come in like throw me around or like smash me around a bit and pull me. Um, it feels a little different now, which is great. I'm great.

Okay. Happy about that. Yeah. So, I, I, the kind of elephant in the room, I guess. And I didn't know that you'd gone through your accident. I didn't know that that had happened. I was like, yeah, Jeremy must have, he did the series and then the event just finished, and then maybe that come back,

and there's a series for that. Oh yeah, just you kind of want that. And then you were. So if you hadn't seen this bit in between, if you that. Yeah, just you kind of want that and then you were. So if you hadn't seen this bit in between, if you'd just been watching the wrong kind of headlines, nothing would have occurred. Yeah. So for the people that sort of weren't aware of what happened,

there's something to do with the snowplow. Can you give the overview? Yeah, the overview. It's a, well, it was hard enough to recount to write the book, you know. Mm-hmm. But it was, now I got to write the trailer. Mm-hmm. Okay, so, the settings in Lake Tahoe and it's New Year's and we always have my family in New Year's

and we were snowed in for a few days. Armageddon, snowmageddon we called it type of thing. So we had no power, no electricity, nothing. And we were having a great time, but New Year's Day was going to be sunny so I had to clear the driveway so we can get out and get some fresh air and that type of thing. And in the mountains You know, it's you're at 8,000 feet elevation you get a ton of snow So we have like probably 10 12 feet of snow

So that's like sand, you know, you got to move this stuff to kind of Get it out when we're supposed to go skiing and all that stuff ends up I'm taking the snowcat which is used snowcat. If you don't know what it is It's like it like a tank it moves on the snow It's about sixteen thousand pounds wet and it's got a big shovel in the front of it and Usually drags behind it, you know stuff, but it's like a tank and it turns like a tank or a skid steer

So it's pretty nimble and it floats on the snow because it has these steel tracks and they're wide So it kind of like snowshoes if you will right so you don't sink in it but which is great for that but when we took it up to the end of the drive which is about half mile long we were taking cars that were stuck in the snow and things that were buried you don't even know what's underneath all that snow so you have to be very careful so we're dragging all this stuff out of there so we have a driveway so we have access to maybe we'll get food, supplies, something, anything. Right.

So we take the snowcat and drag all this stuff out. The final one was my truck and we got it to, to the top of the mountain where there's a plowed driveway and where it's hard and we can actually can maneuver a bit better. And then my nephew just takes it to help with my nephew, Alex. And, um, so, and we've done this a thousand times. I mean, this is like mowing the lawn for us up there in the mountains. It was just a, we're on this, it's kind of a slope and it was very icy and we were sliding

and I didn't like it. I was sliding towards him as he was trying to unhook a chain from this giant machine. And so I turned it around to try to talk to him and couldn't see him and sliding towards him. So I backed up. But again, you have to understand this machine. You have to see this machine to understand but you have to step on these giant tracks

and things that roll and move to get in and out of the machine anyway. There's no platform, there's no ladder, there's nothing. You just have to jump onto the giant metal tracks and then you jump into the cab to start driving this thing, right? Kind of a design flaw, if you ask me, because it's really unsteady. Anyway, it's not really a pedestrian type of vehicle. This is a commercial vehicle for ski slopes, right? Right.

Typically people aren't hopping in, hopping out, or hooking or whatever. It's a shift. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so it's just one of those things you have to step out to try to talk to them, to hear them, and all these things at any rate. And there's a little toggle switch on the steering column, and that's what will move it forwards and backwards and put it in neutral and

I just keep going backwards just so I could I don't slide into him because I can't really see him and then in doing so I'm stepping on the tracks hit the button wrong it threw me off and now machines rushing towards him I have no idea. I know he's within between the truck and that's 10 feet away. I Get up as quick as I can and I just quickly jump back on this machine or tried to jump back in the cab leaping up and over three feet, these spinning tracks. And then, you know, I don't make it and I get caught underneath this machine and it crushes me and rolls over like a tank would run over a log, you know, doesn't think, doesn't think, does it? And it didn't crush my nephew, which is great.

But. That would have been a real double whammy. Oh yeah, that would have been terrible. Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah. Yeah, wouldn't my body slow it down a little bit? Probably not. Probably not. This thing will climb up a tree.

It's gnarly. The power of this machine is quite insane. It's impressive. You need it. It's the only thing that'll kind of operate in that kind of snow. That kind of crazy conditions. And so at any rate, you can edit this the way you want, but then at the end of the break, like 38 bones, my skull cracks open and my eyeball comes out. I can see my eyeball with my other eye. I can't breathe. I'm awake the whole time during this thing.

And I have to survive for 45 minutes on the ice till I get hella lifted out of there. And a lot of the book is about, tells you about that experience. There's a lot of things, the death and coming back and there's a lot, there's a lot of mindset stuff, a lot of fortitude, mental acuity is what got me through, physical, I mean, there's a lot of things that got me through. But the power of the mind and the body

is wonderfully responsive to your thoughts, to heal itself, to hurt itself, whatever. But it's pretty, pretty amazing what the mind can do. Did you have a practice? Meditation? Oh, yeah, yeah. Did you have this prior? Yeah.

Right. Okay. How do you think this situation would have been different? Or how well do you think that your practices in advance contributed? It's hard to know. I mean, that's why I had to reflect. One thing that was very cathartic about this book is just reflecting back on what prepared me for that situation. I've been in not near-death experience situation before, but I've been in like high adrenaline situations. How do you react?

What is, how do you react to like things that, you know, car crash or something, somebody gets hit on the freeway and what do you do? Or you either react or you know, you go into shock or how people deal with the flow of adrenaline rush through their body, right? And I've always been challenged and I've always come out clear-headed in all those adrenaline rush through their body, right? And I've always been challenged and I've always come out clear-headed in all those adrenaline rush situations.

So it's hard to know, because that's how I've always been. I like rollercoaster, but I'm not like a thrill junkie, really, right? I'm not like an adrenaline junkie, but it's just, I just know how my mind reacts in those situations. I'm always very, very clear-headed about it in an actual person. So that helped.

And then, you know, there was like breathing. Breathing was like you say meditation. Well, I was in Lamaze class when I was 12 years old when my mom was pregnant. So, and that all Lamaze is, is preparation for birthing a child. Mitigating, you know, pain, managing your pain as you, you know, is very, very painful for a woman as she's giving birth. So you use these short breaths and all these sort of things. You're mentally feeding ice chips and keeping their attention away from their cervix, right? Right? And do all these sort of things.

I learned that at 12. I didn't know that that was gonna save my life on the ice as I got ran over by a snowcat, right? But that was huge in it. That's all I was trying to do. Look, if you can't breathe, what are you gonna do? Look for your next breath. You need to breathe.

I saw my eye, I'll worry about that later. I saw my twisted legs, I'll worry about that later. That'll hurt. Then then I have to find my next breath or this is all, I'm a goner, right? Everything will start failing. I'll lose consciousness, my organs will fail, I'm dead. So, yeah, there's a lot of things I think prepared me,

but I can only reflect. I can't say for certainty, right? How could we? But yeah, I think there were a lot of things that prepared me, but it was definitely the mental thing through anything, even into the recovery. It's like, the only thing you have control of is your perception of something. That is it.

You think you could control your body. You think you can control something, but it starts with your brain and your mind and your spirit of what you believe in. What you see, how you see something is all in your control. It's, and I'm not like the half glass, half FMD kind of dude, right? But it's a version of that. And I'm not like the half glass, half FMD kind of dude, right? But it's a version of that. I could have made it.

I could have whined and complained and like, oh God, I'm never going to work again as an actor. None of that. I didn't care about any of that, right? That had no value to me. The value was the mental acuity to get through to find my next breath, to zoom out so big and so wide, and I keep my perspective there. I live in a very comfortable, loving, pure life where I over-simplify the simplicity

of life because it is just that simple. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentous. If your workouts feel flat, your recovery slow or you've just been feeling off, it might not be a training plan or diet, it might be something a bit more boring like your testosterone. So if you're not performing in the gym or the bedroom the way that you want, or you just want to naturally improve your testosterone, Tonkat Ali is a fantastic research back place to start. And when this is stacked with zinc can

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a Modern Wisdom, a checkout. How long did that 45 minutes feel? Hmm, wow. It was probably the first 25 that were the toughest, because I don't think an EMT or fire department can get there until like the first half hour. So the first half hour is rough and I died in that time because I got tired. I just got, because doing the equivalent of breathing that we all don't even think about breathing, it's not even conscious, right?

It's just sort of reflexive. It just happens in our body. But I had to like work and I was like doing like a one-arm push-up. It took every piece of physical energy I could do just to exhale a little bit so I can get a little bit more back in. I was suffocating. Yeah. It felt like drowning. Yeah. In a way. Yeah, yeah. I was still getting air. You can't do that in the water. But I

was like a boa constrictor kind of feeling. Like it just squeezes more. You start blowing out air, it's squeezing you. And it's because my whole rib cage, my shoulder, all this side of it was just collapsed on my lung that was already collapsed instead of suffocating myself. So I got, once I had my nephew lift my arm up enough to lift my rib cage off my lung, I could get a little bit more air in. It wasn't like suffocating so much.

So it was still excruciating, but to breathe was quite, quite the effort. And if you just to take deep breaths for a minute, you feel lightheaded, you might pass out, but like, this is just, it's just, it was just exhausting. And with each exhalation and then inhalation, it was just like, so did it feel long? I don't know. I can't answer that. It was just like, so did it feel long? I don't know, I can't answer that. It was just like, I was waiting for my next breath. I was never sure what was gonna happen,

but I was gonna will it to happen. We got tired. I got tired. And that's, you know, that's when I'm... I just, everything just started slowing. It actually probably, I guess, maybe it felt like a long time, because things started to get slow. And consciousness was, the neighbors got here by this point.

A lot of things transpired. It was me and my two neighbors I'd ever met, and my nephew Alex there, for the first half hour, they're on the phone call with 911, whatever, and trying to, they're trying to do everything they can to keep me alive. And I just got tired, and that's when I was gone. And then came back. And I was pissed about it.

I saw my eyeball again. I'm like, oh, because it was so great. I'm like, oh, it was so great. I was having such a good time. Because I was going, because I did sort of regulate breathing, and then it just started to slow, the heart rate started to slow, it was like 18 beats per minute.

It wasn't just sort of like I just croaked, right? It was just smoothly into it. Gently away. Just gently away. Like later, everyone, it was great. And something brought me back. Psych. God damn it. And I saw my eyeball again. I'm like, oh, dude, I'm in this busted body. I'm in this busted body again. I'm like, all right, here we go. Just get back into it. So it wasn't, no one was, I mean, CPR would have powered them out.

No, yeah. No, no, no, no. It wasn't for very long. It was only like probably, you know, my neighbor, because it just happened to my neighbor the day before when she saw her uncle die. What? Yeah. Or, yeah, I think it was her uncle or no, it wasn't her brother.

I think it was her uncle. And it just happened to her then. And she happened to be working in the medical field anyway. So it's kind of a great thing having kind of a nurse be your neighbor. But yeah, she said, yeah, I saw you go. And yeah, because all your face turns all these colors and it's like a lizard or a chameleon or something. At any rate, so I don't think it was gone for very long, but it doesn't really matter. I suppose. Um, I guess not long, not dead enough to have, you know, brain dead. You know, or whatever.

Or maybe I'm brain dead now. What does, uh, I've always, I've always wondered this. What does looking at your own eye look like? Uh, you know, it's, it's one of those, it's a queer situation, you know? Um, just like looking at your at your foot facing the wrong direction. And then your other leg, that's not a joint, but it was broken and shattered. Like there was twisted all like a pretzel. I knew that it was supposed to hurt.

Did it? No, it'll hurt later. I'll worry about that problem later. And just like the eye, I'm like, ah, man. And I, and I rolled my face on it. It's like, at least when you put that thing on ice, because I'm like, ah, man. And I rolled my face on it. It's like, let me put that thing on ice. Cause I was like laying on the icy asphalt. So let me ice that thing.

You know, I thought about that dude. Right. Yeah. I said, it is funny, right. But that's what I thought about. I'm like, oh, did you think I didn't put that on ice? And I had my nephew lift my arm just so I can breathe. There was like conscious, my hyper hyper focused, conscious stuff was to survive.

So you had a lot of- And I went through every checklist of my body. I have a strong, strong awareness of my body as well as an athlete, as a stunt performer, also as an actor, because it is my instrument to, to even act. So I'm very, very aware of my body, how it works, all the things. So to my knowledge, I don't know all the things, but at least I know the basics of how my body should operate. So I'm just constantly going through,

like what it really initially felt like for my breathing was like when you lose your wind, you get kicked in the stomach or punched in the stomach, it's that suffocating, trying to find your breath, right? It's what it sounds like on the 911 call, it's like just... Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's just you can't get air in, right?

It's like you're cramping in your diaphragm. So I kept saying, if I get this cramp out of my diaphragm, I can get a deep breath in. I mean, this is never coming, but I keep telling myself, as long as... Let me relax, let me relax. Let me see if I can just get this... The immediate is get that air in.

If you're not getting air in, your immediate thing you need in your life is air in, right? Pretty obvious. So it started there, so I'm just trying to work through that and getting my body to be in a place so I can get air in. And eventually it got to that place where he had to hold it in a very specific, my arm up in a specific way so I can breathe.

I could start regulating the painful way to now the new way I breathe. The one arm push-up breathing type of thing. A lot of effort. And yeah, but all the mental part of that is the main thing that got me through initially. That sort of mental focus. No one was going to help me breathe,

no matter who was there who could have done it or not. Nobody could have. I was the only one that was going to be able to make myself breathe in any way possible. No one knew exactly what was wrong or how sudden I had to, I was kind of flattened, my head's crushed, you know, there's blood everywhere. So they're thinking of a lot of different things. I'm like, fuck all y'all. I just need to breathe in so I can breathe out. I'd even use expletives to help me laugh. I see how I said I had all these, yeah, it was hookers, whores, and hamburgers that I would scream out.

Cause the huffing of the eight sound would, would make me laugh. Huh? Huh? Hooker? Right? H sound would make me laugh. Huh, huh, huh girl, huh, right? Huh. I had to do that to get air out so I can suck air. But, and also have a laugh. That's my eyeball. That's my twisted ass legs. Uh, yeah, I already died.

What else needs to happen? This is my body. It's my body. I'm owning it. So that's, those are the sense of humor I even had if you can in that horrifying, you know, drawn out 45 minutes, you know. And then you get out.

There's no rule book, there's no like directions and like how to overcome something like that, right? We're not taught how to do anything like this. You didn't have a blueprint beforehand. You just do what you can do, what do you got? And say yes to everything, do whatever works, right? We're not taught how to do anything like this. You didn't have a blueprint beforehand. You just do what you can do. What do you got? And every say yes to everything, do whatever works, right? It's fascinating how much mental clarity you had. Yeah, yeah.

You had to, had to. I was dead. If I passed out, I would've been dead. I wouldn't be sitting here. I'd be dead. They're too far high up in the mountains. No one could have gotten to me. Oh, of course, you're so high up in the mountains that even breathing normally I imagine is a little bit more difficult for most normal people.

Yeah, at 8,000 feet. Yeah, so maybe my body's also prepared for it I also have you know higher mental oxygen in my body because I do work on that stuff and but There's no one thing but the mental part of it was the one thing that did get me through at least to the next Exhalation. Mm-hmm. And then that got me, it bought some time. You know, I came back for whatever reason and then the paramedics got there shortly after and then they had to, you know, do the crazy thing in your chest. They stabbed your chest like it's some movie or something. And why did they, they're trying to reinflate the lung?

Either that or release pressure. Right. Don't ask me, I'm not, I didn't go into the details of it. Yep. Um, even after the fact, I had to worry about other things than the scar on my chest. I could care. Couldn't care. But they come in, it's the guy that's choking on something and they put the big pen in the neck.

It's pretty much like that. Yep. And I'm like, oh my God, that happened. Right. Right. Um, but yeah, then they could also get, you know, uh, fentanyl and all that stuff into you and sort of mitigate the pain. Oh, that's fun. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's when things got a little...

When they started cutting my clothes off, I'm like, I relinquish my duties now. I mean, someone else's... And I give my body to you.. I did the best I could. But now like you know so I think they're already have me regulating my breathing or using a pump to kind of regulate the breathing a bit more so I didn't have to like consciously fight for every breath. So I just said I give my body up. I'm done and I just let them go for it. And thank God for them. And one was my friend or a friend of my friend.

One of my best friends, he was a firefighter. He is a firefighter, he just retired. And then the guy that jabbed me and stuff, he had to call my buddy and be like, look, Renard just got hella lifted out of here. Sorry, we did the best we could. Dude. You get that phone call.

It's brutal, man. So brutal that my friend had to get that phone call. But anyway, all these little moments that keep flooding back, talking about it. Such great, it all represents love to me. You know, if I get, if I catch any feelings, if I, I, I don't get triggered with rage. I don't get triggered with disappointment or sadness ever. It's a trigger with an overwhelming sense of love, gratitude. Something, I hope never goes away. I can't imagine it will.

Kind of like alchemy. Yeah. To take something like that and to see all of the love that came pouring back in. Yeah. I mean, it's the ultimate thing that got me through. It's the only thing you take with you when you die is the love. It's such a beautiful you take with you when you die is the love. It's such a beautiful, beautiful space, place, and a loving space. And then you come back around in the ICU, presumably. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. And, uh, I was pretty much, I was, yeah, they had to put me in a coma and get to work. There's a lot of life-saving stuff that I do initially. Don't know about any of those things. Even to this day, I don't know all the things that they do.

Probably don't care, want to know. You know, you have to move my eyeball back in. I know there's duct tape on my eye. Again, whatever works, dude. I mean, what's in my body is just hammers and screws and a pipe that they've hammered through my knee, down here, and screws and plates. And it's very like sort of this carpentry work. So putting duct tape on my face to hold my eyeball back in, you know, is just as, you know, this is how you do it. You gotta use what you've got. You use what you got.

And that's what they had. That's what we did. And that's what worked. My eye, my vision in my left eye is better than my right eye now. You're kidding. It's better. Yeah. It's amazing.

I don't recommend it. So what I'm, what I'm interested in is when, uh, and you've sort of hinted at this already, when the pain starts to kick in. Yeah. Well, that was the initial. The, from all, all the, every, every synapses fire, every, everything your brain is lit up because when you're crushed, everything was, I never experienced a feeling like that in my life.

It's like if you hit a hammer on your thumb, you're like, oh motherfucker, but like on every inch of your body, it's like what is going on? There's so much information, you don't know what to pay attention to. So that was very confusing. The pain was everywhere and everything, even

like in your spirit, everything was, you don't know what's going on. So it was very confusing. It was very bright, a lot of flashing, you know, because there's like a lightning strike that happened when my skull cracked and the eye came out. It's so weird that I'm talking about this. Yep. When my skull cracked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, cause they don't look like it happened, right? Yeah, yeah.

There was like a lightning strike and you know, you start messing with, I don't know, it was such an overload. Felt like it was like, you know, you gotta turn off the power because there was an overload of information, overload of pain, all your nerve endings are like on fire. Like it was like fiery hot lava is like all these things were happening so it's and again the worst part of it is like you got stepped on by an elephant and you

can't breathe that sort of you just can't breathe that was the worst of it it's like who cares about the rest of this stuff I mean all of it hurt but I don't even know what that is anymore. Pain became my bitch a long time ago. How so? It's because it's all a construct in your mind anyway. It's your body's way of saying, hey, it's trying to preserve itself. Your body tries to preserve itself by saying there's pain.

Oh, that's hot, don't touch it. Or this is that, don't do this. Try this, right? So, again, mind you, this is not during the do this try this right so they get mind you this is not during the accident this is after the accident and I started to deal with pain in in a different way and I had I wrote a whole chapter on the call the agreement about having you can read new pathways you can change them for your brain how I receive pain is different how I received it before. I can still stub my toe and ow, motherfucker, yes, right?

But I understand what it means. What the body is really trying to tell me. Like when the body gets a break, it ends these swells, tries to create its own cast and do all these sort of things to protect itself. The body just tries to preserve itself. It's a miracle what the body does. It's fantastic. If you are in alliance and what the body is trying to do and the body realizes, ah, you were listening to me.

Okay, I won't bother you so much anymore. And that's where we became the agreement of like, you can't tell me that's painful anymore because that's a metal piece of metal. Now, you're not even a bone. You can say it's broken. So I have to reprogram my brain from receiving those pain signals in that way. And it takes a time. It takes about 28 days to really, really reprogram. Yeah, explain this 28-day cycle. Yeah, it's like a lot of cycles. Like from a menstrual cycle, a moon cycle, human patterns and behaviors, a lot of

toxicities to leave your body, take around those signs. But it's just something about that 28 days seems to be something congruent a lot of different versions of our lives. And with patterns, to really create a positive pattern or take a negative pattern to a positive pattern, it's like 28 days. And then you don't have to think about it. It's not a conscious thought anymore.

You don't have to be grudged to stretch every morning. You're just stretching every morning after 28 days, essentially. And it doesn't have to even be that long. It could take, be less. But to, it's always in your brain, the power within your brain and your mind. And it takes fortitude. It takes trust and faith and a whole lot of other bag of goodies that you can't be weak in spirit You cannot

You have to be If you don't believe it then no one's gonna believe it kind of attitude if it's not gonna get done if you're not gonna do it or you have to do it and believe it and the there was it was a lot a lot of that came through because because I had to walk on my leg and that my leg had a spiral fracture spun around it was shattered and so they had to hammer a big piece of titanium in and just plates and screws and plates and screws and he said you're gonna have to walk on this thing otherwise it's gonna be pretty much just like a log stiff thing. I'm like, all right. To keep it mobile?

Yeah, to move it. All the scar tissue, right? I have to, as you know, you got to keep this thing rocking and moving. So I got the okay from the doctor. Like I have to move this thing. Otherwise it's going to be just a club leg. So I started doing it and my body is screaming at me. Ow, ow.

I stepped down. Ow, ow, ow, ow, my liver. Ow, ow, ow. It's broken. My body's telling me. Like, no, it's not. So I ow, ow, ow, my liver, ow, ow, ow. It's broken, my body's telling me. I'm like, no, it's not. So I started yelling at my foot and my leg. I'm like, look, motherfucker, sorry about my language,

I'm just like, look, we gotta work this out. The doc says, you're not broken, because you're a piece of metal now. Like I'm literally talking to it, like it's a, like my appendage in my body is like a, like a scorned lover or something, or like a bad dog. Oldie dog. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like, what are you doing body is like a, like a, like a scorned lover or something, or like a, like a bad dog. Oldie dog.

Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, what are you doing? How would you, how would you cheat on me? Yep. Yep. You know what I mean? You know, it's, you're betraying me essentially.

It's such a betrayal. And so to be so crazy enough to like, to talk about my appendage as a separate thing, you know, it was opened up to this idea that I have to really change it. Cause I know with all the things I'm telling you, I knew before I just like, I have to really work this out. I'm literally arguing with my leg every day. I'm arguing with my leg many times a day.

Every time I go, I have to go move it, get blood flow through it. So for blood clots, right? Scar tissue, it's all this stuff. So otherwise I'm threatening, dude, I'm gonna lop you off. I'm gonna chop you off. Every times I go I have to go move it get blood flow through it so for blood clots that right scar tissue It's all this stuff. So otherwise I'm threatening dude. I'm gonna lop you off. I'm gonna chop you off I'm gonna get a wooden peg I'm gonna get a fucking parrot and an eye patch and go live a pirate life motherfucker either fucking do it or don't Like I'm screaming right? I'm saying it like I'm saying it now like no joke

But saying with that intensity in that belief, dude, cause I did also was okay living the pirate life, dude. I was totally okay with it. I was just happy I was alive. I didn't care about acting again. I was, I'm just happy to see my family there with me, all the people I love around with me. I didn't care about what the future held for my body in that sense.

You know what I mean? Or I was willing to do it. about what the future held for my body in that sense. You know what I mean? Or I was willing to do it. So I'm threatening my leg, I'm gonna chop it off. I mean, it's like, it's the most insane thing ever. And I know I'm, I know that as I'm saying it, and I reflect back on it sometimes at night, and I'm like, dude, that was good talk we had. That was good talk.

You know what I mean? It's pretty, it's a lonely business recovery, right? When you're in a bed alone, Sometimes at night and I'm like, dear, that was good talk we had. That was good talk. Good hustle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty, it's a lonely business, recovery, right? When you're in a bed alone, you're the only one recovering, no matter how many doctors you got, how many people love you, giving you tea, whatever the heck it is. All that's amazing, but you're the only one that can make you get better. And that's it, man. And me and me and my leg were, were partners of crime at the time.

And yeah, I'm talking to curtains, I'm talking to all sorts of things in your, it's quite lonely space. But it was a thing that helped me reprogram the neural pathways in how I received pain. And it took about 28 days, about a month of me yelling at my leg as I'm doing physical therapy. I'm doing it every day.

I did it as soon as I got home. I was in two ICUs for six days a piece. As soon as I got home because I was breaking out of them every day. Get me home, get me home so I can sleep. And as soon as I got home, I'm doing physical therapy. You know how painful it is. I don't care. So I got on it real quick. And so so after doing that, this having this agreement with my leg, all the other things, like my ribs and all that stuff kind of fell into place much better than I anticipated. My lungs were like plastic suitcases for all the goop and things to kind of come out of the blood and all this stuff. It's so weird. And it was quite a hot mess.

But as the leg, that was really quite the issue because it was the physical therapy part of it. And that's where I focused all my energy. Then the rest of the body just kind of fell into place. It's like I focused on one bad dog that was pooping on my pillow or something, right? I just focused on the leg. And then it just, pain became just something that I can manage. Cause I know when my body sends signals to my brain,

but it doesn't mean I have to receive it the same way. What's your advice to somebody who's currently dealing with pain? You know, I'm not gonna say you have to yell at the thing. I think getting an understanding of it, I think there are other ways. You know, I think modern medicine is fantastic for the short term, but for long-term and chronic pain, I think there's gotta be other ways, you know, I think modern medicine is fantastic for the short term, but for long

term and chronic pain, I think there's got to be other ways. I deal with it all the time, but I certainly don't take pills. I do injections of peptides, amino acids, vitamins, maybe natural anti-inflammatories, things like that. I think everybody's got to deal with inflammation. I think there's a lot of great science that's coming out. I get a lot of access to people that I've been dealing with for a long time and also been doing it for a long time.

But none of that matters. What matters is what your body says. I listen to my body. My body tells me what it needs. And I listen to it. I pay attention and I also talk the fuck off. Like no joke, it's a part of me, it is what I am, but it is just my spirit living in this vessel.

So I'm going to take care of it the best I can. So I'm going to listen to it and it's going to listen to me. And it does. And that agreement I have with my body gets me through every day. How do you know when to listen to it and when to tell it to fuck off? It starts to scream at me a bit. The volume that it reaches. Yeah, it gets a little louder or it's actually not even that, it's more it's repetitive in

nature. Not just something like it's not just an afternoon or a stiff morning. It's just a fleeting. It's just like, oh, this has been a week of this repetitive thing. I'm like, all right, I gotta help my body out here. I'm not doing something right. I'm doing something wrong. I'm putting something in my body

or I'm not, it's something else, right? The body, like if you have an injury, usually some other part of your body overcompensates and that kind of stuff. So you have to really kind of watch the whole thing. We'll get back to talking in one second, but first this episode is brought to you by AG1. I've been drinking AG1 every morning for years now and it just got even better. AG1 NextGen keeps the same simplicity. One scoop once per day, but now comes with four clinical trials backing it.

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Yeah. And somebody, again, not run over by a snowcat, full Achilles detachment. Yeah, yeah, fuck, get out of here. That was a motherfucker. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. See, singular to any one of those, it's way worse than getting ran over by the snowcat. I would disagree.

Because there's only one thing, and I was tested to my limits, to my death. So nothing else can, I don't, pop both my Achilles tendons right now, like, eh, whatever. I'll limp out of here or just waddle out of here. Right, because the worst thing that's happened to you is the worst thing that's happened to you. Yeah, yeah, it's like, all right, this is gonna be a terrible year.

I didn't know that already, blah, blah, blah, blah, but you know, we'll reattach. They're probably doing six months now. They got, they're in Roger's machine, all right, this is going to be a terrible year. I didn't know that already, but, but, but, but, but, you know, we'll reattach. They probably do in six months now. They got Aaron Rodgers machine. They can do like, you know, but my point being, uh, with that for me, I resonate an awful lot with the loneliness. I think, I think this is one of the, one of the things I really want to get an insight from around you, the role of patience and how you deal with loneliness, how you remain sort of mental fortitude and you sink into that.

That's interesting. I think, yeah, especially for you talk about, the Achilles tendon because it is such a long ongoing thing. And then- 12 month recovery, man. It's a real injury. Yeah, it's a real damn injury, dude. And it's like no joke. You can break any bone and you're done in a month. And people aren't really that conscious of it.

Cause usually you're just playing sports or you're just getting out of bed and it can pop, right? It can happen anywhere. Usually you're doing something kind of athletic, just playing pickleball. Mine was cricket, which is a much more British way to do it. Either way, usually it's not a sexy way to have such a gnarly injury.

But anyway, so people aren't caring. Like people care a lot about my injuries because they're very aware of what happened. Like, oh yeah, you're playing cricket, you know, whatever, that kind of may make fun of you for it. But there is a real loneliness in that. So I gamify recovery. I gamify my pain.

I gamify that loneliness. Meaning I set goals. Daily goals was always like as long as I'm better than I was the day before. And I don't, it doesn't have to be a high standard. It's like I move my elbow an inch more than I can move it the day before victory. Right? So at least it's progress. It's this, now the setbacks are fewer because you don't set such a crazy high goal.

I'm gonna start, I'm gonna run a four or five 40 at the end of the year. You know, it's like, come on. Then you're gonna set yourself up for disappointment. But so to gamify things and give myself confidence and self-confidence in my loneliness is like getting better. I'd always push myself, even after the PT leaves, I'm doing stuff on my own.

It's a 24 hour job. It's a 24 hour job. As long as I get my good sleep, then the rest of it's like, what am I putting in my body and how do I get better every day? And then I hit higher goals. And I find ways to heal my family in me getting better. That helped immensely.

I can remove myself out of the equation and my pain and my recovery, because I'm getting better to heal my family. If I get better, my family gets better. I'm not getting better even for me. That was a huge perspective that I had as soon as I woke up from the coma. I apologized that I was in the accident. I said, I was sorry. And I promised my daughter, if you wait for me, I'll get better.

It was like, it was, I relieved myself of the duties of me wanting to get better for me, I was getting better for them to heal them because I hurt them. It was easy. It was a one way road of recovery. There's no other direction to go. I have to heal my family. Isn't it strange that we find it easier to do something for Russell There's a one-way road of recovery. There's no other direction to go. I have to heal my family. Isn't it strange that we find it easier to do something for us for other people than

do something for us for us? Yeah. Isn't that a strange quirk of the humans work? Yeah. It's the same thing, you've probably been in movies where this is actually a scene. The bad guy wants to get the information out of you, so they're torturing you and they're doing stuff and you're like, it doesn't matter, then they bring in someone you love.

Yeah, it's like, ah. That always breaks everybody, right? Yeah. There's an interesting stat around the likelihood that we ensure that we complete a course of antibiotics. It's around about 50 percent, maybe a little bit less. The likelihood that we ensure that

our dog completes its course of antibiotics is like in the 90s. So we're significantly better at looking after an animal than we are looking after ourselves, despite the fact that if we are not functional, the animal's fucked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? And again, with this, it's so interesting that we can use somebody else, as other people, group of other people, as the motivation for our recovery in that way.

Yeah, well, I think it's something in the, I think it's within the limitations of, in a perspective, it seems like it's the limitations of human experience, right? But it's also an act of love. I mean, the fuel behind that is all love. So in a spiritual form, that is just what we are to be anyway. In the human form, it's us protecting ourselves. Like the body's trying to protect itself, right?

And we try to protect each other. We're social creatures, we're a thing, we try to, right? Ultimately, people are good, whereas not situations for us to be good to each other, right? Even if you are doing this because you're going to help to heal your family, you don't want this to be the defining, lingering memory of what happened, etc. The recovery is still on you. Finding the solutions is still on you.

Yeah, and it's also still my body. I'm not going to hobble around the spinning rock for the next hundred years because now I'm a titanium man. Get out of here. Well, you're late awake at night, a couple of weeks, a couple of months in. It's just one of those normal days. It's been an all right day of rehab. It's been an all right day of whatever, but you just, you're kind of deep in the hole and what, where was your mind going to keep your motivation to keep driving you forward?

I, I always focused on, on the things that were better. Now, not every day, all day all of me was better, but some part of me was getting better, and that's all I cared about. Just sitting up was like a giant milestone for me. Not peeing in a jar. That was a great victory for me to go bathroom, right, just whatever it was.

I kept things really simple, and I made it okay. That's an amazing thing. Because there are days that aren't great. And there's a lot of people that might get stuck in a rut of, you don't even have to be in recovery. I mean, you can just have a bad day and just like, but your brain, right?

It's not, you can't let it wallow in that. Just get up off the couch, move, go move your body, oxygen through your system. It'll help you navigate something just to make a different choice. And it'd been easy for me to like not have any positive thoughts about things, man. There's not a lot of help or hope to grab onto. So I just built the things that I could grab onto. Like I said, I was just filled with such gratitude,

but I wasn't gonna ever... have a low bar set, right? There's that duality of it. It wasn't gonna like, oh, as long as I can just kinda walk. No, they said, if I walked again, if I did, I'd walk funny, and said, you're never gonna run again.

I said, I wish you again, if I did, I'd walk funny. And he said, you're never gonna run again. I said, I wish you would have told me that. I heard it from my family later on. I would have been running faster earlier just at that challenge. I'm also that guy. That fuck you energy. Yeah, yeah, well that challenge challenged me

because I know what I can do and I know what I can't do. And I know my limitations and sometimes I'll try to, I always try to exceed what I can or can't do. You have to go to such extremes of your obsessions to really grow. Like what cold plunges do for the body and like even extreme hot does just,

the nerve endings in your body. You used a lot of heat vibration for pain. So I'm a pain heat, high heat, high vibrations, great for pain. Were you using a power plate stuff? Yeah, power plate stuff. Cause that gets really, really intense vibration. That's great to like just numb the nerve endings,

a really hot bath. And then I, That's the reason why when you bang, when you stub your toe, like you said earlier on, why do you rub it? It's because it's really difficult for the body to receive multiple signals at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It just confuses all the nerve endings, seemingly. And I don't feel it. It's like, it's why I got off a pain medication like that. Yeah, what was your relationship? You know, a lot of people have injuries way less bad than this. And that's the beginning of their road down the dark path. I'm glad I had it.

I'm glad it was there. It was necessary. I mean, goddamn, was it necessary. But I think it was like when I got home, switching from epidurals and IVs and all this stuff of writing intravenously, you know, to deal with your pain management. And then going on just now just taking pills, taking OxyContin. You know, you get behind on that, you're kind of screwed because then you realize, oh, it's going to take a minute to get through your system. And what's the bit of advice I was given after my surgery and never chase the pain. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, don't you've got to get out ahead of the pain

Yeah, yeah, you gotta stay ahead of it. Otherwise you get behind. Oh man. It's gonna be a bad day. So Yeah, it was so it happened like that happened once maybe twice But but then it was like maybe four weeks in when I was home. And I had a night tear. My mouth is broken. Everything, so many breaks in my face and my head. And my teeth don't align. So I had a night tear and then your teeth don't align. It's easy to crack a tooth. And I cracked a tooth. Then I felt pain. I'm like, wait, I'm on Oxycontin. And this is breaking through. I go like, yeah, it was breaking through. So I'm like, wait, I'm on OxyContin and this is breaking through. I go like, yeah, it was breaking through. So I'm like, well, then what do I need that OxyContin for in the Gabby Pentin?

Like I'm out of here. So I went emergency extraction, put in a post, take the thing. I'm crying, just got so happy that my pregnant dentist had come in and do this for me. And got home and said said I'm getting off. I'm not taking this stuff. I took it for the next day for the tooth. And then when that felt good, I just said I'm cold turkey this stuff. And then I cried for like three and a half days straight and shivered in cold sweats and the whole thing coming off the pain meds.

Tell me about that time. It was way worse than the accident. Why? Because how bad coming off that stuff is. It was just like uncontrollable crocodile tears. Emotionally just out of control crying and it wasn't sad. I was just crying. I was doing PT, his band and stuff just sobbing. I was just crying. I was doing PT, his band and stuff, just sobbing. I just couldn't stop sobbing. And you know, I was shivering.

I was so cold. I had all these electric blankets on me. Like I was coming off heroin or something. It's actually, I guess what it is or something, right? Oxycontin. Anyway, after the three and a half days, I talked to the pain management guy, the doctor, and he's like, yeah, you can't do that, dude. No one does that. You kind of wean off. You need two weeks at least to kind of wean off of

it. Both. Gabby Petten as well. All your nerve endings are like feeling everything right now. I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm freezing. I'm shivering. I'm crying. Well, one, it's okay if you, you know, do a little bit. I'm done with it now. So I'm just going to stay off of it. Thank God. I'm done with it now, so I'm just gonna stay off of it. Thank God that I got to shake it. But wow, what a terrible thing to be hooked on. Wow, I mean, if you need that, because then your body gets numb to that kind of stuff anyway, then you need more of it,

which is the terrible thing to it. So it's like, you need to get the fuck off that stuff as soon as possible, is my recommendation. Find other ways. And high heat, high vibrations, do tremendous things to your nerve endings to mitigate your pain. And it allowed me to sleep. That's why I love, I take a super, super hot bath as much as I could stand. And then, uh, vibrations, like one of my, the parts that were really kind of just

giving me some achy, achy sort of feeling. Are you sitting on a power plate Or um no, I mean I was too fragile. I was too fragile at that time. I do it now But I do it. I did like the diva roller. That's a vibrating roller Okay, super intense rest I put both my knees on put it under both my knees or both my ankles Angles and knees boop night night going to bed Amazing well if you have any ankle or knee issues, as long as it not breaks,

as long as if you're healing from a break, you can do it, but great for nerve endings, tendons, to get blood flow, circulation for your things that are hard to get blood flow through like tendons, you know, right? Pretty tough. All the cartilage areas, all our joints, you know, are all gonna cartilage areas, all our joints, you know, are all going to fail us anyway, but I just got every joint screwed early on.

What would the, take me through the big recovery modalities, sort of what contributed to your rehab and because you seem to recover very, given how intense and sort of catastrophic the injuries are, you recovered really quickly. Yeah, I became obsessed. I had to become obsessed at recovery. It was my main focus. It was awesome because my life was freed from any other obligations, even parenting. Sadly.

So I have to get this so then I can go back to being a parent. So I can go back, right? So I became obsessed at, like I said, it was 24 hours a day. That's all I focused on. That's all my brain energy went to. That's all my thoughts went to. We're all recovery, healing, getting better, even dreaming of my bones growing over this metal pipe and all this stuff.

It was just all that was, I was all in with every part of my body even in my damn dreams about recovering. So the obsession and then it got to a place maybe just a few weeks later. I didn't have the the plastic suitcases for my lungs and then I'm sitting up in a thing and I'm in a wheelchair and I'm moving around and it's like a mobile. I'm getting more blood flow in. Now I'm just getting better faster. And now it's maybe 16 hours a day of obsession. And then reduced to 12. And it kept getting less. By the summertime, it's eight hours a day. I have to start my morning, routine, and all the things, and just keep going, keep going. And then what my body allowed me to do that was just sort of like, not recovery stuff.

I would do life stuff that was like recovery stuff. I go walk in the sand. Great for your ankles and stability and my hips and knees and all that stuff. But at least I'm outside in the sunshine at Lake Tahoe breathing in the air, getting my feet cold. That's the biggest cold plunge in the world. That thing is freezing and just go in there and that's awesome. Right?

So I can do that. So now I'm just doing eight hours and I reduce it to maybe four hours by the time I started going back to work. I'd have to commit to four hours a day. Hyperbaric chamber, put O2 throughout my body. Red light therapy was huge. I still do these to this day.

And all that, I mean, between the high heat stuff and the vibration, the red light, infrared beds and hyperbaric chamber, I'll do this for the rest of my life. What peptides were you using? Thymus and alpha, thymus and beta, BPC. Yeah, thymus and BPC 157, some, MOTC. I love MOTC. MOTC is great. Yeah.

Yeah. And there's TB 500. There's, guys, there's a long, long list of stuff. I had to do hormone replacement stuff cause my testosterone was at 200. I had to get that up cause I was thinking some energy. So then they're getting the gym instead of falling asleep in the gym.

So that helped getting, regulating that. Cause again, I'm 54. And at that time, you know, I didn't, no one tells you how to get old, but I guess my testosterone was super low and That affects a lot of things in your body. Mm-hmm, especially your energy. Mm-hmm. So Yeah, and there's a whole List of different peptides and I rotate them in and out. It's not like I do

Them all the time. I just kind of rotate just like supplements. I do the same thing with supplements I rotate him in and out of my life I'll go for a stretch of two months or three months on three months off or that kind of thing You know just to get your body to regulate challenge it let it sort of produce its own HGH its own testosterone All those type of things Really really great to work on your body from a cellular level Out using the NAD. I mean, yeah, yeah, I do that every day. Why?

Every day. Uh, Sub Q. Yeah. Sub Q and also I am, and I don't do it through the, uh, IV because it just takes too long to go through that suck. You know, it's not nice. It's not nice. Uh, Sub Q NAD is like, it's like a shot of coffee.

It's really huge. Yeah. Yeah. And I also feel like the light version of it, uh's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. And I also feel like the light version of it can do your stomach. Like, oh gosh. It's only for 10 seconds.

It's nice once it goes. 25 minutes. I had this theory about NAD that one of the best parts of NAD was it finishing. It wasn't actually the effect. It was like, I've just been in so much discomfort. Yeah, precisely, precisely, precisely. Exactly. Yeah, because I don, precisely. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, because I don't know many things that you put in your body that immediately make you feel good. Like an IV, that's an instant thing. You're getting hydrated pretty instantaneously. You're getting great vitamins. You can smell the vitamins, vitamin C in your brain. And when they do that push. Yeah.

So that you feel pretty instantly and you feel good. Not much else I can think that I've done it. I do everything, everything. Maybe a hot bath and that's only because you get out of it and you're like, okay, I'm not in pain. I could pull a plunge. Either when they say like, oh yeah, dude, you feel so good getting out. Yeah.

You feel good getting out of that because you're not dying anymore. That's why it feels good. It doesn't feel good ever. Does it feel good? No, it feels like hell. So by getting out you're just not dying anymore. Your body's screaming. I'm dying. I'm dying. Cold proteins released. Cold shock proteins. We all know this. They do it. I don't do a lot of cold plunges because I think you have to kind of I do those when needed. I do those when needed. I do, there's a, crowd chambers, you know, I'd rather do that. Crowd chamber, I felt being a little bit more effective. You like the hyperbaric?

Hyperbaric I love. I love it because it does take a little bit more time, but I can do my, yeah, I can do emails, a cup of coffee, because I can sit in a chair just like this and not just sit there and be like, I'm in some treatment. I can sit in a chair just like this and not just sit there and be like, I'm in some treatment. I'm like, forget it. I would never do it. But I'll just bio stack in there.

I'll do red light mask in there. I'll do whatever I can to do multiple things. I do many things all throughout the day. How is it? Like again, I would have these things on right now. Yeah. But as you don't mess up with the mics. How is it that your face looks like your face?

Why does your face look like your face if it's so much destruction? Is it reconstructed? Well, interestingly enough, interestingly enough, nothing, the only skin that broke was on the back of my head and that's where all the blood was gushing. Because when it got ran over, it went to my cheekbone pressure and the back of my skull here, that was where the rollover pressure went. So that's why I broke this cheekbone and it floating around, broke my orbital and then my jaw.

So this and then my jaw broke in three places. And then the crack here. All the other marks on my body are scars from the surgeries. To put the metal in. So it was more, it was more the, the indice size of my body that were crushed. And luckily like the, one of my ribs poked my liver, but that, cause it broken two spots. So there's a couple of gaps. It's like, there was like 14 breaks in and only six ribs.

So several pieces of my rib cage were just gone. Floating. Yeah. It was missing around. So, um, well, what was it we were talking about? ribs. So several pieces of my rib cage were just gone. Floating. Yeah. Just missing around. So, um, what was it we talking about? I can't remember. Oh yeah. My face.

Why do you face it like your face? So once the swelling went down, they can see where the real damage is really just to my jaw because it's hard to fix your jaw, apparently. And also my teeth got pushed in the molars. So nothing sits right. Um, that's still the same case now. Yeah. Yeah.

Forever. Wow. Yeah. They can't palette expands. Uh, I think, I think we'll be risk losing the teeth. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to lose them all anyway from all that trauma.

Um, hold on to them. So I'm gonna hang on to them while I can. And I still got a decent smile. Everything's fine. It's just when I bite down, it's like chewing and eating is just not that enjoyable. You got to be careful with what foods you eat then? No hard feelings. I'm only careful with foods I eat, just, um, just what I want to put in my body,

you know, and I'm not really a stickler about things, you know, I'm just, I'm just conscious about what it is a bit. Yeah. I like, I like eating steak, but I'd say, you know, I don't try to chew on stuff too much. Like gum will never chew gum. Like I've put a gun in my mouth. What a price that you can have. Yeah.

Uh, I'm interested in how you- So anyway, the swelling, it was your eye. How does that go back in? There was so many ways that that I should have an eye patch or a glass eye or something at this point, right? Because of the orbital nerve didn't get pinched in the, in the crack. Uh, the, any nushal tissue, no damage to like essentially anything behind the eye or any of the, the, uh, the nerves.

It's a miracle. It's a miracle. The best way that this could have happened. It's a miracle. Essentially it's just like moving it back in and duct taping it and just swelling went down and it started operating again. Yeah it was crazy. Yeah so I think I mean there's I don't know there's a little unevenness with it I don't care my face is my face is I still look the same I guess for the most part and

there's no like plastic surgery or anything they had to happen. It was all internal like they put in they put the plates in my eye and my cheekbone. They said, we don't have to do it, but because your face is, you know, you're living, we're afraid maybe you'll lose your cheekbone if we don't support it with a metal plate. And they just went inside my mouth and cut open all under the skin and put these plates in. Wow. You know, so then, and I had screws in my skull and then my jaw to kind of rubber band it to put to heal the jaw. And then that was it.

And then that was it. It's pretty harrowing how they get these screws out though. They just like get a screwdriver from Home Depot and they just rip them out. Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard and give you actionable insights and recommendations

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Modern wisdom I'm interested in how you avoided becoming a victim of this. Oh, how would I ever be a victim? Well, you've had this thing happen to you, which you didn't choose to. I wasn't even victimized. How could I be a victim? You understand how this narrative plays in people's minds? But I'm telling you, I'm telling you my perspective. That's how.

If ever I have been victimized as to never be a victim. Certainly doesn't even apply to this incident. I made the choice. I don't regret my choice. I'm only saddened by that I put so much terror in my family's life. My nephew cannot unsee the things I did not see. He saw the blood gushing, holding my arm, squat, squatting to hold in a certain position for 45 minutes, my eyeball out, legs twisted up, just calm, cool, collected, partial shock. He cannot see it. Along the long list of all the other things that have happened transpired because of it.

So there's no, there's no, it's always my perspective and that's what I have control of. And it's, I refuse to be haunted. I refuse to hobble around. I refuse to, and it's not going to happen. My will will not let it happen. But I, what is it, it's not let it happen. But I, what is it? I, I, I just not gonna happen. Like if I believe I can fly and sprout a propeller out my ass, trust me, propellers about to come out and I'm going to propel around this room.

I believe it's physically impossible. So I don't believe it, but that will. The reality is you build it. You can build your own reality. If you don't, you can become victimized or a victim But you have to be sort of active in your believing and you're doing in your in your heart and your will and your will is a thing Is your life force? so

It started with not wine To Joe hurt my family, you know, I wouldn't want to have been on their side, looking at me in the bed or hearing about it. My mom heard about it on the phone call. How about that phone call? Had a 13 hour drive to get to my hospital bed in the snow and the ice, it's brutal. So there is no me in any of this, man,

except getting better version of me. You know, there's no being victimized or victim mentality in it. It's impossible, it's impossible. It's just a square peg round hole. It doesn't fit here. It doesn't apply. At least I make it not apply if it does.

How's this changed your outlook on life now moving forward? It's quite the same. It's a lot better because there's less obstacles and that's where the white noise is gone. The things that I gave credence to or gave great value to are wiped away. What like? Everything outside the basic things that I want in my life. Time, shared experiences with people I love, laughter. When I oversimplify a simple life, again, very complicated, busy life I have, but I keep the white noise out.

I don't listen to the, it's like the idea of like reading the comments or reading your reviews or like, I never did really anyway, but a version of that, you know, what that is for an individual. What it is for me is not giving so much energy to my career. I do, obviously, I mean, I was working a year Um, not giving so much energy to my career. I do, obviously, I mean, I was working a year after the incident and I'm on second season, third and fourth season right now,

but I give energy to it, right? But maybe how much energy? Maybe I'm more married to central part of my life as my health and wellness. Everything else falls into place. I'm filming in Pittsburgh right now to get better. And then I happen to be filming Mayor of Kingstown season four. But I'm there to get better. My garage is filled with workout equipment, hyperbaric chamber, my red light, but all these things.

My fridge, I brought a sack with my peptides and things like I'm committed to my health and my wellness. It is a central part of my being and it has to be. And I like it and I love it and I want it to be. So that simplicity, like it doesn't, then I don't get busy doing a bunch of other dumb stuff. You know, whatever, like what I would normally might do. And it's way better because life is much simpler. And that's the only thing that's really changed.

It's just like, I just don't give so much energy and get myself away to just things that I don't want anyway, you know? I already have everything I want in my life anyway. You know, especially as like, I have like, I have many careers, I have many careers and I do a lot of things. And like, so I always had that drive to do stuff, right? As an independent sort of be my own boss and go do things, right? And you know what that's like. I think any athlete knows what that's like. I think any businessman knows what that's like. But when do you stop and really get to enjoy it?

When work becomes the central part of your life, but then you don't get to reap the benefits of all the hard work, then what the fuck is the point? So now I'm doing the point. I'm working hard still, but I start with living the life first, doing the life first that I want to live. And then, you know, prioritizing what, right? I re-prioritize it.

I think is the best way to say it. It's like, I just put the priorities of me and my health that I didn't do before. I might wash my face once a week, you know. I go to the gym, brush my teeth, basically. But like, now I do like complete opposite of that. And I do so many things to for my health and my wellness from the cellular level on out, you know. And it feels good, dude. Oh my God. It feels amazing. And then I'm so much better with everybody else. I can sit here in this room and not be in any pain.

I can be in a good mood with you. I can do this all day long, you know? Is that different to how you were before? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This would be a chore. This would be work. This would be time away from my daughter. I'd be here with a chip in my shoulder. I should be with my daughter right now.

No, she's with me all the time now. I have her in my pocket Give her little some peanuts down there once. No, I just take her. You know, I mean, it's I She's with me all the time. So I have that perspective. I'm not not an angst of not being with my family or loved ones Pretty pretty amazing sort of perspective to have. And I try to hold on to those. It's a much lighter, more loving place and space to be. I'm interested in the way that your mindset changes going from going from having to be so self-focused to selfless focused to

that and then sort of moving between these two, right? Because there's attention, it feels like there's attention here. You're showing up to make yourself better to help to heal everybody else. You've got you that also needs to be served an awful lot. And yeah, it feels like there's a, a dynamic that's going on here between. Yeah. I don't know what the future holds to be honest with you, brother. Um, the, the giant shift was, which is, it's hard to say, you know, cause it

consists to me, it's like, it's like an airplane, right? And you use, use, um, pressure you use pressure in the cabin, right? And the things come down. You're supposed to put it on yourself, then your kid. Well, every parent's gonna be like, no, you put it on your kid first. That's been me raising my daughter. I'm always gonna look after and do the best for my daughter.

And just like we brought up earlier about how we like to take care. It's easier to take care of everybody else instead of yourself. And it's such like such a camaraderie kind of thing. It just, it doesn't, it doesn't really help us. But if we fill our own water first, we fill us first and then we can serve others better.

It's so I have to work that every day. I work that every day because my instinct is to always do something for somebody else first, right? So I, the practice is that, like I to always do something for somebody else first, right? So I the practice is that Like I told you like the idea of like oh wait, I went to Pittsburgh to film Mary Kingstown. No, I didn't I went there to go work with a great pt there I got a great medics there and do all my health and wellness and then I got to go back on set and Create jobs and have a lot of good time on the show like all that. It's secondary

That's just the way I think about it. You could look at it like yeah and create jobs and have a lot of good time on the show, like all that, it's secondary. That's just the way I think about it. You could look at it like, yeah, I went there to, of course I went to go film there, otherwise it wouldn't be in Pittsburgh, but no, I'm going there because I, you know what I mean? I take control of like it, so I don't feel like I'm victimized by my job. Like my job is removing me from my health and wellness.

No, I can't do that. Same with anything. So I think starting with taking care of myself because I again, because I have to again, I wouldn't do this if it didn't get ran over if I didn't fucking die. Sadly, my health and mental health and spiritual health would be depleted. No matter how much I tried.

So thank God I got crushed because now I take care of myself very well and I take care of others even more so. It's interesting what you said about the hamster wheel that you get on the priority of a job, of a calling, of something that's really important to you. My friend Bill wrote a great book, Die with Zero, and in it he says, delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. And I think a lot of people that are super, super driven, they get caught in that trap.

I got lots of positive reinforcement from the job that I do. I get accolades, I get recognition, I get validation. Well, it keeps you long. It keeps you hooked along. Correct. Yeah. I'm spinning on this hamster wheel, waiting for the day when I arrive. Yeah. At what? At some thing. I'm gonna continue to manana, manana filling my cup.

I'm gonna keep on pushing down, taking a little bit of time. And I wonder as well whether a good bit of that is that a very busy life, a very chaotic life, doesn't actually force you to turn inward and goes, is this actually what I'm supposed to, am I spending my life in the best way that I can? It's like, well, look at how important I am. Look how busy I am.

I can't be wasting my life. I look at how back to back to college. I've got my toilet break scheduled in 12 or five. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you, you, you see different countries where capitalism isn't like the forefront of your existence. Some monetary things, some status, some jobs, some cars, some object, right?

Whereas some more, you go to Japan, more sort of Buddhist sort of thinking and there's capitalism there for sure. But you go to Italy, there's capitalism there too, but there's also a love of life. Way more cigarettes. Yeah, exactly. There's wine and when they close their shop at two, they go take a nap. Or there's just, you know, there's a, there's a balance that can happen.

And America doesn't, America has such a strong sort of sense of capitalism. But it's also, you know, a strong country for, for that very same reason. And from the industry is one thing, but then we, I think we lose sight of. Like, you know, the American dream is, is, it needs to, can shift or can't shift. We don't have to, it's interesting time, just this time of information that we have. We could get so connected to everyone on the planet with all this information. I found not disenchantment with the American dream that maybe I knew in the 80s,

which is I go to college, I think I can get a Porsche and whatever the heck it was as a young dumb boy in the 80s. It certainly shifted as I mature as a man and now gotten older, but I have no regrets. That came from dying and being in the hospital. I wrote two goodbye notes, one to my family, one to my daughter. I had no regrets.

And I was so ready to go again. Because I was on machines and I'm like, oh man, I think they're gonna pull a plug on me at this point. But you know, it's nice to get that confirmation that you don't have regrets. So I'm gonna keep going with that idea and keep living, I'm I must be doing something right. Hmm

so I'll continue with the The ways the ways I was thinking because that confirmation was just a great great gift to receive Along with no bad days, you know, I'm not gonna get any bad days the rest of my life. That's pretty awesome Why I want to live a long time because I know what a bad day feels like life. That's pretty awesome. I want to live a long time because I know what a bad day feels like. I can have maybe a bad moment. I could find frustration. You'd be hard-pressed if you get any rage out of me. Was that something that you had before? No, I wasn't a raging guy. No. I mean neither. But just like you know just the idea of like you know what you when you

see you get you have to know the limits, right? And then reach beyond the limits, tested beyond my limits. And dying and coming back, it's like, all right, there's a different sort of, oh, also, I got to see behind the curtains. You know, I know what happens. And like, it's super exciting, wonderfully peaceful, super electric, magnificent. It's everything, there's no time, place or space. It's like all that, it's like,

oh, that's just a knowingness just in the back of my mind. Wow, that's amazing. There's a long list of amazing gifts that came with that. But going from like, oh, where are your capitals and the thing, that's spinning rock that we're on, and you can keep zooming out. That's where I start. Then I can get back in.

Once I find I'm too, too microed into something that my, my blinders are on and information is limited. I'm like, what am I doing here? I'm giving too much credence to something that has no value. And that's what I did a lot. And I think that's what a lot of us do all the time. Cause we have the freedom, the luxury of where we are in our lives, of, you know, to pay a lot of attention to stuff that doesn't have value.

You know, how many colors of toenail polish are there? For God's sakes or whatever, the minutia of what are we doing here? So let me zoom out. Let me zoom out a little bit. Let me aggregate what actually matters here. And then go back in, reengage into conversation, reengage into my life, reengage into, you know, whatever I was doing before,

because we can get a little caught up. We can get caught up. I feel like there's a ticking clock and the things that pressure and all these things we either we put on ourselves or society can put on us. And I relieve myself of all those duties. I am relieved. A quick aside, you've probably heard me talk about element before and that's because I'm frankly dependent on it. For the last three years, I've started my morning every single

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So you can buy it and try it for as long as you want and if you don't like it for any reason They give you your money back and you don't even need to return the box Plus they offer free shipping within the US. Right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to www.drinklmnt.com. That's www.drinklmnt.com. How do you think about balancing your desire to be professionally a very competent actor, pushing your limits creatively in terms of the way that you show up, because that does require obsession with the micro. You win in the weeds when it comes to stuff like that,

especially I'm sure there'll be more movies and the big show. Yeah, I think that'll take time. I think I can swallow the idea. I didn't think I was going to go back to work. I can swallow the idea. I didn't think I was going to go back to work. I had to live life in reality, not in fiction. It's hard for me to go back. But it meant a lot. I was around a lot of love. So then that felt- What was the first day back on set like?

I mean, it was very difficult. All of it was very, the energy levels were very low. I had like a couple good hours where I was awake enough to perform. As a character I knew very well and so that part was easy enough. I had to do a stunt as well. Um, a little challenging but worked through it. But all the working through with stunt guys and even the director, all set up the cameras, it was all just acts of love.

So that was what felt great. Everyone was happy that I was back. So yeah, I took it, it felt very loving. A very loving set and amazing group of people. So that's why I'm back again. You know, and it's pretty awesome. And I think it's just, to me, it's also to make a statement. I was tired of, you know, just doing recovery.

I got recovery down to eight hours at that point a day. And I had to reduce it to about four hours to start working. But I said, I think I'm ready. I think it's time. I got to get back on the world. I can't just be, you know, some like, recovery rat. Some recovery rat.

Like a gym rat would be like a recovery rat. I mean, that's all I'm doing. I'm assessing on recovery. I got to do something else. I got to participate in life. And like, why not do it with these people? There's a kind of fragility associated with that focus on recovery that never actually leads to you going back out into the real world. You know what I mean?

Right. Well, that's also, yeah, becomes kind of a do tile at that point, right? Well, then what do I get to set my goals to do? You know, I think I was ready. I was definitely very social all throughout that, you know, so I was getting that, I was getting fed that part. But yeah, just kind of get it back out in the world. And the world was really wonderful to me. Instantly with the set and then even people I met out about. I got wonderful treatment by people wherever I went.

And wow, that love that I would get just filled up my gas tank to get better, get stronger, do better, be better. And that all starts with me. I'm not doing it for anybody, right? I'm filled with things I need to do for myself. And there's zero selfish bone in my body. You know what I mean? And I always had that.

And I don't know if you too, but or if it's just a general thing, I feel selfish to take care of yourself so that I don't need to take care of everybody else. Right? I don't know if that's, but it certainly doesn't, it doesn't even come across. I never, there's not a selfish bone in my body and I know it no matter what, how much time I spend on myself. You know what I mean?

What would you say to someone who is deep in the hole, some sort of recovery, complex illness, injury, and they just haven't got that same fire that they need? Yeah, I know, man. If you need people around, you need a support system, emotionally support you. Even if they're just there in the background, you hate them, you need people around. You need a support system. Emotionally support you. Even if they're just there in the background and you hate them, you hate hearing their voices in the other room as they're playing games. My family was doing that. I didn't resent that.

I just loved hearing their voice there. The rumblings in the other room as I was in there with rubber bands and stuff and doing my thing. They'd be happy if I wheeled out and joined them. But I had, there's always love and support, you know? You gotta have, you need a community almost, you know? Maybe that's why they have like treatment centers. There's lots of other people you go into struggles,

but you're not alone, right? You have to believe that you're not alone and you can't do anything all by yourself. And that kept pushing me to keep going because I had a lot of help. And that help, I interpreted as love. And that was just all the few I needed. So I would say find support.

I mean, if you're, gosh, if you're a person alone in a hospital, you know, wow, you got nurses there, you got a team there, they're trying to help you, you know, help them help you, help your body help you, create, you're not alone because you have your body, create as a separate thing. It's a new girlfriend or new boyfriend, whoever you want, a new dog, it's a new separate entity that you get to work with. Separate your body from yourself, from your mind.

Then you can work together to get better because they work together wonderfully. If, right, that's a great dialogue to have. That was very clutch for me in my loneliness of it. But it's very, very effective for neural pathways and making new pathways for yourself. To treat your body like something that needs instructing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or to treat it with respect. Like I think it's a bad dog,

I think it's a bad analogy, but it's like, you know, it's just like, it's just a partner, but you're not helping me out here. So you gotta listen to me. I'll listen to you if you listen to me. But it treat it as a respect. It's still, I respect my body, but I'll tell it to fuck up once in a while. You know, and it's like, ah, I gotcha, I gotcha.

But you know, I give my body a personality. Like it's a, you know what I mean? It's a, I see it, I see it in my head and then we have this relationship. Now it's just like almost, almost unconscious thing that happens. And nothing, nothing, I get no flare backs or set backs or anything. I mean the worst, and also I never use the word even pain. I'll use discomfort, I'll use inflammation, stiffness. It's the worst thing I can ever say about my body.

But not pain? No. I don't know what pain is. That ain't pain. Inflammation, stiffness, walking, whatever. My back's like all out of whack and out of control and whatever. It's hard for me to get up and down sometimes, but like, but it's all temporary. It's temporary.

You move through that. It's a bad afternoon, it's a rough morning, whatever. Who cares? You move through it. It's temporary. It's all temporary. Anyway, isn't it? Your time on this planet is temporary. So make it the best you can. Work through the obstacles as best you can, right? We all gonna get obstacles no matter how rich you are, how poor you are, how strong you are or whatever. We're all gonna have problems and obstacles.

How good you are getting over those and through those, how fast and efficient you are with those. You're gonna have more joy in your life. It leaves a lot more room for joy and laughter and other things you really want. I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up what, at least to me, as a total noob in this world, a muggle outside of the industry looks like

maybe one of the biggest productions of all time, which was the Avengers series. Yes. Yeah. Looking back on that, what was being involved in that production? Like, you know, it, it removed it initially itself from, you became sort of part of something so collective. It's right. It's such a collective type of narrative.

The movies I was doing before were pretty more like I was a lead of a movie and the story is told through my character. This is such an ensemble sort of piece. So you had to rely upon so many things and so many things that didn't even exist and it's fantasy and there's all green screen and like people are dressed in checkerboarded outfits and you know, it's this fantasy world. People are dressed in checkerboarded outfits and, you know, it's this fantasy world. And then there's something that became really powerful in knowing that how much it meant to kids, right? How like, you know, the wide-eyedness of hope with kids, like, I don't know, it was such a great sort of conduit to kids.

And I love kids. I'm the oldest of seven and it's sort of my birthright just to, you know, to have them or to be with them. It's why I have a, you know, renovations foundation. I mean, to give hope and opportunities to kids is really, really important to me. So like, it started off there. We're dressing in costume. You know, it looked ridiculous at first. We're all dressed in, you know, there's Hemsworth, you go out like a Hemsworth

and he put him in, he's got a wig and he's just, but he's got like a latte. And he's in this store car, he's got this foam hammer or rubber hammer and this bow and arrow and we're all trading around our props. I think we're at some Halloween con. I was going to say, what's it feel like when you step out of each, your respective trailers and you come in

and everyone's got the, it is kind of like. Yeah, that's when we all, because we're all figuring out, this is at the beginning, right, in the first Avengers, we're all kind of figuring out each other, and then each other's characters and costumes, and then it's just grown into, you know, a family, you know, a personal family. We have our own private sort of chat,

and we've all gone through, like, marriage and divorces and kids and all these things happen over these last 13 years we've been together and It's also shared on a stage. That's almost a Significant culturally significant sort of 22 giant films there to make the last one that all led to Endgame right it's quite Significant It's quite a significant thing to have happened over the course of 12, 13, 14 years. It's awesome to be a part of that.

I get to take away, again, like I said, it's the great friendships, lasting friendships, while I have matching tattoos that signify our bond, that in this extreme narrative, crazy narrative of superheroes in a strange fantasy world brought us together and now I have like really really amazing loving friends and I have great conduit to children to be able to help them and because being famous before kind of sucked. It ripped away your sort of,

I don't want to say it totally sucked, but it just takes away your privacy, all the things. You don't get to do just normal things. I'm just a normal kid from Minnesota, California. I want to do normal shit. I just don't get to do. Fine. But I can do other things. Great. But having a voice to kids,

I took my daughter when Endgame came out, she was five years old, and I dropped her off at school for the first time, and she was in kindergarten. And then as I dropped her off in there, I was kind of nerve wracking. I hear my name, Jeremy Renner, be called by some third grader. I'm like, why does this third grader know my first and last name? That's Jeremy Renner. you, they're not even saying Hawkeye, but then something, oh, that's Hawkeye.

And I had like 30 kids come chasing me down with cell phones out. I'm like, what are you doing with cell phones? First of all, you get, anyway, so I take pictures of them all, like get back in, get back in your classrooms. And I went home, kind of freaked out that all these kids chasing me. I thought, oh, the cool thing that is now to have, I can use a

celebrity have a real voice and use it in a proper way, use it for a good thing. So that forever changed my life and that's where the foundation came involved and I could really make a difference for kids. It's usually foster youth and disadvantaged youth and but to put a smile on kids face is just the best feeling anyway. And hard to do if I was playing Jeffrey Dahmer, hard to do. That probably couldn't do it if I was doing this role or doing that role or doing that role, but because I did some, something that kids could watch.

Like my daughter never saw any of this stuff, but these kids were older. So anyway, I had, anyway, I had such conduit to kids and that became such a beautiful payday for me. Because the greatest payday for me doing anything in Marvel was my access to give love to kids, to inspire kids, to give them especially this foster youth and disadvantage, some opportunities, and plant some seeds of hope for them. Can you remember what your last scene was in

the filming schedule for the entire franchise so far? What was the last thing you did? The last day that you were on set, were you there for the final day of filming overall to give the big? Oh, yeah. We got all of us together just to do press. I had to get all the Avengers together because it got quite big at the end game.

So that was like a big sort of high school reunion kind of feeling. Like, oh my God, nobody's in costume this time. Hmm. But yeah, the last day of filming, yeah, it was a reshoot, I believe, for Scarlett and I. Her death scene, which is brutal. Um, but I also did the Hawkeye series.

So then that continued on. Kicks it on. Yeah. That kind of continued on and, you know, cause I love to love to continue on, but mainly continue on cause, um, I like the character and I think it can do a lot for more with kids with it and I want to affect a lot of kids. So. Was there ever a sense of poetic irony that Hawkeye, given that one of your eyes

was out of your head and on the floor, did that pass? Probably other stuff to focus on during that 45 minute period. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it cut off my head. So what are you focused on now? What's coming up next for you?

Well, I stick really quite present. Um, I kind of try not to let my future get a hold of me. Uh, cause it did in the past. So I focus, uh, the renovations foundation. I have a couple of camps that I'm doing. Um, it's grown quite significantly is, which is great. A lot of support, a lot of community support. So I'm really focused on that as a outside of my mental health and physical health.

And, uh, the foundation is, uh, probably second in line as far priority. That's, that's a bigger scope as something. And all my family's involved in the foundation as well, which is so killer. It's given them a real direction in life as well, my passion to help kids. So it's really easy. And my sister running it.

And then work-wise, yeah, there's a movie coming out later this year. I'm excited about the knives out. Um, third one in that, and then Mary Kingstown's continued on. And people seem to really like that one. Um, it does well for Paramount plus, and I'll probably do one more season for sure. It seems if people still like it, which I think to do is going to be a pretty killer season. But outside that, I'm building a house. I'm always building and designing and doing those things.

And try not to get too busier than just that. That's a pretty booked year. I'm trying not to work anymore for the rest of the year so I can go focus on the foundation and helping that grow and that sort of stuff. So those are the important things to me. In my family, of course, I can't wait to spend the summer with my daughter. She loves working with the foundation and helping the kids.

It's pretty cool. Pretty cool to see her growth as an emotional, emotionally intelligent creature. She's a lovely, lovely human my daughter's become out to be so very proud. I'm happy for you, man. Yeah. Thanks, man. I'm really happy. I'm really happy.

Jeremy Rana, ladies and gentlemen, you're awesome. Uh, I think being able to see, uh, somebody sort of publicly go through, uh, a challenge like this is, is really important. It really, really is. Yeah. I'm glad it became a public thing. I'm glad. I mean, I never wanted to be. Because I woke up and there was like, you know, I was gone for a while. But by the time I woke up, it was like, it was everywhere, right? And like, that was a private moment between me and my nephew with my family on my driveway.

It's none of your damn business. And I, you know, but I guess I just kind of leaned into it and just made it, they made it public. So then I shared a private experience with everybody. And it was wonderful. It's, it's, it's, that's where a lot of the narrative grew from me being a man or a brother or just a friend.

Or I wasn't the actor anymore. I was just somebody that went through something. Something they might be curious about or not. Or just someone that's had a lot, right? So that was, I'm really glad it became such a public thing. And I'm glad who me being very private typically shared a lot of sort of milestones that I had through social media or through the press.

The press is very like whatever I said on social media, they just went out and printed everywhere. I'm glad I created a lot of wonderful relationships with the public, with fans. They can't just, I mean, I'm glad, I'm so glad for it. But I tried to do the Diane Sawyer thing and then say, okay, here's what happened, now let's move on. Let me get back to it.

No, no, no, no. That just, just the beginning. The book, dude, the interviews. Oh yeah. What did the album do? Yeah. All this stuff. So, so even like with this book, it's not going to be, it's just only going to be a

chapter, it's not going to be, I'm letting this go for the rest of my life. I'm never going to let this go. It's just always going to be part of now my DNA. I mean, it is for me and you know, the importance of it will be maybe less in public, which would be good, but it's something I was, I can't just shove away anymore. It's just now become a central part of who I am. And I'm thankful for that. Maybe don't do it again.

I'm not gonna do that again. I'm on the snowcat again, but you know, I'm just, you know, I'm not gonna let that thing haunt me. That's not happening. Jeremy, I appreciate you, man. Yeah, thanks, brother, appreciate it. Ooh, tasty Jeremy Renner made it all the way to the end of that episode.

Well, why not watch the Indian Hawkeye, Naval Ravikant, right here.