The Checkup with Doctor Mike - Steve-O Is Dying For Your Attention

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Buy Steve-O's book here: https://www.hachettebooks.com/titles/stephen-steve-o-glover/a-hard-kick-in-the-nuts/9780306826771/ Steve-O is an icon. Everyone knows him as one of the faces of Jackass, but what most people don't know is that Steve-O is more than just a stunt man known for falling down stairs in a bellhop cart or lighting himself on fire. In this two-hour interview, I feel like I really spoke to the actual human being, Stephen Glover, and not the extreme stunt-man from MTV. We dove into the obvious stuff I know you want to hear, such as old Jackass stories, his most painful injuries, and how his body is holding up. Beyond that though, we dove into some really deep subjects, such as his struggles with growing up as a "rich kid", Buddhism, and the profound lessons he's learned through a multi-decade life of getting paid to injure yourself. Steve-O is addicted to attention, and I was glad to give him some! Executive Producer and Host: Dr. Mike Varshavski Produced by Dan Owens and Sam Bowers Art by Caroline Weigum CONTACT: [e-mail]

Steveo is absolutely a legend. Being on Jackass for over a decade and all the stunts that he's pulled, as a doctor, I'm not even sure how he's still alive. But in this podcast, we have some really interesting conversations about his health, the injuries he's sustained, some unique projects he has coming up, including him getting double-de breast implants. As an individual who spent so much time in hospitals getting treated for injuries,

I thought he would be the perfect guest. Let's get started. I don't know how much you know about me, but I'm a family medicine doctor by training. I understand that you are a legit doctor, a massive YouTuber, a sexiest doctor award winner. Yeah, it was a no-brainer for me to do this. So thank you for the invite.

Yeah, no, thank you for coming on. Obviously, a legend. I've been a huge fan growing up. I came as an immigrant from Russia. So American culture was very new to me. But Jackass was almost the beginning of that for me. So it's so cool. Is English not your first language?

Correct. Yeah. Russian is my first language. It's pretty incredible, man. Like, what is it that allows some people to take on a second language and speak just undetectably well? You know, you would never know that English is not your first language. I think it's age. People have different cutoffs, but they say if you come before age 10, you generally don't get the accent.

I say it's probably a little bit younger than that, eight. 7, 8. If you come before then, no accent undetectable. For example, my sister, she's nine years older than me. She has a heavy accent. Okay. Yeah. You can hear definitely she's from Soviet Russia. Wow. Are you a sparkling water fan or flat water? I do. I like it. Yeah. I don't know where I got that from, but now I'm obsessed with sparkling water. I think it's because my parents poisoned me with soda when I was a kid. Right. And then I'm like, I can't keep drinking soda. It's just not healthy. Now, as a doctor, do you have an opinion about the health of sparkling water versus not? I have a few tips when it comes to sparkling water. One is if you have issues

with acid reflux, not a great idea to drink before bed. Okay. Because it bubbles, makes you burp, some of the acid can leak out, obviously very uncomfortable. I absolutely have issues with acid reflux. and a long-running case of Barrett's esophagus. Wow, okay. So that's like a pre-cancerous state in your esophagus? And I've monitored it very closely with my gastroenterologist. Yes. Regular endoscopies on a yearly basis.

But my last endoscopy, the doctor said that I've stabilized and do not need another endoscopy for three years. Fantastic. Okay. I'm glad to hear it because I heard you talking about that on hot ones and then you started pounding hot sauce and I got nervous for you. Right. Yeah. Well, that's interesting.

Yeah. So Barrett's esophagus usually occurs with individuals who have longstanding uncontrolled acid reflux. So have you had issues with heartburn and pain? Yeah. I did. And I mean, just of the alcohol. You know, I just remember, I remember times when I was still drinking when my acid reflux was, my heartburn was so terribly bad that it would wake me up in the middle of the night.

I would go to the bathroom and just barf to just try to get the- ease the pain. Yeah. Wow. And was there any ever blood? Not that I recall. The reason I ask is in individuals who do drink a lot of alcohol and have issues with their esophagus, sometimes you get tears and you can have a tear in the esophagus

or something known as esophageal varices where you get swelling in the blood vessels of the esophagus and they can rupture inside and you could have bleeding inside. So I'm glad that never happens to it. But yeah, I mean, you're basically a professional patient at this point. I'm a professional doctor, you're a professional patient. Not because of that, but because of all your lifelong injuries. Yeah, I've said many times that,

If all of my hospital visits were to the same hospital, I would be on that hospital's Christmas card list. You would have a wing. Yeah. I've definitely been to the hospital a lot. You haven't? No, no, I have. Oh, yeah. I've definitely been a lot. I read in your book that you were saying the worst stunt you ever performed was the jet fuel.

That was the most painful. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. it um it was it was a frustrating question for uh you know for me when people would ask what was the most painful stunt particularly because it was such a frequently asked question yeah and uh you know it frustrated me because there are really different criteria to the pain there's the duration and then there's the intensity and the type right and um I would lean towards the, you know, quicker it's over, the better.

But, you know, it's just apples and oranges. And then when I had suffered the third-degree burns on 15% of my body and needed skin graft surgery, that actually checked both boxes. The burning, the length. Emphatically. Yeah. Yeah. The duration and the intensity of the pain was like just in another.

world i i went on effectively a tour of burn units after that wow and uh and and heard multiple times that people who have been both shot and stabbed as well as suffered burns will tell you burns are the worst pain of everything i could see that yeah that's really bad did you feel the pain right away when the burn happened or was this i did i did it uh it wasn't as bad the next day and then each day thereafter it just got like more and more unbearable and then at day five i was like okay like i got to so it's progressive showed up in the hospital on day five and they're like what the fuck were you waiting for oh you didn't go right away yeah they thought that it would just get better you know okay and uh and then i showed up on day five and they explained that i needed emergency surgery

And the real pisser was that their next question was, when's the last time you ate? And I was like, I just ate. And before I came here. So they're like, you have to wait eight hours. Eight hours. And I had just refused the painkiller. You know, like, no, I'm a sober guy. I don't want any painkiller.

And then I heard, we cannot operate on you for eight hours because you just ate. And I said, okay, give me the painkiller. Do you know what they gave you? I believe it was dilauded. And my arms were so burnt, they put the IV in my neck. Wow. So you had like a central line put in. Yeah.

And it's crazy being a sober guy in recovery. Like, you know, how quickly that awakens the beast, you know, like, oh, like, are you in pain? Yes. The receptors right away started. Yeah, it's really crazy. And it was, it had a real, like, sort of powerful effect on me. Like, I, you know, yes, I am still in pain. I need more.

And then what snapped me out of it at one point when I was asking for yet more, they said, we'll give you more, but it's getting to a point where I'd be concerned about your, you know, getting off. Yeah. And that woke me up and I was like, oh, yeah. like I got it what would your advice be either to yourself at that moment when they initially offered it or maybe to someone else who's facing the same dilemma um i mean there i could be in that uh situation a thousand times and and 100% of the time i would take that painkiller because

the pain was that bad wow um i i i'm kind of careful about giving out advice to other people particularly as it relates to addiction. Sure. But I know that for me, in my 14 years of sobriety, I've never even filled out a prescription for any kind of a pain killer. It's been all Advil and Tylenol. Okay. Congratulations on that. That's a long time. Yeah, I've been in horrific pain and taken Advil and Tylenol together. Okay. But that's as far as I've gone.

Got it. Okay. And in severe cases, we do recommend that. in the hospital. It's unbelievable how effective both of those are, Tylenol and Advil. Well, because they work slightly in different ways, so you kind of get a stacking effect of the medicine. And again, I don't recommend that to most patients because it's largely unnecessary for most pain.

But in certain instances, a big example of it is actually dental pain. And I've heard you've had a lot of dental issues. Unbelievable amount. Yeah. And your biggest risk that you say people face is by doing one thing that not everyone likes to do. Floss, yeah.

It's not a risk that everybody faces. It's just personally my biggest regret in life. Like, you know, in the grand scheme of things, my biggest regret is that I was not diligent about flossing. And I think I was genetically predisposed to having poor oral health, you know, in the teeth and gums department. but part of that and really the worst part of that is that I was one of those people who I am one of those people who cannot get away with not flossing because not flossing led to the

presence of a bacteria with a very it's a very distinctive odor when someone has this bacteria and the crazy thing about it is that the person who has has that bacteria in their mouth. Doesn't know it. It doesn't know it. And I remember, like, you know, being, like, in my very early 20s, maybe late teens, my mom would say, oh, your breath. I mean, Mom, I just brushed my teeth. She's like, I don't care, your breath is, and I didn't get it.

You know, I didn't get it. I didn't understand it. And it was just years and years later that a dentist said, hey, you know, you've got this odor in your mouth, like, you just. And I became a diligent philosopher. One time I got in a van with all the jackass guys and we men and we man says, oh, dude, Steveo, your breath. And Knoxville just says, saying Steveo has bad breath is like saying we man is short.

It's just all the time. And I got so many years of my life that it was disgusting for people to have a conversation with me because of this odor coming out of my mouth. And did flossing solve that? It did. I had a round of deep cleaning. Okay. And flossed ever since.

Now I have a whole ritual at night. Water pick is how I start. Then I floss. Then I brush. Then I tongue scrape. Then I rinse with fluoride rinse. Okay. I love it.

So you have like the full cycle going on. Yeah, because I'm just such horrific gum. recession that really it's just an exercise in doing everything I can to preserve what little remains. And if it weren't for my poor oral hygiene with the flaws, it's not just the, you know, the bacteria, the odor that was emanating from my mouth. I blame the hardcore gum recession on that too. Yeah, of course. And I'm curious, did you, when you started doing the hardcore dental care. Did you at the same time get the Barrett's esophagus process started? I had the, I had it already. You had it right. The reason I ask is because a lot of times acid reflux will present with bad

breath. Wow. So I wonder if like as a child. Yeah. Were you like a kid having early symptoms and that's how you developed barit's esophagus from longstanding reflux? I wonder it sounds like it could have been uh it could be a chicken or the egg thing here because the the um acid reflux presenting his bad breath so like what came first the parents are the bad breath yeah yeah for sure yeah it's it's crazy and you know what what's what's so uh perplexing is how it's um like in our culture like you'll tell somebody if uh if they've got like a bugger in their nose yeah like if someone's I've got some food on your face. But like nobody and myself included can bear to say to somebody, dude, you're

a bit, dude. Well, because I think it's not as easily to be fixed. Like you can wipe this off, but if someone's breath, right, it can't really help it. And I want to, like when I smell that very distinctive bacteria smell coming out of someone's mouth, I have this inner dialogue. I want to tell the person like, hey, like, you know, I'm, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, don't want to be unkind, but I, you know, I want you to know that I can smell this thing that I used to have a problem with.

And the answer is to go to the dentist and get a cleaning and then floss. And a real tell is that if you floss and smell the floss, you can tell that. Well, yeah, that's, that actually happens to people that are healthy as well if they haven't flossed in a little while. Right. Right. And now, as I move forward in my life, I really predict that I'm going to have a whole new biggest regret. And that is going to be not having a very disciplined stretching regimen. Interesting. But you are meditating still, right?

Oh, meditating my ass off. Are you on your streak still? Yeah, over a thousand days. A thousand days. I think I'm like a thousand and six days. It's over three years now. You have it on the phone. Not over three years.

Three years is going to be December 27th. See, this is Doctors Aren't could have math. Yeah. Yeah, I'm on day 106. Wow. Yeah. And you log it religiously daily. Yeah, for sure.

It's almost like the act of meditating, I could take it or leave it. It's getting credit from my app I do it for. I love it. No, it's like a challenge that you've met each day. Yeah, because I'm such an all or nothing, like no moderation guy. like without like the the app to keep the the numbers like i would just fall up like interesting where do you think that comes from i don't know like you you love getting big viewership numbers you love any kind of attention any kind of credit and it well first of all you deserve it well

you've had a very unique life like listening to some of the podcasts you've been on before your book uh i I mean, Ringling Brothers Clown School, that sounded like a trip. It would have been a really crazy and compelling reality TV show, the whole process of Clown College. I mean, it was 1997 when I went to Clown College. So there really was no such thing as reality TV yet. But it was basically an elimination show, you know, like, Survivor of clown school. Yeah, 33 clowns were accepted after untold thousands auditioned.

And then of the 33 clowns, all 33 graduated, but only 10 were awarded with contracts with the circus. So it was like kind of, you know, an elimination dynamic. There was a lot of backstabbing. Really? So there was drama amongst? Yeah, I mean, you might like, it would not be shocking. if somebody got their alarm clock unplugged so that they would be like late and and then

have that be frowned upon and you know i never thought i'd say this but there's a lot of similarities to clown school and medical school because there's people that like try and stab you in the back in medical school they're called gunners they actually have a name for that do you guys have a name we did not we did not but but nobody was upset if a clown uh you know had some unfavorable situation they found themselves in fair yeah If you think you were coming up at a time like this, like early in your career, and there's TikToks. It's a great question.

Are you crushing it on TikTok right now? Had I been born 20 years later, would I have found success in this new digital landscape? It's an interesting question. Because when I came up, there was name and then? internet. You know, literally, they did not have the internet. And, um, you know, I recorded my stunts on onto, uh, video cassette tapes known as VHS tapes. And, uh, I would edit my footage by, uh, by wiring two VCRs together. You know, how many of the people listening even know what a VCR is? No, come on, they know. It's a video cassette recorder. And then I would physically walk my, my video,

cassette to the post office and mail it to whoever I thought might watch it. And that being the case, there was considerably less content to compete with. There was a lot less noise to rise above. And to answer the question, I don't know how I would have done with all of the noise to compete with and try to rise above. But I genuinely believe that I am such a persistent son of a bitch, such a rabid attention whore that I just would have been, every bit as tireless. And I just like, I am a tireless attention whore to the point where I think I would

have risen above the noise no matter when I was born. Okay. I think you would have definitely gotten shadow banned by these sites. Yeah, that's still a concern. Yeah. The community guidelines violation check? Right. Because even I did a reaction video to the new Jackass movie talking about the medical situations that could arise in each one of them.

And it got like age gated. It got blocked. I don't doubt that. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a copyright claim too from a Viacom. Yeah. But then again, by doing that, it's clearly a fair usage too. Yeah, exactly. If you're adding commentary to it.

That's cool that you're aware of that because a lot of people are like, no, no, no, don't ever use my stuff. Fair use is not a thing. Fair uses and what you're doing by analyzing it and giving your own commentary, you're changing the meaning of it. And that's precisely what fair usage is for. Exactly. And my thought is, I think you would crush it on these platforms.

if you were born 20 years later, not that you're doing amazing now, but I worry that with the state you were in at the time when you were younger, with alcohol, with drugs, would you have gone too far for the views? Maybe that's just me speculating, but I'm curious what you think about that. I don't know that there was any, like, limitations.

And, you know, like, I mean, there was, like, Because the world's always odd now. I mean, the camera was always that, you know, mystical, super, you know, like I worshipped the video cameras, what I'm trying to say. And I don't know that I could have worshipped the camera or the footage or the audience, like any more than I already did. So going too far for the views, I think that was going on very much. I really looked to the video camera as like a religious kind of a thing. The human condition is such a terrible catch-22, such an awful prank on us. you know we've got one instinct just to survive we've got one guarantee we won't survive so it's like

how do you handle that mortality is such a motherfucker and um some people turn to religion to try to wrap their head around their mortality because heaven's going to be great and everything will be okay you know another thing is is really popular is reproducing because there's something about that that defeats your mortality. You're going to have your legacy and your children. And then there's, for me, the video camera, like leaving footage behind it. It was my message in a bottle.

Well, it's your art. Right, right. Like cavemen were scrawling stick figures on caves, like presumably because they knew that that wall art would outlive them. Yeah. And leaving something behind of permanence, you know, to be a legacy. That's how, and I took it so seriously. So, yeah, as far as, like, going too far for views, like, there's no links that I wouldn't be willing to go to for that VHS video camera because I viewed that footage as just totally permanent.

That was my way to live forever. Where do you, what do you credit, like, your high level of insight to? Because you're very insightful as an individual. Oh, well, thank you. I mean, I don't know. I certainly had a really good education. In Miami? I lived in Miami among many other places.

I was raised in five different countries. So I tried. You were high school in England, college in Miami, right? Yeah, high school in England and college, you know, what little I made it through, I was in Miami. So when you say you had a good education, which one of those are you referencing? I would say that the grade school and, you know, the high school that I went to, it was in England. It was called the American School in London. And, you know, I was classmates with, like, the American ambassador to England's son, like, all of these, like, you know, just, it was an Uber privileged school for, like, Uber privileged school for, like, Uber.

privileged people. And of my senior class, 80% of my senior class went on to Ivy League schools. And I was like effectively a loser for going to the University of Miami, which is actually like a pretty good school. Exactly. And I mean, you know, what's particularly interesting in this context, speaking with you, is that my best friend, I moved to and from London, England, multiple times. This school that I went to high school at, I also attended fourth grade there, fifth grade and sixth grade. Then I left and then I ended up coming back.

So the one guy who I've known the longest out of anybody in the world is my buddy, Abdullah, who I met when we were nine years old in fourth grade. We also graduated high school together. And Abdullah, like 80% of the class, went to Brown University. He graduated from Brown University with a 4.0, went on to Cornell Medical School, and then went on to become a pediatric surgeon at the Mayo Clinic and literally invented methods of operating on unborn children still in the womb. Wow.

Like just came up with them and introduced them into the world and now it's like you can operate on children before they're born because of my buddy Abdullah. Wow. And we could not have taken more different paths. Yes. We just couldn't. And yet we've stayed in touch all these years.

Really? Okay. Yeah. What has he made? Like I'm curious what a doctor, who's your friend, feelings are on what your journey has been like. He's all about it. I mean, he's super supportive of me and what I do. I remember, I remember him being really emphatic, you know, above anybody else.

Like when you're, like, you know, wear a condom. I really like, he's like, you don't want to know. You know, you don't want to know. You know, wear a condom. Like he, uh, okay. Like, really emphatically. You're jumping off of building. He's like, wear a condom.

Right. I mean, he, he was, you know, seemed to be privy to some information that made him feel very strongly about that. Interesting, okay. And it's interesting, too, that, you know, he was my best friend when I was in fourth grade, like, in high school, you know, like, we were really close. And my dad was a super successful businessman, and as such, like, as I grew up, the house my family lived in grew larger and larger.

And I was just, for some reason, very self-colle. conscious of that you know like i i i i don't know why but but i was like you hated the wealth like that i was i was embarrassed of it you know like i i don't know why but um but i was embarrassed of it like to the point where um in high school i um my intention was to ride my skateboard to school but that took some time and if i overslept or was running late for any reason then i was out of time to ride my skateboard to school. My dad would be leaving about the same time. So I would be forced to catch a ride with my dad who was chauffeur driven and just sitting

in the back seat, reading a newspaper. And when that was the case, I would ride in the front passenger seat. And then when I got dropped off at school, I would hug the driver because I was like embarrassed of being a rich kid. What else wealthy in this wealthy school? Yeah, I mean, and that's a very good point too, but I was just embarrassed of being a rich kid. I hated that. And I hated the idea of bringing like schoolmates over to my house because it was like a big ass house, you know?

And I was self-conscious about that. So I didn't bring a lot of people over to my house. I was always at Abdullah's house, you know? And in fourth grade, I remember like, because Abdullah, His family was super religious, you know, Muslim family from Sudan. And I would join Abdullah in praying to Mecca and stuff. Oh, wow. I was just like, all right, this is what we're doing.

It's cool, you know. Abdullah, very highly evolved, like, super spiritual guy. And when he was at the Mayo Clinic, my comedy tour brought me to Minneapolis, where the Mayo Clinic is. And Abdullah and I went out to go get lunch. We were at, like, a bar playing pool because we used to play pool when we were kids. Over this game of pool, I was expressing to Abdullah that I do not want to have children. And he was not understanding this.

I said, you know, like my rationale is on top of my genetic predisposition to a dick. you know and just sort of like the all that comes with that I look at the world and I see the the increasing disparity of wealth you know that the age gap is just really stopped being funny a long time ago like that I said to Abdullah you know when when our parents graduated from a university that meant placing in a career of your choosing and then for us like our our generation, not quite so much. Like it was viewed as very helpful to have a university diploma, but it didn't guarantee you anything.

And then now for our kids, I mean, it's just being bogged down in crazy amounts of debt. You know, like the opportunity in this world has dwindled and dwindled, and I just cannot bring myself to create a human being to fight against this struggle. Wow. Okay. That's dark. I take it seriously. Yeah, I think I take it seriously. I really respect the idea of it. And it is dark. Abdullah's response to all of this, I'll never forget it. It was so intense. He says, in Africa, with all of the poverty, the famine, the disease, do you think people are any less happy?

my gut reaction, right, I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, I do. But intellectually, I get what Abdullah was saying, which is that you can strip from somebody. They're, you know, everything, really, their health, their, you know, food. Like, you can take everything away. But one thing that you cannot take away from somebody is their capacity to love another. And it is from the capacity to love another, from the act of loving another, that happiness truly is derived. So to Abdullah's point, people are not less happy. If anything, they're arguably maybe happier in Africa.

Yeah. But I still got the vasectomy. Wait, not that day. Not that day. Okay. You didn't go from pool and this conversation. Not that day, but I went through with the vasectomy Olympics. Do you think you consider yourself more of a pessimist than an optimist then?

Probably. Really? I take you as such an optimist. You're like high on life right now. You're logging meditation hours. Absolutely. But in my new book, and this isn't just for the sake of shamelessly promoting it, But this is something that I think is pertinent here.

And the final chapter of the book begins with the question, in quotes, are you happy? And then I go on to say that question just has always made me super uncomfortable. It makes me just, I like I find, this is one thing to say, you're like, hey, yeah, dude, how's going? You know, that's super casual. But are you happy is a much. much more serious question and and my my natural instinct my my gut reaction to that is like if I think about it now I'm not you know like I consider myself uh largely gripped by anxiety fear and

stress and I I believe that my natural default fault feeling position is just that everything's not okay or if it's okay now it's not going to be okay and that like I've got to hurry up and do something to make it so that everything will be okay I've got to hustle I got to hurry I got to work I got to accomplish and and that's just my perpetual state um and the question bothered me because I feel genuinely that that's my perpetual state and as I just kind of chewed on it and processed it I arrived at no I'm not happy and that's okay because I don't want to be happy I believe that it follows that to be happy is to be content to be content

is to not need anything. And to not need anything is to be fucking lazy and potentially a loser. Interesting that you read into it that way. Yeah, I mean, now I wish that I could work, work, and then have a switch that I can flip where now I'm not working and now I'm perfectly comfortable and happy, but I don't have that switch. Sure.

It's funny that you use the word content because have you ever seen a show? It's canceled now. I thought it was really good called Magic City on Stars about how the casinos we're potentially going to leave Cuba and come to Florida in like I've not seen that but isn't it crazy when you said it's canceled now how powerful the word canceled has become I got to be careful what did the show do no the show this show is a great show funding I think it was an issue okay but there was a scene where one of the mafia guys gets asked are you happy and he goes howdy do these happy I'm contented wow okay and I'm like okay

Okay. Kind of a similar message. I mean, I would submit that happy and content are synonymous. I bet if you looked up in a thesaurus, you would. Yeah. The way that I look at it as a doctor is based on research. And what we've seen is pessimistic people in comparison to optimistic people are usually more accurate in predicting the future. I bet.

Because they are more realistic versus optimistic. But this is going to probably relate very well to you. Their health status is usually worse. Okay. Because of the immense worry and anxiety that comes along with being a pessimist. Worry, anxiety, it's not good for you. Chronically, like long term, it's not good for you. Yeah, it's a pisser.

It's a pisser. And I wish that on some level I could change it. I mean, I do take Zoloft. Okay. I, uh, but that's like, like more than anxiety. That's, um, I think that what I shouldn't say I think I know for a fact that if I'm not taking Zoloft, I go into dark places very easy. It, it takes only a minor disturbance for me to go straight into suicidal ideation. And it's super scary. I don't think that I've ever been particularly suicidal. I think that the, the, the, the,

the travesty of all that is just the constructive, the time that's wasted on just fantasizing and just being in this dark, morbid place. And when I'm taking Zoloft, I don't ever go. I'm taking Zoloft, I do not think about killing myself. And that's a bonus. That's powerful. That's intended. Yeah, it's intended.

And I don't want to come off like a Zoloft commercial. and I'm sure everybody's different and, you know, but it's super helpful for me. It's a type of medication that we prescribe for anxiety or depression. And what's interesting about those medications and how I speak to them with my patients before I prescribe them is a lot of patients have a fear that it's going to make them not feel things, like make them go blank. And the goal of it is just to tone down the intensity of those negative or very positive emotions because anxiety is considered a positive emotion.

It brings your energy level up. up. Like there's a lot of energy there. With depression, you're down usually and as a result, you have low energy. So with a medicine like an SSRI, the idea is to take off the highs and lows to give you better control in those moments. And that's essentially what you're saying, when you're saying it helps you have less chance of having suicidal ideation. Yeah. Yeah, I swear by it. I really, I feel that Zolov's. is very important to me. And, you know, other than that, the, you know,

like the kind of perpetual, like, scrunching of my, that I just feel like I hold all this tension and anxiety. And I kind of just consider that to be the fire under my ass, you know, to strive to accomplish things. Well, so many times the things that make us really special and do great things are oftentimes, or weaknesses at the same time. Sure.

It's hard to imagine that there's any such thing as other than that. Yeah. Like I have patients come in and say, well, I don't want to be less angry. That helps me keep my edge at work. And I'm like, well, can we find a way where it's not going to get you arrested and then you can keep working well?

Yeah. And it's that fine line of always balance and coming back to that center point, which have you done any reading on Buddhism? I'm curious. Absolutely. there's a bunch about Buddhism in this book about how the philosophy of Buddhism

and Buddhism is much less of a religion than it is a philosophy and that all of human suffering is caused by craving where it follows that if you're in pain, then it's natural to crave for that pain to end or be lessened. And by the same measure, whatever situation we find ourselves in, if we're in some situation that's pleasurable, we will crave for that pleasure to last longer or to intensify. So, like the thrust of Buddhism, as I understand it, is that no matter what our circumstances as humans, we will crave for those circumstances to improve.

That's just the nature of our ego. That's the nature of us as an organism. And because that's the case, there is no state that we can be in. where we're actually gonna be satisfied. We're always just gonna want more, more, more, more, more. And it's that craving of more and better and just to improve our circumstance that causes suffering.

And so Buddhism, it points to accepting the state you're in as opposed to craving for it to improve. And that's easier said than done. Yeah. How do you meditate? Is that sort of what you try and achieve? It's mantra-based.

Okay. So it's the same of the transcendental meditation, the Vedic meditation. They're the same thing. Except hilariously, the transcendental meditation people and the Vedic meditation people are at like a low-grade war with each other. Really? Why? They're doing exactly the same thing.

Okay. So it's just claiming who does it better or first? I mean, I'm not necessarily even sure the nature of the beef, but I just know that there's a low-level beef. Meditation beef. Yeah, there's a low-level beef because I started out with Transcendental Meditation in 2013, and I was not, it's like one of the funniest things in this damn book. I was not particularly, like, diligent about it, but I would do it. And the place that taught me transcendental meditation, my teacher,

asked me to, you know, if I would be willing to, you know, participate in like a fundraising effort to bring meditation to inner city schools to try to disrupt the school to prison pipeline. And I was all in. I posted this all over my social media, raised all the money I possibly could. And that place, it's called the David Lynch Foundation, that taught me to meditate.

They didn't follow me back on Twitter. Twitter. They didn't even thank me for the money I donated. And I was so incensed by that. I, despite them, I quit meditating. I was like, fuck that. I swear, dude, which is so funny because the idea is it throws me like a spiritual practice. And I'm just like, fuck them. I quit. And so, you know, the following years, I really did feel that I was doing a disservice to myself by not meditating. But I still held that grudge. So I ended up finding a new meditation team church who just happened to be like of the Vedic, you know? And so that this is where like I was like, wow, this is exactly the same thing they taught me last time. But like they're beeping with each other. And so it just

helped me to nurture that grudge. And I got a new mantra and now I do it every day. Maybe I'm being overly philosophic with this. But you know, they say you ask God for patience. They give you a complicated problem so maybe you wanted meditation and they gave you this to learn that you really need to find meditation i mean who knows who knows but it's really fucking hilarious that uh you know that that i managed to uh be so resentful at uh you know in this spiritual practice of meditating and um and despite all that now i'm just so thrilled that that i'm just so thrilled that I have a discipline practice. I know, too, that when I got in,

when I first started with the Transcendental Meditation, like you fall off once, you know, and then it's like just really easy to just fall off altogether. And that's why I knew going back into it, like let me keep it on an app so that heaven forbid if I break the streak, I like, you know.

Well, hopefully if you break it, you still go back. I would be very worried that I wouldn't. Oh, okay. That's a fair concern. Yeah, I would be very worried that I wouldn't. And my new meditation teacher, any meditation teacher isn't going to frown on the use of a timer, of an app, you know, of an alarm. And my new meditation teacher has since come around. I send him my screenshots my app and I get it.

I get it. I'm actually his star pupil. Wow, okay. Because of the number of days. Yeah, because like I don't, I just don't miss. Okay. That's amazing. That's like dedication.

Yeah, I don't miss. And I have an unshakable faith that my meditation practice causes the universe to conspire in my favor. It's an arguably outlandish belief, but I believe that the universe responds to effort effort to acknowledge. to have a relationship with it, to plug into the force. I don't think it's outlandish. I think it's very accurate. I did. You can't tell me otherwise.

Yeah. You know, you can't. I think even medically it makes sense. Yeah. Oh, my God, Abdullah was telling me about times when prayer healed fucking unhealable shit. Well, that's why I'm very careful with talking about integrative therapies because Because people say, oh, well, they mislead people to believe this is the cure. Right.

And that's not what I'm trying to say with a lot of these therapies. But if you're not giving up traditional medicine that actually works and has proven benefits and doing your prayers, please, that's amazing. Right. Because we like to shit on the placebo effect in medicine. Right. Oh, that's placebo. That's placebo.

Right. Why? It fucking works. Yeah, yeah. Like if I give 100 people a sugar pill. and then these hundred people, a real pill, a pain relief, and I tell all of them that it's a real pain pill, 30% of the people that I got the sugar pill will feel pain relief.

Why would I not take advantage of that and allow people to have spiritual journeys? It's a fantastic example. Now that is it more than 30% on the real pill? That's how we do our trials. Because you can never compare just does this pill work. Right, right, right. You have to compare it to a fake pill. Right.

That's the random way. You got a control for the experiment. Exactly, yeah. Dee, you reminded me of a situation again with my buddy Abdullah. My sister, her second child was born with both autism and Down syndrome. And I believe that it's common with children with Down syndrome. There was a hole in the baby's heart. And it was a super upsetting and terrible.

terrifying situation and I'll be I'll be damned if after not hearing from Abdullah for like the longest time it like no communication whatsoever just in the in the midst of that situation Abdullah called either me or my sister out of nowhere and said hey you know your baby's going to be okay and the whole fucking closed like like uh that i mean it was like that crazy but it wasn't like day after it was it was it was uh i would have to call my sister and ask her but uh that's when i started looking at abdala a little different you're like all that praying we did early on wait a second yeah praying a met guy when we were kids like uh i was like man you know dada like anything you want to tell me man

Well, no, there are spontaneous closures of a lot of these. Sure, sure. Especially on the upper part of the heart, which is between the atrium. Right. Yeah, it's not unheard of that the whole closes. I think that's the less striking piece of that story. It's just that the... Confidence.

Well, the unsolicited call from out of nowhere with... How do you know? Oh, wait, you don't know? I have no fucking clue. Like, uh, you didn't ask. I, I think it did ask and it was just like vague and it's like, it's like, you're like, what happens to patient privacy? Right.

It's crazy. Wow. Now, going back to something you said earlier, um, in feeling embarrassed by having wealth. Yeah. You've kind of lived your life in a way where you've experienced both ends of the spectrum. incredible wealth you were homeless for a period of time and and i was when i dropped out of the university of miami in 1993 i um was homeless for three years and um i mean homeless is sort of uh i was more of a couch surfer i think the difference you know a homeless person and a couch

surfer is just more of a sort of you're a nomad a little bit of charisma helps you It helps make the difference there. But yeah, I was very nomadic and I did not have a place of my own. And there was a point when, I mean, dude, I was, I knew that nothing I was up to and no news that I had to share was the type of news that was going to like make my dad feel really happy. about you know like i um had uh i just didn't have any and any i wasn't doing anything that my dad would have been proud of and i kind of had too much pride to uh i just i just fell off the radar which is just the shittiest thing that a kid can do and um i had too much pride to ask for help i had too much pride to uh you know explain my situation i just fell off the radar and during

the six months of uh just not communication with my parents, I entered into a medical study for money. And as medical studies go, the more dangerous the study, the more they pay. So I went in for the most dangerous shit I can possibly sign up for. Like what? It was a medical study to test on people. a drug that they were hoping to make legal to administer to pigs and cows so that the pigs and cows would have more muscle and less fat. It was supposed to work in like an inverse way

that steroids might work, but the purpose being so that they could have slaughter the cattle and have a leaner meat to appeal to a more health-conscious consumer. Interesting. And by the virtue of the fact that this meat would be consumed by humans, a trace amount of this drug being in the meat would enter the human body, and as such, if anything's going to come in contact with the human body, it needs to be tested. And it seems that the objective of this study was to determine

how much the human body could withstand of this shit, which seems counterintuitive. But the goal of the study, you know, the target that they were aiming to hit was for one of the subjects in the study, someone's resting heart rate had to reach 150 beats a minute. Yeah, that was, that was the... Resting? Resting heart rate, 150 beats for a minute. Whose heart rate resting heart rate is...

That's what it was. us, dude. And I remember, like, the resting, I remember, like, there were only six of us in the study, and typically medical studies are going to have, like, way more than that, but because it was, you know, considered a particularly dangerous study, they had a smaller number of people in it. And I remember, like, one or two of the guys just being drenched and sweat, you know, like, on the day that they, that they gave it to us, or there was one day when they did a blood draw on the hour every hour. Wow.

Yeah, I think we gave blood like 10 times in a day. I wonder if they're checking sugar levels. Perhaps, I don't know. But they also had us on like the sonogram thing for our heart. This happened in... Was it anavar? No, no. The drug was called ractopamine hydrochloride.

Oh, you know the name of it? Oh, yeah. I mean, we knew the name of it at the time. But like you still... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just like, it was kind of a notch in my belt at that time. Like, I was like, I'm going to be a crazy famous stunt, man. I'm wild.

I'm crazy. And this was like just part of the course. Like, almost as much as though. Did you document it? Like, I did. I did. I would have. But in my, you know, in my travel, starting out of the University of Miami, the video camera I had, these, those VHS sons

bitches didn't do well in super hot cars. you know like the the rubber that the ribbon needs to go around like fucking melted so my camera was was rendered useless but um yeah this happened in i was in that medical study in january of 1994 and um yeah like i got paid two thousand bucks well it's good money they're supposed to be 1,200 as i recall and uh they didn't get um enough volunteers they didn't get enough Heartbeats per minute. So they asked us, could we extend the study? We're going to give you more money.

And then everybody said yes. But so they were, it was the sonogram machine, which they'll look at babies in the womb with, you know, like imagery, imaging. And but they were, they lubed it up and they had it on our hearts. And it was so fascinating because on the screen. the oxygenated blood, like, you know, leaving or coming or whatever. Yeah, you would see those Doppler flow, yeah. Yeah, and like the sonogram or whatever, the sonar would detect the oxygen, the blood coming in of the heart of one color on the screen,

and the blood coming out was another color. It was just fucking. Well, the way that they do it is the flow moving towards is one color, flow moving in a way. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay, one way or another, I would... But it looks like a textbook where it's like, oh, this is the oxygenated blood, this is the deoxygenate, because no blood is actually blue.

Right, right, right, right. Now, here's the other thing, too, is that there was so much free medical attention that we got in this study. I remember the doctor who was operating the sonogram thing. If I'm even using that term correctly. Yeah, it was an echo cardiogram. Yeah, okay. But it's the same. Right.

The guy who is operating it and moving it around and looking at the image on the screen, when he looked at my heart, he said, man, what a squeeze. And this was the first time I learned that I've got like an exceptionally, like, powerful heart. And maybe take my pulse right now, like my normal, like normal heart rate. normal pulse is like, what, 72 beats a minute? 60 to 100 is around. I'm like 40 to 50. Oh, is that because you're in great shape right now?

People like jump to the conclusion that I'm in great shape. I'm not really in great shape. Maybe it's because you had this racco da-da-da-d-d-d-d-d-d-I. I mean, who knows? But I have a low-ass heart rate. You're like Captain America. You got the serum. Yeah, I've got a low-ass heart rate.

And throughout that whole study, the only, time my heart rate went over 90 beats per minute was when that same doctor with the echocardiogram was telling me like stories about being in Vietnam and killing people or something. It was some weird one. I don't remember what it was, but it was some crazy like battle story. And he was like telling me some wild stuff. And that was when my heart pounded the fastest. That's why you had a good pump there going. Yeah. And, but, but the, but the, the, the, What it sounded like was that the implication was that what a squeeze meant that I have such a low heart rate in the 40s and 50s because it just takes less my part my heart is powerful enough to be able to do all of the circulation it needs to do without meeting. as many times. Yeah, so the heart is a really complicated organ because a lot of what we think is good

with regular skeletal muscle is not always good for a cardiac muscle. I'll give you an example. Let's say you have high blood pressure throughout your circulatory system, right? Your heart has to pump against that. So it becomes essentially diesel, right? Because it's constantly pumping against the higher pressure. That's actually bad. Your left ventricle, which is the lower portion of the left side of your heart, that actually pumps blood to the rest of your body, that can become, bigger, which is called hypertrophy of that area. And then as a result, it doesn't relax well. And the cardiac muscle, in comparison to most of the skeletal muscle in your body, needs to contract and relax well, both. It needs to be balanced. Because when the cardiac muscle

relaxes is when it fills. So if it doesn't relax well, it doesn't fill well, therefore that when you pump, you can actually have a non-successful pump, even though it's super strong because it didn't relax enough to fill up okay so isn't that weird like about the heart yeah it's uh yeah yeah it's great you know um i i once when uh i once went to to the doctor for like a standard checkup to to be cleared for some reality tv show and uh the the reality tv show in question was a mountain climbing show in Peru, where I found my dog from Peru. It was basically like mountain climbing with the stars, and it was going to be like more physically demanding than your average.

So in this case, they had me like on a treadmill, like, you know, they had me like doing all this stuff. But it was a more, I think, comprehensive physical. And the doctor called up and he said, you have pre-diabetes, pre-diabetes. And I thought, well, that's kind of weird, you know, and he says, you're not, you're, he said, like, I'm not like an obese guy, but he said, you are what we refer to as skinny fat. You've got fat on your organs. Visceral fat. Yeah, what does that mean?

Okay. There's a lot to unpack there from the medical side. of things. I don't consider that great bedside matter. I have to be critical. Okay, good. Yeah, it wasn't. I mean, they got told me this over the phone. Well, it also, like, he's jumping to a conclusion without probably knowing the full picture. I did, do you do an ultrasound? I did turn around and go to Dr. Drew to get more, uh, info. Like, what, like I went to Dr. Drew's medical practice and, you know, echo a cardiogram. And he was like, no, dude, you're fucking fine. This is bullshit. So this is why I hate looking at lab tests and not really

knowing the patient because I'll give you an example. If you don't go fasting eight hours like you had to do for your surgery for the blood work, your sugar might come up slightly high, but that's normal because you're not fasting. So you're not pre-diabetic. You can't even make a diagnosis of pre-diabetes off of that one blood test. You need multiple, you need to see that it happens, like successive blood tests. There's another blood test that we do called a hemoglobin A1C. This gives me the average range of your sugars for the last three months. So it's usually a better picture of what your sugar is like. And based off that number, we can say, oh, you're in the range of clear.

Some people fall into the range of pre-diabetes and some patients are diabetic. Once you become into the diabetic range, that's for life. Even if you control it well with diet alone. There was a vegan documentary that said that type 2 diabetes can be reversible. So it's controllable. the fact that you've developed it puts you in the higher risk category because it's really just definitions so like we can argue the semantics of whether it's cured or treated like in reality like once you hit that threshold your risk lifelong goes up for heart attack stroke those cardiovascular

diseases so is it true that one in three Americans born after year 2000 will develop diabetes I don't know offhand, but it doesn't sound unreasonable. I read that statistic and I found it staggering. Yeah. Well, the reason a lot of folks develop type 2 diabetes, not everybody, because some people have genetic issues, other medical conditions that can lead to it, but it's from overconsumption of calories and poor calories, like meaning not good quality ones.

And as a result, if you overeat, a few things happen, your sugar gets out of control because your body develops insulin resistance where you have insulin, but it doesn't work in your tissues well because there's always so much of it that it becomes ineffective. And then you have people who develop actually fatty liver disease where because of the high levels of triglycerides in their blood,

high levels of cholesterol, their liver actually starts becoming inflamed as a result of the fat buildup inside the liver. So maybe that's what the doctor was mentioning because he may have seen some liver enzyme elevation. But the way that it was explained to you was kind of garbage. Yeah, I mean, I'll never forget the phone call. And it was brief and it was basically what I don't think I mischaracterized it.

No, honestly, that's not out of what ordinary of what I hear from other people. Right. So that's disappointing. Do you have bad experiences with doctors? Are you ever like screw this person? Yeah, I don't know that I have doctor trauma, right? you know i well then again there was another like a pretty incredibly bad experience um before i got clean and sober and uh actually specifically in 2006 i was good buddies with dr drew then

um i was uh with him on uh his radio show love line like quite frequently considered my friend And I was like just a goddamn mess. I was very out of control with drugs and alcohol. And my family was kind of leaning on me, like, you know, we're concerned about your lifestyle and, you know, this and that. And, you know, being an active alcoholic and a drug addict, my reaction was I said, hey, guys, I'm going to go get this checkup, you know, fully. Like, it was called the UCLA Executive Health Program.

And Dr. Drew... I'm not a fan of those. Okay. No, go ahead. Dr. Drew referred me to it. Okay. It was described to me as such an overwhelmingly comprehensive physical that they're giving you information that's like just extraneous and as such as not even covered by it's just not covered by any health insurance

because it's considered like unnecessary. They're giving you so much. extra medical attention. It's expensive and this and that. I heard about that from Dr. Drew and I told my family hey I'm going to go into this executive

health fucking physical and it's going to be the most comprehensive thing and if my results come back saying that I'm healthy like you guys can just get off my back. That's why those programs are bad

because imagine it came up healthy and then you live in the start of a lifestyle. I said, if I come up healthy, you can just get right off my back. And so I went into the thing. It was like it was a pretty full day of scans testing. And I got a phone call about the results. And the doctor said, hey, I want you to come in so we can talk about your results, which is like right off the bat, like super scary.

because if you're okay, they'll just tell you you're okay on the phone. So I'm like, oh man, what's wrong? And I'm just like, please don't let it be my wiener. Please don't let it.

Like, I just didn't want to hear that I had some. We don't even have tests for wieners. Right. I just didn't want to, I was just scared that it was going to be some weird sexual transmitted disease thing. Oh,

okay, got it. And I go in there and I'm like, I don't even think the doctor, I'm in his office. I'm like, my wiener a cadence, he's like, okay, your wiener's fine. It's your heart. He says, he diagnosed me with cardiomyopathy. He said, I had the heart of a 90-year-old man and that I wouldn't live to be the age of 40 if I didn't do something or other. And this sounded to me

like a crazy death sentence. You know, alcohol induced probably. Yeah, it was, and I remember I went like straight from there to Love Line. It was like with Dr. Drew was on the radio. It was like, wow, you know, and it was like the, Steve was dying episode, you know, and like, uh, and, um, then ultimately I went to a heart specialist, and it was like, eh, not so much, like borderline, like, not a big deal. And, um, so they overread the echo. Yeah, I mean, perhaps the, like, it was just evident, like, how heavy my drinking was. and this was the doctor's attempt to like sort of get through to me and sure so maybe i was like uh over diagnosed somehow like uh but but in any case that was a pretty bad experience yeah so do you let's say the doctor did that he overread it because he wanted to protect you

would you do you like that or no well i mean the the like by definition an alcoholic You know, like what the disease of alcoholism means is that you're powerless. So you've lost the power to choose, you know, like you got an alcoholic in front of the judge. And the judge says, you know, if I see you in here again, like, it's going to be prison. And then the alcoholic walks out and saying, man, fuck, I'm going to prison. You can't do anything about it. You tell you tell the alcoholic that if they drink again, they're going to die. Like, oh, man, fuck, I'm going to die.

I mean, you know, like, it didn't do anything. How would you have wanted them to deliver the news? Just fairly, just straight shot? Yeah, I mean, like, you've got, you know, a borderline case, like, you're teetering. I mean, I don't know. I mean, maybe that wouldn't change anything, but I damn well didn't change anything anyway. Well, that's why I was saying earlier that I'm not a fan of those executive health programs because they're checking a lot of things that don't benefit from being checked,

because a lot of times we can't intervene or shouldn't. Right. So you're saying don't ask a question to which there is no good answer or that you might get a bad answer to. I like asking questions. Don't do tests and imaging that you don't have a plan with. And I'll give you a simple example of this. I had an 80-something-year-old patient who was bleeding rectally

and we were suspecting a tumor in her colon. And we said, you know, we should do a colonoscopy to see if it's that. and her response is why would I do a colonoscopy if I'm saying that if there is a tumor I don't even want surgery and she's right. Why would we check for a tumor if she already knows she doesn't want the surgery? I've got another example. My buddy Tony Hawk. Okay. He found out that this CTE condition with the concussions. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Right. He, he, found out that there is like a gene, some genetic disposition for Alzheimer's, which if you have it or

if you don't have it, I think if you have it, you are considerably more at risk of CTE. And he explained to me that when he found out this information, he immediately went to go, find out if he had this, this gene, this Alzheimer's gene, which put him at risk for CTE. And where I'm coming from, it's like, hey, Tony, bro, like, we've already hit our heads. You know? Well, that's the thing. Is it actionable? Yeah.

And I said that, so I said to him, because I was thinking about it a lot. Like, I've hit my head a lot. Like, do I want to know this? I said, hey, Tony, like, and thankfully he said he did not have the gene. gene. But, but, uh, I was, I asked him, um, well, what were you going to do? And I asked him like considerably later. It was just on my mind. And then I like reached out, reached back out to him like, hey, Tony, like if you had that Alzheimer's gene, like, what was your plan? He's like, oh, I don't know. Curiosity. Right. So that's a case of there's nothing actionable about it.

And what are you going to do with the information if you, if you have that gene? Like, I don't fucking want to know if I have that gene. Yeah, that's why, like, a lot of these also send out home tests that check for certain genetic conditions I'm not a fan of, because a lot of times they're not checking for all the variants of a certain genetic situation. And as a result, people start making life planning decisions about it. Right. So I'm like, please see a genetic counselor, like speak to an expert on this. Don't just take a test and say, oh, I'm either all good or all bad. Because you need some guidance as to how to read these results. That's why I saw around. we're there to help right okay how about this i remember i believe i was in high school i believe i

was in high school um at 1991 you know like like the the i was i was sexually active and like everything i'd learned in school about HIV and aids was just top tier terror and because i had had unprotected sex like a couple times I went to the family doctor and I was like yo like doctor I want like please test me for HIV AIDS you know I'm so I'm so scared like I was just like freaking out about it and the doctor said nope we're not going to do that like uh and he was kind like his position he was coming from was that like I was like a young guy like yeah and I'm not surprised that you hate this this idea but he was like just we're not going to ask that question because you know like he the doctor because like uh i don't know i don't know that's weird

it's super weird and no answer given us to why it was just like uh we don't need to know that what do you mean we don't yeah it's like you're not going to like i mean maybe there was like you don't fall into a high risk category like you know based on uh gendered sexual orientation Maybe I was two years old then, so I don't know what medical things existed then, but now certainly we wouldn't do. Right. I mean, that's fucking fucked up as hell to think that like, oh, I'm going to, you know. But then again, I've had a lot of buddies that said there's no way to, you know, as long as you don't get tested, you're definitely clean. Comfortably, I'll give the medical advice that that is wrong.

Right. For sure. For sure. And, you know, I'm just glad. that for all of my years, you know, navigating the minefield that I came through unscathed. Does your health insurance company hate you because you meet the deductible probably like this? Right? Because you probably cost them an arm and a leg each year.

I wonder. Like especially filming jackass and wild boys. Yeah. That's workman's comp. So that's a different level of insurance. When I'm on, when I'm injured on a jackass movie. I don't even have to produce a medical insurance card. And that's a workman's comp.

But, yeah, I mean, there's been, especially because in the more recent years of my career, like all of my worst injuries have happened in now the last six years. Really? Yeah. Is it age related? I think perhaps age is a component, but it's just more of a question of trying to raise the bar all the time, you know? Like you got to jump higher, you know? Like, so, like, yes, I'm getting older and, like, I have felt compelled to take greater risks.

Yeah. You know, so that's scary. Oh, well, so speaking of taking greater risks, for your next comedy tour, you're going to do the Gone Too Far. Yeah, that's my plan, yeah. And you're going to show people stunts that you think that they will say you've gone too far. Correct. As a medical professional, do you want to tell me some of them, and I'll tell you if you've gone too far? Well, I mean, there's, I've been very candid about my plan for breast augmentation surgery.

Okay. What is that going to entail? It's just, I'm going to get double D boobs. Okay. And do what with them? Well, there's a few. I don't need to give away all my ideas. but the first thing that I intend to do is it like a statement like a political statement or just as a prank

as far as a statement goes I think there's a healthy dose of my body my choice in there okay you know which I believe in um there's some just straight curiosity that uh as a heterosexual man who identifies as male um does just go and get get a boob job all the a sudden, me and I can't post pictures on Instagram with my shirt off. That's a question that needs to be answered. Okay. So it's much in like when you went to your lawyer and asked for jail time. Sort of.

Yeah, sort of. You're going to go to prove a point here. Right. And, you know, there's just like a lot, I think a lot of opportunities to mine it for compelling content and jokes. The motivation for it is, you know, I picture that whole show, the gone too far show, ultimately thematically, to be an exploration

of my experience confronting middle age. You know, the deterioration of my body. And in particular with the boobs, I was horrified to see in the mirror that I am officially developing man tities and have already distinct underboob. I've got dimples underneath my man boobs. And lashing out at the God that allowed that to happen,

I'm going to make big old titty. Well, I'll tell you why, you'll have back pain. I'll predict that. Right, okay. So your low back's not going to be happy with that. I'm going to want to stretch even a more important stretch. Strengthen. But I'm not planning on keeping these boobs for more than three months.

So it's going to be kind of like I'm... Surgically, that's going to be tough. I'm under... I've been told that after three months, there's more stretching and it's going to be more difficult to restore me to normal. Interesting. I wouldn't even know how to comment on that. How did you find a doctor, though?

I had as a guest on my podcast of botched fame, Dr. Terry Dubrow. Got it. And he said that he would not put in the implants, but they'd be happy to take them out and do whatever little bits that need to be done to restore me into normal. And perhaps, you know, where I end up will resolve the man titty problem. Who knows I can only hope. My worry as a doctor is going to be that you can develop other problems surgically,

but I hope that's not the case. I'm not wishing that upon you. Yeah, for sure. Now, there's, of course, different types of breast implants. Like, under the muscle is a more involved situation where you can have, what's that condition? Capsular contracture. You looked into it, right? Yeah.

The risks. Yeah. But if you're not under the muscle, then the capsular contracture is less of a concern, right? So just the over the top, like kind of is more of a superficial job. I'm going to venture a guess that you're going to get them put in outside of the U.S.? Oh, I don't know. That sounds like a great time. I just don't know if they would do it in the U.S.

I don't know. Dr. Terry DeBrow said that they'll be like. lining up around the box. Really? Okay. So maybe I take it back. You know, that, yeah, this is going to be not a problem to find somebody to put them in.

Now, like, of the, like, kind of, the over-the-top thing, that that approach to it, it feels somewhat less invasive, a little bit more of a superficial procedure, and allows more easily for like if I've got like colored liquid is it just saline in that situation or is it silicone? It depends I don't know I'm not a plastic surgery because we could

we could perhaps you know if it's like saline or something it could be like dyed a certain color and you know like I'm just this crazy vision of like a metal caprice on straw which well no I don't think if they were easily that

penetrative that would be problem. Oh, okay. Yes, I hope that's not. We were also talking about just like an endurance thing. Like what can it, what will it take to break it? You know, like that's an idea. I've seen videos of that.

Do you think that. Yeah, like Dr. Terry Dubros said that they had a silicone implant, you know, and like drove a car over it and everything. Wow. Okay. So yeah, they are terrible. Yeah. Do you think that you'll get pushed back by folks, maybe of the trans community,

making light of the situation? I don't. I don't. That was my fiance's concern about that. And what I told her, I said, I just don't, like, I'm not coming into this with any, uh, any like, like, mean spirit. The spirit of what I'm doing it for is not hateful or negative at all. And I, and I likened it to the, like, the home. erotic humor that's been such a part of jackass and my other show wild boys we were never um trying to put down or mock the homosexual community if anything we were like proactively seeking to make people uncomfortable who are like the kind of jock dude like oh no you know like that would be our target and in this case like i'm not out to to mock or or uh target anybody of the trans community if anything it wouldn't be much the same like i i love the idea of somebody who's particularly transphobic being made uncomfortable by me doing this yeah so that i mean that

that's all i know i can only speak for your intent for my intent for the you know i'm I think there's a larger message of my body, my choice, which is something that I love to, but yeah, it's just, I'm not doing it to make anybody feel bad. Sure. That's never what I, like, that's one thing I never want to do is make people feel bad. Yeah. I think that shines through. And you know when it shines through the most?

I was at Harvard yesterday on a panel speaking on health policy, and there was an infectious disease doctor and I mentioned that you're coming on my podcast today and he goes oh my god I was just showing jackass to my eight and 11 year old oh my god I don't know that's for them but like he was ecstatic and you know you would think doctors very highbrow abella right would be maybe saying oh I'm not going to show that to my children yet but look I mean I have maintained for the longest time that I'm proud. I'm very proud of jackass for how wholesome it is. And I know it's counterintuitive to describe jackass as wholesome,

but I feel strongly that it is because there's just nothing being spirited about it. You know, you see a bunch of guys giving themselves and each other, you know, a terrible hard time you know you could liken it to torture just you know self-destructive uh you know self-harm but we're such attention horrors we're begging for the attention we're such willing participants we're so happy to be doing it that that makes it permissible how destructive some of our behavior is and beyond what we're doing to ourselves and each other there's just nothing mean-spirited about it like we're just doing it to make people laugh and and uh spread joy yeah i think you hit it right on the nose there it never felt that there was a bullying aspect to jackass on this this

most recent movie like i felt that the cup test went a little bit apart like that like that might have edged into the the bullying aspect yeah that was uh and maybe it's because i was there for all of it. But yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't. The spirit of jackass is just super positive. And I'm proud of that. That's awesome that you guys have that camarader. Are you still close with everybody in the gang? Yeah. That's the big difference. There's a lot of like YouTube channels right now that are struggling because there's groups of people who do well on YouTube. They blow up together. And then someone in the group says like, I've been really bullied in this group for the views and at my expense. Versus you guys never had that. Like it seems

like you guys are all very together. Right. You really feel like a family. It comes through. Yeah. When you say that, I can think of a distinct example of that. And yeah,

we're not, we're all pretty willing participants. Our buddy Danger, Aaron, who was the subject of the cup test, has definitely been, you know, I would even characterize as bullied.

But I'm proud to say that I've really never bullied them. Okay. Yeah. during the Volvo Fall Experience event discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures and see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety

brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute this September lease a 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 biweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event Conditions supply visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. I want to talk a little bit about your comedy, your stand-up comedy,

because you said you've gotten flack for being a comedian and a superstar, but you put in the hours. I wouldn't necessarily go as far as you say superstar. But yeah, whenever somebody comes from one area of the world of entertainment into stand-up, They get, you know, some side-eye action. A little gatekeeping. Yeah, a little gatekeeping.

And it's not been like a particularly pervasive thing, but certainly there have been examples of people who are even outspokenly opposed to the idea of welcoming Stivo into the world of stand-up comedy. And I'm not going to say that that, didn't bother me, but I'm very happy to say that that did not stop me. Did it encourage you? I would say to an extent it encouraged me for sure. But like, I'm just a guy who's all in no matter what I do. I do not know moderation.

And, you know, like I don't know how to not just give something everything. And I think that as it related to. in my experience doing stand-up comedy like uh this is kind of the results speak for themselves because if you're if you don't belong there if you don't belong in the comedy club if you're not taking it seriously if you're not um you know delivering uh a show that the people are are enjoying then you're not going to come back you know it's kind of it's going to be short-lived and And in the comedy club circuit, I, for 11 straight years, kept making the loop and coming back. And that indicates that I did belong.

And so the proof is there. And I've since graduated from the comedy club circuit to performing in theaters and traveling on a tour bus. And, dude, I love it. Yeah, that's awesome. Is it fair to say that you become a crossover comedian? or do you not like that term i don't mind i don't mind one bit if uh someone wants to call me a crossover comedian um i would just say that i'm an entertainer you know i'm an attention

horror uh through and through and um i spent 11 years in comedy clubs developing the craft of storytelling and joke telling and um over the course of that time i found that my my world converged and and um now what i'm doing with my comedy is uh is a multimedia affair so so you've got like me telling stories and then at the end of the story i pay it off by actually showing a video of that story happening so you've hybridized your your entertainment it's i've really stumbled upon something like truly unique and original and uh you know the stunts that I did for my current tour which is called the bucket list tour

across the board like just I mean you'd be fascinated by the fact that two of the bits in my bucket list tour two items on the list which each have their own respective videos

one of them involved a medical professional in disguise administering stolen general anesthesia drugs while I was riding a bicycle. And the drug was called etomidate. Okay. Because when we were doing our research and speaking with anesthesiologists,

they described an epidemic among just about everybody who has access to propofal rampantly abusing it like Michael Jackson did. They said, but there's another general anesthesia drug called etomidate, which they affectionately refer to as vomit date because it makes you so nauseous you might barf. It would be like overall physically uncomfortable. And they said, dude, it's like a deterrent, basically. They said nobody would ever use etomidate for fun. Okay. And I was like, green light go. So you're keeping always that in the back of your head. Like, I got to make sure. I got to protect my sobriety. The bid started out as a, of, a, of, a

foot race which would start on your market set they shoot tranquilizer darts into our butt cheeks at which point we sprint for distance but finding out that that involved ketamine was was uh um you know that shut that down right away and then another one i did for the bucket list it's so great that you get to see these videos like actually in the theater on the tour um because i was so concerned and after the atomitate one i i was like man they said nobody would use it for fun but i thought it felt great and i was like really like questioning my sobriety after doing that's done um and i felt that that was just a a catastrophic failure and and um a guy who introduced himself to me as a doctor said i've got a way you can finish your anesthesia

bit without worrying about your recovery i can he says i can put a four inch needle into your spine inject a drug into your spinal cavity that will straight paralyze you from the waist down and we can make that happen while you're in a full sprint. That sounds dangerous. Oh, dude. Like the medical... The medical...

He took out the four-inch needle and then I went sprinting. Got it. Yeah. Scary. I had like, you know, 10 seconds to run my ass off before I collapsed like a baby giraffe being born. and that fucking shit was so awesome

that shit was so awesome so awesome so that that's another one of the business this is sort of like you know coming up with the most just outrageously over the top ideas for stunts filming them making an act out of it

that incorporates stand-up and you know the footage like that's something that nobody else is doing and you know anybody doesn't like me doing that they can suck a fart out of my asshole. No, I relate very strongly to you in this sense because something you probably don't know

is I've become a professional boxer over this last year. Oh, wow. And a lot of people say, oh, you're a crossover. YouTube star now becoming a boxer like all these other people. And, you know, it takes a lot of guts to get in the ring to be sparring with other fighters. My next fight, actually, in four weeks is against the UFC MMA fighter.

Chris Avila. He's of Nate Diaz's camp. Okay. And that's going to be a serious fight for me, but a lot of people will, like, it's on Showtime pay-per-view and Showtime posted our poster, and all the comments are brutal. I mean, I can't even speak to that because I'm still jammed up over the fact that a doctor is pursuing boxing. That's like the most counterintuitive.

I file that under Oxymour. I think I've lived my whole life also is oxymoron. Right. I mean, just to... Do you think it's dangerous? Is that why? I mean, I... I'm not debating if it is.

Yeah, my concern is the repeated... I mean, I think that we've learned, like, factually, that boxing is way more fucking dangerous than MMA. And the reason why I believe, I mean, we've just seen it, like nobody dies in MMA. It just doesn't happen. People die in boxing all the time. And it's like, it's brain trauma. And I think that I have an analogy, which I think is accurate, which is that in today's world, CTE is a, big thing with helmets or with football they're wearing helmets crashing their heads all the time

and i suspect that back in the day of the leather football helmet that cete was not an issue because all they had was a piece of fucking leather on their head and as such they didn't like bang their heads together so much yeah but now because the helmet the the the modern american football helmet is it's like it allows you to feel like you're hitting your head with impunity. So it's just all crash, crash, crash with the head

and that's what the problem is. And then now we take that dynamic to boxing and the boxing glove, the 10 ounce boxing glove every bit like the

football helmet, it allows you to throw your fists with impunity. and the weight of it and the the impunity for your hand it's like you know you almost feel like you can get hit with it with impunity but but you can it's too heavy and it's uh whereas with the the four ounce glove you know it's uh or or heaven forbid bare knuckle you know you're going to be a lot more conservative with your bare knuckles than um and even with the four ounce glove much like with the leather helmet football it's true it repeated trauma in boxing, like the repetitiveness of getting hit in the head is the issue. That's why I don't

plan to do this for a long time. Maybe I got another year left in me. So I'm not doing this for a lifelong thing. It's my final hurrah in my early 30s to say I tried to be a pro athlete. Super cool. And I, like, you know, I've been knocked out completely unconscious, like a handful of times in my life. But what scares me more than anything was, you know, early in my career, when I started touring, I had this live stage show. Every time I came out on stage with like a 12-pack or a 24-pack of Budweiser's, and my entrance onto the stage was always, bump, bump, hitting my head with the beer can until it exploded.

And then I would take two and hit them both and explode them. And then, dude, embarrassingly, after I got sober, in comedy clubs, I'd come out and do it with carbonated water, like banging my head. And it got to a point where, you know, like I felt dizzy getting out of bed in the morning, you know, like not good. And just like so much repeat. It's precisely what you said, that repeated, not the biggest hit, but the repeat that it was so repetitive. That like a stupid act of breaking cans on my head is what I point to is by far my biggest concern for my own brain. and C-T-E situation, you know.

You know, I heard someone say in similar vein of what you're saying, that the best safety feature to put on a car would probably be to put a spike on the steering wheel. Ooh. So then you're like, oh, I got to drive. I like that. I've never heard that. I like that.

Right? Instead of an airbag, you put not a safety feature like that. You put a threatening feature on it. Yeah. Because then you're going to be really careful when you drive. Yeah. You ever have guests say that they feel like they've been in a conversation with Bradley Cooper? No.

No, but I... He's got this strong resemblance to Bradley Cooper. Wow. Okay. I've never gotten. Very handsome guy. I appreciate that. Yeah.

Thank you. I like that spike on the steering wheel. That's killer. Yeah. That's not mine. I can't take credit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you were going to do sexiest jackass alive, who is the cast member?

Knoxville is always going to be that yeah yeah we wouldn't have uh gotten where we were without like him being the the face of it got it okay yeah it'd be tough to to go second after that you know okay lots of competition you guys would fight for it yeah i think um yeah i don't know i mean you get you get into a real fruit basket of apples and oranges you know like it's going to be uh So largely subjective and, you know, up to someone's taste. Before I get to my little quick lightning round of questions, I got to ask, you've accomplished so much, you've inspired so many people. Even from your Joe Rogan first episode, the amount of people I reached out to you, thanking you for how honest you've been with your journey. Are you proud of all this?

Like, this is amazing. Well, for sure. For starters, thank you for the kind words. I remember my first Joe, my first real Joe Rogan episode was heavily focused on recovery. And there was, I mean, the staggering number of people who that reached is, I mean, it's intense. You know, the audience there. And I did get a great amount of feedback from that. But for that and anything related to recovery, I think you've got to be careful about using the word proud.

You know, it says in our recovery literature that there's a reason why pride leads the procession of the seven deadly sins, you know, and that you want to be careful about being proud of things and and try to focus more on being grateful for things you know we're not like it doesn't serve us to be proud of our recovery it's much more um helpful to be grateful for it and so if I've been able to inspire people or help people that's something that I'm that I'm grateful for but um you know you guys even be careful about you get a little bit of ego you know your ego being involved in like, yeah, I help you, you know, and I help people like, yeah, it'd be good.

You deserve it. Like, if it wasn't deserved, I would say, yeah, I agree. Yeah, the thing about recovery is that we keep what we have by giving it away. You know, like if we try to help other people, you know, achieve long-term sobriety, then that's the number one thing we can do to preserve and protect our own sobriety yeah and i wasn't just talking sobriety absolutely i mean i've been about from your career wise i've been super super like to it confounds me at like um the uh you know a career in entertainment is inherently precarious from the onset you know let alone when

your uh your art is is what the fuck i do you know um And then to have longevity and entertainment is very elusive. So, you know, to be, you know, more than two decades into a career the way that I am, yeah, I mean, I, it would be an absolute lie to say I'm not proud of that, but I'm just overwhelmingly grateful for me. Yeah. You've done an amazing work. And I look at all the stuff that you've done. And it actually drives me to say, look, I got to work hard. I got to continue working and learning from individuals like you. It's so funny that when you described the boxing, you said, you spoke of yourself as a

YouTuber. And I found that a little bit odd, considering that you're a practicing physician. It's weird. You have a medical practice and, you know. Well, that's whatever, that's the bucket I fall into in the entertainment space. I guess I'm Dr. Mike, but when I'm in the boxing ring, he's a YouTuber. Okay. Yeah. So that just happened. I think it's because, I don't know if you're familiar with like the Jake Paul and Logan Paul's of the world, they've paved their way into that YouTube boxing space. And that's why I'm sort of put into that bucket.

It's, yeah, I mean, it really has put a spotlight on the financial compensation of combat sports. We'll say that. Yep. And it's very interesting how it's all playing out. And I just love combat sports, man, particularly at MMA. Awesome. I love it. Well, yeah, if you want to come to the fight, it's actually, I'm fighting on Jake Paul's event. Oh, cool.

I'm his undercard. So on the Anderson Silver thing, it's October 29th. Correct, yeah. I'll be in Canada, but I appreciate the invite. Yeah, that would have been epic. All right, so let me give you the lightning round here. Okay. That makes me very interested in watching that.

Really? Okay. Awesome. I hope I don't let you down. I train this morning really hard. I'm running tonight as well. Cool. The training doesn't stop. Okay.

Lightning ground. First question. What's a weird thing your body does that not everybody else's body does? Double join in. Oh, okay. How's this one not going? Oh. It's become arthritic.

I was going to say double join in arthritic. Yeah. You know what's hilarious? Yeah, I can do that. Okay. You have good control of the... I think that counts as double-jointed too. Okay.

You know, it's funny. My first guest was CalPet on this podcast from Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Okay. And he did the same exact thing. It's interesting that my first two guests said the same. I'm your second guest? Yeah. Wow, about that.

Yeah. Cool. Actually, the podcast launched today. Epic. Congrats. It was awesome. It's doing really well. So this will continue the streak.

Nice. What's one stunt you would do? if we could guarantee you wouldn't suffer any medical consequences. So you'll feel the pain, but I as a doctor have the... Ooh. God, there's a lot. I mean, first stop Niagara Falls. In a barrel.

I mean, I don't know. I was obsessed with that idea for some time. And my jackass comrade, Chris Pontius, got me off of it. And saying one thing, he said, dude, it's been done it's been done i was like oh yeah you're right um but yeah there's uh like i've got a lot of a fair amount of anxiety and and uh just pure will to um to do something that that i call the the crash capsule where uh it's just effectively um what kind of a survival pod that i'm in if not a uh like just a roll cage with a five

point harness that, you know, like a seat lives in and it just goes, like, rolling down the mega ramp and off the lunch and, you know, over a waterfall, like, uh, hit by a car, like, you know, like a Simpsons. Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. And, um, you know, when it comes to like high impact throwing your body around, you know, like falling great heights and, you know, that's fucking scary, man. Yeah. So, yeah, I would, I would go to town on the crash capsule. All right. I'm going to make it happen with my miracle invention at some point. What's one silly thing you wish you could change about your body? I guess that you're going to get implants, right? That's a silly thing and it's going to change. We answered that one. What's one food you don't like you wish you did

and one food you do that you wish you did it? A food I don't like. I don't know that I wish I did like it, but I just can't do raw onions. They brought raw onions bummed me out. Okay. Probably also not great for the Barrett's. Okay, there you go. So I'm glad I don't like them. Is there any food you like that you wish you didn't? I mean. Guilty pleasure? I like, does anybody like not wish they didn't like candy? Which candy? What's your ghost? Is sugar? Like I have like terrible trouble with sugar. You know, I'm, I'm in and out of a food program. I'm actually since June 4th I've been good about no obnoxious sugar okay okay so sugar uh which stunt do you think brought you closest to death not pain um I think uh I was in

in legitimate danger of uh the bends on a on a scuba diving thing um just kind of ignorant and uh our underwater cameraman like grabbed my fin and by the time uh when we got up to the top he was super exasperated he was just just just very angry said he said you fucking almost died and i almost died trying to save you like i had just been you know kind of blissfully ignorantly just and i was like dude they told me the sharks were on the bottom yeah the bends is serious if it happens yeah yeah so I understand that that was like genuinely yeah I think it's it's a anticlimactic answer but no it's true but your blood literally begins to bubble so like that's a problem um last but not least what's your favorite stunt you've never been allowed to do my favorite stunt that I've

never been allowed so I like my my ultimate like wish list uh do you have to clear it with the company of like the shoot oh i mean no i i have been pretty reckless in that um and and and whenever whenever uh like m tv would would say no like we won't give you permission to do that i would typically just turn around and do it on my own okay and uh you know like in the early days of my career, I had a, um, uh, like a too hot for TV, DVD series where I just found a home for all the footage that they wouldn't show and went out of my way to shoot footage that they wouldn't show. And I put it out of my own. And then now with, uh, with my like my bucket list tour and then again, with the gone too far, like, oh, I can't do it for jack guys. Okay, cool. Do you do it yourself?

Yeah. Well, it's, it's almost like the add one street ball. Like, do you remember that when that came about? No, but there's, there's a, there's a Netflix show. I just watched. I just watched. It's good? Yeah, it's really good. Well, worth watching. Okay, good. Then I will add that to my cue. For sure.

Cool. All right. Dude, thank you so much for coming. You're a rock stuff. I appreciate you. And continued success on Gone Too Far and all your ventures.