The Joe Rogan Experience - #1602 - Justin Wren

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

Justin Wren is a professional mixed martial artist, humanitarian aid-worker, and founder of Fight for the Forgotten: a non-profit benefiting the Mbuti Pygmy people of the Congo.

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day what's up my man what's up buddy you got a a whole book of stuff to talk about yeah you're prepared i'm prepared a little bit there's something special there's something special and we're gonna kick this off with a bang uh. You're like a professional. There's something special. There's something special, and we're going to kick this off with a bang. Uh-oh. Yeah. Something I don't know about? Something you don't know about.

Uh-oh. But we'll get into it. Okay. Yeah. Special. Yeah. Tell me. You going to do it now?

Sure. Awesome. Let's do it. What's happening? Well, you and your team, you picked Fight for the Forgotten my non-profit as charity of choice with buffalo trace yes and we're gonna do something really special for all your fans oh but first um i want to do something i talked with bo beckman his great grandfather's great grandfather i think his name's like th i don't know eckert or something like that. He, um, he started basically the modern day

bourbon in America. So anyways, I asked him, I was talking to Bo and say, can we do something special for Joe? And he was like, yeah, what do you, what are you thinking? And so I talked with my buddy Ryan, who's the vice president of our board. And we thought about it and we're like, what if we could get a barrel from Buffalo trace and we could give it, and we were like, what if we could get a barrel from Buffalo Trace, and we could give it to Joe? And so we thought we'd do a sample tasting for you, and you get to pick a single barrel select. Basically, I guess, I'm not a whiskey connoisseur,

but basically you're about to be able to do a wine, or not wine, but whiskey tasting. Really? And you're going to be able to pick out your own Buffalo Trace barrel that doesn't taste like any of the rest what i didn't know about barrels of whiskey is that what is it they come from like 70 to 90 year old trees and then each one of them starts off as kind of like this moonshine look and it's clear when they put it in the barrels but then the the taste of whiskey comes from like 67 of the taste comes from the barrel itself really yeah

but the trees are all different trees right so those things i think they call them staves or something it's like uh 28 to 35 of those things that make the barrel but they come from all these different trees yeah the wood slats um and so they all taste different every barrel whenever it's a single select barrel so i guess like what they do at buffalo trace is they take a bunch of those barrels and they put them all in there together so it has one consistent taste but whenever you just take one barrel it's always a unique flavor okay so we got a few of them for you to try goddamn whiskey nerds i'm not a whiskey nerd but here we go here's gonna be sample one i need you to put that maybe to the left or right

So here's going to be sample one. Why don't you put that maybe to the left or right? Do I have to test these? Yeah. Here's the idea. Looks like I'm going to get hammered again. Need glasses? We got them right here.

Oh, he's got them. I figured. I got them right here. I talked to Bo. Bo helped us out. So do you like yours with water in it or no? No. What am I, girl?

Well, this is the idea. Or this is how we wanted to say thank you is you need to pick your own thing yep here's a glass oh this is hilarious but this is why we're doing it it's nerdy sure but this is i like some nerdy things don't worry it's not a negative yeah here's why we're doing this we wanted to say thank you from fight for the forgotten and buffalo trace because we're about to do this big raffle for fight for the forgotten but you'll get 220 bottles yourself from whatever whiskey you choose 220 bottles of whiskey yeah but what we're gonna do christ you're trying to kill me no we're trying to give you a gift that you can give your guest okay well that's if you like. It'll have the Joe Rogan Experience logo on it. I'll have a thank you from Fight for the Forgotten.

So this is sample number one. That's sample number one. Go on the left with sample number one. Sample number one. I'll give a little right there. And then. It's going to be a real problem this episode. I might start crying.

This is sample number two. Okay. I can tell you about them, actually. Can you really? A little bit. I like how they come in these little, like, whiskey flask-type deals. Yeah, so they took this straight from the barrel. And each one of these should have a very distinct or different taste.

And so, basically, you can choose it. I mean, you can figure out. I don't know if you want to take notes. That's real nerdy. But they gave me one of these. Oh, Jesus Christ. Bo's a great guy. What is it?

Nerds like hints and tastes. You can do barrel one, two, three, four. No, no, no, no, no. How are you going to remember? We'll do this right here. By the time I get to barrel three, it's just guesswork. I did a pot tasting thing once. It was.

Pot tasting? Cannabis? Yeah, yeah. It was a cannabis cup. I was one of the judges it was ridiculous i was obliterated but by the time i got to like the third or fourth choice i had no idea where i was i'm like i couldn't feel my legs all right so let's try number one sample number one is seven years and nine months old okay came. Came from Warehouse L on the fourth floor.

Tastes good. Tastes good? Very good. So now you would have to choose if you want this one. They make a damn good whiskey. Yeah, they do. All right. They've been so good to us.

That's number one. Now try number two. I feel like such a dork. I'm smelling it and shit. Hmm. You know why I do that? Like if I buy a glass of wine at a restaurant, they pour it for you, they let you smell it.

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I pretend. You would know. I've asked that, too, because I used to serve it. I'd be like, why are people doing this? This seems so dumb. No one's ever given one back. On a rare occasion, you have to send one back because something's fucked up.

One time I did have to send a glass back, buy the glass, because I think they had it open too long. I was like, I'm sorry, I never do this, but I go, this tastes like vinegar. It's terrible. Yeah,

it can rarely happen, but you kind of. But I think that was at a place where the bottle was just sitting around for like a couple weeks or something and nobody had ordered it. There we go. Number two.

Number two. This one is eight years, three months old. It's very good too. Which one do you like between the two? you know they're both really good i don't know they do make good fucking whiskey like you can taste the difference like some people like how do you tell what's the difference so this is this is how bo said it all you got to do is like if you have four pancakes in front of you keep it simple

which pancake do you like the best fucking pancakes it was three yep three's got a nice taste that's that's a little unusual where's the rank three is eight years two months old so three the oldest uh actually two is the oldest so far eight years three months two and three are my favorites two and three it's like one but it's guessing if you gave me one and said it was three i'd be like amazing i have good taste so you could see if one has more character and like a bolder flavor one that you think your friends would enjoy more that don't know much about whiskey they're all the same they're all the same i'm lying i'm lying to these people i can't tell

the difference they're all great i think three was slightly different three was slightly different but they're all tastes like really good whiskey do you like you liked three and two all right we're gonna do two and three i narrowed it down to two and three but that's just like if you gave me a bottle of one and told me it was three, I'd be like, perfect. I really wouldn't know. Okay. I'm just lying. Here we go.

Here's three. It's real good. All right, here's two. All right, here's two. I mean, maybe there's a slight difference between two and three. Let's just go with three. It's a good number. Three is a magic number according to De La Soul.

Three is a magic number, and that one was born October 25th, 2012. All right, perfect. So they say that's when it was born. Yay. So basically what we're going to do is we're going to be able to do that and make you a bottle of 220 bottles and it'll have the Joe Rogan experience logo on it. Wow. And then you can give it to your guest as a thank you for being on the show. I like it.

Do you drink? No. Not at all? I don't. Well, that's weird. This is actually freedom for me. I don't even know. But I can be around it.

And so, and I can enjoy it because this is what buffalo trace has done for us jamie i don't know if it's okay you don't drink at all nothing not anymore when did you stop um i was 23 so i'm 33 did we talk about this we have talked about this we've talked about it yeah i'm gonna talk about a little more yeah but um on fight for the forgotten.org there's something really special that buffalo trace did because you told them to donate to us. It's the first thing on our website. It's a raffle that we're doing. Around December, 15,000 people tried to get a hold of one of these barrels.

And so if you hit order or enter today, basically on there, there's a Buffalo Trace whiskey raffle. And on that, you get like a Disney world experience for whiskey lovers. You get to go out to the Buffalo trace distillery and you get to you and seven guests would be able to do it. You know, you can enter for $10, $25, $50 or a hundred dollars and then you get a VIP tour.

Bo's going to do it himself. You know, his great, great grandfather is the one that basically modernized bourbon drinking today and then you just stay at the lodge that they have there and then i'm going to go up there and visit them and we're going to go around all the different warehouses and they can taste literally straight from the barrel and then at the end they could they could either buy a barrel for themselves and you have 220 uh bottles or we're trying to find a donor maybe uh my friend ryan

llewellyn who's a whiskey connoisseur, he might go ahead and buy it on their behalf and they'll get 220 bottles themselves. That's so much to give someone. Yeah, but they get to pick it. Well, actually, they said that they could resell it to any

local store. Any store's probably going to buy it. Oh, yeah, for sure. And so they'll make a profit off of it. Do you know this company's older than the United States? Wow. Buffalo Trace is from 1773. Wow.

Yeah, they're three years older than the United States. That's wild. That's wild. That's wild. That's a longstanding company. Yeah. Wow. So our goal on that is to raise $100,000.

Bo really thinks we can do it. Wow. So our goal on that is to raise a hundred thousand dollars. Bo really thinks we can do it. We even thought, man, if 15,000 people tried to do, um, you know, 15,000 people tried to get it around Christmas time on these barrels, you know, let's just mention it on the show. It might be able to get 40,000 people. If they did, if they did $25 raffle tickets, 40,000 people,

that's the first time fight for the forgotten would ever raise a million dollars from any one specific donor. Wow. And so it's going to be incredible for us because we're really trying to expand in the Congo. Or sorry, actually Uganda with the pygmies. How many wells have been dug so far? 73. Wow. Yeah.

And when I came on the first time, zero. That's amazing. And we've been able to provide water clean water to over 60 000 people wow and right now uh you know dustin want to refight khabib he uh helped us raise i don't want to slaughter but it's either 155 or 185 000 it was him dana and khabib whenever they did their shirt exchange uh dustin said he was going to try to raise 25 000 for us he blew through that before the even even the fight started. That's amazing.

And then they exchanged shirts. And then we were able to take that money. We were able to buy 48 acres of land for the pygmies in Uganda. Wow. And so when they got kicked out of the Semeleki National Forest in Uganda. Why did they get kicked out of it? The Ugandan Wildlife Authority would say to protect the forest and to protect the animals although the pygmies are the protectors of the forest and they deserve part of the forest because

they're the people of the forest and so um i would say it's politics was there an issue with uh over hunting or nothing they only take what they need and they don't go after elephants they don't go after the things they're not supposed to. They just go after the wild hogs. I mean, they eat what they get. But there was no poaching. And they put them on one acre of land behind the slums. One acre. Said this is where, for Chief Zito, they said this is where your 300 people can live.

300 people can live on one acre of land. It's on the slums. They throw out the sewage. And literally the sewage just starts going through it. I've seen them pick up their firewood because the fire would go out from the raw sewage from the slums. And so they'd have to shift where they're cooking.

I was walking over these mounds. That's why we really needed to get them new land and shift them from living right behind the slums. And it was, honestly, it was heart-wrenching because I was walking on these mounds and asked chief zito i go what are these mounds he goes they won't give us anywhere to bury our dead we live on top of our cemetery and um there was over 150 people that were buried there so literally over 300 people on one acre on Oh my God. They buried on top of each other, right by side by side.

That is insane. It was like one to 1.25 acres, but it was less than two acres. And so Dustin made it possible through the Good Fight Foundation, donating a fight for the forgotten and Khabib donating a shirt and Dana matching it for us to go get 48 acres of new land. We also drilled a water tower, not just a well, but a water tower for an orphanage and a school that the pygmy kids started going to. And now we've started farms on that 48 acres of new land. I actually talked to Manny Pacquiao's team. One of their missions is to build homes. And Manny Pacquiao yesterday, his executive director gave us confirmation that they're going to donate $50,000 to us to help complete 32 homes for these 32 surviving families.

And so they're actually being taught how to drill or actually been taught how to drill wells and be part of that process, how to farm with agriculturalists, growing corn, cassava, potatoes, and peanuts. But also we're about to start teaching them how to make bricks, how to build homes, and they're going to go from never having a real home, living in the forest, to then now being in these shacks, to now that each family is going to have a two-bedroom home at least, and then they're going to have a patio,

they're going to have a kitchen inside, a dining room. It's just going to absolutely change your way of life. So this 48 acres, is that enough for them to hunt on? It's not enough for them to hunt on. So that's why we're having to teach them how to farm. Now, if they can still go into the forest, that's going to be some talking with the, they're allowed to go hunt for basically wild mushrooms or I guess gather. They're allowed to go gather firewood.

They're allowed to go gather firewood. They're allowed to go gather, um, uh, like fruits and vegetables, um, and roots, wild, wild plants, but they can't,

they can't hunt. Yeah. It's wild. And the Congo, it's much different because there's so much virgin forest. It's been untouched and they can still go in there and they can, um, hunt and gather.

They can get wild hog. I mean, I've had, uh, Diker, this little wild hog i mean i've had uh duiker this little antelope i've had um hog i've had a parrot i've had a monkey there you know that's what we talked about yeah monkey we talked there's a amazing documentary from the bbc on uh the congo and one of the things that it covers is the duiker and that the duiker actually swims underwater. And, uh, I didn't know that.

Yeah. They swim under the water and eat fish. Wow. Yeah. This is what's crazy. What the documentary was discussing was the, how rapid it was that these, uh, grasslands turned into rainforests. Apparently it was a very drastic climate shift and a lot of these

plains animals got stuck in the congo it's pretty wild because you can see like these these like herds i guess they would be herds like of antelope running through the swamp they're like trampling through this like all these animals you would normally see like in these grassy plains. They're running through the water and this little duiker, that little antelope thing, swims underwater.

They can swim underwater as long as 100 yards. That's wild. Yeah. I didn't know that. Have you ever seen an okapi or an okapi? Yeah.

Yeah. Cool looking. Yeah, they're incredible. That's like a zebra butt and a giraffe head and then the body of an antelope or a big elk. What is that related to though? Is it related to a a zebra it's actually the only other animal in the giraffe

a day family so it's actually if you look at their little horns and then also their long long tongues that's where they they're part of the giraffe a day family i guess most all the are all the other ones have been extinct um but i've actually had a poacher yeah i had a poacher try to sell me its meat when it was fresh and then he came back and tried to sell me its pelt. And those things are endangered. There's only like a couple hundred of them or something like that. Oh, really? Maybe 2,000 max in the world.

And they're only right there in Mombasa Rainforest, in the Echuri Rainforest. They should bring them over here to Texas. Yeah. Put them on a high fence. Yeah. Well, what's crazy is they had a rebel group that went through the Okapi National Reserve this was probably in i think it was right before i was there or the euro was there um this was like 2013 or 14 maybe 2012 but um i believe it was the my my that went through there and they just started slaughtering these okapi at the okapi national reserve so they got um they got pushed

out of where they were doing their um illegal gold mining they like taking over this gold mine they slaughtered them for food or no they just slaughtered them on out of where they were doing their illegal gold mining. They, like, taken over this gold mine. They slaughtered them for food? No, they just slaughtered them out of meanness when they were fleeing. When they were fleeing, they went through there and they just murdered them. Just for fun? Just for fun. Yeah.

Just out of meanness. So I actually saw that rebel leader. His name was Morgan. I don't know if he went by, like, a code name Morgan. But anyways, they were dragging him behind the truck. Um, whenever they had killed him, he like peacefully turned himself in, but the, I don't know, he had his rebel groups that were like looking in. So they killed him right there. Um, and they took him out of there. So, so you got to watch that. Yeah. Well, I got to watch his body be some wild shit over there. Yeah. I saw a guy get killed um he was uh accused

of being a thief but it was just outside this bar and um normally at night everything kind of they like boarded up basically like if you think about an old wild wild west um thing and they they board it all up shut it down whenever sunset comes that's the same thing um there in the rainforest because of a rebel group comes through you want to already be prepared you don't want to be out after dark and so um but there was a spar that was kind of staying open and these guys were drunk and they accused the guy being a thief and everyone thought he was a thief and so mob justice happened and they literally just jumped him and they beat him to death and i tried to get in there and one of our well drillers grabbed me and said no no if you go over there they're going to turn on you and uh so it turns out those guys were just

drunk they accused the guy being a thief they didn't like the guy they had like some feud with him they just accused him being a thief and he got killed and the next day when i came by in the morning uh he was in basically like a not a gutter but a ditch and he was bent up like a pretzel i mean he was it was awful it was terrible seeing and he's just laying there yeah no one did anything with him anything i mean eventually they did the family No one did anything with him? No one did anything. I mean, eventually they did. The family would have to come get him, but no one's going to come get him in the dark

whenever a rebel comes in. Things are somewhat in the area. You never know when they can come through the town. It's just like a Blood Diamond movie, something like that, where they'll drive through with the trucks and have the guys with the machine guns in the back. And it's pretty crazy.

You know, there's a thing that happens when people go to really crazy environments they they leave and then they have this bizarre desire to go back to experience the thrill of the the fear and the the danger again you know people talk about that with war you know that's the part of the the and the danger again. You know, people talk about that with war. You know, that's the part of the show, the movie The Hurt Locker was about. I haven't seen that yet. It's about a guy who kind of, he's a veteran, but he kind of gets addicted to, or they imply,

I believe that's, Jamie, that's what it was about, right? It's like the guy was addicted to like the thrill of disarming bombs um but people say that about places that they go to that i've heard people talk about that that are adventurers that go to like remote mountain ranges and almost lose their life but they can't wait to go back for some strange reason did you feel that about the congo because uh i felt i felt almost i don't know if it's survivor's guilt or what, but when I came back, I couldn't really sleep in my bed for quite a while. I would say over two months. And the reason was I didn't have a bed there.

I just slept on the dirt and the fire was my blanket. So you wanted to sleep almost on the dirt here? I guess. I felt like they didn't have one, so maybe I didn't deserve one. And I know that's twisted. But I buried a couple of kids, a little boy named Andy Bo, another boy named Bobbo. Little Mo had died and Fina just recently died. Well, she died in 2020.

I met her when she had tuberculosis and she was seven years old and she just died at 14 years old and it was a lung thing they say it was she had a dead lung in there and she needed a transplant but it was while covid was going on too and we got her out of the congo and um this was like february march and uh we got her out of the congo and got her to uganda got her to a good hospital. And then they said we needed to take her to one other place to not have a lung transplant, but just to remove, um, the, the dead, I think it was the left lung inside of her. And so in transport, whenever she was being taken there, she's 14 years old. Um, you know, she died. And so we're trying to save her life,

but we had to send her back in like a, you know, a casket. And that kind of stuff like messes with you. And it's heartbreaking. And you want to make sure it doesn't happen again for some of these kids. And so I think I've been to at least five funerals of children under the age of five years old. And so, you know, that kind of hard stuff. I, I mean, I've been told by Dr. Daniel Amen and, and, um, uh, some other people that I have PTSD from some of this stuff, you know, um, taking rape victims to the hospital right after they've been gang raped, like tied to a tree and gang raped. Um, and when that kind of stuff happens, it's, it's very brutal on, on the women mentally, but also physically, you know, sometimes they need surgeries, um, to try to help them be normal again. Um, not to get too graphic, but, um, it's, uh, there's a guy that won a Nobel peace prize.

He actually passed away now, but he's from the Congo. He's from Goma. And he was like revolutionary or, or innovative in that surgery, like repairing women's, um, uh, and giving them a normal life again so they can stay clean and be hygienic and things like that. Um, so it's, it's been a lot. And honestly, man, I was hoping to come in on this podcast and, uh, be, you know, more, more real and more raw. I mean, I feel like I'm normally a pretty transparent dude on here. Um, and as I'm going through life, but 2020 was actually the hardest year of my life. Um, the first six months, uh, was the toughest six months of my life. And then the last six months,

even now has been the best of my life, which has been an incredible turnaround. But man, I, um, I think, I think this year, 2021, my goal is, is healing and kind of healing from the inside out. I've been doing that physically, um, from a lot of stuff that I've gotten there. Um, but I've been trying to do it like emotionally or mentally and, and, and just mind and heart, um, healing, but it's been quite a journey. Um, in March, I, I would say that I, from 23, when I stopped drinking and what's cool about this moment for me is like, I'm not just, um, you know, been sober sitting in defeat, maybe in these meetings where I don't have a hopeful life or a great life to live. Not that those meetings can be great, but, but sometimes you see some

old timers and, and they're not, um, they're not like living in victory or they're not walking free. They're sitting in defeat. And so like for me to be able to sit here with you and let you, you know, taste some of the greatest whiskey there is. And for me to be able to go up on a trip and experience that with, uh, whoever wins this raffle, it's going to be pretty incredible. But, um, in 2020, I was in 90 days of rehab and I was also in 90 days of sober living. And so I'd relapsed and, uh, it was mainly to oxy, but also weed and some other things. Did you get injured? Well, I had a shoulder surgery. Is that when you started taking oxys?

No, I, yes, I did. And you actually helped a couple of years ago. My ex-wife had reached out and she was looking for something. And I think you had told her about Kratom or Kratom. It was from my phone. And who's that? Hamilton Morris. Is that his name?

He had said about Kratom or Kratom here. And that helped melt away the withdrawals. Withdrawals from Oxy are, is the hardest, besides malaria, it's the next hardest thing I've ever gone through. Were you on an excessive dose? Were you taking? is the hardest besides malaria. It's the next hardest thing I've ever gone through. Um, and were you on an excessive dose? Were you taking, I was on it for, for four weeks and I had six or eight weeks worth of,

of, uh, prescriptions. But since I abused it so much from 17 to 23, whenever you take that stuff, you can get addicted within the first, I don't know, nine days. Like you're hooked to it chemically. Um, it's one of the facets, it's almost like

it's a, it's the pharmaceutical version of heroin. Right. So, um, whenever I had that shoulder surgery, it was such a brutal one. I didn't want to go on Oxy at all, but, um, it was such a major surgery that I'd be, uh, uh, in a, in a cast where I couldn't move at all for or sling for eight full weeks. Would you get done? I had my labrum and I had four not pins, but anchors put in. And there's some other stuff they did, too. But that was the main part of it. They like scraped out some stuff.

There was a cyst that was sitting in there in between the labrum and in between the glenoid, the joint there. So they just scooped that out. Had a bunch of scar tissue. And when they got in there, they thought it was going to take four hours. Well, it ended up taking like eight hours. And I'm grateful that that surgeon helped save my shoulder. He actually sits on my board as the chairman on my board now with Fight for the Forgotten.

And he's been such a gift to us and to me in my career, but also to us as an organization. Your shoulder's all good now? Yeah. My left one's better than my right one. Really? Really. Labrums are a weird one, right? Because it's a cartilage.

Yeah. It's like it doesn't get a good blood supply. Right. They say labrum surgery for people when they get to a certain age, it's like basically useless. Right. Well, that's why I'm really glad we got that treatment in our shoulders and our knees to keep it growing new tissue. Right. Well, that's why I'm really glad we got that, that treatment in our shoulders and our knees to keep it, um, it, you know, growing new tissue and, um, but basically after 10 years of mostly being sober, I had three major relapses where it was like 30 days, nine days, and then five days. Um, so it was getting shorter and shorter, but after my divorce, um, which, which was really healthy for both of us. And we're actually great friends.

Um, I want her to be awesome. She's gonna be a rockstar counselor and help a lot of people and she's rooting for me and, but still no one gets married to get a divorce. And so, um, I think, you know, the silver lining was that we had the kindest divorce and any of our friends or family ever heard about. It was so easy. Um, and think, you know, the silver lining was that we had the kindest divorce and any of our friends or family ever heard about. It was so easy. Um, and we even went through counseling to get divorced, um, like for six months and we were in counseling to save our marriage for two years and we really gave it our all.

Um, but I also think the, the hardest part about it was it was such an easy divorce. And so, um, I don't know why i just let down my guard and um for me weed doesn't i don't do weed like anyone else does like if i get a pound that will be gone in uh two or three weeks um and so i i just i'll smoke an ounce a day almost or more sometimes really yeah so you just roll them all day every single or i go to the vapes and the gummies and everything else too or the the concentrates where i'm doing the dabbing what were you thinking while it was happening were you thinking i shouldn't be doing this are you thinking i'm just gonna escape for a little while a little while so in wrestling

you have a thing called a reset weekend um or reset after a big tournament you want to just have a reset and so you go party and get it out of your system and you're right back in the gym on Monday or Tuesday. Um, and so I used to be able to do that. No, that's even kind of fabricating that I've never been able to do that. I found that out at, at rehab, really taking a hard look at it. I decided not to go to, I could have gone to some of these places in Scottsdale or LA or Malibu. Um, and I could have gotten massages and had the green smoothies and stuff like that, which, which can help a lot of people. But me after having like a 15 year off and on battle 10 years where I was, I was pretty solid. Um, and I, you know, I'd come out of it and I'd get right back on the horse and I'd'd be good for years. I decided I needed fight camp.

I needed a training camp. I needed the right coaching, the right strategy, and I needed people to ride me, be hard on me. This is to get sober? Yeah, this is to get sober. So that's what I wanted, and so I sought out one of the toughest places in America to go to. It's kind of like a 12-step completion program. It's a big book boot go to. It's kind of a, like a 12 step completion program.

It's a big book bootcamp, but it's also like a, uh, it's developed a little bit out of like militaristic style. And, um, I don't know. It was really hard on you.

You know, I mean, while we were there, people were being called, you know, mask wearing clowns, you fake as fuck motherfucker. And,

uh, you Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. I mean, just like they would just grill people and you're up at five is that good um i i i don't i don't know exactly but it was what i needed at that moment um it was what i need at that moment because i needed to not

run from it i needed to face it and i needed to look at the the stuff and are the people running are people that have gotten clean this way? Yes. And they have an 87% success rate for the people that do 90 days. Now, a lot of them only do 45. Some of them only do 60 days. And then I would say probably more than half of the people that went there ended up leaving because of how hard it was. But the only reason they wanted people there is if you really truly wanted to

get sober, because for years you've been stuck in the cycle of addiction. And for me, the easiest way, I mean, they explained it and I had drawn it on whiteboards a lot, but for me, whenever you would have that first use,

you'd have this, what they call an allergy set off. You, you have an abnormal reaction to a, to a substance, just like someone else can't have peanuts. I can't have drugs abnormal reaction to a, to a substance, just like someone else can't have peanuts. I can't have drugs or alcohol because when I do an allergy goes off, that says in my body, I have an abnormal reaction that says, you know, I know rationally that one is too

many, but whenever I have that first use a thousand is not enough. I got to keep having it. And this is explained to you by these people at this rehab or this is just your own feeling. No, no, this was explained. And there's this doctor that's really great. His name's Dr. Kevin. And he's got like a Irish last name, but he's, he's got some stuff on, I think Netflix and Amazon. And, um, he was a Navy surgeon and basically like he ended up writing himself scripts for Oxy and then he was injecting himself with other stuff. And he got put in a prison, a military prison, that one that got taken down in like Kansas. I forget what it's called, but 11's worth or something like that.

He was put in that prison. Anyways, now he spent his time there really trying to help people in addiction. And that cycle of addiction basically is explained as after you have that first use and that allergy set off, now you go on your spree because what, what that doctor did, why he brought him up was he shows scientifically through brain research that addicts brains different, like they don't have enough dopamine receptors. And whenever that hits, now all of a sudden it goes back to that almost hunter gatherer brain where it says this is a priority for survival like that's why some addicts will prioritize it above food or water or family and

you see them do irrational things and then they go on this run and then when they after after that spree after that run they come out of it and they emerge remorseful they feel terrible i've had moments like that and then all of a sudden you, you make a firm resolution. That's what you back it up with. Is that what you felt when you did it the first 30 days you did for 30 days? Yeah, I came out, I emerged remorseful. And then I promised myself, I promised my wife at the time. I promised my family, uh, friends that, that this isn't who I want to be. And, And what they say about an addict is you could hook them up to a lie detector and they absolutely 100% mean it, that they never intend to use again.

But then what happens is they back with that firm resolution, I promise. This was the last time. All of a sudden you get restless, irritable, and discontented. Well, whenever an addict gets restless, irritable, discontented, I would ask the question, what's the difference between discont irritable discontented i i would ask the question what's the what's the difference between discontent and discontented you know just can't discontent you might be a little restless but discontented basically says well if discontent is i'm thirsty discontented is there's not enough water in the whole world to quench this thirst and so you get

in that place where you have this mental obsession so you have this mental obsession you get restless irritable and discontented and then you go back to that first use and then you get get in that place where you have this mental obsession. So you have this mental obsession. You get restless, irritable, and discontented. And then you go back to that first use. And then you get stuck in that cycle of addiction again. And that's where I lived for five years from 17 to 23 was I was just looping back and forth. So you'd get sober for a little bit, then go back again. From 17 to 23, no. I wouldn't get sober hardly at all.

I would get sober from my fights, the eight weeks of fight camp, 10 weeks of fight camp. sober hardly at all. I would get sober for my fights, the eight weeks of fight camp, 10 weeks of fight camp. But then that's why, um, that's why grudge training center had to kick me out. You know, I mean, Brendan was on that vote. I think Rashad, Nate Marquardt, um, Shane, Shane Carwin, uh, Dwayne bang Ludwig, all those guys that invited me on the team after I got off the ultimate fighter, it was just a short while later that they were having to ask me to leave the team. It was like a vote, Elliot Marshall, uh, Trevor Whitman. I think Justin Gaethje was just starting to come up. I don't know if he was actually training full time then. Uh, but he was still at North, uh, Northern Colorado state or Northern Colorado, uh, wrestling there. But they said, you know, Justin, like, um, you, we love you, but you gotta go, you gotta

go get help. And I should have went and got helped, but that's when I found my purpose with the pygmies. I, I, I've heard this quote that said no act of kindness, no matter how small ever goes wasted. And so I started at the local children's hospital, became a local volunteer, went through night school for it later. You remember HD net and, uh, inside MMA with boss rooting. Yeah. Um, those guys came out to the denver children's hospital this was like nine months of me being sober all of a sudden now i have rashad visiting um the kids at the and shane

carwin duane bang brennan shaw visiting the kids that i would push around in the wheelchairs and stuff it gave me purpose so that purpose helped me stay sober sorry so 2020 this was the first time you had had anything since 2000 and like when it wasn't i i'd had three pretty big relapses so so 10 whole years of sobriety oh pretty much but i had relapsed three times in that time oh in the 10 years in the 10 years i'd relapse for 30 days i'd relapse for nine days and i'd relapse for five days oh because these are different relapses. Yeah. This is not the ones you're talking about, the recent ones with your shoulder.

No. That led in, that five day then led into a big one. I'll go ahead and explain it. I was confused. Because when you said 30 days, I thought you meant this year. No, no. Not this year. Basically, March to May 15th.

Well, I was out, I was out there using and, um, I felt so much shame and so much guilt. Um, because I've, I've, I've been on your show. I've been doing good things. I've been, um, really trying to live the right life and, uh, my marriage failed, which is okay, that happens. And I just took on a lot of like shame. I couldn't, I couldn't, you know, have that relationship be a success. Then whenever I went back to weed, all of a sudden that weed, I just kept going more and more and more and more. And then all of a sudden I found Oxy. Then all of a sudden I found Coke. So you started with weed? Yeah. But then I went right to the oxy and I would, I would,

what I would do as in my addict mind, I would think it would sound rational. I'll just have weed. So I don't go back to oxy and, and, and that will help me with pain if I'm injured. Cause I'd, I'd actually hurt my neck training with Raphael a little bit. And, um, he was sweeping me and I, I put my head out. Whenever I put my head out, I crunched right on top of my, my neck or my head. And it just sent this like crunch down into my cervical neck and it was hurting. I was hurting, um, more emotionally and I was stuffing it. I wasn't looking at it. I was stuffing it, stuffing it, stuffing it. And then what happened was I felt so much shame. I told,

I told my board I needed rehab and I said, I need, I need help. Like I've relapsed and I need help. And they've always supported me, but I was scared that would they support me in this? You know, if I'm the leader of the organization or the founder and the spokesperson, you know, we got an incredible internal team, but like we've had donors from thousands, uh, thousands of donors from all 50 States and 59 countries. You know, did I just let everybody down? You know, and is this going to be taken from me? Is this life of purpose that I found, you know, am I going to lose it all? Um, and I felt so much shame.

They were going to send me to a place in Oklahoma, not to knock it at all, but I had known people from the recovery world because I had been going and sharing my story of recovery in rehabs, in different sober living homes, and now all of a sudden I'm back to where they are. What is this rehab place, you said, this hard-ass rehab place that has an amazing percentage of people get successful

it's out of dallas fort worth and it's called stone gate and i don't think the advertising is that hard but it is that hard and i wanted a place once i talked to him i realized like so they get there and shit they do they absolutely do they did yell at me really i had a 21 year old kid yelling at me that was over what uh over a green towel did you want to tackle him uh i was just like bro i didn't i kind of wanted to at first uh what they think is they got to humble you and i'm like man life has humbled me that's why i'm here right and i've been humbled enough and now i came here to get help and but their whole thing is if if if there's no bullshit if they get to you to actually look at your, if they call you on your,

your shit, then you can start working through it. Yelling at you over a green towel. Because you were only allowed to have white towels that they gave you. So when you get there, they give you Walmart shoes, they give you paper underwear and they give you this hideous, what paper,

paper underwear. Why do they have paper underwear? Cause they, they take your clothes and they put them in a hot box and then they try to kill if there's any, cause there's guys coming from all over the place. Right. And, um, I mean, we, we had people that were Ivy league professors, professional athletes, but we had people also from like homeless shelters and we'd mean hot box was a hot box kills any of the, the like bedbugs. Oh, so if someone were to

bring bedbugs in, um, and get in the mattresses and things like that, like if someone came from a homeless shelter or from the streets. How could they afford it? I don't know, honestly. I think there was like a scholarship program because some of the people were paying $895 a day there. I think that's what they charge insurance. It was expensive, man. So I just went through the divorce

and I basically gave the finances we had so she could go back to school and I was going to restart. And then all of a sudden I need rehab and that's expensive um insurance helped but then i had do you find yourself this is a weird question but i think it's i think it's valid do you find yourself always in like a new problem do you do you create problems do you think i think i try to help find a solution to problems but i think for me um you asked me a question after we got the treatment our shoulders our knees and

yes what are you manifesting to have this like sickness you know these all these sicknesses inside of you i think now that's not exactly how i said it that's not exactly how i said it i said do you wonder if you're doing that you're right because sometimes people do you wonder if you're bringing this into your life sometimes people do create problem it's like fine they find themselves in this eternal state of conflict like some people they figure their way through life with very little conflict they're magical people yeah i know a few of them it's rare yeah Some people are constantly engaged in some insurmountable problem. And then they also go and, like in your case, you find insurmountable problems like what you're doing with the Congo and the Pygmies and Uganda and helping these people. Like, it gives you purpose and it helps define your life in a positive way.

Yeah. Then when you're not there, problems come up again, like all kinds of major problems. There's always something, right? Well, I've had some health problems for sure. And then these relapses that had happened were really tough. The biggest one was this one um in march and let me let me tell you what happened because um i didn't want to go to this rehab in oklahoma that that i had known people that were there that talked it had a reputation for people using while they're even there because they could have their

phones at 5 p.m they could have visitors they could go to walmart two or three days a week and then you can call your your connection and they could leave it to you at wal visitors they could go to walmart two or three days a week and then you can call your your connection and they could leave it to you at walmart they could throw it over the gate and it's on 110 acres and they can send you a picture of where it's at right and you can just go dig it up or find it and use and i wanted a place where there i wasn't going there for that i knew i was going to get sober but i didn't want to be around other people so they take your phone away yeah you don't have your phone. Paper underwear.

Paper underwear. How comfortable are paper underwear? It's terrible. But you get it back the next day or that night. After it gets out of the hot box. After it gets out of the hot box, you get your clothes. So it's one day. So that's how I get my towels back.

I brought nice towels, and they gave me my towels back. Well, this guy's doing room checks. Room checks are every day, at least once a day. And anyways, he found my green towels. It's my first like 24 hours being there. You didn't know that you didn't? I didn't know you couldn't have green towels. They had given them back to me.

So all of a sudden I was using that and he gave me an infraction. And if you get three infractions, you lose your phone call that week. You don't even get one phone call until you've been in there three full weeks. Because normally when guys go to rehab and then they start calling their families, they start feeling like I got to get out of here. I got to get home. You start telling yourself this, like my family's more important to take care of than me right now. When in really you're in crisis mode and you've got to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else. And so, um, I got in two infractions for the two green towels I had,

and I was about to lose my phone call at the three-week mark, and because you get three infractions in those first three weeks, you lose your phone call. I got two for things I didn't even know I couldn't have. What was the other one? No, that was the green towel. He took one green towel. He started walking off with it. He looked back, and he saw in my cubby that there was another green towel there.

So you got two infractions for the same thing. Right. What a dick. But I would say that the counselors that were there and the recovery advocates, they're really hard on you because some of the guys that have left there, if they let them leave, they're overconfident that they've got their problem nicked. Then they can go right back out and relapse. So how do they keep you from doing it again?

For me, well, they can't, you have to keep yourself from doing it. No one can keep me sober. No, no, no therapist, no sponsor. It's gotta be me. But what, what do they do to give you the tools to let you do it yourself? I think you really start to unwind the tangled web of why, um, you use. And for me, it's always been like self-worth. It's been, uh, like that bullying moment when I was a kid, my, my record can go right back to the three things the kids told me. And so I dressed up for

a costume party. I went, um, to my middle school crushes birthday party. I crushed there because I was dressed up like a Dr. Pepper transformer, 24 pack on my head, 12 packs on my arms. I went all out. Everyone was excited because she loved transformers, Optimus prime. I went as Dr. Optimus pepper. Anyways, I get there, go to the backyard. And when the door opens, I get hit with a couple flashes of light and it's them taking pictures. I hear the sound of laughter. I see that no one else is dressed up. And my middle school crush said, I can't believe you thought you were good enough to come to my party. Right next to her, a boy said, you're worthless. And then my notorious bully from like third, eighth grade said, you should just kill yourself.

And so that leads to basically whenever I would relapse, I would say to myself, you're not good enough. You're worthless. Maybe you should just kill yourself. You know, I was suicidal at 13. I didn't kill myself because my mom, I thought, what would this do to her? Do you still go back to that one day? Like that one day when you were a child hurt you so badly that's that's still in your mind almost as like a benchmark for who you are i did and that's why i think i've really come to a place of like self-love seeing myself that like when i'm needed well the last six months but this is after your ufc career after your bellator career yeah all the amazing things you've done with Fight for the Forgotten, all the times you've been to the Congo.

I would know it, but when I would relapse, I would feel like such a piece of garbage. I would feel like I was a disappointment to myself, but also to everybody else. And that, let me tell you what happened in Mexico. So I ended up going, I asked to go to a different place and they just wanted to get me into rehab as soon as possible, which I really admire and respect, but I knew it was a place that didn't have a good success. Why in Mexico? I got on a plane and I thought it was, I thought it was pretty symbolic.

There was, it was COVID. So everything shut down. And then I mean, there's a, there's a statistic that was on CNN and it said that in Japan last month, and I don't know if this was last month in December or November, but in one month they had more suicides than all of COVID deaths in Japan in one month. And it's because all these people are isolated. And I know that when I'm in active addiction, what I do is I isolate, I sedate, I suppress, and I numb out. And I, and there's so many people that are going through, um, this right now, what I went through. And I think COVID was a big part of that, you know, going straight from a

divorce to then all of a sudden you're in isolation. Um, and then I just decided to use, and then that's all I had to do. And then kept going. What was the feeling when you, when you decide, when you say, okay, I'm going to use, like you make a conscious decision. How do you get the weed? Like where, what, what sets you off? I was just hanging out with two people and they brought it out and i was like you know what i can do this once and show myself so this is okay this is what the that mental obsession is it'll be different this time i can use it this time and put it down see i know people that are drunks that have figured out that they can smoke weed they can't drink but they can smoke well i think i think maybe some people are that way, but for me, um, so for you, it was anything that

changes your consciousness, anything that has me drop out where I can other people, whenever they smoke weed, maybe they get more creative. Maybe they get more in love with themselves and nature and other people, or they have, they laugh, they have fun. I wasn't, I was a, when I smoke weed, I go dark. I go dark, not, not to anybody else, but internally I go dark and I get depressed. I get depressed and I can't stop. So I go for a couple weeks or a month.

You can't stop. I can't stop. But it's depressing you. To myself, without a, at rehab they say, without a complete psychic change, without something happening to come in whenever you're in that restless, irritable, discontented, or that emerging remorseful in that firm resolution. If you don't break that right there, you have like a pattern interrupt, which for me was, was rehab and sober living.

But you knew it was depressing you. I knew it was, but I thought I could use it once. But my mind would trick me saying, so there was this analogy that this doctor used and it just made sense to me. The addict brain is almost like a kid whenever he goes to the vending machine and he puts in change and he thinks he's going to get one bag of Funyuns. All of a sudden he's getting instead of one bag of Funyuns, it keeps, it's on. And a second one comes or a third one comes or it's just on and it keeps coming. And now all of a sudden it's way better than you expected. So whenever all of a sudden I have that one hit, all of a sudden it's way better than

I expected because in my brain, like literally biologically or whatever, it's, it's given me more dopamine because I have limited numbers of dopamine receptors. And so now all of a sudden it gives me that. And so I think I'm happy, but if I really look back from a rational state of mind, I might be happy for a moment, but then all of a sudden that fades and I keep going and it's with every inhale or what happens with the oxy. So I get on this plane, I ended up going down to Mexico and I thought I'd just use and come back whenever we found a better place. Honestly, I thought I was going to go to Tulum and I was going to get in some healing waters and I was going to get away from my

connection there. And I was going to find a rehab place. And then I was going to go, uh, come back and go straight to rehab. And then I just got darker and darker and darker. And I feel like, I don't know how to explain suicide to people. I, some reason I go to this place of seeing the Twin Towers get hit by those planes. And it's the people that are stuck above. They're stuck above the plane and it's smoldering and smoke's going in there, fire's going in there, and they're looking for a way out. They try to find, they can't go to the elevator. They try to go to the staircase. They look down, it's smoldering black smoke.

They can't see. All of a sudden they come to an open window and no one wants to jump out of the window, but some of those people in 9-11 did. And it's almost like I have, either choice sucks, but I can stay in the burning building. Like whenever, whenever I got snagged by this addiction, this last time, I felt like it got to a point to where I'm not going to escape this time.

This time it's got me in a stranglehold that I can't get out of. I can't fight it off. I can't tuck my chin. I can't pull the hands down. I can't fight the hands. Like I'm done. I'm toast. down. I can't fight the hands. Like I'm done. I'm toast. I'm in such a weakened state of mind or body or, or mentally, spiritually, physically, like I'm not going to escape.

And so when I actually got on that plane at 5am, it was four flight attendants, two pilots and me. I have no idea why American Airlines still took that plane. Um, unless it was like something with like COVID funding that they, if they still operate, they get funding for it, but they would have lost money on that. Just taking one person down to Mexico. They took me to Cancun and I took a one way ticket. And the reason I took a one way ticket was because I thought I'm not coming back this time. I'm not coming back from it. And I ended up going and staying at this, uh, Airbnb there. And I met a military veteran, um, who was there,

who was stoked that he bought this condo that was next to mine by Airbnb. And then he got a call that, um, like the love of his life wasn't coming to the condo that he bought for them. Basically she said, if you like the love of his life wasn't coming to the condo that he bought for them. Basically, she said, if you went down there during COVID, you expect me to come down there in COVID? Like, um, you know, I'm not coming. And so he had his heart broken. I was down there in a very negative space.

He had oxy on him. He had PTSD. He had, um, seen a lot of war. He served a lot of time. I guess he went on three different tours. And I just started using those oxys with him. And then we found his connection, which you can just buy them at the pharmacy there in Mexico. But we ended up finding this guy that had weed, that had coke.

We got oxy. And then we asked him for Molly once. And, you know, the guy had loose lips and he told him that I'm a fighter and this stuff. Anyways, he ends up telling some of the cartel guys that are there. We get invited up to this like penthouse, uh, apartment that's got like an infinity edge pool on it. It's like this drug dealer.

I mean, it looks like a guy out of, he's got the silk shirt and the chains on and, and it looks like the jungle on top of this, uh, in Playa del Carmen kind of Cancun area. And, um, he's got all the drugs there for us to just use. And for Coke, it was the best Coke I've ever had. It made everything numb, both sides of my nostrils. And then I see like people are reaching out. They're trying to get ahold of me. They love me.

They know that I've relapsed and I just feel like I can't come back. I was hanging my head in shame and honestly going, I thought it was so symbolic. Like I didn't want to take a lot of people on this journey with me. And I thought I'm going here. I'm not coming back. I'm either going to die from the drugs or I'm going to purposely, you know, kill myself. And so I was just in this negative, negative place, like, uh, felt defeated in that loop of that. You're not good enough. You're worthless. You

should just kill yourself. It was just on repeat. I was stuck in this thought loop. That's really all back to when you were bullied when you were a kid. That's what I feel like I discovered at, with Dr. Daniel Raymond and at rehab and at these places, like uprooting that, you know, these roots went so deep. Do you meditate? I do now. When did you start? I mean, I often on 10 years, but when I stopped practicing that, that's when I would relapse.

Yeah. And then now it's, I think the greatest thing I discovered at rehab and at sober living was 180 days of daily meditation and just like really going inward and like setting my day up to where i'm not in that negative of a place i haven't had an addiction problem i'm looking to where i ever found something that i couldn't stop doing but i feel like i get myself i understand myself more when i take time in silence every day and I just reset my brain. Yeah. Well, I'm surrounded by a tribe now that does that. Um, what I mean by that was getting out of rehab, having those connections of people that are now beating it and staying

sober. But also I needed something a little different. Like I don't want to be, I wanted something more tailored towards me and my needs. And like, just to share, like Aubrey has been so great to me, Aubrey Marcus, I shared with him what had happened. And I saw that he started this fit for service. And basically it's a mastermind group of people that want to make their business or whatever their livelihood is, make a difference in the world. Basically the premise is to be of service, you must be fit for service, not just a rock star in business, or there's actors and athletes and musicians and podcasters and authors and things like that.

But it's like, you have to be fit relationally. You have to have a tribe. That's what I found in Congo and in Uganda that I didn't have here. Really. I didn't have these deep relationships of people I could completely be raw and vulnerable with where i could share my wins with but i could also share my biggest failures with do you feel at peace are you at peace now i am for sure you have this thing where you're always like it seems like there's always a thing coming out of you like there's always an and then there's this and then there's that and there's this and there's that and they're like it there's no there's no end to it like when you talk about things you talk about one thing into the next thing into the next thing almost like almost like you're troubled

like you're immersing yourself into all these things because you kind of can't help yourself like you're just caught up in the wave of life do you know what i'm saying? I know what you're saying. Whenever this last seven months has been the most at peace I've ever been. And what, uh, I'm eight, eight months sober. And then I am really, well, let me share two experiences with you that brought me the most peace because you were asking about that. I don't know if I ever told you what took me to the Congo. Cause you were asking about that. I don't know if I ever told you what took me to the Congo. Um, it was a sober vision and I know that sounds out there, but experimenting with psychedelics and stuff. I've seen stuff, but this was me in, this was me at 23 and I basically in a time of meditation and I wasn't a praying dude at all, but prayer meditation I did was basically said and I was volunteering at the Children's Hospital I was volunteering at the rescue mission for the homeless all this stuff but I basically just said God what do you want me to do with my life God source creator whatever you want to put on it but I just said God what

you want to do with my life and I had a movie in my mind and it was like visualization whenever you at the Olympic training center, we had sports psychologists take us through visualization and you'd see yourself in whatever color singlet you're wearing. You'd see yourself shake hands. You'd hear the whistle blow. You would, you would see you setting up whatever takedown you're going for.

And sometimes you'd see yourself have the perfect match. Sometimes you'd see yourself battle back from worst case scenario. You get down, what are you going to do? Are you going to sink or swim? Um, are you going to fight back, battle back? Well, those were all like guided visualizations, right? And I'd also do that by myself, like some music and headphones. And this though was unlike anything like that because it was unprompted. It wasn't like i was trying to conjure something up i just really felt like i needed direction i had stepped away from fighting for a little bit because win or lose i had an excuse to use it was like if i won i wanted to celebrate

if i lost i wanted to erase all that and this was 11 months uh sober at 23 and how'd you do that honestly i just kind of white knuckled it and willpower that um and then i had a great group of people around me i would say i would have a i would say i had this like complete psychic change from almost a spiritual experience that i'm about to share with you where i i say that prayer god what do we do with my life yeah i think we talked about this before. Really? And I'm walking down the forest and I literally like I'm, I hear drumming, then I hear singing and I don't know if you've told me this on the podcast. You've definitely told me this, but go ahead. Tell me again.

Sure. I'm walking down this footpath and I don't know where I am and there's vines and thickets that are all around me and I'm clearing out the vines and the foot path is barely wider than my foot. And I don't know where I'm going, but I hear drumming. And then I hear singing. I come into a clearing and I see these leaf huts. And then the first guy I meet has like his ribs kind of poking out or how would I say, he looked like a skeleton with skin on. I knew that he was hungry, thirsty, poor, sick, oppressed, and enslaved. I just, I just had that knowledge. And this was the most vivid thing I've ever seen that didn't actually

happen. It was 10 times, 20 to a hundred times more vivid than the visualization drills that I did at the Olympic training center with my coaches for fights. Like it was so real. And I come out of vision feeling like they were forgotten. And I just knew all this stuff, like they're suffering. And I cried a little puddle of tears. I had no idea who they are, not a puddle, but like a little silver dollar size of like tears. And I wept and I never wept like that for anyone in my life. I know who they were, where they were, anything like that. And three days later, I meet this guy named Caleb and Caleb had done humanitarian mission trips all over the world. And he had lived with the Vanuatu people who, and I thought it was crazy, bro. I literally thought it was crazy.

Is this some psychic break? Is this some sort of, or mental breakdown? Like then that I saw something that like, I didn't try to conjure up. I just, I just had this experience. I thought I would never tell anyone about it. And then when I tell Caleb who had been buddies with Bear Grylls, had done survival training with him, uh, had, had, had went and visited the Maasai tribe, the hunt lions. I thought if there's one guy I could tell this to it's, it's this guy. And, um, I ended up telling the vision. He says, I know who they are. I said, what? And he said, those are the pygmy people. They live in the Congo basin rainforest. It's an eight or nine African nations. I'm like, who are they? And he goes, they're in the Congo. They're in all these

other places. And I'm like, where are they? This is how I found out about the pygmies. This is where this all began at 23 years old. Like this guy tells me the people from your vision are the pygmy people. Then I tell him the vision. He goes, I'm supposed to go there in three and a half weeks. This is crazy that we met because I had a team of three other people that were going with me. But they're all husbands. They're all fathers. And the state department, the U.S. State Department, just said no Americans go there for any reason.

That there's rebel groups that are actually decapitating people and different crazy things. He said, look, like, come tell my wife this vision. Her name's Jess. And he said, if you come tell Jess, she asked me to cancel the trip, but you tell her this vision. And so I told her the vision. And literally he said, he looks at me and goes, Justin, if you go, I'll go. And Jess said, if you go, he'll go. And it was like the craziest thing to me that like, he can go, he's married, he's got a kid and like he, but he was already planning on going in three

and a half weeks. And so we brought a buddy Colin along with us who took the, the, the photo that was just a candid photo. That's the cover of my book. It was my first hour in the Congo. And so the sober vision literally took me there. And then all of a sudden we land on this grass runway. Monkeys are jumping off the runway. We get out, we drive six to eight hours. We, we get on a dugout canoe. We go across the river, we start walking. And then all of a sudden we hear drumming and then we hear singing and then we come into a clearing and the first guy we meet has tuberculosis and he's coughing and like i they start telling us how they're hungry they're thirsty they're poor they're sick they're oppressed but before that happened like before they start telling us their stuff i just had to drop down into like a full

squat i put my elbows on my knees i literally took a knee because i felt weak in the knees because i never experienced i didn't know stuff like this actually happens and i felt like it's who's gonna believe this like you found your purpose yeah i found i found my purpose but it was so wild to me that i was like why did this happen that it came to you in a vision how did this yes it came to me a vision how did this happen why did this i couldn't make logical sense of it did you tell people about the vision other than this one friend i told caleb i told colin and i told his wife jess that's it then i had a piece of paper that i wrote down forgotten at the top then hungry thirsty poor

sick oppressed enslaved and they they knew it and it's been really cool actually uh jim and susan who helped me run fight for the forgotten we had a dinner in caleb's house in nebraska and caleb and jess were able to tell jim and sus Susan their version of the story, which was awesome. You know, he had this vision. We went, it happened. Caleb was grabbing my shoulder like a trap. He was like, this is your vision. This is your vision.

And I didn't know what to do with it. I felt like it was nuts. And, but the chief came to us and he gave us, after we stayed there for a couple of weeks, he said, he gave me the one thing, you know, this is our 10 year anniversary, a fight for the forgotten. We're calling it 10 years of promise because they gave me the one promise that I could keep. And they said, I knew that they needed land, but I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to drill water wells. I was just a fighter. I didn't know how to start farms.

I was just a fighter. I didn't know how to start farms. And literally he said, he, Caleb and Colin are with me. And he looks at me and says, we don't have a voice. Can you help us have one? He's looking right at me. He motions to me. Can you help us have one? I start tearing up because Caleb and Colin know my vision and how it happened. And what are you going to do with this? You know? And I'm like, I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what to do with this, but that that's whenever it set in because I said, yes, I said yes. But it was almost like my soul or my heart screamed. Yes. Like, this is my purpose. This is what I'll do. I'm not just going to fight against people. I'm going to fight for people. And so that really helped me for a long time, like being able to go there and help. And then I'll tell you, since we're on these visions, like I had not, I'd only had one other time that I had experienced anything like this.

It's 10 years later. I was in Sedona and I was with Aubrey and fit for service. And there's like 178 people from all over the world. And we met up in Sedona and there were classes and not classes, but like breakouts on meditation. And I never had like formal teaching training on it, but we did a breath work session and they split us up into three different groups and there's 178 people. So there's like maybe 50 people, a little over 50 people in each of the three groups. And they're going to take us through three hours of breath work. Now it's a 30 minute teaching on the front, a 30 minute kind of integration at the end, but you're going to do two hours of breath work. And I guess to actually set that up in, in Mexico, I took a cocktail that honestly I thought was going to stop my heart. I took five oxy eighties,

80 milligrams. And basically they do five milligrams. They do 10 milligrams. They do 20 milligrams. They do 40 milligrams and then they do 80. So five oxy eighties is equivalent of like 40, uh, or no, what is that? I don't know. It's it's five oxy eighties is what that's 85 milligram pills. That's 85 milligram pills. That's like almost three prescription bottles of 30, you know, 10 shy. I took all that at once. I took the biggest line of Coke I've ever taken. I drank like half a bottle of tequila, one of those smaller bottles, but I took like half a bottle of tequila. And then I had bought what I thought was Molly, this like crystallized Molly. And my motor skills were slowing. This was April 5th. The night of April 5th was the darkest night of my life. Actually it wasn't the night. It was, it was about noon or 2

PM. Like April 4th was the darkest night of my life. And then April 5th when I woke up, I was just like, I was tired. I felt like the addiction had snagged me that I wasn't going to escape. What did you think the crystal stuff was? I thought it was molly. And what was it? Turned out to be red phosphorus meth. Red phosphorus meth? Red phosphorus meth.

What is the... I guess that's the strongest meth in the world That's what the diction ologist at at rehab told me and they said literally Justin just the cocktail you took was a hundred percent A heart-stopping cocktail if you hadn't had that crystal of that meth that meth is the only thing that kept your heart beating What when I sat down when I sat down on the bed? Because the five oxy 80s the cocaine the um oh I had five xanax two milligrams also Jesus Christ so the meth kept you alive the meth kept my heart beating and the next morning I woke up I remember my motor skills slowing to where if I would have tried to talk

I wouldn't have been able to um the table was maybe right where you're sitting and the bed was where I was sitting so it wasn't that far but I remember I only took, I didn't take them. What I thought was the Molly until after everything started getting dark or just kind of cold. And then the last thing I did was I crushed up that, that Molly or what I thought was Molly. And I crushed it up and I snorted it on both sides of my nostrils. And I never felt a burn like that in my life and my nostrils because it was this, sides of my nostrils and I never felt a burn like that in my life and my nostrils because it was this, whatever, this chemical of methamphetamine. And I sat back on the bed and I remember I laid back with my arms out and my feet were off to where the next morning my ankles were swollen because I just fell back and passed out. I woke up at maybe like 6am the next morning.

It was right before the sun rose. And I remember I woke up and I woke up with a gas 6 a.m the next morning it was right before the sun rose and i remember i woke up and i woke up with a gas it was like a like uh and i thought in my head i was like i'm alive i'm still here and i went out and i was in my clothes from the day before i mean bro i was passed out for like 18, 20 hours, something like that from like noon until like maybe 6am the next morning or 2pm to like 6am the next morning. And, uh, people that take meth, like they can't sleep. And that was my first time or only time, but, um, they, they normally can't sleep for days. And now all of a sudden I pass out for that long because I had all that other stuff in my system. I went out and I got in the water and I take my shirt off and I just get in.

And I remember I was sitting on my knees in the, on the sand, in the water, the water's coming up kind of on my chest and over my shoulders. And it was kind of grounding, but I just remember trying to connect to my breath and also my heart because my heart was racing like crazy. And I remember like saying, thank you for the beating heart in my chest. Like, thank you. Cause I wasn't planning on waking up the next day. And I did. And then I was saying, thank you for the beating heart in my chest. And then, and then I started saying, thank you for the breath that's in my lungs. And then I started saying thank you for the breath that's in my lungs. And I had my eyes closed. And before I started saying thank you, though, I remember like these waves coming over me.

And it was almost like this shamefulness was coming over me with every wave. Like just so much shame because of what I did the night before, day before. And then whenever I started thanking myself or being thankful for the breath in my lungs, being thankful for that crazy beating heart in my chest, it's like it kind of switched to like gratefulness all of a sudden. And maybe like the shamefulness was leaving, you know, waves can kind of come over you and then they go back out and they kind of come over you. It was kind of like just all of a sudden it changed like gratefulness and a little bit of the shamefulness kind of left. And I just felt a sense like open your eyes like a thought in my mind just open your eyes and when i open my eyes like literally on the horizon in playa del carmen like the sun just pops up over the sunrise or the sunrise starts to appear on the horizon and i just sat there and i was like i was dumbfounded where i

was like blown away because I watched the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen in my life. So explain to me this, you have this revelation, you realize you want to live, you feel grateful, you feel thankful, you feel ashamed that you almost killed yourself and that you were using, but yet you still have to go to rehab. Yeah. Why? I think it was because, well, it's like. Did you use again after that? I did. That's why I went to rehab.

When did you use again? I came back. And I came back and. How long later? I came back on, I don't know, a few days after that. And a few days after that, what did you do? I took a flight. I was waiting for flights to come back. So I was. What did you do? I took a flight. I was waiting for flights to come back.

So I was smoking weed. I was smoking weed. I was still taking some of the pills. Waiting for the flights to come back. Because they were not taking flights because of COVID. They had to consolidate our flight until it was me and one other guy coming back. And they postponed our flights for like three or four days. And so I was using it in that time because I was going through withdrawal.

You can go through withdrawal quick. I mean, I was using from March 1st or 2nd to then this is like April 6th that I have this revelation that I do need to come back and go to rehab, but I can't stop. So you were in Mexico for how long? that I do need to come back and go to rehab, but I can't stop. And so I need like, you were in Mexico for how long? I was only there for like, uh, I don't know, end of March. So I was there like two weeks, but I was using the whole time.

I was there two weeks and I was using the whole time I was there. And so after this revelation where you're in the water and you're thankful for your heartbeat, how do you use again like what what is the thought process like if you realize that you want to be alive yeah and that you are valuable and that you've just tricked yourself into falling into this trap again how do you allow yourself to use again what like, what happens in your mind? Do you remember? Um, I still had some there. Don't let it go to waste.

I know that's stupid. That's hilarious. Yeah. Don't let that poison go to waste. Yeah. And then, and then also, um, I think just the addict mind of like withdrawal suck whenever you go through oxy withdrawal. Like you feel like, I remember the time I was going through withdrawal after surgery just the addict mind of like withdraw suck whenever you go through oxy withdrawal like

you feel like i remember the time i was going through withdrawal after surgery i was i felt like i was going to shake the mattress off of the bed frame but you already knew about kratom yeah but i didn't have any access to it there in mexico you couldn't get kratom in mexico i guess i could have gone and found it but i had this and I was looking for my flights and I was going back to rehab and I guess I thought, I'm going to get sober at rehab. I'm going to get sober at rehab. And for me, it's like, it's one

thing to like say you want to fight in the UFC, but you got to go to training camp and you got to, you got to, you got to be, get the right skill, the right training. That's what you felt like rehab was going to give you. Right. And so, and because I had tried to do it on my own for a long time and I'd done it well at times, but then I would always go back. And so I, you, you went 10 years, you just had a few, 10 years where I had three relapses

within that time. Right. 30 days. So I can't say I had 10 years. When was the last time? Like how long had you been sober for? I mean, I relapsed that five days in November of 2019. And then in March of 2020, after the divorce,

that's whenever I went all in. And before 2019, how long had it been? Maybe a couple of years and in the time frame was getting shorter and shorter and so that's what was that's what was concerning to me the time frame in between in between that's sober but the time frame of the binges were shorter as well. Yeah, you're right. You're a glass half empty guy. No, I'm a glass half full guy. I'm very hope full. I'm a hope filled guy. So you will never use again?

I will never use oxy, alcohol, marijuana, Xanax, those kind of substances of substances, unless like it's under the, not even unless it's under the care of a doctor. I am open to, I'm talking with a place called a Luma here in Austin. They do ketamine transfusions. And what they do that for is for addicts. They work with recovery centers and they work with, um, PTSD, childhood trauma, and they're seeing great things. So I've talked with those doctors. I'm willing to look at that and see if that's the right thing, but I want to do it under care of like actual specialists that have like a doctorate or degree and proof that this stuff is actually healing addicts or healing,

um, PTSD, healing, childhood trauma. Have you, uh, thought about Ibogaine? I have thought about that and it's in Africa.

Well, no, you can get it in Mexico. Well, you can get it there too, but it comes from the thought about that and it's in Africa. Well, no, you can get it in Mexico. Well, you can get it there too, but it comes from the Aboga tree, which is in Africa. Yeah.

And the Congo basin reinforced where I lived and the pygmies do it as a, as a right of passage for the end of manhood. But it has a great, great reputation for people with heroin and oxygen and all alcohol, cigarettes, gambling. Even it stops withdrawals it stops the even uh the not the temptation but the desire um to to go back to it but

patterns of the mind are fascinating to me yeah um because like i said i don't have a physical addiction problem to like a chemical but i've had addictions like uh particularly games i get i get a real i have a real problem with video games i get obsessed with them rehab said most most everyone has some form of addiction within their life yeah i'll be to their phone might be to porn yeah it might be to people like codependency yeah yeah it might be the gaming it might be the tv it might be to all these things that you can basically sedate yeah how can you sedate numb out? How can you, you know,

break free? How can you have this release? Yeah. Um, and sometimes people can't get under control. Yeah. Food, food.

I mean, I have a friend that has a food addiction and just one. Oh, probably a lot, but one, one that talks about it, uh, openly,

not, not the anorexic and bulimic type, but the one that, you know, says the one that says that food addiction is one of the hardest things because you have to eat. You have to eat. And so like me, I don't have to drink. I don't have to use, but you do have to eat. And so that's one of the hardest addictions that's out there is whenever you actually do have a food addiction. Sure, yeah. It's actually a chemical.

It's a giant problem. Right. Yeah. People are, it's actually a chemical, right? It's a giant problem. It's so difficult to train your body to just somehow or another avoid the temptation to overeat and not just that, but you have to kind of under eat because you want to lose weight. So you have to put your body into a deficit and so you have to be uncomfortable all the time, which is something that most people try to avoid. Yeah. I would say this. So when I was in Sedona, I had one of the most powerful moments of my life because this was 10 years of not having a vision.

And I find myself on, um, doing this breath work and I'm, I'm breathing with these coaches that are doing like a yoga style breathing and you're doing really deep breath work. Like what kind of breath work? Oh, they have music going. Um, and you have some people had eye mask on and you're doing really deep breath work like what kind of breath work oh they have music going um and you have some people had eye mask on and you're just breathing as deep as

you can and then out as far as you can in as far as you can and out as far as you can and they would coach you in different ways and they had people that were walking around doing different things um you can get high as fuck like that oh man dude so i don't know if i had a dmt experience but this was sober just through breath all of a sudden aubrey had gotten down and he had known my story him and violana his wife and i'd shared with him how scary it was that i attempted suicide through addiction and that i can't go back to it again i I just can't, I won't. And, um, and I really need freedom from it. And so I was there and Aubrey got down and I had my eye mask on and he puts his, um, his hand on my heart. He's got his hand down. He's on his knees. He just said, um, you know, what is this? He just

kind of, we're in meditative stuff. We have like this priming thing that we've been doing. And he said, what is this armor over your your heart why have you not allowed yourself to be fully seen would you let that armor fall in your mind's eye and would you just be you be real be open be honest um and uh so i just i just start thinking about what you feel you feel like you have armor over you where you don't let yourself be seen? Is that what you feel? Are these your words or your thoughts? They were Aubrey's, and then I think there was part of it. Why did he have those about you?

I think that, well, I think like right now, you know, with you, and knowing that this is such a big platform, and me sharing my weakest moments you know that's me trying to let that armor fall and be fully seen and not not hide it um be transparent with it and i think for me i'm allowing myself to be seen more and more um and i don't think i was ever hiding stuff i don't my fight for the forgotten has never once been an act for me it's been something i fully believed in yeah that's what i'm saying i don't fully no i don't someone said to me about you not even just fight for the gotten for the got fight for the forgotten if someone said to me about you does he like hide

who he is like it's one of those transparent people ever you're you are your heart in your sleeve like i don't understand that at all i think you do have scars from your childhood yeah that i'm trying to figure like i was bullied when i was a kid but not like that much like your sound that one moment at that party sounds like that cut deep yeah and i ran away from that party my mom found me literally at dairy queen after it closed down and i I was literally, I'd thrown everything off, took all the cardboard stuff and threw it in the dumpster. And now I have the duct tape like residue on my shirt, on my jeans. And I literally sat there, held my knees and cried until Dairy Queen closed. How old were you?

13. Damn, people can be mean. Kids can be so fucking mean. Because they know they can you know it's like it's it's weird it's like they can't almost like some kids can't help themselves like they know they can get a reaction out of someone if they're just mean and they do it almost like to see like it's it's just it's interesting when i watch little kids be mean to each other and you see them on on the playgrounds

when your kids are playing. It's like they're almost like they're testing out how to behave. They're testing out reactions they can get. And they're also testing out group think where they can get each other to be mean to a kid. It's like that sort of gang mentality, mob mentality is very strange because you see it in kids

it's like a it's a natural thing a horrible but natural thing well one of the kids i'm really stoked about i think i might have shared with you where raiden was being bullied this was last night well i remember you took this on yeah well last night he had his first night of jiu-jitsu ever i saw on your instagram page awesome well people don't know who this kid is there was a Well, I remember you took this on. Yeah. Last night he had his first night of jujitsu ever. I saw it on your Instagram page. Oh, awesome. Well, people don't know who this kid is. There was a video online of a bunch of kids bullying him and hitting him and videotaping it and laughing at it.

It's horrible. And he's obviously challenged. There's some issues. He was born with autism and deaf in his right ear. And so he was given a concussion either at the urinal where the kids jumped him and then filmed it or at the bus stop the very next day or actually it might be reversed where he was at the bus stop and it happened off school grounds so the school wasn't able to look into it as much as they could or should and then the next day was at the urinal and since it was circulating

from inside the school they were able to help those. And then that did it to a man like watching that. It's like it's so horrific. I'm in the back of the head, kicking them in the stomach. But it's like, what? How are kids so mean? That's the thing. It's like, what causes kids to be able to do that? Like, how come none of those kids jump in and go, hey, what the fuck are you doing?

Like, what is it about bullying and kids because it's a weird instinct that some have and when they get together with one target like raiden it's it's horrible it's horrible to watch like it makes you lose faith in humans it's like what is about humans that makes that even an option i think hurt people hurt people and when you've been hurt at home when you've been hurt at school yeah and um and whenever someone else will laugh or joke or when people don't do anything you can feel powerful or you can feel strong whenever people sit by as an innocent bystander, wrongly, wrongfully thinking they're innocent bystander when actually they're a silent supporter. A lot of times, you know, if you see it or hear it, the kids just don't know that it's

now they're presented with a choice. Am I going to do something or do nothing? And, um, and kids don't know that nine times out of 10, almost it's like 87% of the time a kid stands up and says one thing such as like, Hey, that's not kind. It actually stops it. Um, someone will stop whenever they're confronted, um, whenever it's addressed, whether it's reported or even more so than the authorities that are in place,

which, which, uh, you know, kids should go tell teachers and faculty and stuff like that, but they have more power than they know. They can stop it. And so,

um, it was cool. Like when stop it. And so, um, it was cool. Like when I was doing that breath work though, I was praying and this brought me so much peace because it was something that I actually needed for me. I think I used that vision to then just give me a mission to like love people in such a deep and meaningful way for myself. But I don't think I've ever allowed myself to love myself because i i don't know that i i knew it logically but i didn't let it actually sink in that you have to love yourself before you love others truly and sustainably right and so how could you not love you you're such a nice guy thanks thanks like it doesn't make any sense i mean i know what I'm saying is not, what I'm saying is like, I know what I'm saying

sounds ridiculous, but I don't, I don't get how after all the amazing things that you've done, it hasn't changed your opinion of yourself that was cut into you by some 13 year old kids. Yeah. Well, I really feel like I have a lot of freedom from that now, but then I didn't. It was, I'll tell you, this vision was what I think needed to happen. I'm breathing. Aubrey says that. And I just visualize in my head, like a human heart and the like armor falling off and hitting

the dirt. I don't know why, but that's what I did in that moment. We start breathing and about 30 minutes goes by probably. And all of a sudden I'm doing the most meditation I've ever done in my life, the most intense breathing I've ever done in my life. And all of a sudden I start seeing in my mind, like almost as visual as that time I saw myself in the forest. And I start seeing these storm clouds forming and it's over the ocean. It's this deep, dark ocean. And I see inside of it, it's almost like perfect storm kind of weather. Um, but the, but the waters were actually kind of smooth. Um, it was just really dark. And then also I see this darkened human heart,

like an atomical heart, um, like sitting in the water and I see it starting to sink. And, um, then kind of the visions underneath the water, it's starting to sink and it's headed down towards the bottom of the ocean floor. And as that is getting deeper, I feel like my chest actually kind of like a little bit of compression. I don't know why, but it felt like almost like whenever you're diving underwater, but anyways, it's going deeper, darker. And I just have this knowing that like, that was me on April 4th and 5th. Like my heart was going down. It was dark and dangerous diseased. It was like, it was desperate. It was drowning. It was dying. And someone walked by and

my, my head was kind of in the sun a little bit. And, um, they sprinkle this water on me. They kind of spritz this water on me. And right when that happened, right before the heart hit the bottom of the ocean floor, all of a sudden I see at the top of the water, this, and it's this golden swirl of this water that swims down. And it's almost like it's on a mission. It's trying to get to my heart. And it was right before it hit the ocean floor. This golden, gorgeous, like, water swirled around my heart and started resurfacing it.

And I knew that was my heart and it takes it back up and it comes above. You're saying you see a vision. Yeah. Are you seeing this? I'm seeing it with my eyes seeing this are you seeing this like you're on drugs are you seeing this like it's a psychedelic trip are you seeing this like you're just imagining it like it's different than a psychedelic trip because i have no other sensation it's just there's there's just a movie in my mind it's just like the visualization drills but it was unprompted it wasn't like i'm trying to see an ocean it's't like i'm trying to see

an ocean it's not like i'm trying to see a heart so this symbolized in your mind what you needed to do you needed to figure out how to get your how to get yourself healthy and to get your heart healthy and to change your perceptions and the way you're you're behaving in life yeah i it comes up to the top of the ocean and it's this golden, gorgeous water that's swirling around it. Also it turns into like this flame and it's like a fire around this human heart. And then also it turns into this like white orb. And then all of a sudden it turns into this golden molten kind of like jewelers gold. And it turns into this golden heart. And when that happened, I don't know

why, but I put my arms up and I put my arms up and one of the facilitators or people helping people breathe and stretch and different things like that. They grab my wrist and they pull my wrist above my head and I'm on my back. Right. And that's, I'm like, I feel like, I feel like I, I know it sounds nuts, bro, but I feel like they put like a medicine ball in my hand, but there wasn't, it felt like they put something there. There was actual like weight there. And then I bring it back above my head and I'm seeing this, this golden heart. And I feel like there's something inside of my hands, like this energy inside of it. I don't know why, but it was heavy and it was there.

And then someone else comes by and they grab my hands and they put my hands over my hands and they sink it right down onto my chest. And whenever they did that, I don't know how to explain it except for it felt like there was this golden honey that was like sinking down into my own heart or into my own chest and my own soul. And it was just like love. And I know it sounds cliche or goofy, but like loves the answer. Like I can't just love everyone else. I have to love myself too. And like, this is a season of healing through self-love

through self-love and meditation, taking time for myself and silence. Um, and taking, I think, I think the word healing for me is like helping being open to others, helping me heal, um, taking time for myself to heal and then helping others heal, whether it's Raiden mentoring him, um, loving on him, other people, the pygmies, like, like as I heal myself, I can help others heal and just like hurt people, hurt people, I guess, healed people, heal people. And like, you can actually, you know, you have to heal yourself, but you can also help others heal at the same time. And if you watch them heal, and like you can actually you know you have to heal yourself but you can also help others heal at the same time and as you watch them heal that helps you heal and so that's been the journey that i've been on and that's what i've been grateful for with the fit for service tribe like they're all people that are using their business as platforms to like help people make

the world better but they want to make their own life better and as they make their own life better they can help other people make their lives better. Are you continuing to do this kind of breath work? Do you do it all the time? I've been doing a lot of breath work. I've been going to here in Austin. There's Black Swan Yoga. I've been going there. I've been having Amy that you met at the after party of Dave Chappelle and you.

She helps me. She does a lot of meditations and she'll do guided meditations for me. She records them, does them herself, and then I do them. And that's really been helping a lot because I've been trying to do that every day. I go out in nature, Cummins Ford Ranch Park that's out there. And there's like these three hidden waterfalls. I've been loving Austin. It's the most amazing city. And then it's got nature all through it. We're telling too many people. People are yelling at me now. Yeah. Well, it's, it's been dope for me because there's, there's the Colorado river or Lake Austin.

And then going there and just hiking on 250 acres or the Greenbelt or all these other parks, Zilker Park, and going out there with people that are stretching, doing yoga, that are just kind of really open-minded, accepting, loving, supportive. It's been wild, man. I've been at Brigham's guest house. I've been staying there a lot. And there's been people that have literally walked into our yard saying, I heard you moved to town. I want to donate. I'm like, what? This is wild. And for me, part of the healing in my journey is that I felt like if I let anyone know, if I really let anyone know, like this dark side or this addiction that I fell back to,

or this relapse that I had and how dark of a spot I got. If they knew like no one would want to support me, no one would want to support the organization. And then when I went to rehab and I went to sober living and the board really helped me, the board said, Justin, we've been standing behind you for 10 years now, close to 10 years. Now it's time for us to stand beside you and out in front of you with a shield and protect you. Allow yourself to heal. Allow yourself to do self-development work and get therapy and things like that. A season, a break, a sabbatical for you.

Like take the season to really look inward. And what do you really want to do? And like I've had this revamping inside of me that's like no this is my purpose and like leaving even our last board meeting was the best board meeting uh we've ever had and it was here in austin and um so you get through the first six months this already interrupts you but i want to just clarify sure so you have this horrible time right and this is what starts off the good time the the sedona vision after after getting out of rehab wasn't all bad i mean

they rode me real hard they were having me wake up me uh for there was different rotations but they really liked me having to get up before everybody else and that's at 5 a.m and then you're cooking breakfast for 32 other guys you're're cooking 60 eggs, a hundred and some pieces of bacon, uh, toast and putting out everything for them. And then you're cleaning all their dishes. Um, and, uh, that was hard. Sober living was really hard. And then whenever I found the tribe with fit for service, like that was just, they spoke my language. They're my kind of people.

They're people I can really look up to that I can trust. Um, and, and, and I think upgrading, not that I had, didn't have good friends, but I think upgrading a friend group in a way of like, these people are hungry. They're hungry to, to, to live an incredible life for themselves, but they're also wanting to better other people's lives. Like these are my people. And so being with them has really helped a lot moving to Austin. There's been so many cool people here. I'm not, I shouldn't say that too loud, but yeah. Um, and, and it's really helped a lot to where even at the last board meeting, um, the chairman of my board moved here. There's so many

like synchronicity synchronicities that happened, serendipitous moments that I can't deny that like I'm supposed to be here. And like, this is a good move for me. And, you know, I just had to thank them because, you know, they told me how proud they were of me going through the work, doing the work, the hard stuff.

And I just had to look back at everyone and say like, y'all don't understand like i thought i was going to lose everything i thought i was going to lose everyone do you think that you this this draw i keep i'm just trying to figure out what led you down this dark path other than obviously the divorce but you the the things that you've done you've been so praised for you've gotten so much love you've been so powerful as a fighter and you're this weird combination of someone who's incredibly strong but also vulnerable it's a very it's a very unusual combination like who you are like incredibly kind and giving but also like very competitive

like as a fighter right you know yeah you i would most people when they do something that like they've gotten over the bullying through accomplishing things and through redefining who they are as a person but for you it doesn't seem like that did enough even with all the charitable work you've done the amazing work you've done even all the accomplishments you've had as a fighter and like you're you're obviously not that person we even talked about you having contact with some of the bullies some of the people that that you and they were kind of blown away by who you are now, but that didn't even redefined it for you. Redefine who you are for you.

Right. It's hard to explain, but I think, I think for me, you know, I, how would I say it? I think,

um, until you love, until you really actually allow yourself, um, not just to, not just to accept love from other people, but to allow yourself to love yourself. Like, I mean, I, it would look like I ran from one thing to another to another. I, you know, was a nobody in school. No one liked me, sat at the lunch table. Then all of a sudden I start wrestling. Then I'm a state champion, an All-American. Then I'm a national champion.

Then I'm living at the Olympic Training Center. Then I'm fighting in the Ultimate Fighter. And then I had wrestled in Moscow. I kickboxed in Amsterdam or helped Alistair Overeem train for Brock Lesnar. I had helped Randy even, Shane Carwin helped Alice Rover and trained for Brock Lesnar. I had helped Randy, even a Shane Carwin, a, uh, Frank Mir twice trained for Brock Lesnar. Someone was fighting Brock. They were normally calling me to come help him train. And then I get out of that. I go live in Congo. Then I come back, I do an interview with sports illustrated. Also, it's a book deal and it goes from a book deal to then all of a sudden it's a Ted talk.

Yeah. And at the time, like it was some reason it was almost like whenever in fighting, I would get my hand raised and I would think, is this it? Is this all, you know, I think Dustin has done something incredible. Dustin Poirier, I got to be with his family for that fight. His brother, Jimmy, his nieces and nephews, you know, he's attaching that fight for a purpose bigger than himself. And so I was doing that for a long time, but whenever the addiction would rise back up, it was like none of that other stuff mattered. Um,

I'm just, I'm just at a depressed drunk. Yeah. But, but the addiction would rise back up because of a bad feeling you have for yourself. Right. So what caused the bad feeling when all

those positive things were happening do you allow it into your mind well do you think that you could have stopped that if you were meditating back then i honestly you're gonna stop that if you knew that if you didn't stop that you could become vulnerable and start using again like what is it that sets it off did you ever think about it like that yeah um because because they say with an addict you have to you you can't stop it the moment it's in front of you you got to cut it off way before days before weeks before months before instead of this restless irritable discontented feeling inside of you and um and and being vulnerable and being vulnerable. Um, so I mean, a lot of times I would relapse or not a lot. I haven't relapsed a lot, but the times that I would relapse, it would be

like I stopped, uh, daily disciplines. I stopped doing my five minute journal in the morning where I have three things I'm grateful for and write down an affirmation. And why'd you stop? Um, I don't know. I'm a disciplined guy, but I, when you stop, that's when you relapsed. Yeah. And, and honestly, the, the real self-loathing or self-hatred or feeling of not good enough being worthless, that would always come after the first use because, um, my first time, um, to use to drink, it was after I won my first national championship, um, in wrestling or when I won the high school national championship. And, um, I never allowed myself to drink,

but that night I thought I took 30 shots of vodka. Um, I really only took 15 and it was out of my national championship cup, which was a national championship trophy. Right. And we're all drinking from it, passing it around. And then after 15 shots of vodka, it was, it was all water shots after that.

And they thought it was funny. And I thought it was hilarious the day after, but I see that from the moment I ever tried a substance, um, it was, it was always that way. Is that in your family? Yeah. There's addicts in my family for sure. Addicts and alcoholics. And, um, I think those are the same thing and it's, it's not everyone. And it's really hard to explain to people that don't

understand it or people that, that don't, they don't have that. Yeah. The thing that I, one of the things that actually got me to choose, um, stone gate in this rehab center was because on it i always thought like i think i think part of me because i'm disciplined because i've been a national champion of wrestling i've fought in the ufc all that stuff and i've been disciplined i just thought that there was something weak-willed about me to use or that i was morally corrupted and i just didn't have, I like, like why it didn't make sense to me. I know it doesn't make sense to other people. Like, and so whenever they said, no, this isn't, this isn't a, um, morality problem. It isn't, uh, you, you actually addicts do after usage, after they do, and that mental obsession and and everything they lose the power of choice

of putting it back down they do until they're equipped until they're empowered until they're educated about what's going on when they do that and how you can trick yourself well then how come sometimes people just find rock bottom and then they just decide to stop using well that's basically what i did at 23 i hit rock bottom i got a voicemail from my best friend at the time and he's a great guy now and we're friends, but he said, um, I can't believe you missed my wedding. I can't believe my best man didn't show up. You know, I was eight weeks on a, on a binge and it was basically a blur for eight weeks and that rock bottom moment and then going back to grudge and

then being kicked off the team. Like that was bottom man and then again rock bottom comes 10 years later and um this is what i'm saying like to take away all agency from a person to say you can't stop like something something has to come along and help you stop right some people can stop yeah so why and then and then you would say that some those people so there there's supposed to be three different types of addicts and alcoholics, um, where there's three types of users. There's the moderate, let's just say drinker. Um, there's the moderate drinker who can just have it from time to time. There's the hard drinker that, that, that drinks often. They're a hard drinker and they drink hard. And then there's the real deal addict and alcoholic. I think you might be saying some people can just stop. Well, that's normally the hard drinker because the moderate

drinker can stop just with a good, like, um, with a, with a reason I've got a, I've got an event coming up or, you know, my kid doesn't like it and that can make them stop a hard drinker. Maybe what makes them stop is there's a threat of a divorce there. You're going to lose your job or, or there's something like that. There's a threat of a divorce there. You're going to lose your job or, or there's something like that. There's a consequence attached to it, or there's a big enough reason for them to just put it down, you know,

but the, the real deal addict and alcoholic, they're the one that actually needs help. They're the one that actually needs a support system. I mean, we all need support system. We all need community. We need tribe.

We need encouragement, empowerment. We need, we need to share our stories. I understand. But you stopped your first time you stopped i did stop the first time maybe maybe i was more of just the hard user then but then after these other times i was the real deal and i can point back to that first time and say i've always been the real deal and maybe i just had this spiritual awakening or this, this, this sober vision that all of a sudden took me and gave me a life beyond. I'm just worried about saying that you need help.

Yeah. No one can do it on their own. No. And people can do it on their own. And I think I'm, I'm doing it in a way, but, but there are people just like me that do need that pattern interrupt that training camp for the biggest fight of their life. This was the,

after April 5th and I attempted suicide, I finally realized, no, there's no fight in a cage. That's the biggest fight I'm ever going to have. Like this is my biggest fight because if I don't fix this, it doesn't end well. Right.

It doesn't end well for me. It doesn't end well for the people I'm trying to help. So that's why I went and actually got help was because I wanted some sort of training camp. And I had that six months where it's like preparation to build support and help and some boundaries and things like that to where I'm able to better know myself. And so it was an internal look. There was an hour long every day of meditation and i would go to that every day at 6 30 a.m right after breakfast and so now since then you've been maintaining a journal you've been maintaining your breathing and meditation yeah and i've been reaching out to people i've i've been better with my phone i mean i know you like we get blown up a lot right and so um you a lot more than me but but this right here i couldn't get back up a lot. Right. And so, um, you a lot more than me, but, but this right here, I couldn't get back to a lot of texts. I get overwhelmed. I get overwhelmed by inbound requests.

Can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this? I've been able to handle it a whole lot better lately where I get back to people. I can set firm boundaries. Like I can't do this. You're in contact with too many people, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've, I've really started to limit that. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's helped me a lot to where I don't feel like I don't feel bad if someone reaches out and I don't really know them, but they expect a response. And are you fucking around with social media at all? Do you pay attention to that? Uh, I mean, I, I post, but I don't, in my request box and stuff, I normally never read those. Do you read the comments?

No, that's good. Yeah. I read them sometimes but not i don't i don't i don't let that affect me and i've been pretty good about that in the past where i really don't care um what someone i if if they have not added value in my life and kind of earned right to speak into my life then i don't care about a comment on social media good because uh with the people like the people that are close to me in my like the people that are close to me in my circle, the people that are helping me with the board of directors or this fit for service tribe or you, like, those are the people that can speak into my life and I'll take a good, hard look at it. And what I learned that they would offend you so much purposefully at rehab

that what they were trying to do is help. They say offense or resentment is the number one offender. And if you allow resentment to build in you or offense and be offended and things like that, a lot of times that's whenever people go back out and use. And so for me, like, uh, you know, if it doesn't apply, let it fly. And if you don't know me, then, you know, and most of the time people aren't saying, uh, real critical stuff. Um, and I've just been really grateful this last year. I, I talked with Denise a few days ago. I did my second round at ways to well, and like, this was what was really cool that she showed me. Cause I've been telling her, I've been trying to heal from the inside out. And she

goes, that's exactly what we're doing. You know, it's, it's preventative, regenerative, integrative care and functional medicine, but they're able to track my progress on i've i've gotten better insulin resistance which the reason my insulin wasn't that great was because i had so much inflammation in my body and that goes back to the parasites the bacterias all the other stuff my cholesterol people don't know what we're talking about so let's just explain that you had a horrible parasite yeah that took forever for them to figure out even what it was yeah and then they think it might have actually been malaria that got into your brain as well cerebral malaria so i did have something called schistosomiasis which comes from a snail and that's from me bathing that's for me bathing

in the rivers so schistosomiasis and then um I also had cerebral malaria of the brain and they had to poison my brain to kill the parasite in my brain. Dude. And so. Wait, this before or after you went on the benders? This was kind of like one of the reasons I went back to the bender because I was feeling so defeated that I didn't have really answers. And I was constantly sick. And I was constantly, you know, like it was, I would, I was on 28 pills a day for 28 days.

I was doing this parasite detox and like I was depleted. I was feeling weakened. I'd gotten a divorce. It was just all this stuff dumped at once to where I was like, yeah, I can have a, I can have a joint once. And then all of a sudden it just turned into way more than I ever expected. But when you say poison your brain, so it broke down like your mental function you you were telling me brain fog yeah i didn't feel like me i literally didn't feel like myself my point is this is what triggered the addiction

episode yeah right yeah don't you make that correlation yeah yeah so that's what it was yeah so that's the moment so i was looking for it is. What is it that made you fall apart? So now it makes more sense. Yeah. It was, I mean, I wasn't getting answers or then I did get the answers. That's like,

okay, we gotta, we gotta kill the parasites in your brain. We got to poison your brain. We've got to do all this stuff to your gut. We've got to build back your gut. Cause you have a hundred, basically they said I had almost a hundred percent bad overgrowth of bad bacteria in my gut and that's your second brain and then and then like i had

to start balancing back out that bad bacteria with good bacteria because it should be a 50 50 balance or or better good than bad but mine was like all bad so now my first brain is is messed up and we got to poison that and now my second brain or whatever you know your gut health is is destroyed and i'm gonna have a long i know people that have recovered from parasitic invasions like that and it takes a long time yeah mine's been i mean it's basically been since 2014 i've been on and off sick that's six years where i was just also fighting at the same time which is crazy and then i fought like uh my second bellator fight was i mean i had malaria the second time i think like four or five months before the fight you need a lot more time to recover than that and and on top

of that we were talking about the fact that you're taking these heavy duty antibiotics yeah and these heavy duty antibiotics have shown to weaken your tendons and ligaments. And then I tear my shoulder. Yeah. And, and, uh, it was just, it was just really tough to make the comeback that I've been wanting. And so what's been great about, I mean, this was just a few days ago I got with Denise again, who you met and she was able to show me on all these places I'm making progress.

And instead of doing it every three, um, months, like they do with more of their patients or all their patients, um, they're going to do blood panels on me. They're going to be watching everything that's going on in my body to show me that I'm not just, she, so the other day she said, Justin, my first time going through your blood laps I wasn't going to tell you how long of a road you still have ahead you've made a lot of progress but you've got a long road ahead and after the second time with her she's like Justin look at all these improvements this is to be to make sure you're hope filled you know full of hope that that you are on the right track to make this comeback.

You know, you can attribute a lot of this to that disease. Yeah. You can attribute a lot of what went wrong in your life to these parasites and getting sick. I think I can. But just think about who you are and who you, you know, like a big part of you is your mind, your mental energy, your, your ability to function. Right. All that was radically diminished. Yeah. I was having to do the hyperbaric oxygen therapy

treatments to try to get blood flow down into a cellular level, into my mitochondria to like increase all the blood flow back to my brain. Are you still planning on going back to the Congo? If I, when I go and I'm going to go back to uganda we're actually going to go celebrate maybe with dustin maybe with manny pacquiao um into uganda it's a lot safer there and we've found a malaria medication i can take that doesn't make me reject it but it's not just malaria this other thing that got into your yeah that was me swimming in the creeks and i mean there there's not a lot of places you can shower so i'm going to take smarter trips where i take my own uh shower where i will shower with filtered water or i will you're gonna smell so bad at the end of that trip yeah i'll shower the filter i won't go get in the

creeks right where the snails are where the parasites are do they have enough water from their wells that they can use it to bathe with yeah so so what we're doing in uganda it's gonna be so incredible literally they've never had a home right we're building homes where they're gonna have tapped water there wow they're gonna have tapped water right outside their doorstep not inside because because the inside plumbing you know that if something goes bad we want it to where they can just walk out their front door turn on a spigot and they've got water for their food for boiling uh for their hands for washing crazy how we take things for granted yes it is that is an amazing thing for them.

Yeah, you know, we've dug latrines, and you should have seen the celebration they had whenever they had latrines, which are toilets for the first time, instead of just having to go behind a tree or behind a hut. Like, they're able to actually have a latrine underneath their feet.

Gregson Simmons has a very funny joke about how we take water for granted. I can't, because he still does it. Okay, sure. It's a great bit about shitting in water. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that was one of the things that I felt guilty about when I came back here, which I don't anymore.

Like, like now I'm helping better other people's lives. But when I was taking a shit in a toilet, right. And it's clean water. I know. And they're walking six miles to go try to find clean water. You carry it out on water. I know. And they're walking six miles to go try to find clean water. Carrying it out on their head. Yeah. And it's 44 pounds when 20 liters is full or five gallons, you know, and then I'm giving

my dog clean water. I know. We're so, we're so lucky. Yeah, man. They're so soft because of it. But the beautiful thing is that you can provide this to these people and see this amazing joy that they can have. And it'll make not just you, but people listening listening to us at least for a brief moment recognize how easy we do have and how lucky

we are yeah and i hope that for me i've started to find a lot more purpose in my voice um like like helping for sure with through fight for the forgotten like that's so much of my purpose and um but like i'm gonna start a podcast this year, 2021. And I hope that it's going to help other people, you know, whether it's having doctors and actors and entrepreneur, whatever it is like people,

but people that have a story, a story of hope, like how they overcome something. And what's that? I was going to say your body is not still fully recovered. No, I don't know if I'm going to say, your body is not still fully recovered. No. I don't know if I'm going to fight again at the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022, but I've been talking to Rafael Lovato Jr.

And what I'm doing is just get healed. Heal from the inside out. That was what I was just going to say. I know that you were thinking about doing that again. When we were talking, when we were getting stem cell shots and talking about it, and I was like, Jesus, dude, it seems like there's always a new thing, always a new problem. When you've got this problem solved, a new problem comes up,

and you've got to deal with this problem. That's when I'm wondering. I'm like, you've got all these problems, and they keep happening. There's no breaks from these problems. But then you're always creating another one, like, I'm ready to fight in six months. Like, stop. Stop. Yeah.

Like, that's what I wanted to tell you. Like, goddamn, dude, you got to get. Healthy. Like, fully healthy and fit. But I'm worried about you going back again. Right. Like, and getting more of this. You've got malaria three times.

You got this horrible parasite that they couldn't even detect for a long time. They didn't know what it was, right? Yeah. cdc found that had dengue fever um and then i had a i had black water fever which if you google that it's either one in two or one in four people die that get it um and that's where i had yeah basically 65 70 but that was uh offshoot of malaria black water fever so how do you feel right now does your body feel i'm literally starting to feel good again and that's what that's what i love so when i talked to dr denise i was like i just want to feel normal again she's like why do you just want to feel normal like you did when you were 20 why don't you want to feel optimal the best you've

ever felt and i'm like yes that's what i want that's what i need but it's okay to want to feel normal yeah yeah it's okay to want to feel normal for seven years yes absolutely but but that was just even more mind like i mean that that's even more hopeful for me is like let's get back to normal that's what we're getting back to right now and then let's get to optimal health and like let's see these met like metrics and measurements of like 180 or 280 like blood labs where she can walk me through it every few months yeah what's what's great is that you can actually do that and see the actual progression yeah the actual blood work yeah yeah i'm stoked about that because no it's great last time i was blown away i was like wow i made that much progress you know

my vitamins going on my minerals going on this. I'm pestering you about this. I worry about you. I know. Because you're such a good person, and I know you want to go back there and do good again, but goddamn, dude, if you get more things happening to you, your body's been fucking poisoned for years. Like, every time you go over there, you're getting poisoned.

You're getting poisoned with malaria. You're getting poisoned with these parasites and fevers and all this crazy shit but the last happening to you last time i went in the last couple times i went i didn't get malaria again it was like the the the what was it the third time i had it it was um where it was laying dormant right and then uh my immune system got uh weaker and because it's been weakened a lot like now i'm i'm 33 and i've had shingles five times and that's like an old person's like disease and it was because my immune system young people get shingles okay yeah i've heard guys your age gets yeah well i guess it's more frequent in older

population like uh but it can happen weaker but it's whenever your immune system you've been immune compromised and all that other stuff yeah and so working on building that immune system back up to where i can i can get back into fighting a steep ace team just reached out and was asking if i could come help them train for francis and ganu and um i mean i can go up there and be a training partner but probably not in the hard sparring right now maybe more in the wrestling where that's my bread and butter and a good training partner i'm a great training partner so i could probably go up there and help him train, but I'm not going to be like this.

Because we've had the amnio in our shoulders and in our knees. You've got to let it heal up. I've got to let that heal up before it's this new tissue. I don't need it to get broken down and re-injured while it's building back up. So it might be a yes if it's more easy. It's not going to be easy, man. You're helping a guy train for the heavyweight title see what i'm saying like you're ready to create another problem in your

life well i was doing pretty good until i went to train with stipe and then i got a blown disc and now i gotta get a disectomy like stop so maybe i say no this can yes i know and then and then listen you're ready you're creating another problem yeah and then four weeks uh i get another round of those uh listen take time the next one yeah take the time well that's what's good about being heavyweight right i got time um because because the older guys can do really really well well you're still in your early 30s you're still like you have a bright future yes as a fighter if you choose to continue to pursue that right you know but the the thing that i worry about you is you've got this thing that some people do there's a pattern right it's it's it's

it's going to be hard for me to verbalize this but there's a pattern that some people have where they have things in their life and they really have enough on their plate but then they see another thing and they go well i'm just gonna do that too and then they fuck themselves up and then there's another thing that comes on when they're in the middle of that i'm gonna do this too like you're you're distracting yourself with this constant state and i recognize it partially because i've done it i've been that guy yeah i've been that guy where i'm doing too many different things and i start fucking my life up and then i recognize i'm fucking my life up and it's like i can't stop i'm just doing too many things and then the things that i'm doing because i'm doing too many things

i'm not doing them well i'm not doing any of the things to their optimal ability now i protect my time now my time's very precious to me, and I protect it. And so when I look at a new thing, I'm like, I don't have time for that. And I've said no to cool shit because of that, like movie roles and things that would be interesting and projects that would probably be fun. I'm like, I can't. I don't have any time. And they're like, this is a great opportunity.

I'm sure it is. I'm great with what I'm doing. I don't have any time. And I don't want to burden myself with too much shit. You look at things like, then I'm going to do this. And I'm going to be like, we're talking about the pocket. I'm going to be on the board. I'm on a piece of that. I'm like, stop.

You can't. You don't have time for this. I'm going to help produce other ones. No, you're not going to do that. You don't have time to produce other people's shit. Stop. Because there's a thing that people do. You just get these possibilities thrown at you.

And then also, you're kind of distracting yourself with activity. Where you're always having new challenges and new problems. But you're in the middle of other challenges and problems that aren't sorted out yet. But you keep throwing them in there. And more irons in the fire. And the next thing you know, you're in a place where you're falling apart again or your your life's falling apart or something gets red blind to the point where it starts breaking whether it's your physical body or it's your your immune system your health or whatever the fuck it is or it's your emotional state or your

relationships something always suffers and it comes back to in a lot of times people are afraid of stillness they're afraid of peace they're afraid of quiet they're afraid of being alone in their thoughts it's one of the reasons why i like the isolation tank so much you have to be alone with your thoughts yeah you're stuck i feel the same way about the sauna like getting in the sauna and doing deep breathing exercises i fucking do it every day i hate it every day every day i get 15 minutes in i look at my watch i'm like fuck so much time left like i just concentrate on the breathing but that piece of that time where you're you're forced to think is so fucking important yeah if you don't have that time and you just keep doing things you're just stuck with momentum the momentum of all these things and then who you are you you kind of you you never

really fully address who you are you don't decide who you are you don't come to grips with who you are you don't you don't accept who you are. You don't take an honest inventory of who you are and whether or not you're happy with things, whether or not you've improved things, whether or not there's still things you need to work on. You just can't. You don't have time for that. You're in the middle of all these distractions that you built up for yourself and you keep throwing new ones out there. And now I'm going to start to play polo. Oh, I'm taking up chess. I'm going to fucking play darts. You know, I'm going to learn how to code. People just do stuff like that.

They start tacking things onto their life. And oftentimes they don't even realize when they're doing it that they're just distracting themselves from themselves. I think that that honestly, one of the most powerful moments for me at rehab was whenever it said you have have to take an honest, uh, personal, uh, a rigorous, honest, personal inventory of yourself. That's a good way to describe it. Yeah. And I, I did that there and I've been continuing to do that. And one of the things that's been great that I've taken on as I've got to do this for me, but also I have support now with the people around me is that I have to be able to say no, um, 10 times to get one. Yes. You know, defend every yes with, with 10 notes, um, and, and try to cut

the things out that I'd really am not doing. Like, so, so most of my mornings now, like until nine or 10 o'clock, like I wake up six 37 until nine or 10 o'clock, I'm really not on my phone. And I'm literally trying to either journal or read or meditate. Um, and then I try to set up my, my day, my schedule before I get on my phone and being reactive. I'm really trying to take that time to do that. And that's something that's new for me, but that's been really, really good for me is taking that time until nine or 10. It might even go to 11 or 12. Like there was, I had this meeting that I needed to get to and I'd met with them two or three times earlier in the week. And, uh, this one

wasn't as important. And I was like, what's more important right now? Is it me going out, uh, to this park and me sitting down and reading and meditating because that's what I felt like I needed. Or is it being at this meeting? I was like, Hey guys. So I, I texted him. I'm like, cause I normally would say I'm indebted to these people. And if I told him I'm going to be there, I have to be there. And I'm normally that guy. And I'm, but since I'd already been with him a lot and they didn't necessarily need me there, they just wanted me there. I texted him and said, Hey, I can be there late. We can go to lunch. We can do something like that. But right now I've got something I got to do. And really that was me almost standing up for myself saying like, I need, I need some, some more time today to work on myself. And so I went out and I sat down

by a waterfall and I literally took out my music. I started listening to it and I started journaling some of my goals for the year, like what I really want to focus on. And so that was on like January 2nd or 3rd. Like one of the things i want to do is really you know help myself before i help others yeah i think you need to deny myself that write that into your schedule like you really do you need to write that into your schedule it's like you're almost so so nice of a guy that you don't think about yourself enough you know i mean that's i'd absolutely agree with that it's part of what's your problem is you're too nice i can definitely be that i mean it's just it's not a problem it's just but it's a thing that you have to kind of

guard you know that you you will try to help as many people as possible and when you get requests you will try to help those people and you will try to honor these requests you try to and then the the fucking pile just adds up and then it's overwhelming and then you tack that tack that on top of this severely diminished health that you experience through the parasites i mean you've gone through the ringer, man. Yeah. You know? Well, yeah, that's what, in that reading of all my blood work, and I love how they're doing it, but just seeing the improvement in my actual minerals in my body, the vitamins that I have available, what I'm able to use, my insulin getting better,

cholesterol getting better, which is showing that, like she was saying, it's not insulin from like you're a bad diet and from eating too much sugar and this stuff. It's, it's from this inflammation that you have in your body. And so now that inflammation is going down and you're getting healthier. I'm just like, yes. So I'm focusing on that now. Are you taking CBD as well?

Uh, I am taking some CBD, uh uh tinctures it's a company here called like reset or something in austin cool and they're supposed to be the only like fda approved or something like that and here yeah it's out of austin and they got it the only fda approved or they've been working with the fda to get it approved and they've invested millions of dollars in it and uh um and it seems like it's really good stuff like it's one of the only ones i actually like notice when i take if that makes sense Like some of that stuff can be garbage depending on the source. Right. Right. This stuff seems like it's really good. Yeah. Um, and so I'm taking CBD to help the inflammation. Um, and I'm on a bunch of different vitamins. And so I'm really

looking at, I'm really excited to see what this amnio and corion based like uh stem cell type stuff is going to do in my joints my knees my shoulders have you noticed anything no it's too quick yeah it's four rounds yeah um but i think it's going to help you tremendously obviously i told you i've taken stem cells in the past and it really did heal injuries yeah uh particularly to my shoulder you know i've had some some you know you get banged up there's no if you're doing combat sports there's no ifs ands or buts about it everyone that i know you know you've got some kind of thing going on always it's a neck thing or a knee thing or a shoulder or elbow or right it's just part of the program yeah did i tell you that i had

them in my knee though um when i climbed mount kilimanjaro so i'd broken my uh or fractured my tibia plateau and my knee training and you know chris long howie long son i won the super bowl with uh the patriots and then he won the super bowl with the eagles um so we were raising a bunch of money for water boys and also fight for the forgotten. And so, um, and we're doing it through this climb of Kilimanjaro, which is 19,341 feet tall. And so I, my personal goal was to raise like, uh, $2 per every foot of elevation. And we like busted through that. We raised like $185,000. Then I break my knees six weeks before we're supposed to do it. And I'm like, damn, I'm not going to be able to go. They told me it'd be non-weight bearing for six full weeks. So the NFL network made a documentary. It's called all the

way up. And they followed me. I was non-weight bearing for two full weeks. Then I had the amnio what we got the other day. Um, and then at four weeks I was snowshoeing up uh mount elbert to climb um to just train for uh kilimanjaro so um you were allowed you were okay to do that even though four weeks kills my healing they were they were watching my healing on x-rays okay so i was doing in dallas so they said it was sufficient they said it was sufficient to go test it out and see so i put it in a brace and then i actually climbed it in the documentary cameras like they show me like just snow uh falling on me and like the wind almost blowing me over and they had to turn back and go go back but anyways at six weeks six weeks i was supposed to be non-weight bearing at six weeks i was at the top of kilimanjaro with chris long and stephen jackson from the nfl and

like some of our military veterans um and that to me was like wow regenerative medicine is real oh it's real it's legit yeah it's real as fuck i could see it on the x-rays it's a real bummer that it's not approved and a lot of people to get like the more potent versions of it have to go to panama and you know columbia and a lot of athletes are going down there to to do stuff that really they should be able to do right here yeah and are you saying it's not approved a lot of times because insurance won't approve it too no no it's the fda fda yeah they're trying to stop this the same thing that's they're trying to stop peptides which are also incredibly beneficial to people there's a lot of weirdness going on with those things, man,

with those regulations. People are like, well, they're not regulated well. It's like, listen, they're fucking hugely beneficial. The amount of time and money that it takes to regulate some of these things, and I can understand if there's no science behind it, if you don't really exactly know what's causing what and why it's healing. No, that's not the case. There's plenty of peer-reviewed studies on the benefits of stem cells they do know that these are incredibly beneficial to people oh there's a lot of

resistance to these things being legalized i think that's why jason with medcor biologics who is helping us like he really wants to be a front runner with it and he is in texas but most of his stuff's all has to be through insurance and FD approved and all the other stuff, which he's like, I think the best in Texas at doing it. And then with Brigham, his whole vision is to literally take,

take the middleman out of it. Like the insurance companies and the providers and having to go sit and literally, you know, they only spend about eight minutes per patient whenever you go to your primary care physician. And then they don't have the approval by the insurance company to draw all your blood work in your labs because it's expensive. Well, they're the most overwhelmed people in the world.

Doctors. Oh, yeah. Oh, especially now, too. First of all, they start their jobs. They start their careers massively in debt. Right. Most most doctors start their career literally hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt. And then they begin this journey of medical care and trying to take care

of people and trying to pay. They have malpractice insurance and all this other insurance. And then people are coming in and they're just overwhelmed. It's a crazy gig. And you're trying to fix people and heal them. And some people, they're not taking care of their body and it's frustrating and they don't listen. They want pills and they want a quick fix. They want an easy solution. It's a hard gig, man. Yeah, I think what got me so stoked with Denise and Brigham

is like, let's not treat disease. Let's prevent disease. And with me having gone through all the stuff I've gone through, it's like, yes, let's prevent stuff. Let's get healthy, stay healthy, be the healthiest you've ever been. And then you can stop in their tracks the top 10 chronic diseases in America, like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, like this kind of stuff you can prevent with a healthy diet with optimal nutrition and, and, and good source in your body and like the right healthcare, not, not the healthcare that treats you when you get cancer, but the healthcare that, that treats you before you get cancer and keeps you from getting

cancer. Well, let's also be honest. We're very fortunate that we have access to these sort of treatments. A lot of people don't, you know, it's it's just it's just the in the time to pursue it as well you know for it's just like we're extremely fortunate yeah that yeah we have access to the all these different things that can opt like when denise is, let's optimize your body. Like that's a fantasy for a lot of people. That's a privilege. Like honestly, like that's, for me, that's kind of the difference between the developing world or, you know, third world developing nations and here in the U.S. Like for me with the pygmies and the water crisis, for instance, that's completely preventable, um, completely preventable disease and death. But then, so that's on a whole other spectrum

and level that's hard for a lot of us to, to hear and get, cause it goes in one ear and out the other. If you see it, that can really impact you. But if you feel it or live it or experience it with them like that forever changes you. But then I feel it or live it or experience it with them like that forever changes you. But then I guess on the lesser skill scale here in the United States, it's like, man, like, um, if you really look at it, I mean, like we're so fortunate and we're so grateful, but still at the same time I look at it and I'm like, I compare it to the water crisis. We can prevent that. We can prevent people from getting sick like that. And now me on my own journey, my own healing journey, it's like there is this kind of wellness revolution that's starting here that we do have access to saying like, well, these, these things that are killing us, we can stop them in their tracks or we can, we can push it back. We can delay it. And, um, I'm really excited. Like I've gotten really close.

I'm really excited. I've gotten really close. I would say I've gotten close and I'm friends with David Sinclair now. He actually helped get me into rehab. Whenever I relapsed and I came back and I'd been to Mexico, that dude's a saint because he helped me from Harvard. Send me the third of the three different types of tests they needed. They did the one that barely went in the swab. I think it's one of the ones we did here.

The other one that goes super deep in your nose. And then they wanted the blood test one because they wanted just, I'd been traveling internationally. So before I go to rehab, I needed all three of them. So David overnighted it to the center and I was able to get that taken care of. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. I love David. That's such a great sense of humor for a brilliant man.

Yeah, it's fun. You know what else though? He, I love David. So that's such a great sense of humor for a brilliant man. It's fun. You know what else though? He, I got to connect him with Laird and Gabby. And so we went up to Malibu. I had dinner with David Sinclair and, uh, in LA.

I was like, what are you doing tomorrow? Me and Raphael and Shonji, we're going up to, uh, to Laird and Gabby's and we're going to do the sauna. We're going to do the ice and we're going to do the pool workout. And he came up there and he's, he's in there with me with, with Laird Hamilton.

What is he, a 40-year pro surfer now? He's 55 and I think he's been doing it since like 15 or 16. And then he's with Rafael Lovato Jr., you know, 12-time world medalist, six-time world champion, Shanji, who's got at least 10 world champions. Yeah, they sent me the picture of all you guys in the sauna. Oh, yeah. Man, we were all in the sauna and we were doing those underwater workouts, which, man, Laird was kicking our ass.

He's a beast. Oh, he's next level. Did you see his ankle? No, I didn't see his ankle. His ankle was broken forever, and he just kept working out on it. What do you got there? Is that you guys? Oh, there's David Sinclair.

His ankle was broken, and he just kept working out on it while it was broken forever. So it fused into this gnarly stump of an ankle, like a tree stump. It's ridiculous. He has one ankle that's like 30% larger than the other ankle. I'll check that out. Yeah, it's just fucked up. I just kept walking on it. I've been there a couple of times and I've done the workout.

I didn't notice his ankle, but David. He'll talk to you about it I will I'll ask him all about it. It was broken. He just didn't do anything about it Yeah, it just healed like a fucking animal like something Like some some wild giraffe with a fucked up leg. Yeah David was literally doing all the work his ankle. Oh my god. Wow. Isn't that crazy insane? all the work is his ankle oh my god look wow isn't that crazy that's insane he is such a beast so he was he was doing these squat jumps he was doing these gorilla ones that we were all doing and i was able to keep up with him on that i forget the name of the other one he does but he's like an

underwater like i don't know superhero mermaid where he's like literally doing us he goes into a squat he does a a curl and then he does the squat jump and he comes out and he arches backwards. So that way he does this beautiful like backflip in the water. And literally he said, I'll show you guys how to do it. He did a hundred reps. He's doing it from like 10 or 11 feet deep in the pool and he's jumping out of it. He literally did a hundred reps because it's all about technique. It's all about flow.

Raphael and I and Shonji, we got like six, eight, 10. literally did a hundred reps because it's all about technique it's all about flow rafael and i and shanji we got like six eight ten i mean it's all about the flow and the breath because you go down that deep and and for me like you know i mean i don't know like you start to kind of freak out whenever you can't breathe um and so not in jujitsu for me but underwater with weights and then all of a sudden i go up all of a sudden it's like, Ooh, I don't know if I can keep going on this many reps. I'm not kidding. When I say he did a hundred, I know that sounds like a lot, but he did a hundred. Then, then, then David Sinclair's getting in there and he's trying to be a champ too. And he was, he was doing everything we're doing a little lighter and stuff, but he was just so for it. He was just so game.

Like, uh, I know he's a Harvard professor and, and, and all that other stuff and researcher and biologist and all this incredible stuff. But, you know, now I get to talk with him and Rob, who's a friend of mine and, and I think he's the PR guy for, for David. But anyways, like I'm starting to look into that NAD, the resveratrol, which I don't know about all that stuff, but he was talking to Laird and Gabby about it. And they're just such cool people. I got to thank you, man, for opening up this world of such an incredible community

or people, group that have come to support me. Laird and Gabby have donated through Laird Superfoods, and Reese might actually come with Gabby potentially. Well, we're both very fortunate. We're both very fortunate. We're both very fortunate. We're connected to a lot of cool people and I'm very fortunate. I'm connected to you, you know,

to know people like you and the, the selfless selflessness that you've exhibited. It's, it's very humbling. Well, thank you. You know, you're an unusual dude.

Very unusual. I'm definitely unusual. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I don't know anybody that's like who got malaria three times like fucking i'm going back well i think it i think for me i don't think i've ever told it to you this way when i was there my mom asked me to come back some of the people that were supporting us asked me to come back the first time i got it come back

home i come back home when i was in congo i, I decided I was going to live there for a year. I went in October and by Thanksgiving day, I find out that I'm dying of malaria. And, um, and a pilot took me out of there into Uganda and he pulled literally, I never touched the runway in Uganda. It's just a pilot in me on a little bitty prop plane. And they pull me out into a vehicle and take me to the hospital in Uganda. They're saying, Justin, you come back to heal. One, I thought the doctors here don't know how to treat malaria. The doctors here do, or the doctors in the United States don't know how to treat malaria, but the doctors in Uganda do. They see it on a daily basis. So logically it makes sense for me to stay here. But the other thing was this was an opportunity and now I'm reframing that,

that thought and everything else. But it was like, I try to find the good and the bad, right? And yes, I'm suffering from malaria. Yes, this sucks,

but this is what the people that I love and who I'm here to help. This is what they go through on a daily basis. So, or they get this in their lifetime and they've lost people from it. So now i get an opportunity to understand on a deeper level that i'll never forget like they they go through this all the time and it is a deadly killer all throughout the world it's one of the main missions of i think the gates foundation and other people trying to end malaria like we've done

mostly with polio and stuff like that and it it's like, we got to come up with something. I think they have new mosquitoes that are starting to target the mosquitoes that have malaria. That scares the shit out of me. Yeah. How is that going to go wrong? Hopefully they don't. Yeah. What else you got in your book, man?

Because I got to get out of here in 20 minutes. Let's do this. Got anything crazy? Got anything crazy? You write it all down and we get through all that well i did have one last gift for you but i uh it's fucking gifts dude well you're gonna get that and then you'll be able to give that to the buffalo trace i'm gonna have to give out 120 fucking bottles of booze to people. For a guy who's sober, you seem to like people getting fucked up.

I like people enjoying themselves. And for me, to be able to give that is even a gift to me, right? Like, it shows me that, like, I can have that in my... I'm not the addict that, if it's in my possession or in my radius, like, I have to grab it and use it um it's just good because here it is baby yeah i know it's just the thing that that that if if i do have it then i

wouldn't be able to stop so i just better make sure i don't have it okay but this right here is a friend uh he actually helped design the tattoo on my uh calf but he um was the simpsons artist his name is alex ruiz he's also great friends with uh aubrey and uh he's doing another piece that's art and i have the digital file you can share but he took two weeks on that and he just wanted to tell you thank you for the impact you've had in his life and the impact you make this with man he does it on computer they did this with a computer yeah it's wild alex ruiz and so he takes it on there and he does all the craziness um but you will look at that 10 different times you'll get something new out of every time you look at it tell him i said thanks i will sweet so man i appreciate you letting me be real raw vulnerable

share some of my messiest it's uncomfortable for me yeah it's uncomfortable for me it is because i want i want nothing but good things for you so you're telling me all those things and i'm like trying to find solutions and i know they don't make sense i know that they're not there it's not like it's that simple but i'm like don't do that stop doing this hey well now it's now it's on me where I, so to end with my board, I was like, my board of directors for Fight for the Forgotten, I just looked at them when we were here in Austin and a lot of them were in Zoom. But I just said, you know, for me to not have lost everything with Fight for the Forgotten,

my position, to not have lost any of the board members. Like we actually gained a board member and to not have lost these donors, but to like have, have had an increase in donations. The most nonprofits in 2020 went down, but I think, I think the mission's so pure. We want to defeat hate with love. We really want to help people in a practical, tangible, sustainable way that they can take on and then champion, um, you know, having your support has meant the world to us. Um, and we've been in existence 10 years now. And what I've seen now is I really believe it's the tip of the iceberg. If I start working smarter, not harder and putting myself in these crazy positions and I protect myself and my health and, and I do the right

things there. And, um, it's's it's going to lead to even better things than we've done before instead of 73 wells i'll be telling people how we've drilled 700 wells sometime i don't doubt it i do not doubt it at all i know you can do it and know what you've done is amazing you know and uh so shout out to all the companies that have helped too shout out to the cash app yes they've done amazing stuff and buffalo tray is trying to get me fucked up beyond belief well hey on that i'm gonna go with whoever wins this raffle uh and you're gonna drink uh i'm gonna watch them drink and i'll have some water no but uh would i open invite for you i don't know it just sprung on me where in the next six months

or a year if you want to go see how they make it maybe we go with them but uh i would love maybe not maybe not but i would uh i'll go down one day but uh you know i uh it's like that's uh it's a giant commitment yeah i get that so i'm stoked to go uh with whoever wins the raffle i do want to see what it's like the process yeah and also the fact just i'm fascinated by the fact they've been around since 1773 yeah i mean that's just bananas there's a continually operating distillery for hundreds of years you know absolutely that's crazy to think you know they operated during the prohibition no yeah they made whiskey for medicinal purposes wow yeah like yeah well medicinal purposes because when addicts or alcoholics when they're going through withdrawal they have to have it

right alcohol and xanax are the only two um things that if you stop or barbiturates if you stop in cold turkey they lead to seizures and could lead to death right so a lot of times um like rehabs and facilities they needed they needed alcohol so they could give the people that are coming off of it yeah so well uh listen brother you're a fucking saint you really are you're you're an amazing person i hate hearing you be down on yourself and it frustrates me because i don't know what to do you know and i'm trying to think logically about it and like what what's how is this happening what's i mean you know so i'm glad you let me think logically about it and like what what's how's this happening what's i mean you know so i'm glad you let me think logically about it even though it might not make sense no it does and uh i'm really grateful that i've had a a big breakthrough i mean literally the first six months of 2020 were

the worst six months of my life but the last six month months like doing the hard work doing deep work like trying to uproot this garbage, you know, instead of having these deep roots that produce like bad fruits in my own life, how about deep roots that produce like good roots. And then even like a shade tree for, you know, the pygmies or these kids are getting bullied or whatever. Yeah. And, uh, in a sustainable way to where it's through self love, it's through self care,

self care is not selfish. You just got to stay on the path. Yeah. You know what to do. You just got to stay on the path yeah you know what to do you just got to stay on the path and don't ever let yourself get off of it you know it seems so easy to let things slip a little bit relax a little here relax a little there but there's certain paths that you really should never get off and the path of of the first of all of being connected to

the moment that that's so important and one of the things about people throwing a bunch of things in their lives and problems in their lives is it keeps you from being connected to the moment when you have all these distractions and problems and issues that keep coming up that's why i get weirded out by people that always have problems and that's why i was saying like do you think that these problems you're creating some of these problems whether you realize it or not you know right you see it with fighters yeah you know and you really see it with fighters when they start to lose sometimes they they get in this they don't stop fucking spiral this head spiral and they're never the same again you know yeah sometimes fighters will lose one like

anderson silva right he's the baddest motherfucker on earth he loses one fight to chris weidman clowning around right he gets ko'd in a way where everybody's mocking him and making fun of him and literally doesn't win any fights after that one one decision to Derek Brunson for years and years and years it's crazy do you think it just happens like that do you think that that could possibly be what happens to Connor or no I was with his brother and the the celebration we had Dustin's brother yeah Dustin's brother sorry Dustin's brother Jimmy and I was in Lafayette with the whole family and went out on the swamps uh during the day and went wild uh oyster mushroom hunting and grilled those up and ate them dustin is a different person yeah he's a different person than he was when they first fought i in um connor's a different person

too but i don't think i don't think he's the same animal that he was back then you know and also their strategies are different like someone could say like oh it's tough to be a savage and you're waking up in silk sheets yeah he fought well in the beginning he did in the first he fought well he landed good shots and and dustin admitted there was one times where he was caught and he was in a little bit of trouble right but the strategy of those low kicks connor has that wide stance and he puts a lot of weight on that front leg and he did not seem to have an answer for those low kicks and that is just a fucking new element of the game that seems unstoppable because you can only take a couple you know khabib was saying that when he fought justin gaethje that

those low kicks were as hard as he'd ever been hit before and he you know even he probably recognized he couldn't take too many of those i told jimmy um dustin's brother after the first round ago he just gave it away to dustin and to mike brown they're going to stay on that calf kick they already knew it was working but he didn't sit down in between rounds he didn't want it to fill back up and then i noticed he didn't sit down either he didn't sit and i'm like there there's that's it's damaged yeah it's damaged he just gave it away keep going after that leg well i mean it was obvious anyway i mean he kept trying to grab the leg after he got kicked he wasn't checking it and when he was checking he wasn't turning it out so he was still taking it

on the meat of the leg so even if you lift your leg up if you're checking those low calf kicks they're still hitting the meat yep it's a fucking terrible way to to go yeah i'm just your nerves just shut down oof yeah i've had a couple of those before and they're they're brutal and i'm i'm curious because i've been talking with some of the manny's team who's donating to us and some of his closest guys is the director and they're like man they were really looking forward to maybe the Manny fight and the Conor McGregor fight happening that's it and now they said now they said that his stocks come down a lot in boxing after being knocked out by Dustin but then John Cavanaugh saying well if they don't get the rematch with Dustin Poirier then he's just going to go over and fight in boxing now no but uh and

I was thinking coming off of that loss, I don't think that John Cavanaugh is being smart there. No. He's going straight into boxing. He's not going to get the fight. Right. It's not going to be valuable. Right.

It's not like it was before. With Conor, if Conor wanted to take that fight before he fought Dustin Poirier, it'd be worth a lot of money. After he knocked out Cowboy, it's a valuable fight. Yeah. But coming off a bad loss like that, and a loss where

he got ko'd you know it's not that fight's not happening though it's also like he needs uh a redemption and here's the thing about the first time he's been knocked out knocked out right yes actually knocked out yes yes in the ufc right But he needs a redemption. Like, and the actual redemption versus Dustin, you can't make a real good argument for it. Like, you can't make a real good argument for a third fight. Because first of all, there's great fights for Dustin, right? There's a rematch with Justin Gaethje, which was a much closer fight. Yeah.

And that was when Justin Gaethje was fighting in a different way. Justin Gaethje was fighting much more reckless, right? There's the fight. I mean, there's the Chandler fight, which they're trying to push for right away, which it's tough to make that argument when, you know, you've got Charles Oliveira, who I think is maybe the most talented guy in the division. Charles Oliveira might beat them all. I mean, he's – but him him olivera versus if you wanted

to be a purist charles olivera versus dustin is the fight to make because you got olivera who just destroyed tony ferguson and then you got dustin who just destroyed conor mcgregor that's the fight let's have that fight for the interim belt or for the new belt because if if khabib really does decide that's a wrap you know maybe he is deciding that's a wrap. Dana said that he needed to see something spectacular, but Khabib said, no, that's not what I said. I'm done. So I think Khabib's probably done.

Yeah. It would be really hard for me to watch Dustin and Gaethje again just because both of them are big supporters of Fight for the Friaten. I was so nervous the first time. I know. I know. How do you do it whenever you're friends with everybody? It's hard, man.

Yeah. It used to be really hard. When Khabib doesn't want to return, I won't push it anymore, he says. I'm obviously going to talk to Khabib, see if he wants to defend that title. And if he doesn't, I won't push it anymore. Yeah. Well, he'll probably give him one more opportunity. But I have a feeling Khabib is an unusual man unusual man very unusual it's why he's the great uh the greatest

lightweight of all time for sure and maybe the greatest fighter of all time i mean john jones has a better resume in terms of the accomplishments but khabib has a better resume in terms of the amount of rounds of dominance. Like, no one's there. And also, Khabib, with no disrespect, went through a harder division. They're tougher people. Like, not tougher humans, but it's a tougher – there's more talent in the 155-pound division than there is in the light heavyweight division.

Right. And this is not a disrespectful thing. I mean, Jon Jones stands out in any fucking division. He would be an amazing flyweight, right? He's just that good. But I believe that the guys that he's beaten, if you look at the guys he's beaten and look at the overall talent depth

of the lightweight division, I think you can make an argument that the lightweights are more talented or at least more technical or overall it's a, it's a deeper division. Right. So Jamie bringing up Dana just brought up something for me that like, I'm really grateful for Dana in many ways, but one is that he said that he's going to help fund CTE research. I actually just got back from a funeral in the autopsy says he died of complications due

to CTE. And he was one of my first sponsors and I was his training partner. He's my training partner, but I was his coach. He played football at Iowa state, but he got concussions in middle school. Uh, probably at least they think he got concussions in middle school. He got concussions playing football in high school. Then he had concussions playing football. People get football in 85% of them. By the time they're in high school, they already have some CTE. Yeah. And then he started fighting.

And then I was a coach for him. I was in his corner and everything else. And he sponsored me with his supplement company. He had a supplement company at the time. Remember whenever Inno Explode was huge? Anyways, he started one called CardioForce, and that was my first supplement sponsor. There is a new study that they're doing now with the ufc with mushrooms with psychedelic mushrooms and uh this is uh some based on some research from john hopkins university and now the ufc is involved in this

cte therapy with uh with psychedelic mushrooms and there's something about psychedelic mushrooms. And there's something about psychedelic mushrooms. Psilocybin regrows neurons, and they think it can regrow neural tissue. And they think it might be able to actually help heal brain damage, which was thought to be a very difficult prospect, trying to heal the mind once it's been damaged by stress and impacts and concussions. Well, that could have been something that maybe helped Brian. I'm really proud of his family and him. He donated his brain to a research center in Boston, the number one CTE research center in the world.

What was really hard was the last three or four months, he really just tanked physically. I got to share the eulogy or one of the people that spoke at the the funeral and i stayed with the boys he's got four boys and his wife gina and um anyways uh yeah he he he ended up uh hanging himself and um he was he was forgetting everything he had watched his mother-in-law go through alzheimer's and her forget people and they had to take care of her for two years or more and for three months like he and it was even longer than that he knew he had it back in 2016 whenever he actually wrote his suicide note was back in 2016 and then he waited and on christmas eve he asked um you know he asked

Kevin Burns you remember Kevin Burns who fought Anthony Johnson yes Kevin Burns is a good friend of mine good friend of Brian Sykes and he had asked him on Christmas Eve or the day before Christmas Eve about what if we started a charity in Iowa for people with CTE former football players and people in the

MMA division and then something happened on December 26th. They had a great Christmas, everything else. But he was forgetting things for like three or four months. Like he wasn't himself at all. He had lost like 30 pounds, I think, in three or four months. He's a big, strong guy. They don't see it coming.

Guys that I know that have committed suicide from CTE, one of them in particular, just no one saw it coming. He was, he, he hugged his kids. He was joking with him the very same night he went outside and he was working in the garage. Yeah. So, um, I think there's going to be a lot of breakthrough, I hope on CTE and Brian for the thing that I even brought that up is even in his death, that was one of the things I said, um, on the, at the funeral, even in his death, he's still helping people. He was one of the most loving people I'd ever met. He would, he would stop on the way to ski Hills in Colorado from Iowa.

We were going skiing. He would stop and like stop by and McDonald's and get the homeless guy like a meal. Cause he wouldn't give him money, but he'd stop. And you know, the kids or people would be saying like, we got to get to the ski lift and everything else. And he would stop by and he would give this guy food and the guy'd be like oh my gosh that's what i needed i was so hungry he was compassionate on the mats he was a great teacher he was a peewee football coach and then this is the thing that took him out and um you know even

in his death his brain being studied is gonna someday somehow did you read that article on spencer fisher it's a that article on Spencer Fisher? So terrible article on Spencer, the King Fisher, you know, I know him though. What amazing fighter from the early days of, uh, the UFC success.

Yeah. And he had to retire due to lesions in the brain. And, uh, there's an article about, um, how poorly he's doing right now. It was,

it was rough. Uh, you know, I sent it out to a bunch of my friends and it's just one of those ones where you go, yeah, how poorly he's doing right now. Oh, no. It was rough. You know, I sent it out to a bunch of my friends, and it's just one of those ones where you go, yeah, the style that he fought was so exciting. He was such a wild dude, would fight anybody, had these wars. But it's just you pay a fucking price for this sport. You really do. And I think if people understood it more they'd appreciate

they'd appreciate the accomplishments and the battles they'd appreciate the fighters more and what they're really putting out on the line you know you could look at this conor mcgregor loss and you go well you know the guy's rich and like that guy got damaged that night he got damaged it's not just his calf. He got KO'd. He got KO'd. That's a price. And it's a big price. He got battered and he got dropped and knocked unconscious.

And he'll have to pay for that. Hopefully they'll figure out some therapies where they can mitigate those problems that are going to occur from those kind of knockouts or maybe even reverse the damage which would be amazing hyperbarics yeah hyperbarics yeah but they believe that psilocybin therapy is very promising for this and that's incredible yeah i'm gonna have whoever's involved in that study come on here and explain it one of the things i really admire about you is one i know john halkman pretty well and then to watch chuck i don't know chuck that well, but I know John real well. And to watch how Chuck left his career, you know, on all those brutal knockouts. And then why I said I admire you is because of, you know, we both love Brendan.

I was training partners with him, was on The Ultimate Fighter with him. And just how you had that loving talk with him because you really care. You really care about him. That was so impromptu. And I probably shouldn't have done it on the air like that. you had that loving talk with him because you really care you really care about him and that was so impromptu and i probably shouldn't have done it on the air like that but um but i think look at him now right yeah he's doing great he's doing incredible and he's he's we actually had a conversation today about a friend of ours who's really fucked up who's a fighter who's uh got some serious cte and i was i said thank god you fucking retired right because i i just saw it coming

it was not he and also he wasn't into it anymore he could say he was into it but i knew he wasn't into it he had a lot of other things on his plate and he was doing well with those other things yeah well look at that he's doing great now it's beautiful that uh that you know it's because he's too smart of a guy too loving of a guy too great of a guy to to have to deal with that for the rest of his life it's just so hard for people to to abandon their identity it's so hard it's so it's so hard for them to to hear like hey man you pay for this if you get knocked out three or four more times, like you're going to be fucked for the rest of your life. Like,

and that's really what happens. And when, when the, the, the wheels start falling off and they keep getting KO'd, it's horrible at the end. It's horrible. Well, I invite a loving conversation like that with me sometime if,

if me going back. But the thing that I'm excited about is I'm in such a healthier place now that I can take or leave fighting. I want to fight to use it as a platform and also because that's what I love to do. But I also fight smart. I get underhooks. I'm a wrestler. I don't take a lot of damage standing. I haven't had a concussion yet that I know of.

That's amazing. And so I take people down. And if I do stay standing, I try not to take a lot of damage. Well, listen, brother, let's talk about the future. But for now, get healthy. I love you, man. Thank thank you so much you're an awesome person you really are well you're one of the best men i know so thank you for that thank you and tell everybody fight for the forgotten.org that's the website fight for the god.org if people want to donate they can donate one time they can become part of our fight club which is our monthly giving club but really right now if you want to if you want to scroll down a little bit,

it's at Buffalo Trace right on our homepage, fightforthwithfregot.org, and you can win the whiskey experience of a lifetime. You can get hammered forever. Yes, and pick out your own whiskey, and it's going to be absolutely awesome. I'll be there with you. Justin Wren, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, everybody. Goodbye.

Thanks, Joe. Thank you, everybody. Goodbye. Thanks, Joe. Thank you.