The Joe Rogan Experience - #772 - Mark & Chris Bell

Episode Date: March 8, 2016

Mark Bell is an elite powerlifter and owner of Team Super Training Gym in Sacramento, CA. Chris Bell is a writer, director, and filmmaker known for the documentary "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" and his new documentary called "Prescription Thugs" was recently released.

I'm in a rush today. Yes! We're live. Gentlemen, welcome back. What's up? Welcome back, Joe. So, uh, I watched your documentary last night. Holy shit. You holy shitted me twice already. Really? You holy shitted me with Bigger, Stronger, Faster, and now you holy shitted

me with Prescription Thugs. It's kinda crazy, right? We have a $300 billion prescription drug habit in this country, yet we rank number 50 in life expectancy. Makes no sense. Well, it all came down to Ronald Reagan. That's what's really crazy.

When they allowed people to, allowed pharmaceutical companies to advertise on television. I can remember when those things first started showing up. Well, you know, medicine turned into a business. And when it turned into a business, that wasn't a very good thing for the consumer.

No, at all. No at all No, how much further do you think life expects expectancy has changed? over the last hundred years Well over the last hundred years, I think it's changed dramatically, but I think last like what 50 years probably not so much I mean from what I've seen it's about 20 years not that much How much would you think it would be i don't know i just think it'd be more i don't know you hear about modern medicine just being so you know such a big thing and it being able to help you and but we also have a tainted food supply which

we're talking about a little bit yeah that that's really hard to get healthy to be healthy totally healthy well it requires effort for sure it definitely requires you to pay attention it definitely requires you to watch what you eat and And most people don't want to do that. But what's stunning to me, I mean, there was a lot of stunning things in that documentary. But the sheer numbers of prescription pain pills that are prescribed in this country every year, that's staggering. They said, what was the actual quote? That there was enough pain pills to get every single adult human in this country high. For a month.

For a month. Around the clock for a month. Turn everybody to zombies. How fucking insane is that? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what we're doing. I mean, a lot of people are just walking around checked out. And, you know, one thing that I didn't know when I was addicted to painkillers was that actually two ibuprofen and two Tylenol have been clinically proven to be like twice as effective as opiate painkillers was that actually two ibuprofen and two Tylenol have been clinically proven

to be like twice as effective as opiate painkillers. But if a doctor told me as a patient to take ibuprofen and Tylenol together, I'd be like, you're out of your mind. Give me the good stuff. Yeah, you wouldn't feel he's doing enough for you, right? I think that's a mentality that we have. And it's a mentality that I totally admit to is if I go to a doctor, I want i want to get a prescription but now i've changed that mentality but that's the mentality i did have even if you go to a doctor and they give you a prescription ibuprofen they give you 800 milligrams

yeah that's a lot so two is four right it's 400 milligrams for two ibuprofen and then two tylenol which i don't know what the milligrams of tylenol is i don't usually take that but i have arthritis really bad. My knees, I had my hips replaced at 33 years old. My ankles hurt every day, everything. And the Advil and the Tylenol combination has been knocking it out of the park for me. And I actually learned that from doing press for this movie. I learned that from Dr. Drew, of all people.

Really? Yeah. That's incredible. And how long have you been doing that? Like two Advil and two ibuprofen? Maybe two months, about. And it makes a big been doing that? Like two Advil and two ibuprofen? Maybe two months. And it makes a big difference?

It just helps me get through the day. Helps me be pain-free. The other thing that a lot of people talk about that I think just definitely needs to be talked about is medical marijuana. Because I'm an addict and I've been through rehab and everything, I don't personally use it. But I think for people that don't have a problem with consuming everything, I think it could be great. So you have a problem in the sense that even marijuana, something that's not physically addictive, once you start smoking it, you'll want other things. I've only been sober about 22 months, so I just feel like I'm not ready to really take that dive because I might smoke some weed and end up taking some pills and drinking and jumping in the pool naked and going to jail, you know? I know. Well, if you just get naked for jumping in the pool naked, I mean, if you get arrested

for that. Yeah, but that wouldn't be the end of it. I mean, it would keep going. He and I were talking the other day a little bit about like, you know, everybody wanting to justify their drug of choice. Right. You know, obviously I've been on performance enhancing drugs for a long time. And so everybody wants to justify, oh, it's not addicting or it's not this or not that. It is addicting. Any behavior that you practice over

and over again is going to become addicting. You're going to like the side effects to it. You're going to like some of the feel to it. So everybody, I think a lot of times kind of kidding themselves when they're saying, oh, pot doesn't do anything. Or, you know, it's like, it's like, well, it does something. It doesn't make you function the best probably, you know? Well, it certainly can be psychologically addictive right certainly I mean it helps your functioning in some ways And that's one of the things that are people have gotten mad at me for our makes you a fucking badass at video games That's for sure. Yeah, you at pool for sure I think music like

God put everything if you believe in God or whatever But we we have a system like everything is put on this earth for a reason and if you know they always say let medicine uh hypocrisy said like let medicine be thy cure and the cure be medicine you know food be medicine or whatever so like food as medicine is something that traces like way back you know so things that are found on the earth that we can use rather than synthetically make i think it just makes logical sense. It definitely is probably a smarter way to do it. I don't think his name is Hippocrates, right? Hippocrates? I don't know. Socrates?

Hippocrates, right? Hippocrates? You're on to something. You're close. Hippopotamus? I don't know. One of them old dead Greek motherfuckers. But the sheer numbers of Oxycontins and pain pills that are being prescribed in this country,

I was watching this television show where they were talking about Massachusetts and the problem. Oh, it was the Anthony Bourdain show. That's what it was. And they were talking about all these people that got hooked on pain pills because they got injured from some job related or something or another. Doctor gives you uh oxy prescription your oxy prescription runs out or they change the regulations and then everybody turns to heroin and that's a big problem in this country where they've changed the regulations and there was another thing that you you talked about on your on your documentary where they

changed the way oxycontins work where you can't crush them up and smoke them anymore, and they lost 80% of their revenue from that. Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that just shows you that people are using them recreationally. How insane is that? Yeah, so that was one of the most staggering facts of the whole movie, I thought.

But we just came back from the Arnold Classic, and there were some guys deadlifting. We went to this pro-deadlift event. And these guys are pulling 700, 800 pounds. One guy was kind of in almost a 900-pound range. But he ran into somebody backstage that said he just saw the film. And he lost his son to, what, heroin, right? It started as Oxycontin.

It went to heroin. There you go. And he told me, he said, you know, I wasn't going to lift anymore. I just gave up on everything. I saw your movie like a couple months ago. And I said, you know, I wasn't going to lift anymore. I just gave up on everything. I saw your movie like a couple months ago. I said, you know what? I'm going to go deadlift at this Pro-Am thing. And he said, your movie made it possible for me to get over what happened to my son to realize like it wasn't so much his fault, right, as he thought.

And so I think just stuff like that, like he told me that. I was completely fine talking to the guy. I walked away. I just started bawling because I know that you can even affect one person and that's the power of film and documentaries that's that's what we're trying to do well that guy's on the right track because he said now i feel it's my duty to help other people and i think that's the way people need to try to look at stuff is to try to you know we're here as human beings to learn from experiences and then i i think we're all put here to help each other.

Well, yeah, you could definitely help. I mean, if you've lost someone like that, to reach out and find other people who have also lost people, and you can help each other. And you can also maybe help someone who is maybe thinking or would go down that path and watches your documentary and says, well, there's a real danger here. Yeah, the place that I went to, Cliffside, Malibu, I have three people right now that are in rehab there that have contacted me from watching the film. And it's really hard to get into a lot of rehabs because of insurance companies. And that's another huge problem in this country is the insurance companies,

they want to pay for, they expect somebody to be smoking, drinking, doing whatever for 30 years and unwind that in 15 days. And that's just not going to happen. People need 90 days of treatment. If you're going to go to a drug rehab, you need 90 days. So you need 90 days where you're not working, 90 days where you're just staying in this place? Why is it 90 days? Well, think about this.

You're working, right, and you're a drug addict. What productive work are you doing? Like let the guy go for 90 days. He's going to come back a new person. I think that that we have to we have to unplug there's there's no other way i mean i think that it just leads to uh an early death you know if we don't that's so hard for people though so many people that have work that need to get money now you can get you can you can get out a little bit right like like you did right yeah yeah exactly i actually made this movie while i was still in rehab.

So there's definitely time, you know, to do things. I think that, you know, you got to look at it this way. Like, okay, I can't. That's like almost like killing people from inside jail. Yeah. That's pretty talented. I can't take 90 days to like just completely like fix my life, you know? Right.

I think, I don't know. I think time is more important, you know, to get, to give the time and figure it out. You did need like a full 60 though, where you're pretty much total isolation, right? The first 30 days. First 30 days. Pretty much totally, you know, kind of unplugged from everybody. You just stayed up there and what do you, what do you do with your time? You go to meetings?

You're in a lot of meetings, you know, it's all like peer groups, you know, you're basically like with other people that are addicted to drugs. And I would say like probably 80% of the people that were in rehab are prescription drug addicts do you know what one of the most effective methods of uh stopping people from doing drugs is ibogaine it's a psychedelic ritual drug yeah they do uh you can you can't do it in america it's illegal but But they have clinics in Mexico. My buddy, Ed Clay, he got hooked on pills, and he had a real problem with the same thing, pain pills, and was really despondent and fucked up. Went down there, did an Ibogaine ceremony, and came back 100% clean. And now he runs a clinic down there.

Any idea what that does for you? Like, does it do something to your brain? We could Google it, but there's some sort of an effect that it does where literally it shuts down addiction. And it's deeply, troublingly introspective, too. Like, it explores the darkest areas of your psyche. Wow. That sounds fucking crazy. Like, I don't know anything about it.

I'm hearing it for the first time. But just from what I know. This is the first time you've heard of Ibogaine? Yeah, I haven't really ventured into that, into figuring that out. Wow. I've never heard of it.

That's crazy. That's the great thing about doing these documentaries. You go and you meet other interesting people like yourself and you pick up more knowledge. Now that's something else.

Okay, what is this? And go look into that. But what you're saying makes a lot of sense because it all it's all in the brain you create these pathways in your brain that just basically you habituate and you do the same thing that you like and it's the same thing with lifting weights or doing jujitsu or do you tend to that feels really good i like it yeah i'm gonna go to jujitsu again i'm gonna go to the gym again you know so it definitely makes sense that it's a something that will trigger something in the brain to fix it you know it also apparently i haven't done ibogaine but the people that i know that have had problems with pills and gone down there and done

it and also people that have also had other problematic behavior that they wanted to correct um it it allows you to look at yourself literally for the first time in a deeply introspective, almost abrasively way. Not almost, but very abrasively. In that it looks at every aspect of your personality. And that's a huge part of rehab. You have to be honest with yourself. If you're not honest with yourself, you'll never get better. No, I'm sure.

I'm sure. People that are bullshitting and lying. And that's one of the reasons why it's so important to hit rock bottom, right? Yeah, I used to say, I can stop any day my girlfriend said well stop and i said okay and i stopped for seven days and after seven days i took pills and drank more than i ever did in my entire life because it was like building up yeah it was like yeah exactly i ended up in the hospital and my girlfriend called my brother and he was the one he's like hey just get him here like he was in sacramento he said just get him here i actually just moved that was it was He said, just get him here. I actually just moved. That was crazy.

Like, just to get, I got a random phone call in the middle of the night. I don't normally answer my phone all that much. And just, you know, I just randomly picked it up for some reason. It was from Philadelphia or Pennsylvania, right? That's where she's from originally. And she was just in a total panic. I couldn't understand, you know, what she was even talking about. I didn't even know who it was.

She's like, this is Lauren, and I'm like, I don't know any chicks. I'm married. So I'm like, I don't know who it is, and then it took me a while. Then I finally heard her say Chris's girlfriend, and I was like, oh, shit. What the fuck? Is this like the second call? Am I losing another brother? What the fuck's going on here?

And then she started to calm down, and she said. know you're you lost both of you guys lost your older brother to drug abuse right yeah mad dog a lot of people say uh after they see bigger stronger faster which was the first film that featured my family in it uh everybody asks about mad dog because everybody in that after watching that film worried about him and a lot of times they don't even know that he passed away yeah that is blindside some days you're fine handling it because i feel like it's our obligation to kind of talk about it to help other people but sometimes you're just not ready for it it blindsides you and it just fucking hurts yeah it's like a motherfucker like this week at the arnold classic there were so many things that reminded me of my brother

because we he grew up in the wrestling, bodybuilding. He loved that shit. He'd be eating that shit up. And then his best friend, Jeff Leibel, showed up at Mark's booth. Mark had a booth there selling all his products. And he shows up, and it just gives you like we love Jeff. He's great. But it gives you that feeling like, man, this is my brother's best friend.

My brother's not here to enjoy this. Tugs of your heart a little bit. And it's hard to talk to him about it. If I bring up Mike's name, Jeff gets upset. We're all just trying to deal with this tragedy, and I was dealing with it in the wrong way. I was burying my feelings with drugs and alcohol. His girlfriend saved his life, though. She called me, and she said, I don't know what to do. I don't know how I'm going to find him.

I'm outside his apartment now. And I said, well, you're the only person what to do. I don't know how I'm going to find him. I'm outside his apartment now. And I said, well, you're the only person there that he has. That's like, you know, that's kind of like family. I was like, you need to go inside the apartment, make sure he doesn't have any keys and just make sure he's alive, you know, and checking on him. So she did all that. She made sure he was OK. He was luckily he was OK, but he was just passed out. And then my wife and I came together and just devised a plan to figure out you know how

the fuck do we get him to sacramento you know what are we going to do like so we were talking about it and i was like well if i just book a flight for him he's not going to fucking come probably like tomorrow morning he's not going to feel fine and be like all right got an 8 a.m flight you know yeah and so going through it um i feel so fragile now like i'm a completely different person uh after going through that it humbles the shit out of you uh it makes you just feel like like i feel really fragile i don't sometimes i don't know how to deal with people or how to talk to people because i'm just completely different than i was before i went through it so it's just in a couple of years about five years years, yeah, being on pills.

You probably felt indestructible when you were doing pills. I felt invincible when I was doing it, and now I feel so vulnerable. And I don't know why that is, but it's something that I think is definitely a warning to anybody out there that's, you know, think of getting on prescription drugs or having prescription drugs pushed on them from their doctor. Remember the Advil and the Tylenol works better than opiate painkillers, and people can look that up. And you don't walk away from it feeling like I feel. I know this guy who has a back injury, and he always was weird. I was always trying to figure out what his deal was. He always just seemed awkward. Awkward, but socially, not inappropriate, Awkward, but socially, not inappropriate, but almost fearless, oblivious, and clumsy.

And I was always like, what the fuck is going on with this guy? And we were trying to figure it out. There's something going on. And then one day he goes, hey, what's going on with this cryotherapy thing? He started asking me about cryotherapy. I said, well, it's really good for reducing inflammation. It helps a lot with people with arthritis it's uh it's great for it helps your body reek kickstart its production of collagen it's really good for a lot of things it's good I like it for the anti inflammation benefits like wine with

what do you uh what do you think of myself I got this back problem I've had for years and then it clicked I go oh you're on pills guys on pills as a motherfucker because he would be like hey how are you guys doing what's going And then it clicked. I go, oh, you're on pills. This guy's on pills all the time. He's high as a motherfucker. He's high as fuck. Because he would be like, hey, how are you guys doing? What's going on over here? How's everybody? But it wasn't like that.

You know how sometimes people are friendly, but they're like, are you okay with me being friendly? Right, right. It's like a little touch and go. They're figuring it out. This guy was just full speed ahead. He didn't know how loud he was and shit. No, he was pilled up, man. We were together with a bunch of other friends that we know. It was odd.

We were trying to figure it out. Not a bad guy, but just this weird, almost like I was envious. Like, why is this guy so confident? Yeah, why are you so happy? What the hell is wrong with you? He's in fucking outer space. None of these people he's asking questions. So where'd you guys go?

Yeah. Was it good? It looks good. Look, you had a good time. All right, how about you over here? It was weird. I was always trying to figure out what was going on with this guy. And then once he approached me, started asking me about the cryotherapy thing, because I

do it all the time. And he started slowly revealing that he's had like pretty traumatic Back surgery or back injuries the thing that was great for me that happened Doing bigger stronger faster and doing this movie is you become almost like a priest where people come to you and confess And so everybody comes out of the woodwork you made a movie He said hey, I do pills or hey, I take steroids big deal You know and you talk about what happened and what what the effects were and what the negative effects were and people just come up to you and say hey man i've had a pill problem for 20 years you know and you're like that's that's how these

people got into rehab yeah uh they they called me uh i actually uh a kid that worked on the movie uh he worked on the movie and um he was um actually the the president of the company's like you know a brother and he was the one that called me and said hey look i know i worked on the movie, and he was actually the president of the company's brother. And he was the one that called me and said, hey, look, I know I worked on your movie and everything. I have a problem, though. After I saw the movie, I just need to fix it. What do I do? Isn't it incredible that these fucking people that are running for president, not a single one has brought any of this shit up? We're talking about a massive epidemic where people are dropping like flies.

People are being addicted It's not sexy probably thing to talk about It's a dark thing to talk about Even watching a movie is kind of a dark thing to get into It's not just that It's that they can't talk about it Because then they'll face repercussion from the pharmaceutical industry I think Donald Trump is the only person that can talk about it

I hope he does I hope he does too I think it's Donald Trump's responsibility Donald Trump, we're calling you out right here We're calling you out, Donald I know you're kind of a goofy fuck. I know you're listening. I swear I'll vote for you if you say something about this.

He's listening. Yeah. Bell Brothers are on. He's into it. Yeah. I think he's kind of busy. But, you know, I think that that's a big problem. One of the biggest problems in this country is special interest because it doesn't matter

what it is. Like, there's all these special interests, including the corn industry, trying to push high fructose corn syrup on everything. Anything you look into, there's a sugar lobby, there's a corn lobby, there's a lobby for everything. And it just twists the truth around and makes people vote for things that they maybe wouldn't. It's interesting though, that statistic that when they changed the OxyContin, when they changed the formula where you couldn't crush it and smoke it, they lost 80% of their profit. At least that tells us that some people are looking out in the right direction. And they're doing so because of things like your documentary. And it's one of the most important things about doing a documentary like that. It

starts this conversation and people start talking about it and they start comparing notes and they start realizing like, wow, these are people that I know, people around me. This is a giant issue. I have to say, like in my movie, a lot of people wanted me to give more answers. What's the solution? I'm like, I don't really have a solution. This is a giant problem that we need to talk about and come up with, you know, bigger solutions because I'm just a documentary filmmaker. I'm just telling you what happened in my life. I'm not trying to run solutions. Because I'm just a documentary filmmaker. I'm just telling you what happened in my life. I'm not trying to run for president. I'm not trying to make a law about this.

I'm just like, hey, man, this is a big problem. What are we supposed to do about it? And that's what I think, that's collectively as a country, we come up with the solutions. There's a real problem in that these people that sell these things are making ungodly amounts of money. Yeah, it's insane. When you showed that seminar that they had where they were all talking about, you know, you guys are going to make insane amounts of money.

And they're just openly talking about how they're drug-packed pushers. I'll tell you something right here. I actually wrote this down. This drug, it's called Avandia. It was for diabetes, right? And so they're giving this drug to all these people with diabetes and they're dropping dead. One third of the people that were prescribed the drug were dying from it, right? And so what it was, was a drug for diabetes that actually gave you a heart attack. And most of the people that have diabetes, that's the number one

cause of death, right? So when you look at that, you go, okay, well, how did this company get away with it? Well, when they made the drug, they packed away $6 billion in an account just to basically, you know, they put $6 billion away because they knew they were going to get sued. And they ended up getting sued only for $3 billion. Like, oh, okay, cool. But they made like $20 billion on the drug. It's ridiculous the things that are going on that are getting covered up and nobody's talking about. Like in the film, I don't know if you saw that drug that was made in the united states it was tainted with aids it was tainted with the aids virus and they said you know what well we can't lose this big batch of drugs let's send it to france well what is how

does the aids i don't understand that though how does the aids virus get in yes what is the aids virus you're talking about h? I have no idea. I have no idea, but that's what the news report says. I know, but that news report was all grainy, and it looked like it was from 1985. They might not have known what the fuck they were talking about. No, it definitely was something that I think was a head-scratcher. I actually have a guy. There's a guy that works out at Mark's Gym, just got his PhD, and he was going to go work for the company Bayer.

That was the company that sold, they make Bayer aspirin and everything. That's the company that did it, and that was one of the things he was going to go work for the company Bayer. That was the company that sold Bayer Aspirin and everything. That's the company that did it and that was one of the things he was talking about. He was like, I don't know if I want to work for a company like that. Yeah, we need to Snopes that though. You need to Snopes that before you put it in the documentary. Actually, yes. We have a big team. Taste a few of those to make sure they're don't have AIDS. When we do these

documentaries, we have a team of people that fact-check everything. Make that a little larger, please. Here it goes. Recently unearthed documents show that the drug company Bayer sold millions of dollars worth of injectable blood clotting medicine, factor VIII concentrate intended for hemophiliacs to Asian, Latin American, and some European countries in the mid-1980s, although they knew it was tainted with AIDS. See, that's what I don't understand.

Taint and AIDS go together. That makes sense to me. How dare you. This article is 10 years ago. It says the company stopped selling the drug in the United States in 1984 but continued to sell it overseas for an additional year. The medicine was made using combined plasma from large numbers of donors. And at the time, there was no screening test for the AIDS virus, so a tiny number of donors with AIDS could inadvertently contaminate a large batch.

Whoa. They continued to sell the medicine overseas in an attempt to avoid being left with a large stock of a drug that was no longer marketable in the United States. Well, you know, that's what they also did with that AIDS medication. What is that stuff that was fucking killing everybody? AZT. AZT.

AZT was initially a chemotherapy medication, but it was killing cancer patients quicker than the cancer was. And they pushed that through because the AIDS epidemic was so huge. They pushed that through so fast, and then they knew it wasn't working and they kept pushing, pushing, pushing. Not just not working, it was fucking killing people. Yeah, absolutely. They used to call AIDS the

gay cancer. That's what they thought it was at one point in time. The whole thing is just disgusting. It's so terrifying when you think of a company that's valuing money at such a high level that they're willing to do something like that and ship this tainted drug to these other companies. I don't even know these people. Just send it over there.

Fuck France. Exactly. It's just crazy. And they're still in business. And the thing is they market to the doctors so much. They spend like $5 billion on marketing to us and like $25 billion marketing to the doctors. So they're telling the doctors to push these drugs and push these treatments on people. And if you look at the statistics of Medicare, there's like 30,000 people every year that die from treatments that they didn't even need.

And that's a fact. That's like a Medicare fact. It's like, how are we giving people medicine that they don't need need and that's a fact that's like a medicare fact It's like why are we how are we giving people medicine that they don't need? It's killing them makes no sense You know It's like it's all because of money and they don't really know What the medicines will do to people and they just keep giving it giving it giving it how harmful are some of the other drugs? Like the restless leg syndrome and like I saw one the other day that said

They have a medicine medication for if you laugh too much or if you cry too much or whatever give me that if you smoke pot take this truck yeah they have restless leg syndrome is that bullshit like what is that i actually have uh experienced that because i've had like surgery and you know i have like weird circulation things but i feel yes right well i feel like what happens is like it's on days i had too much caffeine or too much sugar it's like i feel it's like something that's like self-induced but uh it actually is something that that is is rare you know it's very rare but it's it's something that they advertise and you know so it only would happen if there was external things involved for me yeah i don't know i don't know if you know if it's completely like surgeries and stuff here's the thing though a lot of things aren't completely a myth like a

lot of things maybe affect like 0.0001 percent of the population go how do i get that to affect you know 30 of the population well i advertise the shit out of it and make people feel like they have restless leg syndrome so i'll get all the caffeine addicts i'll get all the sugar addicts and you know let's go yeah let's market it to those people. You know, you know, another thing that's really controversial that you touched on in your documentary that, um, I think is a really important thing to discuss is depression. You know, depression, depression is a big one, man. It's a big one because it's so hard to lock down whether or not this is a, um, is it a medical condition or is it just a state of your life right now is it

you reacting to all it's really hard for the doctor to tell too it's really hard as a friend going through like rehab and i feel great and i turn i'm like how do you feel buddy you know i'm trying to help these people too and we're all helping each other right not so good oh i'm depressed about what we're we're in we're you know in malibu we're in a beautiful place it's like and they're just depressed and you don't you you can't understand it i think it's something that um we just don't know enough enough about and enough how to treat it and i think we treat it with pills that make you a zombie so you just don't feel it and you never face stuff that causes more depression even like alcohol and stuff like

that there's also all sorts of other factors involved. Like, what are you doing with your life? Like, how much of your life is spent doing productive, enjoyable things? What kind of support group do you have as far as your friends? Are your friends, like, really happy, really healthy people? Are you engaging in a lot of physical activity? Are you eating healthy? Are you getting enough rest? Are you drinking enough water?

All those things are a big factor. Huge. Are you doing what you want to do with your life?'s hard to explain to i have a friend that has an awesome family he's got a ton of money he's got everything that you could see from the outside that we might want as a human being right oh that's really cool he's got he can do whatever he wants right beautiful wife great kids but he's depressed and i'm like i have no idea how to help that like zero you know other than like he needs to go see a therapist that's like kind of the only way that that you can treat it because i think like us as friends don't you just don't understand

it well i think there's no one answer that works with everybody i think some people really suffer with uh any sort of balance you know sometimes people get these extreme highs and extreme lows but they're it's hard for them to like ride it out in the middle we've heard before like from our friends that like wrestle uh you know that they'll get this huge high much like yourself going out in front of a big audience get everybody all fucking fired up be funny as hell and then you got to go home and your wife's like you didn't take out the garbage it's like hard to go back to being a dad and and have a normal a normal role in the household because there's no fans cheering for you.

So I think a lot of those guys, the ups and downs are so wild for them. But it's also, it makes it 10 times worse because they're doing a lot of drugs. So the highs and lows are even amplified even more. Well, not only that, but there's also a lot of trauma going on with their body and their brain. And I think that plays a giant factor in it. It's got to. I really do.

I know a lot of people that have had a lot of physical trauma, and almost all of them have a hard time with depression. But being happy is a choice, I think. He and I talk about this kind of stuff all the time, and I've seen people that have their fucking legs blown off for more, and they got the biggest fucking smile on their face. We've seen some people in some pretty shitty situations that have he has a guy at his gym this guy bryce he's trying to figure out how to deadlift with one leg he doesn't have a prosthetic leg he's trying to figure out a deadlift like one and he's all the way up yeah he's all the way up by the hip so he can't a

prosthetic can kind of work but not really you know right right but yeah we've seen people in all kinds of shitty situations and and they still got us they're still fucking smiling they're still finding other things to live for whether it it's lifting weights or fucking climbing rocks or whatever the hell it is they're doing. Like you said, doing some productive shit. Pursuing enjoyable activities is a big one. Pursuing something that you really have a passion for as a career is another big one. I think there's a lot of people that feel that soul-sucking grind of a day-to-day, nine-to-five, doing something they hate

is just unbelievably taxing on their happiness. as being a filmmaker, every film I've done, I've done three of them that I've directed and one of them that I've produced, every time it's about

raising the money and getting going and it's just so hard and I would get depressed in between projects. So I'd have these great highs. A Bigger, Stronger, Faster came out. It's at Sundance Film Festival.

Everybody's talking about it. It's 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. I'm up here. Then I've got to go get money to make the next movie. And I'm down here because I'm broke. I have no money. You don't make a lot of money on these things. And it's just an up and down business.

But at least you're doing it for you. Sure. But after all of it, after all said and done, because it's not about the money, it's about for me doing something awesome. You know, at the end of the day, I talked to my brother after I got sober and he said, you know what, man, your biggest problem is you don't need anybody. You've done it all yourself already. Why do you need anybody? You don't need anybody to help you just keep doing what you're doing. And that's like, that gave me so much confidence and you need to empower yourself you know you need to empower yourself and build confidence confidence is huge in uh in depression you know like i'm not depressed anymore i don't feel

i don't have a project right now i don't have money for projects now but i don't care because it's like yeah we'll get it we'll do it we've done it before you know so i think that building your own confidence is big in in getting over the depression there's got to be a certain amount of depression that's allowed too you know something terrible happens you gotta yeah you gotta allow for some of that you know you allow for some of that to come in and just to happen even not even terrible like for me i'll fuck up one joke on a killer set where i get a standing ovation and that one joke will fuck my head up man yeah i would just i'll just be driving home going, fuck! I'll sit at home.

I'll go over it. Yeah. What about Ronda Rousey? You know, after the loss. Oh, dude. You know what she said on Ellen DeGeneres. To me, that was the coolest fucking thing that woman has ever done. That was really neat to me. Like, I'm a huge fan of hers anyway.

I think she's amazing. But that was fucking awesome to kind of hear her just lay it lay it all on the line there's a lot going on there on top of that there's also like head trauma right there's right you get knocked out like that you're gonna be depressed yeah there's just no way around it not not just the fact that she was the highest of highs as far as celebrities go and then she just got shit on all over social media i mean i read just a few of the things that people social media their direction. Social media really blasts people, all the memes and all the crazy shit. Like people, you know, they're probably just not even thinking. And we all have fun with different stuff.

They're trying to be funny, you know. They're trying to be funny, yeah. Yeah, they're trying to be clever. Yeah, I mean, and some of it is funny. And take down the big man. You can't look at it if you're Rhonda. Right. I mean, that's also part of what comes with being that huge.

Right. Like Conor McGregor kind of handled it. I saw on your Instagram. You said, hey, this is the best way to handle defeat. He handled it like a fucking man. He went out there. He put a picture of him strutting with a nice suit on. And he said, I went out there and I took a shot.

I will not apologize. I will not stop being me. And then he wrote, Dos Anjos, you are a pussy. Aldo, you are a pussy. I love that guy right back to talking shit yeah exactly it's what made him and he's and he's going right back to it you know and uh the thing is if he if he loses more fights or whatever that might get worse and he might go away but if he but if he doesn't you know you become like a legend forever you know

well he'll get better he'll get better and he'll learn. But that's beside the point. I think lows, like you said, are important because what a bad feeling does, for me, someone who's really hard on themselves, I'll screw up one thing and it really drives me nuts. What that does is that motivates me to be more focused and more intense and pay more attention to what I'm doing. And if I don't do that, I will feel that same thing again. And there's a certain amount of those bad feelings where things go wrong that you just got to accept in your life, like breakups.

Breakups are devastating for people. When someone breaks up with you, sometimes you feel like they stole a part of you. They stole some of your happiness. It's a huge investment to be in a relationship with somebody. Oh my God. But you got to realize when that's over, when that breakup's over,

like, hey man, like this gives you an opportunity to move on and to get your life in order better and to look at yourself. Be by yourself for a while and understand

how much you value a healthy relationship. He's had a lot of good ones. He's had some bad ones? Yeah. He had a girl call him up and say, we can't date anymore because I have cancer. Bye.

That's it? Yeah, and it was over. Did she actually have cancer? No. No. It was a big lie. It's part of his whole guy's got nothing story. Yeah, I got nothing.

I mean, how else is she going to get rid of you? Yeah, that was the easiest way. What else could she say? Listen, you're just not fun. Yeah, you're fat and ugly. It's better than saying you got a small dick, you know. I guess. I have cancer.

Bye. It's not that bad. But, you know, those are important. You know, you don't want to be with that person anyway. If that's how they feel about you, you got to find the person that really likes you. Or you got to figure out how to become someone who people like and that's part of the struggle of developing as a human being too that's a rut that some people never get out of some people they get into this rut like in high school like in dating in high

school and college they fucking never get out of that they're always in combative shitty relationships forever and they never pause and reset they never have like a relationship rehab it's rehab. It takes a lot of strength to walk away from anything that you haven't invested time in, right? Yeah, I mean, even shitty relationships, at least they have familiarity to them. I think, you know, Ronda Rousey, she said, if I'm not this, then what am I? To me, that was a huge statement.

People are always being defined by other people. You've got to be defined by yourself. It's got to come internal, and it's got to be hard for her because she is such a mega star and she is known as a fighter she knows you know the most uh dominant female fighter of all time so it's got to be tough it's also like that kind of success like that kind of love and notoriety is so unnatural so that high is so unnatural it's so strange it's's almost like the Oxycontin of achievement. It's not real. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it, yeah.

When you're achieving something athletically, it's not as simple as, say, the Betch Cohea fight, which is probably her highlight. She goes down to Brazil. She gets cheered. She fights this girl, knocks her out in the first round, struts around like a peacock. The whole world's cheering for her.

She's on top of the world, everything. But what actually really happened? Well, what actually really happened was there's two people and they're engaging in an activity and one person is better at that activity than the other person. And only better by like a hair or a margin. Like this one person is more of a brawler and she's much more nervous and she makes mistakes and then the other person is better under pressure brawler and she's much more nervous and she makes mistakes and then the other person is better under pressure and she connects with better shots and then the other person gets

hit on the button and goes down like the actual actual events of what happened are not that big of a deal right i mean it happens in gyms all across the world but the fact that it's on this big stage the fact that so many eyes are on it, that moment gets magnified. So the result gets magnified. So it becomes this really unnatural state where everybody loves you for this brief moment. And you're walking around there. Yeah, glory. I have to say.

But that glory also comes with the potential. Any high comes with the potential of a corresponding low. I mean, there's just no way around it. It's exactly the thing that killed our brother was that. He constantly wanted to be in the WWE, constantly wanted to be something. And when people told him, like, hey, you're getting too old for this or you're not in shape enough for this, like he couldn't really handle that and that was a big part of his depression was he was trying to be defined by this uh wrestling league that only gives very few people a shot and those people have either really earned it or they knew somebody or whatever and got in and he was always trying to get to that and and my dad says even if he did get to it i think he he still would have went the same way

because he wouldn't he would have went the other way he went like crazy because he had money and he had fame and whatever, you know. Well, a lot of times it's the way you look at life, like the parameters that you set for your life. If those parameters are fucked up, it's going to make your life fucked up no matter what you get involved in. And that's something that you find with some people. Some people that are happy and they become successful, they can be happy and successful in pretty much everything they do. They have good parameters. They set up good behavior patterns and the people that have bad behavior patterns or self-destructive behavior patterns those things repeat themselves over and over again even when they get on a roll like i have friends that i know they get on a roll they everything's going good

but i know they're gonna fuck up it's just a matter of time and then one day you'll see them and they're drinking again like i thought you quit drinking uh you know my man my fucking my fucking my girl left and like i'm just right now i don't want to hear it man and you're you're in a in a business comedy right that a lot of people are kind of like that right like kind of oh yeah kind of miserable kind of like that's why they they make fun of things because how do you deal that do you uh like kind of avoid maybe hanging out with some of those people? Yeah, my friends are all pretty happy. I mean, I've had friends that have had problems with depression.

I've helped some friends that had problems. I had a buddy who got depressed because he was taking Propecia, something you should be concerned with, folks, if you're losing your hair. First of all, shave your head. It's the greatest thing I ever did. I love it. It makes it easy. Oh, it's glorious.

I love it. I feel like anybody who won't fuck you because you're head shaved, you don't want to fuck them anyway because you're barely getting them to fuck you. You're barely hanging in there. They don't like you that much. They only fuck you because you have hair. Right. But my friend was taking Propecia and he was getting seriously depressed and he didn't

connect the two of them together. And I got him to a psychiatrist and helped him out and he actually was he benefited from psych drugs Because those psych drugs got him happy and weaned him off and got him on on Point got his life in order and then once his life got in order he weaned himself off those things and also The right way to use them yeah, yeah, you're not depressed forever right? I mean he also got off that fucking Propecia shit It's not for everybody. I took Propecia for a while. It didn't make me depressed.

A lot of people make some impotent. Yes, it definitely did that. It didn't kill my dick, but it beat the shit out of it. Yeah, so it's like, hey, now you have hair. Now you have hair. That sounds exciting, actually. Because you have hair, but you can't get it up, right? Yeah.

Well, it doesn't keep you from getting it up, but it's definitely not the same. And I didn't even realize it was until I was to make sure pubes big and your dick smaller No, my prescription ran out and I was like I gotta get to the doctor and refill my prescription Also, I've got this raging boner all the time like what's going on down here? What the fun? Then I and then I went oh my god. It's the Propecia like this is what my dick supposed to be like Ridiculous went oh my god it's the propitia like this is what my dick's supposed to be like oh this is ridiculous yeah getting off this shit yeah my head yeah you went on i quit propitia long before i shaved my head but it was um that that my friend uh going through that was really scary because he was uh you know he was really really depressed and it was like i was like shit like i gotta

figure out a way to help this guy because this is not who he normally is normally he would be like happy and joking like comics are all kind of fucked up in a way and that they're performers they see things fucked up and they usually usually when you're getting on stage the reason why you're doing in the first place is you're compensating for something that's missing like a lack of attention you got when you were young or a lack of self-esteem, and you're trying to make up for it by your performances on stage, and you're trying to get the audience to like you. It's almost like a hustle in a way.

And the reward, if you can come up with jokes and routines that are good enough to get the people to laugh, you get them to feel good, and then that becomes your new self-esteem. And it's a real tricky trap. Do you think uh for yourself uh you don't really fit the mold or do you i definitely don't fit all the molds but i fit some of the molds you know i mean the same mold that got me into martial arts was the same mold that got me into comedy and the mold that got me into martial arts was feeling like i was a loser feeling like nobody gave a shit about me and that everybody

doubted me and then i just didn't have anybody to count on and i was always worried about getting my ass kicked i'm like fuck this i gotta figure out how to fight and i wasn't a big guy yeah you know i'm only five eight so i was this like short kid and you know in high school like when i started i was even shorter so i was like fuck man i gotta learn how to fight and i just was tired of feeling scared but it was the same thing it was like i was looking shorter. So I was like, fuck, man, I got to learn how to fight. And I just was tired of feeling scared. But it was the same thing. It was like I was looking for something that I was good at to boost up my self-esteem. I was the short kid. And lifting for me, I bench pressed 315 in 11th grade and then 405 by the time I was a senior.

And I was blowing people away. And the same with Mark. He benched 315 pounds in 9th grade. And he was dyslexic and learning disabled and all these things. So that gave us confidence. Well, sometimes the deficits that you achieve or that you experience in life, they can help you if you can get through them. If you can get over that, if you can get over those humps, they can give you motivation and fuel. That's why kids that are born rich and privileged and live in a big ass house

and they get everything they want they very rarely have the drive to accomplish great things because a lot of times that drive comes from that feeling of poverty or that feeling of loss or that feeling of just being lonely and depressed and like you get motivated to go out there and make your mark like the film you did uh trophy kids you know, like there's all these kids, you know, with these parents paying thousands of dollars for these kids to go to these special camps and stuff like that. Yeah. And the best athletes in the world have their parents just take a hike on them usually or

die. Yeah. You know, one or the other or sometimes just divorce or something. I think Mark was coaching football one time. I'll never forget this. And a parent came to him and said, how do I make my kid great at football? And he said, drop him off in the ghetto. You know, that's how you're going to make him good.

Well, he's got to be mad. Yeah, he's got to be. He's got to have some aggressiveness. Kids got to be angry. And then also, too, like, you know, when someone's coming to you at, like, you know, 16 or 17 years old, and they're talking about, hey, like, it'd be great to see him get, like, a Division I scholarship. It's like, you would already know. Yeah.

16, 17, yeah, it's over. to see him get a Division I scholarship. It's like, you would already know. Yeah. 16, 17, yeah, it's over. We would have known at 11, probably. The kid's just a mutant, and he's that much bigger and stronger than everybody, and he just stands out all the time on everything. One of my wife's friends has a five-year-old son, and this little motherfucker, I pulled her aside. He takes martial arts, and I pulled her aside. I go, that kid is an athlete.

Yeah. He knows how to use his body. If he stays with this, if he's really interested in this, he's going to be a bad motherfucker. You could tell at five. That's crazy. At five, the way he does cartwheels, the way he balances himself, the way he can shift positions. I'm like, if I had that little kid, if I could coach that little kid, I could make him a motherfucker if he would listen. Yeah.

I think that's what happened with trophy kids. It all starts with good intentions. You get excited about this five-year-old, but what about when he's eight and he says, you know what, Joe, I don't want to do jujitsu anymore. I don't want to do martial arts. And you've got to let him go. You've got to let him go is right,

but a lot of parents don't let him go. Yeah, but those people are crazy. Well, that's why it's good you did that documentary. Those people are crazy. Because that kid might be an awesome guitarist. He might give up on jujitsu and become this amazing musician. He might become a writer. He might just decide that he loves exercise just for fun,

but what he really enjoys doing is something else. He wants to be a doctor. Who the fuck knows? But no one knows. There's so many different people. You've got to figure out what it is in you that you like to express with what you do for a living. If you could figure that out, man, that is the fucking thing. If you can find something that you enjoy doing, it is the thing.

I always thought I wanted to be in front of the camera. I always thought I wanted to be an actor or do whatever. And I was always short and fat. I was like, well, that's not going to happen unless I'm in a good fellowship. Alfred Hitchcock was in front of the camera. He wasn't that pretty. Well, you're in front of the camera.

I am somewhat, and that kind of happened by accident. I wasn't trying to be in front of the camera. You know what I like about you in front of the camera, though? You're you. You're wearing the same fucking clothes you wear. You talk the way you talk. It disarms people. Even my wife goes, is that the guy who makes the documentaries, the guy with the backwards baseball hat on?

Yeah, it's weird, right? Why does he dress like that? I go, because that's how he dresses all the time. I'm going to the gym. And she goes, oh, yeah, okay. That makes sense. Like, that's who you are. That's who you are.

That's how you dress. It's good. It's a good thing. Yeah, same all the time. Yeah, well, you don't have to bullshit anybody. I think there was a couple interviews and bigger stronger faster where I went into like the senator I'm wearing a suit you know I just figured like right that's probably appropriate but like other other times I was interviewing a

lawyer and I dress up a little bit more and I I look back at him like why did I do that like why it's not a bad idea when you're interviewing a senator or something like that or even a lawyer yes because they'll take you a little more seriously and they like I've had conversations with people on the podcast interviewing a senator or something like that. Yeah, well, present yourself. Even a lawyer. Yeah, some of the other people. Because they'll take you a little more seriously. Like, I've had conversations with people on the podcast, like, especially early on in the career, where they kind of look a little dismissive of me because maybe I had, like, a T-shirt on that was stupid.

Tattoos and shit. Or, you know, like, weed. Like, whatever. Yeah. They just assume that I'm an idiot, you know? And so they would be dismissive initially, and I was like, hmm, probably should have set this up better. Like, if I had an office that looked real nice and the desk was like, this desk is a mess right now.

But if I was in front of something that looked more professional, maybe they would approach this with a little more professional attitude as well. So you showing up with a suit, not necessarily a bad idea. I don't think it's a bad idea. I'm just saying that like some of the other interviews where I wasn't being me and I knew it. You felt hard. I felt weird. It has been me. Well, I guess there's only – the only bad way to do it when you're doing something like what you're doing is to do something where you don't like what you're doing because it's your work.

These documentaries are your creation. I also think that you don't go confront people you go ask all the right questions and You give a give a person enough rope and they hang themselves that happens every single time. Yeah, well, especially if they're full shit Yeah, it's magical. Yeah, when you're acting yourself, you'll probably get more out of One of the best shows ever on television was Penn & Teller's bullshit Oh, yeah, they would just let people ramble and talk and go. And then they would be like, okay, boom. And they would stop and they would say, look at this bullshit.

That was amazing. That was a great, great show. Yeah. I wonder why they stopped doing that. I guess they ran out of things to shit on. They did like nine seasons of it. Yeah, yeah. They did it for a pretty long time.

I watched the one on PETA the other day. I'm like, oh, my God. It was amazing. We're working on something like that. We're trying to do it in the health and fitness industry. Yeah. We just went to the Arnold Sports Festival, and there's thousands of booths of like 80% of it is stuff that doesn't work probably. Like supplements and things like that?

Supplements and just like different things that just don't work. Well, what's amazing is how many of those supplements are steroids. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're supposed to be steroids. Well, some of them are steroids. Yeah, yeah, for a little while until they get caught. I saw a sign that said, for a supplement, it says, it's like testosterone on testosterone.

Oh, wow. And you're like, why are you selling that to people like that? That's not a really good message to send when little kids are buying it or whatever. What is it? What is testosterone on testosterone? It's some supplement. I'll find out for you. That sounds ridiculous.

But when we had Jeff Nowitzki in here, who was the guy who busted Lance Armstrong. That was a great podcast. Yeah, he's a bad motherfucker when it comes to chasing those people down. But his website, the USADA website, where they show all the different stuff that you'll piss hot from

that you can just buy at a regular vitamin store,'s fucking crazy just just you get to the a you know it's listed alphabetically just go through a and there's fucking thousands of fucking things you know when he was on when he was on your show when he was on your show lance armstrong tweeted me yeah private message said are you listening to this shit and i said well what is he what is he talking i said you should just go on there. And then you had him on. It was great, you know? Well, Lance was great. I thought he was awesome, yeah. Yeah, he was awesome. You know, he's helping Dan

Bilzerian train for that bet. He's got a bet. Dan Bilzerian is going to drive... The Instagram guy or whatever? Yeah, he's going to ride his bike from L.A. to Vegas. Holy shit. And he has like, I think, 36 hours to do it or something like that. Wow.

And so they made a bet for 600 grand. Holy shit. So he's got to ride his bike, and as soon as the bet was announced, Lance Armstrong texted me, and he's like, do you know Dan Bilzerian? I want to help him. That's right. So I connected those two guys together and now Lance is helping train Dan Bergerian.

I've actually never met, I've never met Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong has always been cool to me through like social media and I think that's really cool if you can do something.

You know, one time he tweeted, bigger, stronger, faster, everybody should see this movie. I was like, hmm, that was before everything happened,

you know, but it was cool. I love Lance Armstrong. before he got busted? Oh, way before he got busted. Yeah, I can it was cool. It's like really cool. Before he got busted? Oh, way before he got busted. Yeah, I can show you the tweet. I like his coach. That guy was wild.

All the different shit he thought of to try to get past all the tests. Oh, yeah, Ferrari, yeah. And then he had his gardener or whatever go way ahead of everybody and then give him shit at pit stops and stuff. I was like, what? Are you? Is this real? How about the fact that they were doing blood transfusions in front of everybody on the bus?

That was great. Yeah, the bus broke down. This weekend, we were at this powerlifting meet. Some guy comes up to Mark and says, well, I compete in the drug-free division. He said, no, drug-tested. There is no drug-free division. It's drug-tested, you little bitch.

Yeah, he's like, it's drug-tested. Yeah, is there a single powerlifter that's not doing steroids? There's a lot of guys. Let me pull that better. A single successful power lifter that's not doing steroids. Yeah, so the wild thing is, the crazy part, we were talking about this also, is that if you just consistently do the right thing all the time,

like if you're hydrated all the time, you get the right amount of sleep, you train hard, you have a lot of motivation and determination, and you want to be better, you can actually surpass a lot of the guys that are on shit and we see it time and time again whether those guys are actually 100 natural is it's hard it's hard to fucking say it's hard to pinpoint because a lot of us lie about it right but i'd have to say out of all the world records that are broken in these drug tested federations some of these guys have to be what did blaine summer you know what i. Some of these guys have to be claimed. What did Blaine Sumner just do? You know what I mean?

Some of these fucking guys got to be claimed. Yeah, there was a guy that was totally drug-tested competition. 1,100-pound squat, 881 bench, and an 815 deadlift? I mean, he just went off. Yeah, he just went off. What? 1,100-pound squat? So check this out.

What? Blaine Sumner, vanilla gorilla. Mark sponsors the world's strongest man Brian Shaw and He bet Brian Shaw he couldn't pick up this 550 pounds stone and throw it over what a 54 inch. Yeah platform Like it was fucking baby So Brian yeah, it's on the YouTube it's on rogue Fitness's YouTube page Jesus. Yeah, so Brian did that, and Mark went over and said,

if you could do it, I'll give you five grand. So the night before, he said, what? He said, hey, are we still on with that bet or whatever? I said, it's not a bet. It's a sponsorship, first of all. But, yeah, well, I said, I actually changed my mind. I'm going to make it ten grand. Oh, my God. This guy, he throws it over that?

That guy's six foot eight, 400. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What am I looking at here? This is a different event. That's a kettlebell. Oh, my God. This guy, he throws it over that? That guy's 6'8", 400. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What am I looking at here? This is a different event. This is a giant kettlebell. Oh, my God. How heavy is that kettlebell?

About 60 pounds, I think. But Brian Shaw. No, that's way more than 60 pounds unless it's hollow. Trying to throw a 60-pound kettlebell. But wait a minute. Hold on. Back it up. No, it's probably more like 70 or 80.

That can't be. Look how big it is. Hold on a second. They have a special implement. No, no, no. Look at the size of that kettlebell. That kettlebell has to be hollow. The way he's walking with it might be 100. That has to be. Look how big it is. Hold on a second. They have a special implement. No, no, no. Look at the size of that kettlebell. That kettlebell has to be hollow. The way he's walking with it might be 100.

That has to be hollow. I don't think that... I don't think they're as heavy as you think. Brian Shaw is... Look at him right there. He's right there on the ground in front of you. You see that werewolf? Look over at that werewolf.

See that werewolf on the far left? Yeah, yeah. It's made differently. Those are specialty things. Well, those are cast iron. Yeah, yeah. Those are specialty things. Well, those are cast iron. Yeah, yeah. Those are specialty things that they're talking about.

Those are badass. Well, the ones that he has, the only way that they could be... I'll tell you. Hold on a second. Rogue Fitness. Does it say, James? Go on Rogue Fitness' YouTube channel.

God, that guy's ridiculously strong. I mean, even if it's fucking 50 pounds. He's 6'8", 420 pounds. Jesus Christ! You get close to him, and you're like, I'm gonna to die. This fucking guy.

But he's the nicest guy in the world. He is very nice, but you still think he's going to kill you just because he can. I met that Robert Oberst guy. Yeah, Robert. Yeah, he's a big boy. Great guy. He came down to the ice house one night. He's ridiculous.

None of his shirts have sleeves. How the fuck are they going to fit? Cut off his circulations. His hands would fall off. I don't know how these guys get on planes and shit like that. Okay, Hafthor Bjornsson. Jesus Christ, look at this guy squatting 1,102 pounds. Yeah, it's the villain.

What the fuck? Okay, now tell me he's clean. He's in a drug-tested federation, so he gets- What does that mean? He gets blood and urine tested. Say it. That's insane. All right, Blaine Sumner, you're lying. There you go. That's insane. I mean, I it. He gets blood and urine tested. Say it. That's insane. All right, Blaine Sumner, you're lying.

There you go. That's insane. I mean, I believe my guess. Okay, so you can have the occasion. Hey, this guy's a big hunter like yourself. He's into fishing and shit like that. Does he use his teeth? Does he pull out a tooth and throw it at deer?

He probably does. He probably does. Like, look, this is the record. Throws a 45-pound plate at their head. Poof. Game of Thrones actor Hafthor Bjornsson. He's the mountain on Game of Thrones. He threw a 56-pound kettlebell over a 20-foot thing.

And that's a world record of it, right? 20-foot thing, right? That guy's so big. He's 6'11", 6'10". He's retarded out being these guys are. Oh, my God. That's the world record of it. Oh, my God.

It's not as heavy as you think, but if you try to throw a 30-pound kettlebell over that thing, we would probably die doing it. Here it is. Here's the video. Look at this. That's a one-arm swing, so that might be a little harder. That's a 60-pound one? 56 pounds. Oh, my God.

But that's high. That's a huge thing. That was a world record when he did that. That was pretty cool. Yeah, this is actually cool. The giant ice. Fucking boy. Yeah, that vice documentary.

Yeah, there's a couple thousand-pound deadlifts, too, in the World's isolate. Fucking boy. Yeah, that Vice documentary. Yeah, there was a couple thousand pound deadlifts too in the World's Strongest Man competition. There was Eddie Hall did 1,026 and then Brian Shaw did 1,021. It was just the bars fucking branding. Legitimately. How many of these guys are doing steroids? Oh yeah, no. The World's Strongest Man,

I mean, that's part of the sport. It's 99%? It's part of the sport and it's part of bodybuilding. It's part of a lot of sports. In a perfect world, I think a lot of the sport it's 99 it's part of the sport and it's part of uh bodybuilding you know it's part of a lot of a lot of sports in a perfect world i think a lot of the athletes would say hey in a perfect world there'd be nothing out there that we could take to get better but that's not the world we really live in right so i think that's kind of the the case with a lot of there

are there are some guys that are just large human beings that can handle big big amount of weights i mean you've probably seen it in m MMA where people just have a different structure. You're like, I don't know what that guy is. Like Mark Hunt. Yeah. Mark Hunt is like 5'9". He has to cut weight to get to 265. Right.

And he's just a built like- Tank. Yeah. It just doesn't look real. You go to wrestle somebody and you can't even grab their wrists because their wrists is all huge and hands and feet are all big. It's like, what the fuck? It's like John Cena.

He's a freak. Yeah. John Cena is a freak. John Cena. We've known him since he was 23 years old and you know we were kind of instrumental in getting him into wrestling and so when we met him we're like dude you're a freak your forearms are the size of my head he's got double size wrists yeah and he's like two wrists together he wears a headband around his biceps as soon as we saw him we knew you know we're like hey and he got picked up, you know,

by WWE, like, pretty much right away. Yeah. It's pretty easy for him. Well, there's definitely some physical freaks.

There's definitely some physical freaks, but I've always wondered, like, when you see those strongman guys, like, there's,

I can't imagine that any of them could not be on steroids. I doubt that any of them are probably clean, just due to the sheer amount of weight that they have to weigh

and the sheer amount of weight that they have to lift. It just wouldn't weight that they have to lift it just wouldn't really make sense to do without it yeah it doesn't make sense you know you don't want to go in and lose i mean that's not the purpose right yeah i think uh you know we we talk about this like i i'm on uh you know hormone replacement therapy and i think it's it's like you know talk about prescription thugs and whatever people like well you take hormone replacement therapy but i think about hormones is like it kind of balances me out in a lot of other areas so i don't have to take pills you know i don't have to take other drugs 43 and when did you start taking hormones when i was about actually right after i had my hips done i was 30

33 or 34 but it was because i had hip replacement surgery. So you started hormone replacement to try to boost your body's recovery? Yeah, absolutely. I was doing growth hormone then too, and I felt like the growth hormone wasn't really worth it. I don't know. I mean, a lot of people. Financially, you mean? Yeah, a lot of people rave about it. Yeah, but what you get banged for your buck or whatever.

If you're rich, yeah, maybe it'll help you a little bit, but I don't know. Were you trying to get some crazy results? What do you mean by that? What were you trying to do with it? I wasn't a fan of growth hormone. It actually hurt my joints more than anything. It made my hands fall asleep all the time. It makes you hold a lot of water.

Your hands fall asleep? Yeah. How much would you take? No, I know. Everyone says that. It gives you edema and everything? Yeah. How much would you take?

It makes you hold a little bit of water. I think at the time, I've tried two IUs a day and four IUs a day. That's not much. That's not much. That's not a lot. The big crazy bodybuilder guys take like 10, right? Yeah. But I think if you're using it in conjunction with everything else, then you're probably optimizing everything.

It makes sense that it would be effective for you. I do think it made my wiener a little bigger. It made your wiener bigger? I think so. Some people take it and say, oh, my God, I took growth hormone. I got completely shredded. And then it's like maybe it's just not the case. Well, you know, it also could be that now they're on growth hormone. They really stepped up their training because they're all excited.

They're on growth hormone. There's a lot of factors involved. That's what we think supplements do for the most part, too. Some do. Supplements a little bit. It's going to help you a little bit, some of them. And then there's a little bit of placebo effect. If you're taking fish oil and chugging down protein powder and stuff like that, you're probably not eating pizza and drinking beer.

Well, that's why double-blind placebo-controlled studies are so important to find out what actually does work and what doesn't work. What are the inflammation markers in the blood? They've shown some pretty good results for fish oil, though. The part about that, like with certain things, like fish oil, it's like, okay, is it good for inflammation? Yes, probably. But what people take it for is like a lot of people take it for their heart health. And they realize, like, well, I got to take 12 pills a day for it to actually be effective for my heart health. Well, you could take it in tablespoons, too.

That's how I do it. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But I'm saying, like, I guess it's not what I'm saying. It's like it's not as effective as people think. Like, I didn't take fish oil. And then they go out and they buy fish oil. And it might be pretty effective, you know, a little bit over a really long period of time is probably the most effective thing. So you got to stick with it.

I don't think it's necessarily bad for anybody. I just think that it's like, you know, it's something that, you know, it's just another thing. Like, maybe you don't need it, you know. Well, what is need? You know, it's like if you're trying to optimize your life, you're trying to optimize your body fish oil is a good choice right but if you want to get the results these guys are talking about in these studies and taking 12 pills a day you don't really have to take pills you can just I take it I get it it's a company name Carlson's Carlson's I think yeah they've

been around forever they're in a bottle I just pour it into a tablespoon I take a couple tablespoons yeah it's just so good for you. It's like flavored like lemon or something? Yeah, it's got a little lemon flavor. I don't give a fuck. I just throw it down. I think what I'm really getting at and talking about is you're just expected to help improve your health, which is great. I think a lot of people expect, you know, I'm not going to have a heart attack if I take two of these a day.

And then they realize, oh, the study was done with 12 a day. Well, then take 12, bitch. Yeah. And the other thing is, if you want to not have a heart attack, take a couple aspirin a day, right? Isn't that what's supposed to be one of the best things in the world

for your heart? Yeah, it's supposed to help too, yeah. Allegedly? One, I think, one aspirin. One aspirin a day? This is so many different fucking things you have to be on. It's part of the problem.

You gotta be on a lot of shit at the same time. Take some circumnate, and you need vitamin D3 And B12 And fucking Methyl B12 Well they get you all Stressed out about it

Then you gotta take Something for that What are you doing for niacin? What do I need to do? Shit What kind of niacin? And then you forget To take everything

Then you get depressed You ever get that shit? You ever take that flash niacin? That's insane I take that stuff every night Holy shit It makes your fucking skin Turn red and you freak out. Why do you take it at night?

It's really good for you. It makes you go to sleep? No, it's just really, that's why I take it. But it's really good for your body. You know, it's one of those things people don't like taking because it gives you that weird tingling skin feeling. It's good for your blood vessels or something like that? Is that how it makes you all red? Yeah.

But just that effect is temporary. Are your kids like, what the hell's going on with you, Dad? Why are you all red? They make non-flush niacin, right? I take it like a man, bro. You think that non-flush niacin doesn't work? It's for pussies. What are you afraid of? A little flush?

Yeah, no, I'm not afraid. I'm not scared. I'm good. That's what separates the men from the boys. Can you handle that weird feeling? Afraid of looking like you have poison ivy or some shit? Ah, why is my eyes itching? Did you find that stone? That 555 stone?

You gotta pull that sucker up, man. It's unbelievable. You gotta see it. With supplements, like we were saying, it depends on what people are expecting. A lot of times, certain things will rave about, like testosterone on testosterone. There is no way, absolutely zero chance, that that

supplement's gonna work as good as injecting testosterone. Well, if it does, if it works better than testosterone, you're going to fuck your body up. Yeah. Yeah, right. It's going to have side effects probably. Yeah. Also, if there was something out there that was the cure, you wouldn't have to advertise.

People would just know about it. Yeah. Well, here's the most important supplement. The most important thing that you can take is really healthy food. And when you start throwing down all these supplements, but you're eating fucking Big Macs, you can't do that. I got a friend who was telling me that all the chemical components of all really healthy food already exists in vitamins. So just eat whatever the fuck you want and take vitamins. I was like, man, I don't think it works like that. That doesn't sound right.

I just don't think it works. It doesn't work like that for me. That's the problem is people use it as a safeguard, right? Actually, the first time I met you was after one of your shows at the ice house. I don't even know if you remember, we were like outside in the back and you said, you were talking to Brian Callen and all these other guys. And you were saying, every time we go on the road, I got to go to a Whole Foods. And I thought that was so cool that like, you actually take the time to go out and get the, even when you're on the road, get the food and like that was uh that was actually inspirational for me to hear because you know I have somebody that struggle with my weight all the time and

like sometimes I think that stuff is weird or people might think I'm weird if I'm trying to I don't care if you eat a special diet you know and and um it's just good to know that like other people are out doing it well I've traveled on the road for so many years I know there's no unless I stay in a place that has a really good restaurant and I know they have really healthy salads and real healthy food options. And even if that's the case, what am I going to drink? I mean, it's cool if they have, you know, bottled water is cool, but I drink kombucha a lot.

So I always want to make sure that I have enough probiotics and I want healthy snacks. I don't want to have to go through the fucking mini bar and eat peanut M&Ms and all that bullshit in the middle of the night if I'm hungry. It makes you feel bad, I think. It makes you feel like a loser. There's nothing wrong with eating shitty food every now and then, but for the most part, the base of your diet,

it's fucking got to be healthy. You got to stay on top of it. You got to have a lot of vegetables. For the years that I was going through my addiction stuff, I just didn't take care of myself at all. I was 260 pounds. And right now,

today I weighed like 200 on the dot. That's great. But that's a big difference. It is a big difference. I'm fat. Really fat in that movie and I still think

I have a long way to go. I used to weigh 330. I kind of got up there on purpose just to fucking gain strength and I went from like 300 to... Here's homeboy. Oh, here we go.

Brian Shaw, 555 pound. World record stone lift. Oh, my God. So that's impossible to pick up. I mean, look how big his hands are. Boy, 555 pounds. And it's a ball. Like it's the size of a large medicine ball.

It's called an atlas stone yeah it's an object not meant to be lifted you know it's not like a barbell or anything not really interesting he's got to put it up over that platform yeah how's he doing this why is this in slow motion by the way i don't know but that platform is about as tall as i am almost jesus christ isn't that tall is he that big he's six eight yeah he's huge jesus Look at this. That's probably up to my shoulders. Boom. That's a big boy right there. That's an enormous human being.

He's wearing slingshot elbow sleeves, if you noticed. Yeah, there you go. Powerful slingshot. And what do you think that guy eats in a day? He eats like about 8,000 calories a day. Yeah. I had him picked up from the airport and brought to my house by like a limo. Did he have a leg of lamb on his shoulder?

He took a picture in the limousine of him with his wife in a limo. And he's eating salmon out of a fucking thing, like a container of Tupperware. The thing about that guy is everything is so systematic. It's amazing to be in his presence because he talks about yeah like he doesn't he doesn't eat bad you know he doesn't he's on target to just be the world's strongest man and he's won it three times and he's going for four this year right yeah yeah and he's like when are we eating i was like probably like five he's like oh it's like he's like it's like almost four he's like i should probably sneak in a meal now so he ate

before we ate but he brought all his meals already made and everything was great. You know what's interesting? If you look at his supplements, he's got this thing, diet and supplements. His meals are not that high in quantity or in ounces of protein. When you look at what he's eating, 14-ounce lean beef, 10-ounce tuna. I think this is also a bodybuilding magazine. Okay, but this is what he's saying, right? Yeah, yeah.

10 ounces tilapia. So he's like, they're like normal size meals, which you would think a guy that's that big, he'd be eating like, you know, 50, six ounce steaks. But yeah, if you really look at it, there's almost nine up there, I think. There's pre-workout, post-workout, which are kind of more like shakes, but there's like a pudding in there. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. It's like ten different times he's eating.

He's obsessed. His entire day is driven towards continuing to kick everybody's ass. Yeah. But even in that, you're looking at insane amounts of calories, even with the smaller meals. Right. What's interesting about him, too, he does four days of training a week

and three days of full recovery. So three days he's doing contrast baths and he's doing all the shit that you always talk about. He's doing float tanks, he's doing everything. He goes to a PT place and just does physical therapy drills. We saw him get on the floor and he was doing all kinds of shit. We were like, what the hell?

He moves around way better than I do. He's three times the size of me. He's a smart guy, man. I mean, that's really where it's at. I think there's a lot of people that do too much work and not enough recovery. And they just kind of mentally tough their way through it. Instead of less work, more recovery, and probably

better results. That's where I'm at right now. I just fucked up my elbow. They recommended PRP injections, right? My elbow's been bothering me for a little while now. What's going on with it? I was training for a competition. I was going after a 600-pound bench, and I fucked up my elbow midway through training. I did a 555 bench for a double.

That was a big PR for me. PR means personal record for us. Personal record. It was a personal best, PB. For all you PNs. And so I got it banged up somehow. I don't know if it was from that bench exactly, but two or three days later, you know, it started to hurt. I didn't think I was going to be able to compete, but I was still able to compete about five or six weeks later.

Got a 22-pound bench PR in the meet, but missed a 600-pound bench. I did bench 578. But when I went to bench 600, I slightly tore my pec. And I think I tore my pec because my elbow was jacked up. So you just need some time off. Yeah. The pec cleared up. Everything's all good with that, but the elbow is still all jacked up. And so I just went and got an MRI yesterday, which was fucking crazy. They stuffed me in this little tiny machine. You've never had one before? No, I've never had one before.

I've never had a surgery or nothing. MRIs are weird. Oh, I was terrified. I was in there for like half an hour. I was dying. It sounds like somebody's hammering. Oh, my God. After I got out, I was just like a crazy feeling.

The noise is so strange. It was so claustrophobic. I was like, holy fuck, that was insane. But yeah, now I have to try to figure out. I have kind of these, they call them chronic tears, which doesn't really help me at all. But it's only chronic tears and tons of inflammation. So I got to figure out ways to just get it to heal up on its own, basically. Have you looked into stem cells?

I haven't tried anything yet. When we get out of the podcast, I'll give you an address for a guy in Vegas. Some stem cells? Awesome. I wish I had them. I'd shoot them right into you. My doctor is actually one of the guys leading the way in stem cells. It sounds amazing.

They're doing stem cells in Las Vegas where they're taking them from women's placenta. I'm into it? Yeah. I can't get in trouble for my wife for this? No, no, no. It's women who have had cesarean sections. Oh, okay. So a young girl who has a cesarean section,

they take her stem cells out of the placenta and they inject them directly into your injuries and people have had fucking spectacular results. Placenta into my elbow. I'll tell you about it. I've had them done on my shoulder. It's amazing. Did you hear about the guy that had a...

He was like Wolverine. How many of those do you need, do you think? Hold on a second. I'm telling you, it is probably one of the most spectacular healing methods you've ever... You need several shots of that? No, like one shot. One shot of that. There was a guy that Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think, gave an award to last year, maybe

the year before. He had ocular cancer, so he couldn't see in his eye, in one of his eyes. And they did stem cells, some stem cell thing on him and after like 10 weeks he had like full vision and i don't i don't know how i don't know what it was but i remember um arnold schwarzenegger giving him award and talking about that being you know i'm not surprised i'm not surprised i mean i was fucking stunned at what it did to my shoulder. And I've since had my hip done and my knee. My hip was like barely bothering me. I'm like, fucking shoot it up. You know, it just bothered me after hard kickboxing workouts.

But not even to the point where, but I was like, listen, would it do a damage? Or is this like a good thing to do preventative? And he's like, yeah, it'd probably be a good thing to do preventative. Four weeks later, not a fucking single pain, no matter how hard I kick. I'm just going to get a shot all over my whole body. My knee was bothering me. Well, it's shown that they can regenerate cartilage and meniscus. Right.

It's insane because it's literally the building blocks of any kind of tissue. That sounds insane. It can regenerate any kind of tissue, like partial tears and ligaments. You know, some of my meathead friends are real fans of these weird peptides. There's growth hormone, then there's IGF-1, and now there's a bunch of shit that I can't pronounce anymore. It makes your body develop more growth hormone

and develop more testosterone. And I've tried some different things, and I didn't find any of those to be effective. Well, you're on steroids. That's the real shit. You gotta say it like it's a secret. So, yeah, we need that guy's number, because we're both banged up. I'll help you out.

I'll help you out at the end of the podcast. His name is Dr. Roddy McGee, if anybody else is listening. And he's in Las Vegas, and he's a great guy, and he'll take care of you and tell you what you can and cannot expect out of this. But they're going to start doing this all over the world. I believe right now in Vegas is the only place where you can get this stuff that they're doing through placenta. I might be wrong about that.

Actually, they got some to a doctor in New York that was working on a UFC fighter. Chris Weidman actually had a doctor on his knees, too. My doctor was telling me there's some way that he was working on that they can inject 200 million stem cells in you at one time, and they basically do it once, and it works in your whole body.

I don't know anything about it. Boss Rutten was saying. Boss Rutten had it done intravenously. I'll believe anything that guy says. Me too. I don't want to get kicked upside my fucking head. He's just a great guy anyway. But he had it done intravenously.

And he was like, it was like there was power coming off my fingers. Wow. That guy seems amazing. He's a great guy. He's a spectacular example of a human being. So when you're filming this documentary and you're doing this and you're exposing yourself, was that one of the harder parts of the documentary? Because you had to show your car getting all fucking banged up.

It was like therapy for me. Did you take any heat for that? Because you were driving around pilled up in your car. Did you get in trouble for that? No, I never once got pulled over. I'd be hammered. But I mean, you admitting,

you essentially admitted to a felony. You can't, it's weird, you can't, unless it's like murder, you can't really get convicted of anything you say

in like a documentary or a movie. Oh, really? Yeah, like I basically could say I never paid my taxes in 20 years and they can look into it. It might be stupid to say it,

but him like, because we had to check that out, like, seriously, when he was talking about taking steroids. Yeah, my wife's like, no way you're going to be in this fucking movie. What are we doing? That doesn't make sense. We check it on all of our attorneys and everything. They're like, oh, no, like, if he says it in documents. Entertainment.

Yeah. Wait to see if Ted Cruz gets in office. They'll fucking come after you retroactively. I think that it's important that you did that, though, man. It took a lot of balls. Thank you. I think you said, you know, like some of the stuff I recall him saying that he was like most embarrassed about was just like, that's the way he looked. I was more embarrassed about being fat and being bloodshot eyes and like.

Just looking jacked up. He was kind of like more depressed about how that came off. Like he doesn't like watching a movie, probably. I mean, that's kind of some of the stuff he's told me, right? I've watched it maybe four or five times and it's completed form. It's hard for me to watch. What were you eating that you gained so much weight?

Did you just try to placate yourself with food because of your pain? I actually thought... It's funny. I thought I was getting bigger and getting stronger. I was really strong at that time. So I was fat, but yeah, I could still throw up 405 for four reps or whatever. But then I tore my tricep, and that led to more depression, led to eating bad, led to less working out, all sorts of shit. Well, then drinking just causes weight gain anyway.

Yeah. Drinking is like the absolute worst thing for you. It's not good. Alcohol. One of the things that I've noticed from this diet is I have very little alcohol now. Not that I drank a lot, but now I'll limit myself to maybe a glass of wine or two in a night at most. Are you on no carbs? Very little carbs. He's joined. The war on carbs. You joined the war on carbs. Hashtag war on carbs. Well, you guys, you're going to do a documentary on ketogenic diets and ketosis?

I've been talking to the owners of Quest Nutrition. They have 44 dogs at a farm in Dallas that had a very aggressive form of cancer. They're now all cancer-free, and all they're doing is a ketogenic diet. Dogs? Yep, 70% keto dogs. 70% fat, 30% protein. They're going to turn into wolves. Yeah, they are dogs.

And so the thing is, how can we look at that and say, well, will this work in humans? I think any research we're doing on any animals that are mammals kind of have similarities so we can start figuring things out through these dogs. Because you're not going to experiment on people, really. And with a dog, it's like, hey, I'm just trying to save its life, you know? Right. So, um, what are the, what are their conclusions? I think that ketogenic diets, I know they think that it's, they, they know that it's very effective for children that have epilepsy. So here's what I've heard. I've also heard this shot down. So I'm just going to say what I've heard. I've heard that, uh, in the absence of carbohydrates that it basically

starves the cancer cell. I'm not sure if it's that simple, but that's what I've heard that in the absence of carbohydrates that it basically starves the cancer cell. I'm not sure if it's that simple, but that's what I've heard. Well, carbohydrates do convert to sugar, especially simple carbohydrates like bread and pasta, and sugar does fuel cancer. And inflammation in general. Yeah, inflammation in general. Man, I feel fantastic. I've only been doing this a month, this diet, this primal blueprint ketogenic diet. I've only been doing it for a month, but my brain is the, that's when we were talking about before the podcast started, that's probably the

most interesting aspect of it is the mental clarity. He's got a book, right? Mark Sasson. He's got a couple of books. Yeah. The primal blueprint. And I think, where are they in the other room? Yeah. I love, I just love reading all that stuff. I've read every ketogenic diet book there is. So I'm going to get that after we get off the air. I tried gluten-free for a while. I did that. I lost weight and I got thinner.

My face got thinner. I'm one of those guys that are like, my fucking head gets fat. Yeah, that's me right here. The first thing that happens. When my face gets round and big and this part gets fat. I can have abs and have the fattest face you've ever seen. Yeah, it's weird, right? The fat face thing is a weird thing.

But that was the first thing that I noticed when I did the gluten-free. My face shrank down to normal size, and this is even more so. You know, gluten-free is very controversial. The guy who came up with the whole gluten-free thing published a retraction three years later. He says, I was wrong about gluten-free. So it's definitely like a big debate over it, I guess, still. But here's what it is. I mean, this is what I decided, and it's one of the reasons why I stopped being gluten-free.

What it is is you're taking in less sugar. So that's what the benefit was. The benefit was I wasn't eating any bread. I wasn't eating any pasta. So I're taking in less sugar. So that's what the benefit was. The benefit was I wasn't eating any bread. I wasn't eating any pasta. So I was taking in less sugar. It's really that simple. So there's less inflammation. So I felt better.

So it definitely worked. Well, and you're adhering to a program that just gets rid of some junk. Yeah. It's just not. What are you eating on the primal blueprint? I eat a lot of avocados. I'm eating a lot of healthy fats. I take MCT oil.

I take these exogenous ketones that you saw over here. Yep. These things, I mix these into water. Those are ketones. I got a keto protein coming out pretty soon. I'll send you some. This is ketogenic cream that you put in coffee. You mix it in coffee.

That's a good idea. Yeah, it puts exogenous ketones in coffee. That's a good idea. Yeah, it puts exogenous ketones in coffee. And then there's this new supplement, not a supplement, but a snack called Fat Fudge, P-H-A-T Fudge. I reckon that's how you pronounce it. Yeah, yeah, I want some of that. Eatplaycrush.com.

This woman, I don't want to fuck up the spelling of her name. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, it's fantastic. Well, it's important to have stuff that's convenient when you're doing these kind of diets. You know what I mean? It's important to have stuff that tastes good, too.

And you don't want to always be cooking up a fucking pound of meat every five minutes. Exactly. Well, luckily, I have a lot of meat in the back. Right. I've got a lot of elk from the couple of elks that I shot. But you need fats on top of that, and a lot of that elk is really lean. Yeah, right. You have to add fat to it, correct?

Yes. Well, no, you don't add fat to it, but it's not the same as, say, if you get a beefsteak, like a ribeye or something like that. You're getting a lot of fat, especially if it's a corn-fed beefsteak. There's a lot of fat. And so I take different kinds of fats, but avocado is one of the primary ones that I like. Ketogenic diets are amazing for losing weight, for weight class type stuff, like power lifting, weight lifting, MMA. And it works fucking awesome.

You can drop a couple pounds pretty quickly. You've got to let your body really get accustomed to it, though. Because in the beginning, people shy off of it because they feel like losing that weight makes them feel weak and changing from a carbohydrate consuming body to a fat consuming body

yeah it does take time do you have any cheat meal? I haven't had anything in the month that I've done it I just decide that I don't eat that anymore. Yeah, that's great. Well, I gave myself 60 days. At the end of 60 days, maybe I'll have some ice cream.

But I think I'm going right back on it. Carbohydrates. You know they make keto ice cream, right? Do they? Bulletproof ice cream, yeah. Nice. They sell it at Erewhon. Bulletproof ice cream.

I'm not buying any bulletproof stuff. Yeah, but it's just a bunch of... I know that guy. Yeah, it's kind of... Carbohydrates. Well, that guy's just too full of... I know that guy. Yeah, it's kind of... Carbohydrates. Well, that guy's just too full of shit about too many different things for me to support it.

The one thing that carbohydrates do is they help to hydrate. Carbohydrate helps hydrate the muscles. So that's what I think sometimes, like sometimes people will say, oh, I don't like keto diet because I feel weak because I lose energy.

If you're doing a keto diet properly, you should not be losing any energy. Your energy level should be fine. However, you're not going to have as much water through your muscles. And if you're a strength athlete or somebody that relies on strength, it can be compromised a little bit, especially when you start to lose anything over like 10 pounds. Your strength is going to be compromised. You lose a lot of weight, your strength is going to be compromised.

Yeah, so you have to make sure that you're hydrated. You have to make sure that you're... And you've got to make sure you get enough fat. And you're going to need some carbohydrates here and there. Low carbohydrates. You don't want high. That's it. That's all it is. And you look at like, you know, Conor McGregor going up a weight class, and I know

there's different fighters and different styles and all different things, but it is hard to overcome someone just being being bigger than you and so if you lose a bunch of weight you should expect to lose some strength uh the girl's name is mary shinuda s-h-e-n-o-u-b-a paleo chef no fat fudge paleochef.com i think is uh yeah that's her website and the uh the product's called fat fudge and uh hopefully we're going to start selling it yeah, that's her website. And the product's called Fat Fudge. And hopefully we're going to start selling it on it.

Let's just buy the whole company. That sounds amazing. It's really, it's healthy. It's good for you. But it's, you know, it's ketogenic. Right. The whole idea for me was just to just give it a try. Just see what it's like.

I actually really like it and so um it gets me in a mode where i uh i feel like everything come becomes an order when i'm on like a ketogenic diet for some reason like i'm not on it right now but when i get on it i'm like okay i know exactly what i need to do exactly what i need to eat i just i kind of like the structure of it you know and and it it's not bad i mean a lot of people are worried about it you know i'm not gonna have be able to eat carbs And well people start panicking and they start coming up. Well, I heard that it makes your dick fall off Different so many lies about stupid thing. Well, it's not good for you. It's not a day where you throw in runs on carbohydrate Prove it's bad for me, you know, like it's not prove it's good for you Just armbar those people can't do that Do you have a day where you throw in any carbs or not really?

No. Not so far. Just for maybe vegetables and nuts and stuff like that? Yeah, of that. But my thought behind it was I just want to try it. See what it's like. Try it the exact way it's meant to be. And what Sisson is the idea behind is not paleo because that word paleolithic.

It's weird. Well, it's kind of messed up because the paleolithic era, people ate breads. They ate grains. They did. So this is, he calls it primal, and the idea is just eat stuff that your body is just really kind of designed to eat. Your body's designed to eat fats.

Your body's designed to eat vegetables. And fats are important because when people burn fat, if you don't have those fats, like if you're not consuming them, your body starts burning the fat in your body. Well, and your hormone profile is hugely, you know, by fats, you know. Whereas there's a difference between if your body is designed to burn carbohydrates, if it doesn't have any carbohydrates, you crash. So that's a big difference, too. Like the feeling that I get in between meals,, I don't get the same kind of hungry. The hungry that I was getting when I was eating a lot of carbs, I would get this, oh, fuck, I've got to eat now. I've got to eat now.

I do not get that now. I don't get that weak, crashed feeling. I can get up in the morning after not having eaten since like 8 o'clock at night. I can get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, and I'll lift weights. And I don't feel weak. That's unusual. That feels weird. To not have the same hunger cravings because your body

regulates itself better. It burns off your fat. I've been doing this for a long time. So back in 1995, I moved to California to go to USC. Started training at Gold's Gym Venice and started training with Mike O'Hearn and this other guy, Ron Fedkoko who's getting his PhD so going to the gym and these guys are

a lot stronger than me, they're squatting 700-800 pounds and I'm around the 600 pound mark and they basically said hey you're too fat, you gotta lose weight you can't be 240 you need to be in the 198 weight class, I'm like I have no idea how to do that, I'm just a kid from Poughkeepsie

that moved out here, I have no idea how to do that. I'm just a kid from Poughkeepsie that moved out here. I have no idea what the bodybuilding lifestyle is about or anything. And he said, look, just eat red meat and water until you're – What? Yeah, red meat and water. So I did that for – I don't know, whatever. When I came back from New York to go back to school and lift with these guys again after the summer, I think I weighed 196. And so I came back like, wow, you did it.

And I was kind of stupid. He said vegetables were fair game. He said if you're really dying, you could have like an apple here or there. But it was basically bread, meat, and water. But for me, I was naive. I didn't know. And that was kind of a good thing for me

because I just dove in head first. And I didn't think about it. What were your shits like? And how often did they come out? It was like every four or five days. You got to lift up a manhole cover and just take a shit right in there. It's funny. I was absolutely fine.

I was stronger. I went into the meet. I think I squatted 650. Well, why did you stop eating like that? I just don't think it's sustainable forever. I think you just can't eat the same exact thing every day. It gets to be hard to do for really, really long, like years. I don't know.

It just gets to be hard to do for really, really long, like years. I don't know. It just gets to be tough. You mean psychologically? You just run into roadblocks here and there. And then you get triggers for food. Somebody has a fucking birthday, and then they are eating birthday cake. And it just kind of can snowball, and you might end up into something else. Or you might, depending on what sport you're into, maybe you have different goals at different periods of time. So sometimes you want to be small, and sometimes you want to be bigger so but when you say roadblocks you don't mean like

you mean more psychological yeah yeah yeah no the diet's fine you're not going to like have some sort of weird you know blood issue or anything like that yeah i just think i'm going to give myself a cheat day every couple months right that's how i think i'm going to do it just one day you have an an amazing iron will, you know, and a lot of people don't have that. It's not that hard, man. It's not,

there's kids in Ethiopia right now that don't have any feet. You know what I mean? Right. How hard is that? I'm eating elk steaks and sauteed kale and fresh eggs

and avocados. It's all great. Yeah. I feel great, man. You have your own chickens, right? Yeah. It's all, I feel great. so I'm going to stick with it. I really think this might be the way I eat.

People are so annoyed with me, though, because I talk about it too much. I think it's the best way to eat. We've always thought that. We have a friend, John Anderson, who hasn't eaten carbohydrates in years. No carbs? He's jacked. He's huge. Not no carbs.

As he likes to put it, those little motherfuckers are everywhere. Carbohydrates are in everything. But he pretty much despises the act of actually sitting down and eating rice or eating potatoes. Really? But it's so good. He used to do, I know, he used to do strongman competitions. And he said, when he did strongman competitions, the turnover rate from going from one event to the next, he had to eat carbohydrates. But he said that once he retired from strongman, where strength wasn't his main focus anymore, he's like, I get rid of all that shit.

And I just basically just eat meat and vegetables. Any bodybuilding diet, they have a lot of carbohydrates in it. And they stuff themselves with carbs, put on weight. So can John Anderson continue to get like bigger and stronger you're not gonna you're not gonna i don't think you can win like mr olympia without carbohydrates because i think there's a whole thing to the the hormones of the insulin and everything it's a whole thing it's way too complicated for me to understand but i just don't i think you can i think you're limited whenever you limit any uh macronutrient then you're going to have some limitations probably.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting situation when you're trying to figure out what's the best stuff to put into your body to get the best performance and the best feeling out of it. And then you factor in convenience, social things, customary things. You think about someone who's actually doing MMA, like a competitor, it'd probably be a mistake to completely get rid of the carbohydrates just you know i guess the the main question would be um if it's to lose weight to get to the next weight class then it would be something you do for a period of time yeah but if other athletes are successful with the carbohydrates in there why wouldn't you just utilize them some guys have gone vegan they try to go vegan to lose weight oh by the way all way, all you vegan dorks that keep tweeting me. Don't say it.

Don't say it. All you vegan dorks that keep tweeting me and Instagramming me about Nate Diaz, he's not vegan. So stop. Just cut this shit. People are saying he's vegan? Yeah. These vegans went crazy.

How does it feel to know a vegan is the best fighter in the world? You got beat by a vegan. They're all jumped on the vegan bat. He eats fish, you fucks. He eats eggs and he eats fish. He likes green plants. So what? It's good for you. Look, green plants are very good for you. I've heard you say that in your comedy.

The fucking cult attached to these people. They're so unbelievably proselytizing. They're just ridiculous. But what they don't realize too is if I have friends that are vegan and they never talk about it they never push it on me and I'm actually interested in finding out why they want to do that right so I ask them about it

they're not pushing it down my throat well most of what Nate eats is raw he eats a lot of raw foods and he did that for a long time and he tried raw vegan for a while but he felt like he needed to substitute it with chicken or with fish so he doesn't eat any land animals

but he does eat eggs I believe. Pretty sure. I know he eats breads. I've seen him eat like tacos and shit so he eats tortillas. He was fucking awesome

in that fight. He's a bad motherfucker and the reason why he won by the way is not because he's a fucking vegan you assholes. He's healthy

and he's got very good endurance. He's got a really good endurance base, and he's a really good boxer, man. His boxing is nasty, and his jiu-jitsu is top-notch. Nate Diaz has been around for a long time. 20-some-odd fights, I think, in the UFC. He's a bad motherfucker.

And all you vegan folks, I'm not mad at you. Honestly, it's just you've got to understand that that thing that you guys do where you go after people and you fucking insult them. And it just makes people more reluctant to associate with you, to want to be a vegan. It makes people more reluctant. And it makes people think you're ridiculous. They're in a cult.

They're like in a religion. And they're like trying to get other people to actively join. Yeah, why are you shooting deers but you have a dog as a pet? It's like, well, that's just fucking what's acceptable, man. I don't know. Well, it's not just that. If you don't shoot deer, you dummies, they fucking overpopulate unless you want to bring in wolves. There's nothing out there stopping deer from fucking and making babies.

You guys, you have this delusional, fairytale, Walt Disney-ized view of wildlife. And it's stupid. Deer condoms? And it's a really uncomfortable fucking discussion that you guys don't want to have. Because if you do have it, you're going to wind up feeling really fucking stupid. Because there's a reality. They're killing hundreds of bison in Yellowstone Park right now. They're going to fucking shoot them. You know why?

Because there's no hunting. Because there's too many of them. They're going to start shooting grizzly bears, too there's no hunting because there's too many of them right you know they're gonna have to they're gonna start shooting grizzly bears to the why because there's too fucking many of them they did you if something's got to kill them and it's you got to bring in predators or you're gonna have overpopulation problem what about people people with the most overpopulated thing in the planet well then don't fuck stop fucking stop having babies shut your mouth you know it's

the whole thing is preposterous but it was amazing the next day the amount of fucking tweets from vegans that were so excited that a vegan won this ought to stop them this speech no i'm kidding they're gonna go extra hard yeah it's hilarious it's amazing well they're just they're they're they're in a cult. Right. It's the cult of vegetables, and they think they're going to save the world. A lot of people that have gone vegan or vegetarian, like Rob Wolf, who wrote that paleo book. He does not hardcore paleo, but he got very sick from it. I hear that all the time. From people who went vegan.

I went vegan. I got really sick. Actually, when I was in rehab, there was a kid that was vegan. He was eating Oreos all the time. I'm like, that's so gross. Like, why are you going to. What the fuck is that about? They're vegan.

I'm like, yeah, but you're not a real vegan. That's like bullshit vegan, you know? Well, it's vegan, but it's shitty for you. There's a lot of stuff that's vegan. Gummy bears. Well, actually, gummy bears are actually gelatin. It's probably not vegan. But there's some.

Gummy bears are great. Just don't eat the whole thing, like you said in your set. Oh, that's a different kind of gummy bear. That was... Pot gummy bear? That's true. That's a true story. That was amazing.

You're like, why do they fucking sell it that way then? Dude, only eat the head. Why? What's going to happen? It's true, too. That was wild. That's a true story. For me to hear that kind of stuff, I don't know anything about that world.

It's so cool for me to hear about that kind of stuff, because I don't know anything about any of these kind of drugs. So I'm just like, this sounds amazing. Edible pot is a motherfucker, man. You got to be real careful. But you can be healthy on a vegan diet. You just have to be careful and you have to supplement. And you might have to supplement with vitamin B12, which comes from animals.

Yeah. I know people that are on vegan diets that are also very healthy, but they're doing it the right way, I guess. Yeah. You got to be diligent and there's also biodiversity where some people works better than it does for other people i know john fitch tried a vegan diet for a while and it helped him for a little while but then after a while um he just felt weak like initially it helped him a lot like he felt like he had more endurance and he felt healthier but slowly but surely he felt weaker

and weaker and then he just didn't feel like he could compete at 170 without eating some sort of animal protein. But you can get animal protein if you're worried about the ethical consequences of it. You could get it from eggs, and you don't have to hurt anybody. I have eggs. These chickens, they're pets. I could walk up to them and pick them up. They're not getting harmed. there's no factory farm situation if you have a backyard

you can have that and they free range they walk around you know you're gonna have to deal with the fact they eat bugs like if you see something that says vegetarian fed chickens well those poor fucking chickens it's not their idea right they want they want to eat everything those little motherfuckers really i fed them a mouse once. Oh, my God. I heard that episode. They tore it apart and their kids were there. They're fucking. My kids weren't there for the mouse chicken eating it.

Sacrifice. It sort of highlights how crazy people are when it comes to animals and the hierarchy of what's okay to live and what's okay to die. We bought these pinkies for a hawk. A hawk flew into a window and got knocked the fuck out and hurt its wing. And so we had to bring the hawk to one of those wildlife rescue places. And so in the meantime, this poor hawk was with us for a day over the weekend. We had to get it some food. So my family went to a pet food stop and got these pinkies, these mice they feed to snakes. And they're like basically little babies.

It's kind of fucked up. And you feed them to the hawk, and that's what kept the hawk alive while we had them. And everybody's happy. Like, oh, the hawk's still okay. Fuck you, mouse. But then there was this one mouse left. My daughter wanted to keep it as a pet.

I'm like, you can't. It's going to die. It doesn't have its mom. It needs to be fed. And so I decided to feed it to the chicken. They're crying. No, don't do it. But you fed it to a hawk. They're never going to be fed. And so I decided to feed it to the chicken. They're crying. No, don't do it. But you fed it to a hawk.

What are we doing here? They're never going to forgive you. But the moment that thing touched down, those fucking chickens mauled it, those little dinosaurs. They're monsters. Yeah, my in-laws have chickens, and yeah, they'll kind of eat whatever, anything put in front of them. They killed a mouse, an actual mouse, too. Not a pinky, but a mouse mouse that got into the cage. They have a big chicken coop they get attacked

by themselves do you lose some of them here and there no they fuck each other up they peck each other they fucking they decide to start jacking each other

what's going on in their brains yeah my dog killed a couple of them unfortunately and a coyote got one once yeah yeah that's what I was talking about

yeah that happens quite a bit it does happen but they fucking kill everything those chickens they will fucking kill and a coyote got one once. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. Yeah, that happens quite a bit. It does happen. But they fucking kill everything. Those chickens, they will fucking kill anything that's small. Like, they peck my daughter, and my wife is like, well, they're just dumb. They don't know any better.

I go, no, they're trying to eat her. They just can't fucking eat her. Are you crazy? She's little. They're trying to figure out if she's little enough for them to eat. They're fucking little dinosaurs, man. After I heard that episode, you talk about I had my girlfriend listen to it because she loves chicken.

She thinks it's so much healthier, cleaner than anything else. I'm like, listen to this shit. Kind of messed her up a little bit. Well, chicken is healthy. I know. I'm just saying that just when you hear that, you're kind of like taken aback.

Look, factory farming, and I think everybody can agree, is a monstrous side effect of civilization. It's horrific. And that's what's really wrong with the way we get our food. Yeah, you stuff so many of them in a cage and all that kind of stuff, yeah. The documentary Food Inc., have you seen it?

Yeah, yes, I have. That's a great documentary. It's amazing, you know, it's amazing. That's the darkness, you know? And if you feel better from not consuming animals, good for you. The problem is not those people. The problem is those people that are aggressively douchey to anybody who eats meat.

Right. You know, they just, oh, my God, I get them on my, I troll them now. I put hashtag vegan on meat dishes when I fucking cook anything that has meat in it. Okay, I'm with you on that. Let's start hashtagging that. Well, you can just say you're vegan for certain meals, too, because I see you post stuff on salads, right? Oh, I eat a lot of salads. Yeah, vegan meal.

Hashtag vegan meal. That's what I eat most of my breakfast, most of the time. If I'm not eating eggs, I'm eating a kale shake. Like two-thirds vegan. Yeah, but that's not how they take it. You're either in or you're out of the club, man. Either you're in or you're in the way. I understand their motivation. I just think the way they go about it

is so wrong and it turns people off. It's like the people that are against fur throwing paint on people. That's not going to stop it. It's going to make somebody mad. That's it. A lot of those animals that they get fur from are cunts.

How about that? Martin. Have you ever seen that video? We showed that video last week of the Martin chasing down the rabbit. Holy shit. It's this Martin. I didn't even know what a Martin was

until I watched those Alaska shows. You ever see those shows, like the Alaska guys that live in the mountains and go fur trapping and shit? A Martin is like this little weasel, and it's not any bigger than a rabbit. And this rabbit's running, and the Martin's running after it. And they're filming it on this snowy road, and it's a long chase.

I mean, like hundreds and hundreds of yards. Here it is. Look at this. Look at this. Look at that little fucker running. Holy shit. Yeah, he's hauling ass, and he's chasing after this rabbit. Wow.

And this rabbit is up ahead of him. What is the name of this video if somebody wants to watch it, if they're listening to this podcast? It says Martin Chasing Down Rabbit. I put it on my Twitter a long time ago. Holy shit. And this is like halfway into the video. Jamie did it in the middle. What are they filming?

It's not a... iPhone. The rabbit goes off... Like a snowmobile or something? No, it's a car. A car. The rabbit goes off into the side, and then, boom, the motherfucker grabs him. God damn.

But look, they're the same size the rabbit is even actually bigger than the martin but he jacks him with his face and then drags him up the hill and that's what they make fur coats out of yeah those guys that's a big one for fur trappers martin yeah not that there's anything wrong with the martin did that's what they do that's how they live just a mean bastard that's all that's how he gets by yeah it's hard out there for a pimp cold as where they live you know living up there in alaska um what what is the did you get any conclusions out of doing this documentary i mean is there anything that you you got out of it where you like you think that's important for people to know yeah i mean i mean, I've learned a lot myself.

I think the number one thing that I've learned is very simple. I'm not educated enough or have enough experience to really save anybody. I think anybody out there that has a friend or a family member struggling with drugs or alcohol, the number one thing that you can constantly do is drive them towards getting help, whatever that help is, whether it's going to AA meetings, whether it's going to aa meetings whether it's going to you know a rehab or whatever is this you know maybe

you just make them aware that they need help they might not even know driving them towards uh getting help because that's like the most important thing that you can do you know and i think that um you know a lot of people will talk shit about aa and say it doesn't work but i've seen it work i've seen you know every saturday morning in uh down in the Palisades, there's a meeting. There's like 200 guys there. And a lot of these people have been sober for 30 years. So they're still going to meetings and they're still helping people. And it's a great community.

That's kind of a part of it too, right? Being in a community of sober people. You don't want to disappoint the other people in the community. The people I've met in AA are some of my best friends. They're like the best. You know, like they're all, everybody's trying to do to do good you know like they've maybe messed up in the past and we feel bad about it now everything we do is geared towards like trying to help people and do good jamie did you pull up anything on ibogaine and how ibogaine works i found a couple stories

but they weren't really i didn't find like how do you spell that i b o g-O-G-A-I-N-E, I think. Is that how you spell it? I'm going to say something just to contrast him a little bit. You don't need to be an expert to help somebody. You can help somebody, like he's saying, drive them towards making sure they're getting help. That was kind of an issue with him and also an issue with my oldest brother. Especially with my oldest brother, I kind of felt like I don't know anything about all this addiction stuff. I don't understand. He's like bipolar, but I don't know if he's bipolar in the ups and downs or because of the drugs

or a combination thereof. I don't know what the hell's going on. So I almost felt defeated in a way. And then anyone out there listening that has dealt with addicts before you get burned by them so many times that it just leaves you, you know, with a sour taste in your mouth and you don't even really want to help to a certain point, but you have to help. You have to continue to reach out. You have to realize that it's not, the person is becoming a different person over a period of time. They're not the same person that they once were, and you have to try to help them.

And you don't need to be an expert. You don't need to know shit about addiction. All you need to know is that they need to get help and that a lot of the stuff that's happening, and you'll kind of hear them say it over and over again, they blame stuff on other people all the time. It's not really their fault. They literally don't have control anymore. I don't want to make excuses for people but that's the predicament that they get in

that's a predicament my oldest brother was in and we weren't able to pull him out of it and that's a predicament that he was in and we're able to save his life. It was one of the things you brought up in the documentary is bipolar and the diagnosis for bipolar and how many more people were diagnosed

prescription drugs. It went up 5000% in 10 years or something like that. And what is the excuse for that? Is that they didn't know before or is it just that they're trying to sell people medication? Yeah, they're trying to sell people on stuff. And that happened with like Adderall and Ritalin as well. I think that like bipolar is definitely a real thing. And it's a lot. I think it's like the real bipolar is a lot

more rare than than is being diagnosed so what i say what is bipolar exactly mean like what you're at different poles like you're you're uh one one time you know you're really happy and hey it's so great to see another time you're an asshole you know so it's it's just both uh opposite ends of the spectrum which is kind of ironic because that's how our addicts are yeah, and we all have that anyway Like we all have a little bit of yeah, okay I really have a little time and I'm they wouldn't treat our brother sometimes for certain things because they wanted him to get clean first But it's like shit hot you know you he's he's already an addict. How the fuck did we get him clean? There's something to they don't want to treat the bipolar.

It was... You're right. There's similar things. Mark says something really important in the documentary. He said, I talked to our older brother, and the one thing that he said to me is the only time I felt normal was when I was in jail, because I was completely sober. He had gotten thrown in jail for like... Yeah, and I was like, well, shit, maybe you're not bipolar.

Yeah, maybe you're not bipolar. Maybe it's all the stuff you're taking. Maybe a lot of the drugs are the biggest part of it, you know? Wow. So how long was he in jail for? Three months. And that time he felt okay? Mm-hmm.

Whoa. Yeah, I know. That was the craziest thing to me, too. That's nuts. And then when he got out, he just started going back to his old ways? Yeah, yeah. And he would just go up and down. What did he get thrown in jail for?

It was just a violating probation. I mean, he was a bouncer at a bunch of bars, and he got into so many fights, and he, you know. Town badass. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Beat up a lot of people. It's like if there was MMA around back then, he might have had a career. Yeah. You know, but, like, he was kind of that guy.

Like, he never was a bully. He never bossed anybody around. But if he saw you and somebody was, like, choking you, he'd go up and kick the guy's ass. Like, you know, that's – And it was never enough for him either to just hit somebody. You know, he had to fucking throw a bar stool on top of him or something afterwards. He was one of those guys. So the bipolar diagnosis and the fact that after he was in jail for three months, he felt totally normal.

for three months, he felt totally normal. Do you think that all the highs and lows are just coming from the drugs in his system and out of his system and the fluctuating levels and just didn't know how to feel? I think that's a big part of it. I mean, I can't really speak for him, but I know for myself, when I was trying to get off of the drugs, I went on a horrible drug called Suboxone, which is a miracle drug for the time you need it. But the problem is I was on it for eight months instead of for one week. That's a heroin drug for the time you need it. But the problem is I was on it for eight months instead of for, you know, one week. What is, that's a heroin drug,

right? It's a, it's an opiate that helps you get off of other opiates. So it's kind of a weird thing. But does that, did that make you feel high when you're on that stuff? No, no,

you don't really feel high. You just don't feel sick. And so, uh, but what happened to me, I was on, I was on it for like a really long extended period of time. And I, I felt completely out of whack all the time.

I felt like very up and down because if I didn't have the drug in me, I would have like anxiety. Oh, my God, I'm going to get withdrawals. If I was running out of it, I'd get anxiety. I just had so many ups and downs from that particular drug. And I think also from the opiate painkillers. They always made me somebody that I wasn't. They always made me call my girlfriend at the time and yell at her or do some asshole thing

that wasn't me, you know? They made you do that. Well, you felt compelled to do that in a way that you would never feel compelled to do if you were an honor. Yeah, I mean, you always break it down to the truth. Yeah, they didn't force me to do it. But while I was on those, I exhibited behavior that I wouldn't normally do.

Well, the fucking girl in the movie lights herself on fire. Yeah. You know, she's on. That story was so fucking sad. That story killed me. But they make you do some crazy shit. When I say make, I think they literally kind of make you do some crazy stuff. Because I don't think you're really in that much control anymore.

They literally kind of make you do some crazy stuff because I don't think you're really in that much control anymore. Well, your brain is a bunch of synapses and a bunch of neurochemicals reacting and there's a bunch of shit going on. When you add some new shit in there and you're throwing some massive opiates in there and all of a sudden all the signals are all fucking crossed and everything's firing goofy. It's literally not you. And it goes to that same fact of like, I think therapy is really important for people. And I think therapy is something that you get to do. It's not something you have to do. You kind of get to do it. It's like a luxury, I think.

And the thing is that a lot of people will go to therapy and then they want to get a drug with it. They want to go, like I said, we have this have this drug seeking behavior where we're like well a pill will fix me but talking to this guy is not going to fix me when actually talking to the guys what can fix you what can be the cure it's like uh we have these things called escape fires i don't know if you know what that is but like in firefighting you know uh there was this giant fire and it's and there was 15 firefighters on a hill. And a guy, one of the guys said, hey, I'm going to light a fire to make the fire jump over this thing.

And people were like, and we'll be safe. And everybody was like, no, that's not going to work. And the guy lit a match and did it, and he was the only one that survived. Everybody else was trying to get off the mountain, and they all died. And, like, that's the problem with America. Wait a minute. How does that work? I'm just saying, well, it's called an escape fire. So you can light a fire

to make the fire sort of go around you. I don't know exactly how that works, but what I'm saying is the answer a lot of times can be right in front of our face. I can say, you know what, this person needs to need therapy, and the person won't do it. So that's a big problem with America and our, you know,

we want an answer, we want a solution. We want with America. We want an answer. We want a solution. We want a pill. We want a quick fix. We want a pill to get you off pills. But if I'm standing there and I say, you know what, guys, come with me. I have the answer. Everybody's like, no, you don't.

We already know that that's not a good answer. So I think that's a problem. It's like we have to open our eyes and open our minds and start thinking of different ways to heal pain, to cure pain. You know, I mean, you're never going to cure it. You're going to, you're going to hold it down for a while. You know, I think the only way to like fix something really is like surgery or like you said, stem cells now and everything's so progressive that I like, I have a shoulder that I have a rotator cuff surgery that I need to have. And I've, I've just held off on getting the surgery because I feel like it, I feel like cutting my shoulder open

and doing whatever is going to do more damage and actually fix it, which is maybe a stupid thing to think. But I'm actually trying to figure out, like, hey, are stem cells good? Is there another answer to this? I haven't found it yet, but maybe I will. And if I don't, then I'll go get the surgery. But I'm trying to explore other options. Yeah, it's not a bad idea to explore other options, but it really depends entirely upon how badly your shoulder is damaged, how badly the structure of the joint is damaged.

And the shoulder is a weird one because it moves so weird. It's got so many different ways it can articulate. It's a tear in the rotator cuff. Super common. Yeah. Yeah. Super common. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, one of the things that we talked about before about these advertising, the ability to advertise for drugs, I don't know if they're ever going to take that down. But I think that that is one of the more disturbing aspects of the pharmaceutical industry because we all know that advertising gets people to buy shit. Oh, yeah. And it's not that big of a problem when it's a car or when it's an iPhone. I don't have a problem with it. You know what I mean? People can say, well, it supports consumerism and materialism and that's not that big of a problem when it's a car or when it's an iPhone. I don't have a problem with it. You know what I mean? People can say, well, it supports consumerism and materialism, and that's not bad. That's not good for our culture.

You could be strong enough to get past that, and I think you're going to be all right. But the pill thing. Well, it's different. We trust doctors. You don't go to a car dealership trusting a car dealer to be like, you know. Right. To give you the best bargain. Yeah, to take care of your life. Also, they suggest that you ask your doctor.

Like, shouldn't your fucking doctor tell you what medication you need? Exactly. And do you know that people that ask their doctor when they go in, the stats say when you go in and ask your doctor for a pill, 75% of the people will get that pill. So that's crazy because here's what happens with doctors. The doctors are over prescribing for sure, but their hands are tied because if I go into a doctor and I tell them I'm in pain, their job, according to the medical industry, their job is to get me out of pain. So how do they get me out of pain? They give me opiate painkillers. They give me

all these different things to get me out of pain. Now, if they don't get me out of pain and I fill out a doctor survey and say, you know what? My doctor didn't get me out of pain. That doctor gets a bad rating. They get enough bad ratings, they can lose their license. So there's a lot of pressure on doctors. Also, how the hell does anybody know how much pain you're in? Yeah, that's a big one, right? Neck pain or back pain. Oh, yeah, it really hurts. On a scale of one to 10, 10. Anybody can say that they've got something wrong with their back. And I talk about painkillers.

You know, painkillers are actually a great thing for acute pain. So you get in a car accident, you have a broken leg, whatever, you take some Oxycontin, you don't feel it, and you take that for, what, two or three days. You know, you don't take that for months because then you become a drug addict. So I think that if also, like, the prescribing and the number of actual pills we give people needs to come down. We just make way too many drugs. Is it all just money-driven, you think? Because, you know, like if you get a ticket, you know, you get a speeding ticket, that's like on your record. And you get another speeding ticket and it shows up, right?

How come they don't have something similar with drugs? You know, when you get prescribed a drug, like how come you don't have like a record well there is at least at least within the state in california there is a there is a thing but the problem is not everybody's required to use it it's not mandatory so right when it when that kind of stuff becomes mandatory it should be fucking because a lot of people say well it's my privacy like if i go to if i go to costco costco shouldn't be able to know what i get at walgreens and i'm'm like, you know what? At some point, we have to lose that privacy issue because it's killing people. Well, to protect people, yeah. Yeah, to protect people.

I think sometimes in society, we need laws to protect people from these things. Themselves, yeah. Well, that's what caused the whole OxyContin industry in Florida was that they didn't have a database where you could go to a doctor, get a prescription, then go down the road, get another prescription from another doctor. When Vanguard released that piece of the OxyContin Express, which really kind of highlighted that, and it showed a bunch of people in that, people that eventually wound up dying of overdoses, but when they followed them around and found out how easy it is to go to these pain management centers, that's what changed the industry. And that's what also changed the pills to be able to crush them up and smoke them when you can't do that anymore

they call those pill mills they have pill mills and people just go there's people at west virginia there's a movie called oxycona i've pretty much seen every drug movie now so oxycona was a pretty interesting movie where it was just about one single town in west virginia and that's like the nickname of the town and these people drive from west West Virginia down to Florida, get like 1,000 pills, come back and sell them all. And it's like that's what they do. And for West Virginia, they got a lot of money doing it and stuff like that, you know, because everything's cheaper there. But they've caused an epidemic there. There's, you know, a couple hundred people that live in that town,

and there's a couple people that are trafficking all these drugs in and making this this huge problem yeah those depression commercials are particularly problematic man where everybody's smiling there's butterflies and flowers and you see the sun coming up on the person's face and all of a sudden they're smiling again and you want that like it's it's really dangerous because it's so influential you watch a commercial and those commercials like it's visual. There's music playing There's a pretty girl this son and so influential They have those little sad like not like stick figures, but a little fat chubby faces like round moon Yeah

Point of the advertisement is really do is to sell you like they have to list the side effects, right? That's part of it. Like that, real quick. But the thing is, the whole rest of the commercial is just to distract you from the side effects. One of the commercials is showing a woman, which is fine. But it just seems random. They show this woman getting a backhoe. She's operating this backhoe.

As she's operating this backhoe, they say, don't operate heavy machinery while using this product. And you're like, this is so backwards. She's operating some sort of crane or a backhoe. And she's like... In like a business outfit, I think. Yeah, and they're like, don't operate heavy machinery. And you're like, where are these people getting... Who are the ad wizards behind this one?

Yeah. Yeah, it's just... And then the other thing was saying that medication for depression didn't do any better, didn't get people any less depressed than any other method of treating it. Yeah, and like you said, you had a friend that he did some antidepressants and it helped him. Who knows, if he just got off fucking Propecia, it might have cut it off right there. Yeah, and also though, I don't know enough about it to say people shouldn't take this or shouldn't take that.

What I'd say is look into it more, you have to become your own doctor, you know? And if I say like, like, look, I know how effective antidepressants are, how effective they're not. But if I say it, people just slam me for it. They're like, oh, this guy, you know, he's not a doctor or whatever. So what I'm saying to you is go out and do your research on it, you know, and find out how effective or non-effective your drug is. It just seems crazy that they're allowed to advertise, and that seems like something we have to stop. But the amount of money that they have, I mean, that woman on that documentary.

It controls Congress. Yeah, the woman in the documentary whose niece burnt herself to death, she said it best. They're drug pushers. They're legal drug, it was her, right? Yeah, yeah. They They're drug pushers. They're legal drug... It was her, right? Yeah. They're legal drug pushers.

And the fact that we allow them to advertise on television like that, that's got to stop. It's got to stop. I think it's one of the most important messages. We took tobacco off TV and we still have a huge... There's still a large amount of people that die from smoking cigarettes or whatever. But it's sort of their freedom now. It's like their choice. They know it's bad. it has a warning on it says

this could kill you if used as directed this could kill you and uh these pills aren't saying that no they're not saying that but documentaries like yours are and i think we need more stuff like that we need more things like what you did where people get a hold of it and they watch it and they they listen to the message and they go, you know what? This is something that needs to be talked about. This is something that you're not hearing our leaders talk about. You're not hearing our politicians talk about who are running for office. They're not talking about this massive epidemic that's killing more people than car accidents. That was another interesting statistic from your movie.

That pill overdoses kill more people every year than car accidents i'm lucky i came out the other side my brother didn't you know our brother mad dog he didn't make it make it out the other side and now my i've lost two friends i've lost two friends to oxcon we lost an uncle as well yeah yeah and my goal is just just to help people not be in the predicament i was in because it's it's terrible you know it's terrible i have people email me on facebook and i encourage people tweet me email me ask me questions i'm not i'm not too busy to help somebody in need so there's so many people out here listening to you that are listening to this podcast that are just like us that know people that have died there's so many

it's such a fucking like you said that one guy acting really weird if you have a friend that's acting strange it's not showing up on time to certain things that's avoiding you when you call them and just not communicating with you anymore. You're going to have to try to figure out a way to reach out to that person because something's probably up. Yeah. And like, you know, rehab is very expensive. And I want to tell people, don't use that as an excuse. Don't use like it's too expensive. I can't afford it as an excuse.

Hit me up and we'll figure out how to get it done. There's AA is free. There's a lot of, there's ways to do this. Probably a lot of programs too, I'd imagine. Yeah. There's ways to approach this. There's government programs. There's a certain insurance you can get. Like there's a lot of things that a lot of people don't know and they should know. So if somebody out there is struggling, like, you know, feel free to hit me up and I'll help as many people as I can. What else do you think that people need to know about the prescription drug industry that you think is like, uh, it's not, not being talked about on a daily basis? I think they're, they're just being lied to. A lot of people are being lied to, uh, these studies that they do, they only have to do two studies. They only have to show the

FDA two studies that are effective. And when I say effective, they just mean they have to be slightly more effective than a sugar pill, which means like it could be just, you know, some crappy drug and, you know, and that could be the placebo effects. And we said, I feel better because I'm taking this, right? So that's, that doesn't seem like as much of a hurdle as a drug companies make it out to be. Yes, it costs, you know, a lot of money to get a drug to market. Like they say, almost like a billion dollars sometimes just to get a drug to the market. But they're going to make so much more money off that and profit off that. And then part of that money that in the research and development, well, just put it this way.

Last year, I think it was last year, and John Oliver said this, John Oliver did a great piece on this on his show. And says, I think, last year that nine out of the top ten drug companies spent more money on advertising than they did on research and development. That's a big fuck you to all of us. That is a big fuck you. In all of our faces.

They save a lot of money for lawsuits, too. That's like the price of business is them to save a lot of money, put a lot of money away. But then they do the calculations. They run the numbers. And they're like, okay, well, if this many people try to sue us for death or whatever the fuck is their problem, we're still going to make out with $4 billion or whatever it is. There's all kinds of crazy shit like that.

It's just factored into the profit margin. If I sell $8 billion. That's standard business practice. GM does that and stuff. A lot of companies, it's just the way people do stuff. If I make $8 billion and I lost $2 billion in a lawsuit, who cares? $6 billion on top. Right.

Yeah, the studies, the way you showed how they do their studies, too, that was really an eye-opening thing. They have hundreds of studies and they don't have to show you the results. The problem is, listen, if there's nothing wrong with this if if i'm not being lied to then why the fuck did the fda not do an interview with me why did the dea wouldn't do it no they they would they're like you can just uh look on our website all our shit's on our website are you fucking kidding me i want to do an interview with you i want to talk to you i want to ask you questions i want to ask the dea who's responsible for how many drugs are made each year what the hell like what's going on here right and they won't these people are public servants they work for us and they won't do interviews and that's bullshit you know like

that's something that makes me angry because like i had all these ideas for the movie i'm gonna ask this guy i'm gonna ask this guy and they just don't want to talk to you whoa that's that's disturbing because you would feel like someone who's a public servant like that, that they have an obligation to, they should have some sort of a PR representative that has an obligation to state their policy. Yeah. The PR representative told me, like basically, like I'm, you know, I'm not NBC, I'm not CBS, I'm not HBO. I'm always do all my movies independently and then, you know, bring them to somebody afterwards. And so that's kind of a tough thing too, is like not calling up and have the credentials.

Yeah, but you have two established documentaries that have done very well. Yeah, I also think that people might have seen those documentaries and say, hey, we're not coming in our doors. You fucking troublemaker. Yeah. Throw us under the bus. Yeah. Man, just bizarre, bizarre, bizarre world we live in where this is the norm that these these pills that people are taking these consciousness altering pills that

they're trying to force down people's throats that was the other thing that i wanted to talk about the connection between statins and like how little statins work and the fact that statins the people that sell them also sell Viagra. Yeah, so statin will make you impotent. And then they sell Viagra to give you a boner afterwards. Well, there's that new commercial too with constipation. Oh, yeah, if you're taking opiate pills and you're getting constipated, we have another pill for you. That's probably the same goddamn company, right?

If you're taking a psych med and it's not working, you got to throw a Bilify on top of that. The Bilify is supposed to be like really scary for people too. It's all scary. But the Bilify is like one of those ones that really gives you like a rabid suicidal thoughts. Wait a second. Are doctors really telling me, telling us, you and me, that we need to take an antidepressant. And if it doesn't work. If it doesn't work, take another antidepressant.

On top of it. But you know what? Don't smoke weed. That would be bad for you. Weed is bad for work. If it doesn't work, take another antidepressant. On top of it. But you know what? Don't smoke weed. That's bad. That would be bad for you. Weed is bad for you. That would be bad. It seems like marijuana could fix those problems of anxiety and stress and, you know, whatever.

I've never really said marijuana fixing anxiety because it makes me anxious as fuck. It makes you paranoid? A little bit, yeah. What makes me aware. I mean, I think that paranoia is just you being aware of how vulnerable you really are and how crazy the world really is. You start thinking of weird shit, yeah. You start thinking about it as what it is.

But statins, so statins don't really help you? Well, look at that. If you lower cholesterol, what's that going to do for you? Well, there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. We have this idea in our head that we have to get rid of cholesterol. Yeah. But I think getting like lowering your cholesterol, they say really doesn't have much of an effect on like whether or not you're

going to have a heart attack. It's not like one of the markers anymore. Like, I think that the problem is not as a big of a factor as they once thought. And the problem is like, do you really need to lower your cholesterol? Do you really need to like, you know,

fix your diet and do like do it through other ways? Well, it's responsible for a lot of brain function. It's responsible for a lot of testosterone. I think people's cholesterol and triglycerides and stuff go through the roof just because of poor eating habits, not necessarily because they eat saturated fats. Yeah, well, saturated fats, that's another thing that people keep saying. Saturated fats are bad for you.

They parrot old studies. No, they're are bad for you. They parrot old studies. No, they're not bad for you. Saturated fats, it depends entirely on what you're eating, what your body requirements are. If you eat too much of anything, you're going to get fat, and that's not healthy. If you're getting your saturated fats from pizza, that's probably not the best option. Especially if you're eating four or five times a day or something. That's not good. I love pizza.

Well, we're all adults, right? or something. Yeah. That's not good. I love pizza. Well, we're all adults, right? But we're all learning from other adults that, you know,

our parents and our parents' parents that didn't have much fucking information. So we're growing up with these people that really didn't know what they were talking about.

Right. They really didn't have any idea. We're eating sugary cereal for breakfast and, you know, we just didn't know. The studies that our parents had in the 1960s

and the 1970s, what they had to go on, the information that they were given, it's just so poor in comparison to what we know now. Jack LaLanne knew what was up. He did. He did. He was drinking juices and drinking juice. What's funny is that I definitely want to do, I was saying I have a project I want to do that basically, you know, one day you'll read in the newspaper that you should drink coffee. It has all these health benefits. And the next day you'll read that it's bad for you, right?

Yeah. So you have all these conflicting things all the time go vegan don't go vegan do keto don't do you know and and nobody really knows the truth and i don't know the truth so like that's what i want to do is go out and seek uh basically basically do myth busters in the world of health and fitness because like there are people out there that know we just have to go find them and and expose them to the world so other people can know. There are a few people out there that have a really good understanding of most of what they're talking about. Sure.

But the problem is when it comes to the human body, there's so many fucking variables. And there's also so many different types of people. There's some people that just they need different nutritional requirements. They have different nutritional requirements than maybe you do or I do. There's just no getting around that. We always talk about our friend, Dr. Lane Norton, who kind of brought flexible dieting to the forefront. I'm not sure how familiar you are with it. But basically, it's almost like Weight Watchers in a way where it's like you can have all kinds of things.

You can eat some pizza. You can have some ice cream. You can eat steak. You can eat chicken. You can eat all over the map as long as you're kind of fitting within a calorie. Macros, right? Yeah, as long as it fits your macros, as long as it fits your caloric intake for the day. And let's not be stupid about it.

You can't be eating junk every day all the time. Well, people take his stuff out of context, right? And they'll say, fuck me, pizza. Well, they post pictures of Pop-Tarts and say I'm on flexible dieting. And it's like, well, you didn't post a 95% of the stuff that you ate that was healthy. Yeah, the chicken and rice or whatever.

Or like, vegan Oreos. Yeah, exactly. Don't you think though that there's a trend that people kind of understanding this

a little bit more now? At least it's starting to gain momentum. You're seeing people that are concentrating on organic vegetables. I think it's awesome. The seminar that I did

where there was, I don't know how many people there, there was a bunch of fucking people there. 150 people? Yeah, a shitload of people there. I mean, years ago, if I did a powerlifting seminar, I couldn't beg people to go to it. They're like, who the fuck cares?

There's women there now. There's girls. It's like weird. It's like, wow. They figured out the way to get that big, juicy ass. Yeah. When we were powerlifting, we were teenagers. White women are evolving.

Yeah, we would go into these powerlifting meets. Again, that ass. Yeah. But yeah, it's changing. People are starting to learn that strength is important, even as you get older, as you get into your 40s and 50s and 60s. It's more important even because you need to keep your bone density and keep your muscle mass.

It's important for women. They have osteoporosis and stuff like that. You see these guys when you go on vacation and you go by the pool and their bodies are just gone where his shoulders don't exist. They look like old women I just want to run up to him put him in an Americana and just rip their shoulder apart because it's just it's not attached to anything You're not together If you do that But I mean you look at their bodies, you're like, my God, if this guy has to pick up anything,

his body's going to break. Right. And this is a guy who at one point in time was a teenager. Right. He was a young, happy, vibrant kid. Working on the railroads or something. Like doing some, yeah, badass. Or maybe he's just been gross his whole life.

But you see people as they get older. My point is that if you live that sedentary lifestyle and you're sitting in an office all day and if you're not making your body work, it's going to fucking atrophy and it's going to break down. Bend down, pick some stuff up, do some squats. When I go to the airport, when you go to the airport, you realize how unhealthy this country is because people are coming from everywhere. And I go to the airport. Like, what was this in the airport in Ohio? And I'm like, there's not a lot of healthy people. Oh, Ohio's awesome.

How about Disneyland? Yeah, there's not a lot of healthy people. Oh, Ohio's awesome. How about Disneyland? Yeah, there's not a lot of healthy people. And it's sad because you're only making up 1% of the people. And if you see somebody who's kind of jacked, you're like, hey, what's up, man? Because you're the only ones. Well, how about when you go to Disneyland? It seems like a scooter festival now. Everyone's on scooters.

There's so many people that have eaten their way out of walking. They don't walk anymore. They're oozing over the sides of these scooters. That's a good way of putting it. It's what it is. And you could say all day that it's a disease. You could say all, but this is, it's real simple. You're putting too much food in your body.

Your body's getting too big. It's really simple. Well, getting so big that like fat is now growing in some odd places and stuff. I mean, people's bodies are not even, no longer in the shape of a normal human being anymore. I'm not trying to fat shame people, but that's the truth. Don't even say that word, because it's not real.

Fat shaming, yeah. It's so dumb. If you shame them into losing weight, that's probably beneficial to their health. Yeah. That's not the best way to do it necessarily. I think people, because they're lazy, fit shame people.

They'll see him walking down the street. The first thing they do, they'll discount all the work with all steroids or of course I'll say like you know that's not healthy look at that guy or anybody that's lean They're like all he cares about is a gym. Yeah, well not only that they think you're dumb because you work You must be dumb. You know I know this guy's a bodybuilder, but he's also he has a PhD right and people will think he's dumb That's great. oh my god. We just shut the fuck up. Everybody wants everybody else to have some sort of a deficit.

This guy's rich, yeah, but I heard he's got no dick. We always have to figure out what women say when they can't find a flaw. Dumb cunt. She's a bitch. I hate that bitch. She's a whore. Fuck the way of the top. It's always going to be that. I hate that bitch. She's a whore. She's a whore. She sucked away at the top. It's always going to be that.

It's always going to be that. But just, I feel like people are more conscious about their diet now than they've ever been before. They're more conscious about it because it's kind of been

getting out there in the public where it didn't before. You know, it's like, you know. It is very important and it is hard

to go to a grocery store and find the actual things you need. You know, like you want to get things that are, you know, they don't have preservatives and whatever. And it is hard to go to a grocery store and find the actual things you need. You know, like you want to get things that are, you know, they don't have preservatives, they don't have whatever. You have to like look for it. Oh, yeah. You're kind of a hunter-gatherer again trying to hunt in the grocery store for the shit that's good for you. It's exciting for us because we've been involved in this for over 20 years.

And then finally people are starting to pay attention. Yeah, we're like, oh, shit, they're talking about stuff we were talking about two decades ago. Yeah, how come it's not mandatory to be taking nutrition all through school? It's just ridiculous. Oh, there's no time for that. We have to teach you who the presidents were, and we've got to teach you all these other things that you're never going to use. And why not nutrition? Show them a documentary on sugar.

Show them a documentary on the effect of sugar. Yeah, I watched it with my kids. My kids were like, what the hell? I like that, my sugar film. Same company, Samuel Goldwyn, that did Prescription Thugs, put sugar film. Yeah. Yeah, I watched it with my kids. My kids were like, what the hell? I like that, my sugar film. Same company, Samuel Goldwyn, that did Prescription Thugs, put that out. And it's cool because that company is just looking for important things to put out. It's cool. Yeah, very, very important.

Sugar is a crazy one. I've taught my kids from when they were really young that a certain amount of food and excess, junk food, is going to make you fat. I kept saying it over and over again. Now they're older, so I don't say it because I don't want them to have some sort of weird complex about it anymore But they know yeah, they got the information. They get a message got across there eight and twelve now And so we're kind of just put it in their head that feeling that you get that feels good when you take it in Healthy versus getting sick and yeah, so on but the feeling that you get that feels good when you eat sugary foods like that Corresponds with a crash.

And that crash is really bad for you. Right. And so like now think about that next time you eat ice cream. Like enjoy it, but understand that you're doing something bad to your body. Because most kids don't know. They just, the good part. And then they have to realize one day that there's a bad part to it too. You have to teach them that.

But if you mix it with painkillers, it feels great. That was the other thing in your documentary where they're showing the kids how quickly they get kids on children's claritin. Right now, they've just approved OxyContin. They've approved OxyContin for like 11 to 16-year-olds.

Well, because here's what the problem is. Here's what people are saying, and it's bullshit. They're like, oh, well, it just makes it easier for a doctor to prescribe OxyContin to a cancer patient. You're telling me that the FDA is going to come down on a doctor for prescribing OxyContin to a kid that he's going to die from cancer? I don't think so. I don't know. Maybe they are, but it's so crazy because all that's going to do is create a bigger epidemic. Yeah, they're finding a new avenue for sales.

Yeah, I think they're very aware of that. I don't think that's something that needed to happen. I think that, you know, these kids that have... Yeah, who even thought of that? Yeah. Some fucking monster. Just somebody that makes the drug, right? No one else is really even thinking about that.

Well, the lobbies are the most powerful thing in the world, and that's what's... Was there anything surprising when you were doing this documentary? Was there anything that really took you by surprise? Yeah, I think what took me by surprise, I relapsed during the documentary. That was something that I didn't think would happen. But that was something that was...

What was the trigger? Was it the hip replacement? No, what happened was I... Okay, so I was taking a lot of prescription painkillers, right, from my hip replacement surgery. Fast forward about five years, I'm on them for like a pretty long time. I actually had to get my right hip replaced again. So I had three hip surgeries, not just two. Both hips done and then another, you know, another hip two years later.

So it was a constant like painkiller, painkiller, painkiller. Because the doctor, after the first hip surgery, never knew what was wrong with me. It was just this perpetual, you know, cycle. Oh, hey, your hip is, two years later, my doctor called me and said, oh, you know what? We screwed that up. I'm sorry. There's actually your, the socket never grew in properly and it's moving. That's why you're having so much pain. I felt like, I felt like I was on fire for two years, you know, like my, my hip was on fire. So, um, that was a big part of the drug addiction. And then I basically, my best friend Leland was a guy who he was, you know, he was prescribed painkillers too.

And he knew what it was like. And he was never one to overdo it, you know. But I just remember one day I told him, like, I need to quit these. I'm going to die, you know. And he would get prescribed painkillers. So I would try to get them from him. And he would say, no, no, I've cut you off. You know, you're done. And I just realized I needed to get off those painkillers.

I was going to die. So I went on Suboxone and that was like another year on Suboxone. And then while I was on Suboxone, that doctor put me on like eight other drugs, like Klonopin and all these other powerful, crazy drugs where I banged up my car, you know, driving around. So it was like a constant perpetual mix of these prescription drugs. And then I decided to get off everything and get clean. And I felt like, uh, when I did get clean, I felt like I could never sleep.

So I started drinking like a fish, you know, I was drinking vodka, full thing of vodka every day to sleep. Yeah. To go to sleep and stop my mind from racing. Yeah. Did that too. Didn't work. No, I did that too. Didn't work? No, it didn't work.

So I became a very heavy drinker, and I would get these crazy hangovers. And that's when I just said, you know what cures a hangover? Xanax. Wow, that really works for me. And I would go on Craigslist, and I would buy Xanax from a kid in Sun Valley, which is like way the fuck out from Venice. You can buy Xanax on Craigslist? xanax oxycontin i showed i showed that in my documentary and that was something that the congressman was like whoa yeah in the movie yeah and then they stopped doing it but you were like i knew about it because i was doing it yeah and what happened was i lied to him i said you know i used to do that like three years ago i just did it three

days ago jesus christ and uh you become a good liar you know when you're addicted to drugs and I was trying it was weird I was it was a weird thing I was trying to make a difference but I was still doing shit and I didn't know how to stop that just seems so crazy you could buy drugs on Craigslist that's insane yeah I say in the movie like they they had shut down the whole prostitution thing mm-hmm on Craigslist why don't you just shut down selling drugs yeah why'd they shut down the whole prostitution thing on Craigslist. Why don't they just shut down selling drugs? Yeah, why'd they shut down the prostitution thing? I don't know.

It seems like a great idea. It just went over to Backpage.com now. Yeah. Oh, now you let everybody know. Yeah. There's a service. Was there anything else that was surprising when you were doing it? I mean, I think a lot of it was surprising.

Like that woman, Gwen Olsen, who was the pharma rep who basically uh yeah there was there were so many things that like i always thought that a lot of the stuff i was going to present in the movie was a conspiracy theory you know was like people are gonna think i'm crazy but then you find so much proof that like you're being lied to that it's crazy that the proof keeps mounting and that was that was always surprising to me how uh every sort of uh corner i would turn in the movie i'd be like what this is something else that's messed up and then trying to get people to be in a movie and talk about their uh their drug use isn't is that isn't ever easy you know that's like always a problem yeah that woman was really really it was really profound it was

really intense but one of the things that she said what she was talking about, are you worried that they're going to kill you? She goes, no, I'm worried that they're going to kill you and you and you and you. And I'm going to be screaming from the rooftops and no one's going to care. Yeah. I know it sounds crazy, but the whole time people were saying, aren't you afraid they're going to kill you? And I said, if they kill me because I made a movie about prescription drugs, that just proves the point. You know, like I'm not afraid. I'm not going to live my life in fear

because I'm going to make something and tell the truth and somebody's going to kill me. That would be the worst way to live your life. Well, not only that, it's not like they have a team of assassins working for a pharmaceutical company, but they don't have to kill you because they're going to keep making billions of dollars. Exactly. They don't care. Your documentary, as profound

as it is, is only going to put a dent in maybe 1% of the people that would be thinking about taking those drugs. Exactly. And that's the problem, you know. What we can hope is that 1% will be 10% in a few years and maybe 20% in a decade or more. And maybe other people continue to make these documentaries and uncover, you know, new information. And the thing is, like, you know, yeah, like you said, they're going to keep making money. They're going to keep, they're basically printing money anyway.

You know, they're going to just keep doing it. It's scary shit, man. It's scary shit to watch. It's scary shit to see people that you know get hooked on these things. You know, and it's scary shit to like, like this guy that I was talking about where I'm like, what is going on with this guy? And then one day he tells me about his back. I'm like, oh. Yeah.

How many people are walking around like oh yeah how many people are walking around like that how many people are driving their cars like that i mean you'll see build up out of their head i you know when i'm like i said when people when you do a movie like this it becomes a confessional and you would be shocked at the people who were doing the same exact thing as i was doing that like would look down on me for doing because oh well you were a drug addict like i'm i'm not addicted to it like i hear people say that all the time like i'm not addicted though and like yeah but that's where you're going you know also if you're addicted to something that was prescribed by a doctor maybe you don't feel like a drug addict because you're not like buying

shit on the streets maybe yes i know a lady who thinks she looks down on marijuana like in a big way and she just talks trash about it but she takes a xanax every night right when i literally can't go to sleep without xanax when i started the movie i was the exact same way i always thought we always thought uh in our high school marijuana was for all the dirt bags like i felt i thought that for so long i did too and now i look at him like did i miss the boat on that like yeah maybe maybe what was i doing uh drinking and taking all these pills when something was there you didn't want to be a loser. And that's what we're, it was drilled into our head when we were kids, people who smoke pot are losers.

And I think, I think marijuana, there's a, there's a slippery slope with marijuana because now that it's become, you know, more accepted medical marijuana in some states, it's legal. Now they're just ramping it up and make it stronger and stronger and stronger. You know, anything that alters your, your consciousness can be stronger. Anything that alters your consciousness can be problematic. It can be beneficial or it can be problematic. The only good thing about marijuana, it doesn't have a physical addictive property to it where your body desires it in a way where you're going to start sucking dicks and robbing people for it.

But it certainly can become a problem. Yeah, that guy's just been wanting to suck dicks. Wasn't that in like Half-Baked? Remember in that movie Half Baked? I think that anything can be addictive. Gambling can be addictive. Food. Porn.

People get obsessed with things. That's addiction in a way. You can get obsessed with all kinds of healthy or unhealthy things. healthy or unhealthy things. And I think that what we're seeing with this documentary is a world that has been growing. It's an epidemic that's been growing that we're just not getting that much exposure to in the mainstream. We're not hearing these numbers.

We're not hearing these statistics that you presented in this movie. We're not hearing these numbers. We're not hearing these statistics that you presented in this movie. The statistics about the 250 million fucking prescriptions a year. I mean, just that. And what's sad is they put people on this endless cycle all the time. Like Chris Lieben, who's in the movie UFC. He was awesome to talk to.

He was great. And then I talked to him not that long ago. He got in some trouble. So I called him to see how he was doing. like it sucks because he's still on suboxone i'm like yeah you know like that's a drug that you know he's on it now he said he told me he was still on it and he's still drinking once in a while until he's taking that and it sucks because he's he's a cool guy you know he's a great guy a little reckless here and there but he was he was so awesome to talk to he actually became a friend through doing the movie and i i always worry about my friends like i don't want him to still be on stuff or still be taking stuff you know yeah i wanted to add that uh the reason why he relapsed

was because he tried to stop everything cold turkey on his own and he stopped for seven days right and then that's when he that's when he relapsed so those people out there that think they can do it by themselves, you probably can't. You probably need to try to seek some help. Well, there's a lot of people that are very strong-willed, and they feel like I can do it, like some other pussies can't, but I'm going to be able to do it. I went through 90 days of rehab, and I came out, and I've been sober for like 22 months, and people in my circle say that's a miracle because a lot of people don't even make it that far.

So I'm just trying to keep going and trying to get healthier because I think it's all a snowball effect. You can go snowball effect downhill or you can go snowball effect and, and, you know, be on the rise and start doing everything right and eating like you're eating and using people like you, like you're a big inspiration to me. I listen to your show all the time. I think it's awesome. It's a great source of information. I have a bunch of different things I do every day and listen to and watch and try to gain information from everybody, become a better person all the time.

Well, thanks, man. I appreciate it. And I do too. I have a bunch of different podcasts that I listen to and news sources that I find. And I think this is a cool time for that. And this is a cool time for a guy like you can come on a podcast and just talk for a few hours and explain everything and be open and people will hear this

more than a million people will hear this and it'll open their eyes to what this is all about i felt obligated to be open because i felt like i did so much bad shit like like man i gotta tell people about this i gotta be and a lot of people are afraid to be an open book and i understand that and the luxury i have is like I'm a nobody. It doesn't matter. I can tell you everything. I have nothing to lose. Well, you're not a nobody.

I mean, you're a well-known documentary filmmaker, but I think that it takes balls, no matter who you are, to do what you did. So thanks. Thanks for the documentary. Thanks for making two awesome documentaries that I've seen. I still haven't seen Trophy Kids. You like Trophy Kids. You have kids. I have kids. The other thing, seen Trophy Kids. You like Trophy Kids. You have kids. I have kids.

The other thing, too, is it's not over. He's still working on his life, still working on rebuilding. It was a financial disaster. Well, we decided as a family, we've had family meetings to figure out how the fuck do we help him. So we all got together and now actually moved him out of this pit of L.A. and moved him to Sacramento. You're in Sacramento now? In Davis.

He lives down the street from me and he works for me now. So we're just producing content for my YouTube channel and just cranking out awesome information. We'll probably do some documentary style things as well. I think it's funny because I inspired him to start working out when he was 12 years old. And now he inspires me. I mean, he was a dyslexic kid. He was, you know, he's worth millions of dollars now. It's crazy because he was always told he couldn't do it. He wasn't smart enough and you're not going to make it

and all that bullshit, right, that they tell you in school and they put you in a class with the kids that are eating glue. And he invented a thing. Set the desk on fire. It's almost like a meathead version of the movie The Jerk. He invented a thing that helps you bench press more weight without getting hurt and boom. And I think that it's an important message for people to follow what they're passionate about. Not always worry so much about money.

Because the money came because he followed what he loved to do. That's a very good message. Don't give up on shit. Don't give up on the people that you love. Don't give up on the people that you care about. We lost one. I'm lucky to still have him here. He's's my hero my other brother was my hero as well just you got to take value in the people that are around you and there's there's inspiration and motivation to be found all over the fucking place stop being so goddamn grumpy and getting on youtube and talking shit i saw your bit that made me fucking almost cry. I was laughing so hard.

Because you're like, all you got to do is close your motherfucking laptop, you bitch. Yeah, that's right. But, you know, anyway, just try to be positive. There's a lot of great things surrounding you. Open your fucking eyes. He went to your show for his birthday,

and him and his wife, they loved it. They were laughing their asses off. Joey Diaz killed me. Killed that fucking guy. Holy shit. So check this out. So he's like, hey, Andy, the day that we come, because his wife is a big part of this.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got an argument. He's like, the day I come back from the Arnold show. I was gone for a week. Yeah. The day I come back, I'm going to go to Joe Rogan's show. She's like, I don't really think it's that important to go to Joe Rogan's show. It's all through text.

A lot of miscommunication. Like in L.A. Like, why is that so important? He's like, well, I'm going to go to Joe Rogan's show. It's all through text, a lot of miscommunication. Like in L.A., why is that so important? He's like, well, I'm going to go to his show, and it'll be awesome. I think it'd be good for us. My brother would go on. Yeah, you need to be with the kids. She thought he was going to go to your comedy show, not the comedy show.

So it was weird. She was upset you were doing this. Oh, no. I was like, no, no, no. Honey, I'm going to be on his podcast. I was like, no, no, no. Honey, I'm going to be on his podcast. She was like, oh, okay, that makes sense. Oh, I get it. She thought he was going to your comedy show and thought it was like, I'm flying to L.A. We just went a couple weeks ago for your birthday.

Oh, so she thought you were coming to see stand-up. Right, right, right. She's like, you fucking idiot. Why are you doing that? Miscommunication through text. It can happen. Listen, man, thank you so much. Thank you both, you guys.

MB Slingshot, right? That is... That's one of the Instagrams. The other one is at Mark Smiley Bell. That's my official Instagram. And if I can plug my YouTube, it's youtube.com backslash supertraining06. And to celebrate being on the show, we put a code up. Go to howmuchyoubench.net and type in Rogan and you get 20% off.

Bam. Day now. Bam. And Prescription Thugs is available right now on iTunes. That's how I watched it. Amazon. Roku. All that stuff.

Roku. Shit. On demand on your television cable. And anything you got going on, man. Always, you got an open invite. There's some awesome stuff coming up, man. I'm really excited. Shout out to all our bitches. All our bitches. I don't know what that

means. Pros and cons. Thank you guys. Much appreciated. Thank you. Alright, stem cells.