JACKASS Star Steve-O: A SHOCKING Story Of Unaddressed Childhood Trauma, 3-Day Drug Binges, Mocking Death & Craving Attention! (HOW TO TURN YOUR LIFE AROUND).

42:50John's Wood in 1992. I went off to the University of Miami. Right around the time when I went to the University of Miami, my mom moved to Florida as well. Then on that fateful day of October 10th, 1998, we received word that mom had this brain aneurysm. My sister and I flew to Florida from New Mexico. My dad flew to Florida from England. We all congregated around this crisis with my mom. At one point, we went to a nearby restaurant just to get a meal. I went outside to smoke a cigarette and my dad came outside and initiated this conversation. He says, I want to tell you that I feel I've done a disservice to you by not supporting you in this path that you've chosen, my path to be a crazy famous stuntman.

44:00He said, I chose a path that my father, Dad broke the mold becoming a businessman. The idea of that was pretty repugnant to his father. And he said that his father had the same conversation. You chose something that I would not have chosen for you, but you're clearly committed to it. And so I just want you to be the best and be the happiest. And I pledge to support you. And I'm thinking, man, like it's tough because I'm a loser. you know like the whole thing going on with my mom was it was kind of prevalent but this the side conversation like i just felt like wow you know like now dad supports me and i i just did i didn't feel very very hopeful i don't think at that time but it put a lot of wind in my sales.

44:53So the next year I saw this advert on television for a show called Real TV where they're saying if you got home video footage that's crazy and you think that we should have it on our show then call this number. I called the number and sent them my videotape and they wanted it. And dad helped me negotiate the license deal with them. And it was meaningful. You know, this pursuit of becoming a crazy famous stuntman had made my father and I as far apart as, you know, it really, really made us not, our relationship suffer. And then ultimately it would bring us together. And today, my dad is 80 years old, been retired forever, but he's come out of retirement and he's on my payroll.

46:00He manages all kinds of business stuff for me, all my insurance stuff. like and um it's crazy it's insanity that that that just again what what drove us so far apart brought us so close together and that catalyst moment was your mother's brain aneurysm really it was that conversation might not have happened and then it it was and now now you pointed to when Jack asked her, I wouldn't just, well, okay.

46:40My sister and I both moved from New Mexico to Florida. To be with your mom. To be with my mom. Yeah. And my sister naturally assumed the role of caregiver for my mom. And I got this opportunity to go be a circus clown on cruise ships. And it just made sense for me to do that. You know, like I think that my overall attitude, particularly like even going off to work on cruise ships and then with Jackass, I don't think that I had any level of guilt about it. I think that my attitude about pursuing my own career and to be with Jackass and everything else, my attitude was that rather than let this aneurysm destroy everything, that I've really strongly wanted to get out there and really make something of myself and that that would be the way to honor my mom more and make my mom proud that way.

48:04People don't often appreciate how difficult it is for everybody around the individual. That's sick. And again, I've learned that from having this conversation about just how sort of debilitating and difficult it is for everyone around the individual, especially when there are situations where they become disabled. And your mother's situation was, I mean, she couldn't move, from what I understood. She wasn't necessarily speaking. She was wheelchair bound. She had to be lifted out of bed and into a wheelchair and back. And she could speak? She could speak, but it fluctuated how present she was, how aware she was.

48:48One of the more aware moments, I said, Mom, I'm going to have a book written about my life. And she said, and who's going to write this masterpiece? She was making fun of me and it was funny. like uh the last time that um that my mom ever laughed was i came home um with the words shit and fuck tattooed on my knuckles and um mom was in the hospital at that point with the do not resuscitate order on her bed like this was this was the end like it was about a month before she passed and um i i walked into her hospital room and i just didn't you know it was just a tough situation i didn't and i just said hey ma like check it out and i held up my my knuckles to her and she she looked at it and she said shit fuck shit fuck and then she said my son is a shit fuck and she could, like, she laughed and it's just the most beautiful, I thought it was just the most beautiful thing.

50:06Like, she was able to laugh, you know? And, yeah, it's tough, man. That whole thing's tough. And the toughest thing is just imagining. When I was struggling in the beginning, like prior to her aneurysm. Like there were times when I'd show her one of my videos. I'd say, Ma, check it out. She says, oh, yeah, that's great. But like how is this ever going to like earn you anything? You know, like she didn't ever seem to be like terribly concerned for my safety. I was showing her videos of like jumping off bridges and doing stuff that was really pretty dangerous and appeared to be life-threatening.

51:00And that never seemed to upset her. What she was upset about was that I didn't have a pot to piss in. She would say, you don't have a pot to piss in. How am I supposed to be impressed by this? Where is this ever going to get, you know? How is this ever going to, she would say, show me the money. show me the money like how is this gonna get you the money and um man like given that that that was her position on it and i think that that she was um largely concerned with the appearance of things and and um like less she wasn't ever i never got the sense that she was worried for my safety on any level i think that's what she was concerned with was how i reflected on her interesting you know like my son's a loser this is a bummer you know she was bummed that i was a loser because that reflected badly on her and um that's just that's what was important to her you know there's nothing wrong with that and um is that why you want her you'd like her to be able to see god yeah man that's the toughest thing to imagine if uh if we if she she had been to rehab many times she was in the program recovery but she just couldn't hang on to that you know she would always she would just always end up drinking again and um i think that what would what would cause her to relapse was was the you know trauma from the breakup with my dad, which is just a vicious cycle because what broke her up with my dad was her drinking.

52:45And then the trauma from the divorce would make, you know, it's a vicious cycle. But had she gotten it, had she really, really grabbed onto it and not let go and been in recovery, and both of us, like she would have just gotten such a kick out of like being on being on the red carpet at a big movie premiere and she would just be letting me have it making fun of me for the dumb shit i was doing in the movies like we'd be laughing so that was one thing my mom had like a sense of humor she had she was cool man she was cool and we would we related to each other a lot you're you're 29 november the 7th she passes away correct a mixture of emotions i read in your book um in professional idiot page 194 the overwhelming emotion i felt afterward was relief sure yeah she like it this the suffering was over you know it was it was merciful like there's nothing upsetting about my mom dying It was what was upsetting was the pain and the suffering that she had endured for the five years leading up to her death.

54:12Do you ever process that? We talk a lot about these days about grief and we understand that grief is a thing. And I don't think we ever did before. Do you did you ever process that?

54:25if I did it was years later in recovery and and digesting the concepts in that book conversations with God that was when I finally

54:48that was when I just developed the idea that mom wasn't alone. You know, that mom was, she wasn't alone. That was an experience that she had as God. And somehow that just, it doesn't change anything, but it changes everything. Alone. Why the word alone? Why was that the concern? Yeah. Just because the... I mean, it's... like on a bigger level like mom mom's this one thing you know so there's no such thing as alone at the same time jackass starts taking off right so that's roughly around that time your fame goes through the roof yeah well mom's aneurysm was 1998 i worked on cruise ships for six months of 1999 i worked in a circus at a flea market for six months in year 2000 and jackass came out in October of year 2000.

56:05And then, yeah, everything. The movie comes out in 2002. Yeah. You're 28 years old at that time. Your mother passes when you're 29 the next year. These two things have almost happened at similar times. Your trajectory has started to skyrocket. Your mother has passed away. Lots to deal with. Lots going on. Fame is this new thing in your life now and attention. And as you said earlier, like, worrying about the next meal is maybe sometimes a better problem than worrying about the last um this strikes me as as a real difficult moment in your life um i i the from professional idiot which i read it said by by mid 2007 i was practically living on diet coke booze and nitrous a not diet coke a diet of cocaine oh it was a diet of coke big difference um you were hallucinating and hearing voices yeah big time it's called psychosis and it's a fascinating um it's a fascinating thing that um there are so many different substances one can ingest that might bring about this phenomena of psychosis, yet there's so much similarity between the experiences people have with it, even though they take so many different avenues to get there.

57:41And that's partially why I believe that psychosis, that there's sort of different compartments, maybe dimensions, and that in our human experience, we're in a distinct compartment and that psychosis happens when you erode the barriers to the other compartments, other dimensions. And by doing that with chemical substances, we erode the barriers, kind of open ourselves up to energies from other dimensions um you open yourself up to like all levels of it so you can really let in demons you know like like demons being low level frequency energy and angels like being a higher level and And by just consuming enough substances, I really believe that you erode the barriers, you open yourself up to all these energies, and in comes flooding demons and angels.

59:13And that's how I characterize my experiences with hallucinations. All that stuff is demon activity with some angels mixed in. I was reading about this thing called the rad email list, where you sent an email to a lot of people, which I think ultimately sounds like one of the things that brought about an intervention. Right. It wasn't one email. It was more of a stream, a barrage. I was inundating a list of roughly 200 people, many of them very influential people in the entertainment industry. celebrities and agents and just powerful people uh you know media personalities um and i was just inundating these 200 people with emails at all hours around the clock and and effectively broadcasting my downward spiral in real time and and i would send at times really funny stuff you know at times uh just deeply alarming stuff i was you know i i was i knew that how out of control i i was and but but i but i was just i was rad i mean i i was out of my mind i was out of my mind and i was making that abundantly clear by uh sending video youtube had become a thing youtube started in 2005 so 2007 youtube allowed me to make really disturbing videos and then email the links to 200 people if i was a fly on the wall in 2007 in your life what would i have seen on an average day in 2007 i was renting four apartments in one building one of them i just demolished the walls and built a skate park throughout the whole apartment um with permission from a landlord no not at all no no permission whatsoever and it was just with the the the i remember there was like a russian prostitute operation in the adjacent apartment, so they weren't trying to complain about the noise.

1:01:52There was a stairwell on the other side, and beneath was the parking garage. So there were never any complaints for that. And then a little bit down the hall, I had a couple of my buddies living there. One of them was, you know, edited stuff for me, but we very rarely, well, I mean, he would. He thinks he works hard. Yeah, I mean, I had people like on salary and they didn't do too much. But when I was really out of my mind and these disturbing videos that I wanted to email the links to the rat email, this my editor guy was in charge of that. um so yeah i had the the office the skate park apartment the office apartment and then i had an apartment for the assistant the assistant really didn't do anything um except uh explain to people that she couldn't get a hold of me and change my flights uh well because i would always miss my flights um and then i had my apartment which uh was this is sort of a this is where all where all the really crazy stuff happened that was that was just my little drug den and um i would i would inhale this nitrous oxide stuff and and it would come in these little cartridges that people use to make whipped cream and a box of these nitrous oxide cartridges would have there would be 24 cartridges per box but if you bought a case there would be 25 boxes in the case and i believe that 25 times 24 comes to 600 um and so i would sit down with 600 cartridges of nitrous oxide and just inhale.

1:03:57The thing that the cartridge goes into, this canister, correct, yeah, but I'd have two of them. So I would crack one up and fill that and inhale it. With my lungs filled with nitrous oxide, I would be busy filling up the next one so that when I exhaled the nitrous from the first, I would then inhale. So I would not breathe. I wasn't breathing air. I was inhaling nitrous oxide to the exclusion of breathing air as much as possible. And my goal at all times would be to lose consciousness. Because if you do that and you hold your breath, you will become unconscious. and you're kind of twitching and flopping around and your lips are all blue and then you come back too and it's not healthy.

1:05:01And I would be doing that and I would be doing that for days on end while snorting cocaine. So it was on the second and particularly on the third day of being awake on a cocaine binge while inhaling nothing but nitrous oxide. That's when the most profound psychosis with all of the hallucinating would be going on. you sent out on that rad email one time suicidal ideation yeah i i i uh i um i mean i was going so crazy in this apartment and um i uh it's very loud and and and um destructive in there and and the the next department over was uh a lawyer in his first year of being a lawyer uh so you know like um a guy who cared about work and i was just making all kinds of noise at all hours and so he was he would call the police he's kidding this my neighbor.

1:06:25It's insane. And the more that the police would show up at my apartment, the angrier I would get at the lawyer who was calling the police, which is a little bit backwards. And that was kind of my MO. I would wrong people and then I would resent them for their perfectly natural response to being wronged by me. At least you're honest. so i would uh you know i would bang on the guys i would really antagonize this this poor lawyer guy and um at one point it got to uh to the level where pounding on the wall i actually pounded a hole in the wall and um i pounded a hole you know on my side there's the there's the the dry wall and then in between there's like the fiberglass stuff and then then there's his side throughout i actually this one night pounded all the way through his side of the wall too so i was actually looking into the apartment which of course constitutes vandalism so when he called the cops this time the cops showed up they had no choice but to actually arrest me for vandalism He said, look, he put a hole in my wall.

1:07:44So they were here to arrest me. And I was really, really out of it, like having been snorting both cocaine and ketamine. So I was super out of it and didn't put it together that I was being arrested and going to jail with a bag of cocaine in my pocket. I mean, I probably could have. It would make sense that... And I remember it was funny too because they said that I was barefoot and I had no shirt. They said, well, we have to take you to jail. We have no choice, but we will let you go put on a shirt and some shoes, which was the perfect opportunity for me to go into my apartment and remove the bag of cocaine from my pocket.

1:08:34But I didn't do that. And I'd said, you know, fuck his shirt, fuck shoes. So I went to jail completely barefoot and shirtless with a bag of cocaine in my pocket. And then when they process you into jail, they search your pocket. They found the cocaine and they arrested me again. So now I had a felony cocaine possession charge as well as the vandalism charge. And this was pretty well publicized, the fact of the cocaine and the arrest. and when I was released from the jail, I was in there for like, I want to say like three days because the consensus among anybody who loved me was he's better off in jail.

1:09:24So there was no concerted effort to bail me out, which was why I managed to stay in there for I believe about three days. And then when I finally did get released from the jail after the three days and I returned to my apartment, there was an eviction notice on the door. So my response to that was, oh, okay, well, I'm being evicted. And I went into the apartment. I found more vials of ketamine that I had stashed in there and I cooked that all up. And within a couple hours, I was like screaming about God, like while jumping up and down on a parked car and like dealing with more cops you were you were manhandled into a psych ward right like yeah yeah well so i went on this this this prodigious final bender and and uh i was running out of time before i had to get my stuff out of the apartment i was evicted so the email to the rad email list was hey i have to have my stuff out of this apartment because I've been evicted.

1:10:32But before I have to be gone, I want to jump a motorcycle. I want to ride a motorcycle through the living room and off a ramp and jump it over onto the building next door, which was a very, very small gap. It was hardly even a big stunt. and it was like two and a half stories up. I think I was on the third floor, but it was really like kind of two and a half. So maybe like 20, 25 feet. And I said on the rad email list, and I also, I want to jump the motorcycle onto the roof next door. And I want to jump out of the bedroom window into a hot tub. And I said, so Knoxville, bring a camera crew and a hot tub.

1:11:26and if you can't do the hot tub, at least bring some cardboard boxes. But I'm jumping out of the window and I'm jumping, you know, and if you don't come, I'm jumping out of the window anyway. I'm going to jump and I'm going to find out how many bones break when I land on the sidewalk 25 feet below. I'm ready to die. I was like promising that I was going to jump out of the window and break bones on the concrete below and that qualified me for the psychiatric evaluation. And they staged an intervention? They staged an intervention, yeah. I said, so Knoxville responded. I forget if he responded with all 200 people on copy.

1:12:07Oh, shoot. But I did this on the RAD email list with the 200 people. And I said, if Knoxville responded, he says, okay, I'll be there. you know i said be here at 10 a.m be here at 10 a.m where i'm gonna jump but his response was he says uh can we do noon what's with the early call times sheesh so we agreed on noon i forget i don't think he was concerned with the early call times i think what he was concerned with was having more time to uh to rally uh you know a group to really do the intervention but but by in that email exchange I I was not scheduling a shoot for you know for jackass as I thought I was actually scheduling my intervention and that's really where your life seems to start to take a new direction although not linear in any respect well I mean that that That intervention marked the beginning of my journey.

1:13:20I've been clean and sober since that day. Which is? I mean, the intervention was March 9th. The intervention was March 9th of 2009. Oh, sorry. Eighth. Yeah, March 9th of 2008. And we don't count that as our sobriety date because it's the first day you didn't get loaded is your sobriety date. So my sobriety date is March 10th of 2008. Over 14 years sober. Over 15 now. Over 15 years sober. Yeah. Congratulations. Dude, it's huge. That's amazing. Honestly, that's incredible. It's so incredible. And I don't say that to be self-important or like douchey. It's just the most profound gift ever. And I believe strongly that this conversation began with this dark discussion of alcoholism and how terrible and sad alcoholism is.

1:14:26However, as upsetting as alcoholism and drug addiction is, it's the only disease where once you treat it, you become a better version of yourself than you were before. and and that's really incredible to me because any other disease the best you can hope for is to get back to as healthy as you were before you got sick but for us sober alcoholics and addicts like we genuinely become improved versions of ourselves and the work you've done since has been incredible I mean you've taken on many professional pursuits um your stand-up comedy became a facet of your life in 2013 uh 2010 2010 okay i had the first time i had um gotten on stage in a comedy club and and uh performed what what i intended to be stand-up comedy was 2006 how did that go um i thought it went a lot better than it actually did but um but the first time i ever got on that stage it wasn't it wasn't a disaster it became a disaster later um but but in 2010 once I'd been clean and sober for just over two years I I pursued stand-up comedy in earnest why stand-up comedy I know you've got a big tour coming up in the UK but why stand-up comedy I'm trying to understand the through line between the stunts it's the the through line is just attention seeking you know um the first time i ever got on stage to perform in a comedy club uh there was it was 2006 i believe it was august of 2006 and um our second jackass movie was um to be released a couple months later showed up at this comedy club i walked in had no plan for what I was going to do and just observing what was happening on the stage with somebody standing there holding a microphone, just speaking to the audience.

1:16:50I thought there's no stunt that could possibly be crazier than that. I'm going to do the craziest stunt that I could possibly do is no stunt at all. I'm going to stand there and speak into a microphone and try to make the people laugh. This was genuinely the most terrifying concept. And I was just wasted enough to decide I'm going to do that. When it became my turn to get on the stage, I had come up with one joke. As I got on the stage, there were people, they were aware of me. They were excited to see me. I felt like an excitement. They were there to have a good time. They were rooting for me.

1:17:34I mean, of course, like get on stage. Steve O 'Rad. I felt loved. I felt they were rooting for me. They wanted to have a good time. Terrified. I got on Steve. I was terrified. But it was just, man, it was electric, dude. And I said, what's up, everybody? I'm in the mood for a blowjob. Does anybody want one? and uh and and and i got a laugh you know like they'd laughed and i just was so happy about that and um i couldn't have been on that stage for more than three minutes like um i got on and i got off just got out of there and it was a favorable experience and i decided that this was something i wanted to pursue and you've been pursuing it ever since there's a an awesome tour coming up in the uk from june 30th to july 14th i believe called bucket list that's right and and which i'm coming to see oh dude i love that man make sure that happens so when i started doing stand-up in earnest in 2010 um i imagined that i was that i was trying to establish myself as a stand-up comedian and that i was going to forge a career with speaking into a microphone.

1:18:59And I felt that I was well equipped to succeed in that endeavor because my life has been so just colorful. Like the experience that I've had in my life like to to to mine my life experience for material stand-up comedy uh it seemed very doable you know like i've got i've got stuff to talk about so i felt that i came into stand-up comedy not with just an advantage and that i had um an audience a profile but i just had interesting material to you know to mine and um clearly the world was not eager for the stand-up comedy of steve-o you know i think that they're the bar for the stuff that i was for like to to go from like the the the shocking like unbelievable like crazy visual stuff that i'd become known for and then appear speaking into a microphone it seems like a mismatching expectation yeah like that's always disappointment isn't it right like and maybe this is from my own perception I'm not sure but with all of the self-doubt with all of the um you know negative negative self-talk I just still persisted and um I wasn't super successful in the beginning and like of course not but I was successful enough to get booked by comedy clubs and then be welcome back and I would go around this comedy club circuit around the United States.

1:20:57And I did just well enough to go back around the loop. And that loop lasted for 11 years in comedy clubs. And I tirelessly persisted. I genuinely didn't. I put in work and I developed this craft of storytelling and stand-up, telling jokes. along the way i taped two comedy specials the first one was me and a microphone and uh some intermittent stunts i performed on stage throughout the act and as i put together what would become the next comedy special i put together this this new act to tour with it occurred to me that the stories I was telling in this new act had for the most part all happened on camera and I had the idea wow what if for my next comedy special I perform the act but in post-production I edit into the special interstitial footage of these story is unfolding oh i love that so it's depth to the storytelling oh dude my head exploded i got so excited i i couldn't even i couldn't even stand it wow like i'm gonna have a my next comedy special is gonna be multimedia uh that that one i put out myself um and uh and then it was time to put together the third show so now i knew that for this third show which is bucket list the bucket list correct that i needed to film all new stuff which would lend itself to all new stand-up material and it had to be crazier than shit it had to be crazier than ever and that's what people will see if they go yeah okay for sure that this uh there were just ideas that came up over the years that were that were genuinely never supposed to happen on any level but they were they were just ideas that i was so fond of just because they were crazy things to say i can't wait the idea was to push things further than jackass ever could and there's no way that you do that and there's not a story to tell you know there's like the the the challenges is of of making these things happen it's just there's uh it's inherently juicy material for stand-up there's just no way around it and and one step further is that um i've worked so hard on um developing the ability to be in a healthy relationship with a life partner so i was just about to ask you this was my last question which was about lux right my fiancee lux and and the the bucket list show is every bit as much about these ultra high level jackass stunts and how they were conceived and executed it's every bit as much about that as the implications of carrying out these bucket list items on my relationship with my fiancee what i was actually going to ask you about was specifically kind of the juxtaposition of what's making you successful here seems to me as a guy that's gotten into relationship struggled to find a relationship for my own reasons with my childhood seems to be the antithesis the very opposite of what it takes to be successful in a relationship which is like the stability the the I don't know, the calm, the...

1:24:56Right. And over here, we're seeking instability. And here in a relationship, I don't know, there needs to be a certain stability that I think. How? Well, to derive one's self-worth and self-esteem from external validation, the way that we do in show business. Like for me to base my self-worth and self-esteem on how successful I am as Steve-O, it just plainly presents a dark and upsetting future as the spotlight wanes. You know, like the – and I can't – and this is something that became very clear to me 15 years ago when I got sober was that for me to be happy and healthy on any level, it is of paramount importance that I find some separation between me and the persona of Steve-O.

1:26:13and um with that kind of ruminating in my mind and and as i when i got into the stand-up like i i was acting out sexually as much as possible on the road while doing stand-up and and at that time i was um in my late 30s approaching 40 and and it just occurred to me man this is not the the road to being happy and you know i gotta learn if i want to be happy later in life i need to learn how to have a healthy relationship that was a belief that i subscribed to and i got to work on learning how to be in a healthy relationship and thank god i did because i'm terrified of being a washed up old attention whore that nobody wants to pay attention to anymore and being alone and being alone that sounds like the most terrifying like awful thing and so what does it what does she mean to you lux i mean she you said something earlier that uh that the the design for living in the 12 steps and this is my you know kind of extrapolating on what you said you said that the The principles of honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness are helpful to all people.

1:27:39And I'll take that a step further, that the design for living outlined in the 12 steps is something that you don't have to be an alcoholic or an addict to benefit from. But what Lux is as a person is somebody who automatically does that stuff. You know, she's automatically honest. You know, she's automatically like open, willing, like she's automatically does the right thing, you know, where I had to really, really work and train myself to be honest and to do the right thing, you know. and uh you know she's just automatically it's just automatic to her and and lux's capacity for love is so staggering like her it's just so natural to her to to be loving and and it blows me away we both like with the animals we're out of our minds we love animals so much and um the way that lux loves me and the way that she wants me to love her like just uh no no hold like the way that we that like hold each other the way that like she's she's she's taught me to love she's she's increased my capacity to love and and that's that's the biggest deal man it's it's massive such a beautiful thing steve-o thank you so steve-o steven yeah thank you so much um we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest okay um and the question that's been left for you is one of the most interesting questions that's ever been left in fact they don't know who they're leaving it for good so it's a totally they said what can steven so you've filled in the blank no no no no they literally wrote what can steven when they're talking about me ah okay if they spell they spelt it with your name with a ph they said what can steven this beautiful man improve about himself so that's my quote what can i improve about myself it's they're asking you to tell me what i can improve about myself because they didn't know you were called steven so they said what can steven this beautiful man improve about himself honesty

1:30:12you didn't speak about yourself very much but but one thing that you did say um you seemed to point to the deficiency in your relationship with your girlfriend being that you're so consumed with work and uh that you said something about she wants quality time you can't compensate for your uh you know all of your energy and time going into your career and that you want to compensate by with material things and and that but that she's no no interest in material things she wants It's quality time. And I think that you and I both have this drive, this hustle, this urge to succeed. And I think that both of us would do well to find our success in our relationships.

1:31:24Every study about longevity and health and happiness 100 % points to relationships as the source of true happiness and true health comes from the quality of our relationships. not the numbers in our bank account but the quality in our relationships so um i think that the the my answer for you is this for me is just that uh you know that we should put the emphasis on our quality time in our relationships that we do on our hustle. And it's the reason why I don't is because I think of some of the stuff that I said earlier about like where I came from and being a poor family. So like my survival innately in me or my validation comes from my work.

1:32:24So I'm like being pulled by this like insecurity and the shame from my childhood over here, like become everything that you weren't. And then on the other hand, my sense goes, well, Steve, the happiest times in your life, all the studies I've sat here with the guy that did that 95 year old study on men and found that they live I think it's like 14 years longer if they have a meaningful relationship I know logically but then emotionally and the scar the scar tissue in me goes no you need to validate yourself right I'm being dragged by that still to you know right and hustle but but not in a way that that that undermines or detracts from the quality of the relationships.

1:33:08That's what you're doing. I mean, yeah, shit. Lux and I have a rule that we were not to be apart for more than two weeks. I love that. And we spent two days together over the course of six weeks. We broke our rule badly. and that's not cool man yeah so um if i wasn't so you know so so operating from fear that's the that's the the difference yeah exactly hustle because you love it not because you're not because you're afraid of the post-apocalyptic you know and there's this concept i've been toying with a lot in this podcast between the distinction between being driven and being dragged. And sometimes I'm being dragged.

1:33:57Yeah. Driven is the like intentional. It sounds like, you know, kind of the intentional hustle with control over the hustle. Dragged is like fucking fear. Like if I don't, then I'm not enough. And I've taken so much of your time. I did. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. A pleasure to meet you. And I've learned so much. Incredibly surprising, wisdom-filled conversation that graced so many different aspects. I'm so excited to see Bucket List. I'm sure all of my audience are as well. the 13th is the date to be there right yeah empire that's where i'll be i'm looking forward i think that we might be able to open up some tickets on the 14th okay um but but i don't know and i don't know how many i just know that as i sit here now the the show on the 13th just went like so that's that's a whole show that i gotta fill so link is in the description below to get tickets in the youtube description and on the audio apps it's in the description below and i hope to see you guys there thank you so much damn thank you bro