Osher Günsberg Is Back After The (Psychotic) Break

27:44You got the hair, you got the looks. You're sort of this symbol of Australian youth. Somewhat. And you're getting, you know, and you're living large, right? You're living here in Bondi. and lots of drugs, lots of partying, lots of rules, lots of attention. Yes, all of that. But it was also very much a, stop looking at me. Why aren't you looking at me? Please stop looking. How come you're not looking? Like it was that complete oscillation that was unbearable. It was really weird. It was very, very weird. The weird thing that happened when I was on music television was I was using alcohol to cope with this.

28:25it was a lot of stress being on. I was 25, you know. I've been in radio for a long time and then moved to Sydney, left everyone. My girlfriend and I came here and I was a heap of pressure. It was so much fun. It was the best job I ever had. It was unfucking believable. I love music, man. I'm getting paid to talk about music every day. Three hours live TV a day. Talk to all the biggest rock stars in the world when they pass through. Yeah, but not only that, it was also talking to like just fans of music who live, you know how huge, Our country is as big as yours, all right? The lower 48 at least.

28:59And people live 400Ks from a post office. And I'm talking to people on satellite phones who really want to hear their favourite Ice Cube song. And I'm, how do you love Ice Cube? I love him. Like, you know, what do you do? Oh, I'm on a farm, you know? And it was unbelievable speaking to people from all across our community. It was amazing. And, you know, working in live TV, there's nothing like it, mate. And it's just the best working as a team and it's just so much fun. But it was a lot of stress. And the thing was, it's like the kind of refs per minute you need to get up to to perform that kind of thinking three hours at a time.

29:36That doesn't stop at seven o 'clock when you go off air. You know, it's like, whoa, what do I do? What do I do now? What do I do? It's like, I've got a lot, I'm coming in. With no healthy tools for down-regulating yourself. No, no. And to the point where we're like, we would, I remember we would go on the road and my floor manager would hand me a beer as I walked off stage. He'd take my mic off me and hand me a cold beer. And, you know, I'm in the music industry.

30:06In 2001, I was on a work trip. I went to America for a work trip. And it was me and my producer Ben, our cameraman Mike, and our sounder Andy. And we were, it was my first time in Los Angeles. and we got caught in a riot in Hollywood, of all goddamn places, sketchy. And it was a band called System of a Down and they had no, it was put on by a radio station there and they had no real security. And I'd been around venues and I'd seen some pretty wild stuff happening, both as a roadie and then later on with the bigger gigs working at V backstage and stuff like that and going on tour with big festivals.

30:49So I'd seen how badly it can go. when even a couple of hundred people decide they wanna go that way and then everybody else wants to go that way. It can be, people can die, all right? And I saw it happen once, it was awful, awful, awful. And so we could see that this gig was five minutes late and it was 10 minutes late and the capacity was probably, I don't know, they probably thought they were gonna have 1500 people, like 8 ,000 people showed up. And I don't have to tell you. I think I remember that, was it K-Rock put that on maybe? Yeah, exactly. Out in the streets? That's right, it was. Yeah, I do remember when that happened.

31:22And I was heavy. No body searches, no weapons checks, no nothing going into the place. And it got later and later and later. And then it became, we sort of looked around and realized we were standing with a bunch of media and we realized everyone else has left. Oh shit. And we were kind of cornered in the back of this gigantic parking lot. And there was about between five and 8 ,000 people between us and the street. And they started to take the backdrop down and that was it. the place just erupted and they were pushing over speaker stacks we watched we watched a kid like she nearly got crushed by the speaker stack we got footage of it like it like brushed the back of her t-shirt and and everyone's looking around and there's my cameraman jacko we're filming all this and someone just grabs for his camera it's about 120 grand worth of camera and everything pulled together and they grab it and he pulls it back and then then it became this like eight people are on top of him and they're punching onto him.

32:19And, you know, my producer, Ben, drags him out of there. And then one of the, one security guy stayed behind and he had an unscrewed a mic stand and this metal bar just starts raining down on these people that are on top of Jacko. And I'm seeing forearms and shit like that. And then we drag Jacko out of there and I pull up a chain link cyclone fence because it was right behind Hollywood High. I pull up this chain link cyclone fence and we got out underneath. But then now we're in a school with these 20 length, 20 meter high, like 10 meter high fences all around it. Like, how do we get out of here?

32:47And some of those kids followed us in like, Jesus, how are we going to get out of this? And we climbed over another fence and we get out. And so I can't remember what street it was. It was one that ends up right by the Montalban theater, right? And we get out and we look and there's like horses and riot cops loading up rubber bullets and like jackos covered in blood. Like, what the fuck is this? And then out of nowhere between all these cops who were staging around the corner ready to go, this cab just appears out of nowhere. And like, have you ever held a cab on the streets in LA? No, never. Yeah.

33:19It was really scary. And we thought, you know, what's going to be amazing if we, oh, fuck, let's get out of here. Jacko went to see Desinai. He was pretty fucked up. And like, yeah, it's going to be amazing. Let's get the fuck out of here. This was September the 3rd. Again, a week from now, we'll be in New York city and we'll be interviewing bands and we'll be having a great time oh shit yeah yeah and then we were there we woke up you were in new york city on 9 11 yeah i didn't know that yeah it was and we were safe you know but we were on like 51st something like that but it was terrifying it was terrifying and um i've said like almost an unbelievable panic attack and like i had a panic act so intense I fell asleep my body just went and shut down and that was it it was terrifying and it took us ages to get out and like physically we were fine took us about two weeks and two and a half weeks to end up getting home to Sydney we were coughing up black stuff for about six weeks but that was about it and I was physically fine but I remember being back at work and just staring at the thumbtacks on the squishy wall of my cubicle.

34:30At four o 'clock, I'd go on air and go, and Rich is asking for a Britney Spears song and da-da-da-da-da-da, Anne McLear. And I would do that. And I'm just staring there. I'm normally a fairly boisterous person sometimes. And my boss, Jackie, she comes by and she goes, are you okay? I said, no. She said, would you like to see someone? Yeah. And amazingly, she organised a psychologist for me to go see who specializes in debriefing, you know, trauma response and things like that. And I went to go see this guy called Phil and he had this amazing office up in Manly. So, you know, I went surfing with him, you know, we'd finish our session and go surfing.

35:09It was unreal, unreal. And he says, you've got PTSD. I'm like, fuck off. I don't have PTSD. I'm fine, mate. And he went, oh, okay then. And he gets up and he walks over to his bookshelf and he pulls off this book, the DSM-4, which is like the, back at the four maps on your phone, you would have this big map of streets, right? So it's essentially a street map where psychiatrists can basically talk to each other. Every condition defined. Yeah, well, it helps people who are talking about the same patient to have an idea of what's going on. Right, are we on DSM-5 now? By now, we are, it was four back then.

35:41Four. And he opens it to, and he hands it and goes, read that. And I was like, fine. And I looked down, I was like, okay, so someone snuck in here and uh written some shit out that they saw while watching me and then put it in the same font on the same grade of paper and snuck it into this book because it was like exactly what was going on and i had to be in acceptance this was happening and um because of that i was like okay then well what do i do about this he taught me cognitive behavioral therapy which is i'd never known before i'd never known that you could just because i think it doesn't make it real.

36:14It took a lot of practice, but I started to work on that. And that was really interesting to get that initial kind of idea that just because I feel it doesn't mean it's real. And just because I think this is happening, where's the evidence for that? Maybe I'm not saying that. And developing that awareness and that recognition is gonna come into play later. Well, absolutely. But all that work. The recurring theme here is a willingness to seek out and receive help. Not as willing as I was to go, you know what, alcohol is way easier. Let's delay that one, right? Yeah, it's easier if I just drink.

36:54And I'm drinking red wine by this point, Rich. I'm not just drinking beer. I'm a connoisseur, come on. I remember like buying this really expensive bottle of red and hammered and I was gonna open another one and an older bloke I work with, she goes, don't open it. It'd be like feeding strawberries to pigs. Right. And you could do all the CBT you want and talk your ears off with a shrink. Yeah. But if you're just hitting the bottle and doing all the other stuff, it's only gonna go so far. Yeah. But all that, the ability to question and double check my thinking came in really handy when it finally came time to stop drinking because that's really quite fun.

37:37that's a fundamental leap you need to make when you first stop drinking you actually need to understand that just because you see it that way doesn't mean that's the way it is right and that would have been a very hard thing for me to get to at the same time as everything else but thankfully i had that experience and i was very grateful for that um i you know like most people i reckon i took a good i white knuckled it for a year and all that was is you know what's it what's alcohol It's a fucking freely available, widely legal, self-administered depressant. When, you know, in this country, there's so many drugs that are illegal because they worry that kids are gonna overdose, but I can walk across the street and buy enough gin to kill me for 20 bucks.

38:27But it's completely fine. That's bullshit. That's fucking bullshit. All right, there's a debate in this country going on about legalizing medical marijuana or legalizing marijuana. It's like, mate, there's two drugs, Rich, two drugs that if you are drinking them or using them to enough point and you stop straight away, you'll die. Alcohol and benzodiazepines, both illegal. That's not okay. That's not okay. And yeah, here we are. You know, it's just that culturally alcohols, I didn't know that you could not drink. I didn't know that it could ever happen. I feel like that's changing though. The younger generation has a very different relationship with alcohol and I don't know what it's like in Australia, but in North America, the habits of young people are very different and possibly that's because other drugs are just more widely available or cheaper or more accessible or don't give you the same hangover or what have you.

39:19Do we dare admit it's because they don't wanna look sloppy on a Instagram thing that's never gonna go away? Yeah, there's that. Yeah. And the whole marijuana thing is also kind of a whole other podcast as well. I have lots of opinions about that. I'm gonna do that, mate. Yeah. But anyway, so you get back, you're dealing with, you get back from New York, you're dealing with the PTSD, you're doing the CBT, you're drinking, your career is advancing. Yeah. At some point, you know, you move on and you're doing like, you become the host of American Idol. Yeah, or Australian Idol, yeah. Yeah, Australian, of course.

39:56Yeah. It's like a McDonald's franchise, all right? You sell the franchise, all right? You know, so, I don't know. Say you create Finding Ultra, the reality show, right? You would then, this is the format. There's the coach, you know, Coach Houth or whatever. You know it works. Plug it in, plug it in over here. You need the champion. You need the one who's got, everyone's got to have somewhere to go. You need the one who's trying to find redemption. You need the one who's trying to find a reconnect with her daughter. You need the one who cries. You need the one who, mate, this is called - And you need the right host.

40:27And it comes in a Bible, Rich Roll. It's going to be a host. All right, we'll get Simon Hill to be the chef. It's going to be amazing. And then when you sell that turkey, they go, huh, okay. So who's the Australian Turkish version of this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and you make money and you sleep. It's a franchise like anything else. And so, yeah, I was one of the hosts of Australian Idol. Me and Jimmy hosted it for, I hosted it for seven years. He did it for six. It was unbelievable. It was incredible. It was unreal. And it's capturing an audience share that probably would be impossible to them.

40:57It's never gonna happen again. Right? So when you're hosting that, it had to be relatively surreal. I know that like even, wasn't there, what year was it where the finale was at the opera house? Yeah, we did everyone there, yeah. Right. Yeah, we did the first, I think the first finale, the one in four adult Australians watched that. It was like the Olympics don't get those kinds of numbers, you know, and it was just a cornerstone of Australian pop culture. And thankfully, you know, everything that, I mean, Jim and I had been on air at Channel V doing hundreds and hundreds of hours of live TV every week, every year, sorry.

41:35And so by the time we get to, Idol is very funny because all that kind of network people like, yeah, but this is real television, boys. Like, you know what, get fucked, all right? Like, we... We put our reps in. Yeah, yeah, don't worry, mate. Don't worry. We're in this spot. And where are you with your mental health and with drugs and alcohol at this point? Oh, I was pretty jumpy. I was very much a, you know, it was odd because while I was thinking everyone was looking at me, everyone was looking at me, you know? I had people walking up to me in the street. It's wild because it's 20 years later right now.

42:09I've got the same haircut. You're back. I've had like five haircuts. Yeah, you got - Five haircuts and two names. This is the closest to Andrew that you've looked at. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt. The current do. Yeah, totally. And people, I'll just be doing my groceries, man. And people will come up to me and grab my hair and pull it and turn around, oh, it's not a wig. You know, and their mates filming on a shitty phone. And like that would happen in the middle of the day. You know, I'd be at, you know, at a bar or whatever and people would come by and someone would bump my, and a beer would fly everywhere.

42:41And, you know, the guy would then turn around and like, fuck, whatever. And I knew enough to start, I knew what to look for. And if a guy was there and he'd opened his body that way, if I looked that way, there was someone filming on their phone there. I'm like, sorry, mate, I'm sorry I was in your way. you know that would happen every it would happen all the time wow all the time um it was yeah i mean look the thing the thing when you got a job like that and i'm sure you you know understand what i'm talking about but you don't end up having to pay for drugs they're just always there there's people like hey mate oh thank you very much don't mind if i do right you know and it was just it was just half of the course man it was just it was just all over the shop and And I remember trying, I started to understand that I had a problem, real problem with alcohol when I met my ex-wife now.

43:30And there's a joke among the acting community in Australia. I won't say her name because she's quite a high profile Australian actress, but she said, oh, you don't think you've got a drinking problem until you leave Australia. And then you get to America and go, so anyway, it's five past 12 on a Saturday. I mean, okay, more for me. and I kind of realized I went to the Middle East for the first time and I was like oh wow our cultural relationship with alcohol here is quite fucking weird and not okay and quite damaging and I came back and I tried to not drink beer for a year so I drank heaps of vodka and it was quite a classic I changed horses but eventually just like a duck to water mate I was back on it and then by about 2009 i could i was like bloated again i was really fat and i started to um i understood that i needed to stop i knew that i tried to stop a few times by myself i tried a bunch of times by myself couldn't do it i reckon i got a couple weeks up at a time maybe six maybe seven and then i'll be right and then half a sip of heineken and then it's 2am and I'm doing Jagermeister and, you know.

44:43You're off. It was, there was no ability. You kind of have to have that experience to really lock into the powerlessness of the whole thing. Yeah, but it got worse, you know, and then it got worse. And then that TV show ended, you know, and I had put no work in at all to see if I was gonna have any kind of continuity career. I just expected that the, I was turning away more than I could say yes to. I just expected the phone would never stop ringing. I would just expect it that it would just keep going, going, going, going, going, going, going. and then that show went away and i didn't know what to do um it was around around the same time that i was in america and um actually dan mcpherson was in town and he and i went for a hike on uh on the running canyon and we was talking about shit he was over there for pirate season and i slipped at the very top of running canyon we were descending it can be rocky and slippery there and I slipped and I did a, like a kind of exaggerated runner's lunge essentially and I blew my MCL in my right knee.

45:43And at that point, it was the most painful thing I'd ever experienced. And I took about 600 milligrams of ibuprofen that night and I went to go see my doctor the next day. I was like, this happened to my knee and like, it's really hurts. And he goes, oh, I'll just take some ibuprofen. I was like, man, I took 600 milligrams last night. I didn't work. He goes, oh, I'll give you some Vicodin. And like five minutes later, I'm standing downstairs with a hundred Vicodin pills in my hand. he didn't ask me any questions, didn't ask anything. And now that's a slippery slope because it's still fucking hurts.

46:12You just don't care. And when I mixed it with beer, it was like, so needless to say that was, I reckon that was January. Yeah, it was like January, 2010. I was in meetings by the middle of March. So that's what ultimately brought you to your knees. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, literally. Because I just could, I couldn't not do it. I couldn't not do it. And it's a very, very slippery slope, that stuff. And so like cut to like the last couple of years, I've been through some pretty interesting stuff with my hip and I've had a hip replacement and some stuff didn't go right with the surgery and the pain was unfathomable, but I couldn't touch those kinds of drugs.

46:54Right. Because like there was one point where we have, our Emmys are called the Logies here. That's TV, it's a night of nights, you know. and the first Logie out Australian, I had a level one. I've still got the scar on my hand. I've broken my hand snowboarding, and I'd come back here, and I was off my guts on Percocet, because I was in North America, and I said, I've got to fly back, and I'm worried about my hand, and he gave me this big tub of Percocet like that, and it's the kind of thing that I took a pill in Vancouver, and I woke up in Sydney, you know, and I no way held the Logie in my hand.

47:29I do not remember. You don't remember any. Not a thing. Wow. Not a thing. Yeah. I'm on national television. At the peak of my career, you know, I could have done anything. And there was a bloke I now work with, a guy by the name of Dave Hughes. He's amazing. He doesn't drink. And a couple of months later, I'd seen him on radio and I'd, you know, typical fuckwit, you know, it's sunglasses in the morning and, you know, 6am, 6.30 radio. I'm in there going, and he goes, this is Dave. G'day, mate. How are you going? Mate, we've met before. I'm like, I've never met you. Mate, I gave you your logy. I remember, oh my God.

48:07But the thing is like in the, you know, canon of like hitting bottom, it's, you know, it's, you could have gone a lot lower, you know, but it is what it is. The pain threshold is what it is. You know, it brought you in. I'm, you know, and I've heard you speak about this and I really related to it in that I just have this ability to withstand discomfort that is different to other people and what would probably have stopped others. And I've had a number of doctors now tell me going, how are you still moving? How did you walk in here? And they're looking at my blood test going, how are you standing upright?

48:45This doesn't work. How do you do this? I don't know, man. I just, there's a bit of my brain that won't stop. Part of it has given me the life and the career I've have, but part of that has tried to kill me. And it's managing the shitty part. Yeah, and untangling that is so difficult. Because when you're forced to confront and break up with your best friend, this thing that you think gives you superpowers, you also have to contend with that disposition to go the extra mile that you're convinced is the reason why you've been able to make your way in the world and be successful and do all the things that you do.

49:22and finding a healthier, more sustainable fuel source, energy source, and putting that idea away and understanding that it's a lie is a very steep mountain to climb. It is. I was very lucky in that there's a incredible doctor here by the name of Dr. Ian Chung. I've had him on the show. He's amazing guy. He really, really helped me. And he just kind of matter of fact, he told me, he goes, I don't know. yeah this is OCD and I was like and I deflated like a bouncy castle after a toddler's birthday party like you know and he goes wait wait wait wait like I can't tell you how many Olympians how many you know Wallabies it's a national rugby union football team you know like lawyers like the amount of people that have sat there in that chair and I've told the same thing to you like come on why do you think you got the career you've got I was like what and he goes he said do you think?

50:19And he was talking about particularly like there's an Olympic swimmer. He says, do you really think that that kid who will stare at a black line on the bottom of a pool four mornings a week from the age of eight, so he can do it in Tokyo in 12 years from now, doesn't have something like that going on? Six mornings a week and then six afternoons a week. Precisely. 12 times a day for two hours at a pop. Do you think they don't have something like that going on? Of course they've got something like that going on. Of course they do. That's how they can do that it's it's making sure that you only use it for you know see it as a superpower and i was so grateful that he helped me reframe it like that it's like the bits that have given you the life you've got you don't want to lose those the parts that can really you know be bad is when it gets out of control and and then it has you know it has got to the point where it's nearly killed me and it's learning how to manage that stuff that is um this is the kind of ongoing effort and it takes, I know there's this amazing TV show that I really implore you to watch, it's called Bluey and there's a game in Bluey called Keepy Uppy where they basically just try to keep a balloon in the air and it's basically that, you know, so we're at the balloon in the air part.

51:28It was holding the Atlas ball above my head like I'm, you know, Thor Bjornsson in the, you know, whatever it is, the strongest man in the world thing, but now it's just keeping a balloon in the air. But if I don't, if I keep my eye off that, if I let the balloon fall pretty soon, within a couple of days, things start to get pretty grim. Yeah, what's interesting is with sobriety, so I meet you when you're like, I don't know, two years in or something like that at that point. Yeah, but only a year of meetings. Really, okay. I'd only just on my fourth and fifth when I met you, yeah, yeah. I was pretty white knuckle, yeah.

51:56Oh, wow. Yeah, but I was like - I didn't realize you were that raw. Yeah, well, I thought I could do it, but by not drinking and then doing all the work, not doing any work, I was essentially just come off my meds without anything. Yeah. You know, so I was like, you ever go on like butter smooth tarmac and then you miss a turnoff and suddenly you're on an ungraded gravel road? It was that. Yeah. I was like, suddenly I was like, what the fuck is this? I don't know what to do here. Yeah. So that brings you in, but this is on some level, still the very beginning of your mental health journey and adventures.

52:30I was really lucky. Like the bottoms that you've had with mental health in sobriety are much lower than the one that brought you in into the rooms in the first place. And I was so lucky that I'd stop drinking by then. So, so, so lucky. You wouldn't have made it. There's no way. No way, I would be dead, absolutely. Yeah, things got really bad. And it was like my, like many things. It's, you know, I'm a fan of the Robert Gonzalez book, I think that's his name, Lawrence Gonzalez book, Deep Survival. It's really good. I try to read it like once a year. It's fantastic read. It's about what happens to your brain and survival situations.

53:04and he talks about like real proper, proper cataclysms, like mega, mega airline disasters and things like that. It's not one thing. It's not two things. It's like five to seven things in a row that happen. And by the time number seven happens, it doesn't matter because you got nowhere to go. And it was like that. I was living in Venice Beach. We had yet to get the green light for another season of the show that I was working on. so I had no work. I was paying rent out of my savings. I was in a relationship with someone who was wildly inappropriate. It was extraordinarily, you know, interesting and volatile, but wildly inappropriate.

53:50And I was under a lot of stress. My father was ill back here in Australia. And I didn't, you know, I was not sleeping. had been weeks since I'd had actual sleep. And I would, if I did sleep, I would wake up and I'd strip the bed like it was laundry day. I was just thrashing around that much that I would like pull the actual elastic corners off the bed. I was thrashing around in my sleep that much. So it had been weeks since I'd had a decent sleep. And that's a real, that's pretty bad. That's happening. There's a lot of red flags that I was totally walking straight past. and then like just one day I woke up and I read, I had a coffee like I always do and I prepped up my iPad and I was reading the New York Times like I always do and like they always do they wrote in the corner oh it's going to be you know sunny in 72 because it's LA and it's that's what it is every goddamn day but then they wrote in the tiny little Times New Roman font oh by the way this is the 114th warmest consecutive month ever recorded.

54:56Passive aggressive bastards that they are but they would do that. And something in my head just went like that. And as far as I was concerned, like there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop the full and completely cataclysmic, untold terror, destruction, end of the world, climate change, disasters. And it was, as far as I was concerned, it was happening today. It was happening right now. And I was the only one that knew about it. And it was terrifying. My brain just went on this cascade of horror and fear and and I couldn't stop the thoughts. And what I normally would do is I would run to manage my mental health and that would have been really useful.

55:34And I'd got to the point, and I loved it. You know, I'd got to the point where I was running 10Ks a day. That's what I'd do. I'd run from my house, I'd go touch a Santa Monica, turn around, run back. And on the weekends, you showed me where the Nike missile silo was. I'd just go run that on a Saturday. I'd go run a trail half on a weekend to do that. That's what I did on Saturdays. And that was that fit. I loved it. and I was, and I used to make things pretty okay, you know, that did a lot to regulate me. But I remember running and I reckon I got about, I got past the skate park and I think I got, I got almost to, I don't know, somewhere a little further past the skate park.

56:13And, you know, I'm, I'm seeing things, I'm seeing like those kind of Baywatch towers and they're, they're, they're floating like they're on there. They've got a big concrete blocking a chain underneath them, right? And they're pushing against these chains floating in a now higher sea level, right? And I look up and these, the tops of the palm trees, I look up and now I'm looking at them as if they're underneath of lily pads, you know, because I'm now on the new sea floor. And I can see, I'm seeing like, do you ever watch Mr. Robot? Yeah. Yeah. They did that really well. When I watched Mr. Robot - When he's having those breaks from reality.

56:48It's like when I watch BoJack Horseman, I'm like, someone knows. someone knows in the writer's room someone knows so in in mr robot they i remember talking to audrey going it's that it was that it was that where it kind of glitches in and out yeah like it wasn't all the time but i wanted to i wanted to warn people i wanted to grab people and go don't you understand like it's all gonna and i knew i knew enough like if i want to grab people and warn people and you see that you see people who are struggling really badly shouting on the streets you see that because that's the symptom of you want to try and help everybody i was like fucking hell, I want to, I want to, and I was, their thoughts hurt, they were coming and they wouldn't stop and they hurt like I was chewing on alphire or, or you'd poked me with a barbecue skewer, right?

57:31And so it's like this and they would come at me and I started to flinch and push them away like they were mosquitoes. I was like, fuck, I got to get home. So I turn around, I didn't run that far, maybe only two, three Ks. I turn around and came back and I'm running and I'm grunting, like I'm making noises, like every time I hit and I'm flinching like this. and up ahead of me on the path, I see this guy and he's shuffling. Now, if you've never been to that part of the city or that part of the world, like complex, untreated, complex mental illness on the streets in California is terrible. It's terrible.

58:03It's a complete tragedy that the richest country in the world allows it to happen. And the police are untrained and unable to deal with it when it goes bad. And people would die by cops all the time. And it was awful, awful, tragic. and up ahead of me on the path, I see this guy. He's kind of shuffling along. He's got no shoes on. His pants are too big for him, so he's clearly not eaten in a while. He's got this big bloom of urine. He's clearly peed himself, and I run up along next to him, and two things really hit me. It's like he's younger than me. He's got this kind of shaved piece of his scalp there, so I don't know what's going on, but he's got a shaved part of his scalp, and he's doing the same thing.

58:46He's going, and he's doing this. I was like, oh, fuck. And I knew at that moment, the only thing that was, I knew something was wrong. I don't know if he knew something was wrong. I ran home, I ran upstairs, and I called my mentor, David, who is a guy that guides me on my sponsorship. He's my sponsor. So I called David, and I'm like, he's like, hey, buddy. I'm like, climate change is going to fucking, I did not draw breath. and the forest fires are going to, the whales are going to die, there's no food, just water, get your family out of here, I know you live in San Diego. I just couldn't stop.

59:24It was like, it's called plusive speech, right? I was just, and he says, okay, two things, mate. Number one, this is way beyond my pay grade. You need to get to a doctor right now. And number two, you're really lucky because crazy people don't know they're crazy. So you better get to see your doctor fast. Yeah, you had a little bit of self-awareness of what was happening, but at the same time, this is real. Like in your mind, these things are actually happening. Oh yeah, it was, they were and they weren't. And that also caused a huge amount of pain because I knew they kind of were and kind of weren't.

59:57And I didn't want to accept that it was happening and it was enormously painful. And this went on and on and on and on. And eventually I went to go see my psychologist. I finally got to go see him. I had to wait the whole weekend and then I go see him. Did it fade or you were in this persistent state? It was pretty bad. It kind of came and went quite a bit. It was really bad. And I went to go see him and he had this Eames recliner. It was a beautiful, beautiful place. And I sat on the edge of his and I said, mate, do you have a gun? Do you get a gun? Can you hide up in Big Bear? Because you remember Rodney King?

1:00:29You remember the riots? Remember how the city was on fire? That's going to happen again. There's going to be... I was just like going for it. And he goes, hmm, mate, you're experiencing a form of psychosis. This is paranoid delusions. and at a moment I was like, he's in on it. He's a fucking climate denier. And at that point I was like, oh fuck, part of me, whether it's God or Buddha or Prince or whoever it is that watches over me, I was like, hang on a second. If you don't believe him, you're in trouble. And I was like, okay, well, what does that mean? But that was the first thought in my head.

1:01:08You had a shroud that was still tethered to the real world. My first thought was like, he's on it he's in on it he's he doesn't know he doesn't know wow it was so scary it was so scary and he told me you know told me what psychosis was and that you're really going to need proper medication and you need to go see a psychiatrist and i'm like yeah fine i'll be fine without meds dumb idea dumb idea eventually i did get meds and um it was terror it was terrible because and this is a really hard part is like this shit doesn't stop and it's really painful and it was happening every five to eight seconds.

1:01:42And eventually my brain started to consider and come up with ways to make it stop. Unfortunately, it was a very permanent solution to what was a temporary problem. I was back in the Middle East, I was shooting a TV show, I had a job that I was going to go do. And so I was doing this job in the Middle East and I was in this hotel room and this idea popped into my head and it wasn't like, oh my God, I've got to, it's just not working out with this girl I'm seeing. I'm going to have to call her. I've got to be a man. I've got to fucking call her and I'm going to see her and I'm going to look her in the eye and tell her it's not.

1:02:18And like, you know, the kind of nervousness you might feel with an idea like that, like I'm, ah, I'm going to have to break up or whatever. I'm going to have to fire someone. It wasn't that. It was like when you're doing your ocean swimming, right? When you're doing your Otolo thing, round about, I don't know, mile 40, that thought of a hot shower and you went, oh man, that's going to be so good. I'm going to get out of the hot shower and I'm going to peel this wetsuit off and I'm going to do a wee and I was going to care and I was going to feel so amazing and I feel my body warm up. That's what it showed up as.

1:02:53I thought it would show up as some super scary thing. It showed up as like the best, kindest, most amazing thing that I could do. And again, Rich, I was so lucky because I'm like, hang on a fucking second. If I'm convinced that the forests are on fire right now and the sea is rising, how is this not also a distortion? How is this not also not real? And I got on the phone. I just started calling people because I had been trained through my time and sobriety is like, before you pick up a drink, pick up the phone. So I just started calling people and I reckon I was on the phone. I just looked at where the sun was, wherever it was in the world.

1:03:29I'm like, I know someone that lives near there. Hi, you haven't spoke to me for about a year. I just started calling people. Wow. Just to check on the, I was calling my brothers because it was, Australia was awake. So I called two of my brothers and we were FaceTiming and Skyping and stuff and just checking on the world with their brain and being really aware that I, I wasn't able to process things very well. It was so frightening, mate. And it's went on for a long time.

1:04:01That vacillation between catastrophe and then that blissful state and understanding that that's just a different version of the same thing is also a level of self-awareness. that probably saved your life. But the thing is, dude, like I remember when you went to the Middle East, like we were hanging out around that and you would share with me, like I'm having issues with my mental health and I didn't fully appreciate or understand what you were actually going through. I don't think it was until, and this I think was much later when you came over to the house and Mel, our friend Mel was over and we were having like a tea ceremony.

1:04:42We served you tea. Oh yeah, when Wuda was there. And you were convinced that the tea contained some kind of mind altering substance. Without a shadow of it as far as I was concerned. And you literally freaked out and laughed and it really scared me. I might as well have done ayahuasca. Because I bore witness to a small slice of what you were going through. And that it wasn't until then. And this probably, this was a couple of years. I was still pretty fragile. I was still pretty fragile. Yeah, and that's when I realized like, oh wow. Like this is serious. And what was the diagnosis? I mean, you have this psychosis, this episode with psychosis, but is it bipolar?

1:05:24Is it like schizophrenia? No, it wasn't schizophrenia. From what I understand is like, what I was experiencing was a really acute, it was like, this is what like untreated anxiety and OCD. and as I found out later on ADHD, all that stuff spinning me up into this place of extraordinary anxiety will then start to pop up into psychosis because what's neurosis is when you break a leg or you lose a job or your partner leaves you. You have an irrational fear. Well, it's the pain caused by not being able to accept reality, all right? That's essentially neurosis. So like, this is the thing that is actually happening.

1:06:12I don't want to accept it. So it really hurts. All right. Cause I know I have this job or my lover or can walk. Psychosis, I've got to explain to me that psychosis, when that pain becomes so great, your brain starts to reinterpret the reality to keep you safe. And so I started to realize that I was observing things through my sight, my taste, every input that I could touch was being filtered through this bizarre kind of distorted cataclysm of doom and i wonderfully and very gratefully i'd learned how to meditate at some point and um just light watkins oh yeah god we're just dropping every venice beach name ever here and he's coming back on the show on it pretty soon oh cool man tell him hey and i was in amsterdam because i was going to business school over there and i'm i'm meditating in this amazing airbnb on the canal and it's unbelievable and i'm in in meditation and i'm doing that thing that um oh what's his name it's got a funky voice uh austrian sat on a bench for a tall yeah you are looking at the pain body watch your see like i was doing that right okay so i'm meditating i'm meditating and just just enough breath between me and the thoughts, all right, just to watch them all go by like that.

1:07:39And I was like, huh, I don't see anybody else freaking out. I don't see anybody else worried about that. I mean, people are concerned and that's normal, but I'm the only, huh, maybe something's, and it was only in that. It was only being able to meditate and observe my own thoughts being that distorted. I understood the amount of trouble I was in. So I pretty quickly went to go see a psychiatrist back in Santa Monica. Amazing guy. Super fucking smart, really smart. And he just looked at me and he said, mate, I never lose. The only tricky part is getting the dosages right. But once we get the dosages right, you'll be fine.

1:08:15And I really wanted to believe him because I was thinking about suicide 20 times a day. And that's a really fucking hard thing to do, hard thing to deal with. And that went on for a really long time. And this is the thing about meds. I think I was on, I'm on my ninth different iteration of medication right now and it's actually doing pretty well, you know, um, but it's all in titrating and it's all in getting the dosages right. Um, but you know, for a while there I was on two kinds of antipsychotics and SSRI, I was on an NSRI, I was putting on a kilo a week from all the, um, from all the, cause they fuck with your insulin, the antipsychotics.

1:08:48And, um, but eventually, you know, it started to kind of get better. And the meds work, but the meds don't do the job for you. And the way I would describe medication for this kind of thing, mate, it's like you are in the world of cycling. I can take all the EPO that I want, right? I can dose myself like I was on the postal service team and whatever, but I've still got to pedal my fucking balls off to get the top of the Alta West, all right? You still got to do the work. It's not like I inject this and my bike magically gets to the top of the mountain. Hey, gold jersey. No, you've, you've seen photos of those guys who were on the gear.

1:09:25They're pain faces. They're all on it, but they're all, you know, they're not all of them. Depends on which documentary you watch. A lot of them are on it. Like you've got to really do the work and the meds let you do the work. If you don't do the work, it doesn't get better. The meds give you the space to do the work. And, um, wonderfully through the support of a, I have a psychologist and a psychiatrist. So the psychiatrist is like the, like the mechanic who makes sure that the engine works right. And the psychologist is the rally driver, the navigator. It was like, you know, 45 turn in five, three, 90 degree turn left, you know, they do shout all the turns to the rally drivers.

1:10:04They shout all the turns to the rally drivers. So I've been working with two people for quite a while now. And getting back here, I met this amazing guy. I had him on the show the other day. He's Dr. Adam Bays. He's actually, leading the research into psilocybin and the treatment of treatment-resistant depression here in Australia. It's amazingly smart. Yeah, that's interesting. Are you, what is your perspective for yourself with respect to those compounds? Mate, I've seen, I did a whole documentary about suicide prevention. It was incredible. And I've, you know, I've met people who were going through TMS and DTMS and experimental ketamine therapy and stuff like that.

1:10:47So I've actually spent a fair bit of time with people who are dealing with chronic, catastrophic treatment-resistant depression. It's horrible, horrible. It's not the sort of thing you can have a smoothie, a nice walk, and you'll feel better. Like there's your brain switches completely set to doom and you cannot move them. What's really interesting about psilocybin is that what it does to the brain is that, and certainly the way that Adam describes his study, is that with very little treatments, maybe only two treatments, but they're quite intense. There's two psychologists, they go on for a long time and it's really, really important that it's done in a very particular way.

1:11:23With only one or two treatments, you can have a humongous... And that's amazing because I'm someone who dealt with the side effects of medications. Like your testosterone goes out the window and I met Audrey in the middle of all of this, all right? So, for me, the woman is now my wife and the mother of our kids. With the testosterone, it's like, to try to explain what no testosterone is like from these drugs, it's like, hey you're in the woods and it's raining and you need a light of fire here's a box of matches no matches in the box like it's really yeah it's hard i mean it's not hard but you know you know what i mean like it's it's it's a real drag um look unfortunately adam told me because i've had episodes of psychosis i'm not allowed to participate in the trial oh wow that that obviates you from yeah i'm not allowed i'm not allowed to play interesting no i mean i i ask certainly, you know, there's all kinds of evidence of the efficaciousness of these compounds with these resistant conditions.

1:12:21I mean, there's no question about it. And I think it's very exciting to see that unfold and, you know, with the development of these new therapies that are undoubtedly helping lots of people. But it's tricky, especially when you're in recovery, Like, it's like, is this, because my brain lights up and says, yes, please. Well, this is the thing. We're 50 years behind on the research because this stuff started to escape the labs and there was studies. I don't know how they got approved, but there were studies where the doctors were taken at the same time as the patients and all the research got shut down.

1:12:51No, I know. Yeah, and we lost decades of knowledge that would have advanced that. And it's certainly, it's not something that you want to do in your backyard with a bloke whose name used to be John, but now calls himself, you know, Panther Forest or whatever. There's a lot of those people. Where's a bearskin hat. There's a lot of people. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on right now. No, you want a proper psychiatrist. But my Adam, so Adam was super smart and is super smart and was willing to question his initial hypothesis because I'm on all these meds and it still wasn't right. It's like, what else is going on?

1:13:22Something else is going on. And so we came down off all these meds and I had to do a week without them. And I was doing breakfast radio at the time and I had a, you know, let's fucking live in the dream. I was doing breakfast radio from my house. I had a line in my house. I remember that. Unbelievable. Just go down to the basement, you're on the radio. It was the best. And so he said, okay, you need to do a week without to give you, so it can work when you come back on the other ones. And he said, here's some, you know, Valiums. And I came home and I had them in my hand and I gave them to the ordinary.

1:13:51I said, hide that, give them to me when I'm being a bastard. Don't tell me where they are. Because me and Valium are, Prince Valium has ridden me into the sunset. but also you're titrating off all of these powerful psych notes it was over quite a while it was over a number of weeks but that one week man i remember telling the radio people i was with it was one morning i had three people i was on the show with within the space of the first hour each of them texted me going fuck you're fast this morning fuck you're funny this morning man what the fuck you're amazing today and i was like the radio person that i always wished i could be but the rest of the day I was like, I just couldn't handle that operating speed.

1:14:32Like no wonder I used to, you know, drink and use so much. Yeah, to slow it down a little bit. Yeah, I couldn't do, I couldn't, I couldn't, and that broke my heart a bit because I was as funny and fast. But also you must be thinking, oh wow, like let me just like, that's a, you know, how can I have more of that as my career superpower? Well, maybe. Is there a euphoric kind of feeling with that also? though? I think it was more the, you know, that I, it's the thing that I guess got me in the door and got me quite quickly up the ladder. But by this point, it was unsustainable. And it kind of broke my heart because I had to face that.

1:15:10I wasn't able to, you know, I mean, even Lewis Hamlin's got brakes, you know, I didn't, I wasn't able to stop it. And that was the hard part. I wasn't able to regulate from that. And that was a bit sad, but I understood I was able to come to like, well, I can do this or I can be safe and have a life and be able to have relationships with people. I think I'd rather the latter. So Adam, we started, he said, he started treating me for OCD. And once we changed on the OCD meds, things started to work really well. And within a number of weeks, things got pretty good. And then I went and saw a acceptance commitment therapy psychologist.

1:15:45And then I got really stuck into basically exposure therapy, which is terrifying. and horrible. And I remember I was on just kind of, you know, garden variety, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors by this point, which just helped grease the wheels, you know, and help give me the space to do all the work essentially and rewiring the neural pathways that I needed to do. And my exposure therapy, like this is the point where I would drive my car in LA and I had my car on the dashboard had the word climate control written on it. The word climate made me want to shit my pants and vomit at the same time.

1:16:23Like I was so, so sensitive to any kind of trigger. Like I would walk out the door and if I felt the warm sun on my skin, I'd be terrified. And this is years later. This is like 2016, 2017. This was still happening. It was the worst. And so I was like, I can't live like this. I cannot do this every day. I will not do this. There's got to be another way. There's got to be another way. And so I went and found Janine, who's amazing. and, you know, I would sit there with her and she had these really interesting pictures and she'd sit next to me in her office. She had an iPad and it was an art project, I think, where they took photos of really famous parts of London and New York and I think, oh, it was one other city.

1:17:05I think it was Los Angeles. Like the bull in downtown, we're near Wall Street, that big bull statue. It's like 90 centimetres above the high tide mark, all right? and there was this picture and you could put your finger on it and swipe it that way and it would give you an artist's impression of what you know when the west antarctic ice shelf melts with three meters or so of sea level what that's going to be and i would swipe it back and i would do this for about 10 minutes just shaking in terror and wanting to shit myself and wanting to vomit and then she would kind of top me down through it and then we would i'd go back you know a little while and we'd do something very similar and do it again and do it again and then it got to the point where i was shooting a TV show in Fiji.

1:17:46My wife's from Fiji. And people don't give a shit about sea levels high in Australia because like it doesn't affect them. But let me tell you, in Fiji, there's villages that have been there for hundreds of years where, you know, the village used to be as big as this table. Now the village is this big because it's just been washed away. All right. And I would sit there and there was a village right next to where I was staying. And I would sit there every afternoon, sometimes when the tide was high. And so I'd sit there as the tide was coming in and I'd look to my right and I'd see the water washing up underneath the houses.

1:18:17And you could see where they bury their ancestors on the land. And you could see where their ancestors were buried. And like pretty soon they're going to have to move the grave or they're going to be seeing bodies. And it was horrible. But I did that every day. I did that. I just forced myself to be with it every single day. And I still do it every day. Like if I see a headline that I would otherwise have previously shied away from, I will click on it and I will read it and I will be with the discomfort. And it is only, it's like anything, Rich. It's only in being willing to be with the discomfort that we then get the adaptation response.

1:18:55And that goes for your muscles, it goes for your endurance, it goes for your mental health. If you, the more you run away from it, the worse it gets, unfortunately. Like the less you run, it's not, you don't run faster. the less you run, the slower you run. So, you know, it's only willing to be with the discomfort that any change happens. You don't have to do heaps, just a little bit. I think the magic number is like 4 % or something. It's just a little bit, but just enough, just enough to be with it. And then it's just a little bit easier the next day, but then you make the discomfort a little bit harder.

1:19:28And then slowly, the thing is, mate, if I ran away from everything that scared me, I'd live my life on the head of a pin. And what does that give me? It gives me no options. It gives me binary. It gives me, I don't want that, so I'll hide. And that's not a lot of choices to go through life with. But if I'm willing to be with the discomfort, suddenly I've got possibility. If I'm willing to be with the discomfort and go, okay, this is awful. I wonder what could happen here because I've only ever known what that looks like. What could this be like? If I approach it, try to approach it with curiosity and be aware of how painful it is, but also go, well, what else is happening here?

1:20:04Cause it might not be as bad as I think, or it might, I might, I don't know all the answers. Someone else has probably got a pretty good idea. It's in being with that curiosity and being with that willingness to be uncomfortable that that is what has allowed me to actually have a life now and I can sleep at night. I'm so sorry that you've suffered so much and it's so much more than I originally realized. And it's a credit to you and your commitment to getting well that you're able to sit here. Because I think a lot of people, perhaps the majority of people who might've found themselves in a situation where they're seeing things that aren't real, they don't make it back from that.

1:20:48They end up in those institutions that have that smell that you can't forget. And unfortunately, that's the common sort of scenario. That's how that generally plays out. I got really lucky. As I said, I got really lucky because I learned that just because I think it doesn't make it real. I learned that a long time ago. I fought it, you know, and I didn't want to take it. And how do you know today when to differentiate? You know what I mean? I do a lot of checking. Is this happening right now? Are we here? Yeah, we're here. I mean, we're here having this conversation, right? Yeah, everything's fine right now.

1:21:21You're locked in, you're anchored. I have no problem reality checking. I have no problem checking. And for a while I would be, I will check, sometimes I can not understand emotions in a room and it turned out that it's the ADHD diagnosis, but I'll not be able to understand things and I'll check. Like say if I've done a promo thing and I'm doing a radio interview and I give one of the anchors, the hosts some shit and they go, oh, 7.15, I'm seeing another day. Oh, see you later, man. And I'll walk out and ask the publicist, did I fucking blow that? Are they upset at me? no like okay because my head is telling me that i've just destroyed my career my relationship with that person i'm like no you know okay okay so then every time my brain goes you're fucking blown you're blown i'm like but hang on um no peter said it was fine and i just remember that other thing that the other person talked about like you know the person who doesn't have my brain i can't you know i can't imagine how terrifying it must be to not know whether something that's happening is real or not yeah it's not fun it's just absolutely terrifying it's because you've never, yeah, it's so scary.

1:22:27It's so, so, so scary. But I don't know, man. And is there a sense of, like, what's the origin story here? Like, where does this come from? Is this a genetic thing? Is this, you know, a result of a series of traumas that went untreated for a certain period of time? Is it even worth trying to understand that? Or is it just about like, I know what I need to do now to be well and stay tethered. I think it's worth trying to understand it for the purposes of, well, then what can I do about it? And how can I deal with it properly? And I'm the son of two people that had to leave their countries because of war, all right?

1:23:07And that's gonna change you as a person and who they were when we were little. So there's a possibility of like an epigenetic - Absolutely. Trauma passed down. Yeah, when I wrote my book, I had to check. And I said, yeah, yeah, you're about 50-50. You're about 50-50, 50 % of like what comes from your parents and 50 % of like what happens after you get born. And so look, like I said, you know, this is the brain I've got. It's the brain that gave me the life I have. I probably didn't help it by drinking and using so much and literally, you know, given it the Jimi Hendrix Zippo on the Strat, you know, just drank holes in my brain.

1:23:47Or maybe it saved you. Maybe it was what you needed in that moment, you know, to survive. Sounds like a donic recall going on there, Richie. Yeah. Well, it was, you know, on some level of coping mechanism. Yeah, precisely. Yeah, and that was - And you were living a very surreal life. Yeah, it was very weird. I'm very lucky. I'm very, and I don't, you know, like I'm white, straight, middle-class man. Okay, so I can, you know, I could have been weird on the street and walked past the cop and they would have not looked at me twice because I had this job on TV. or just having a big night. If I was any other color, forget about it.

1:24:22I'm very, I am aware of that. It's not like I'm not aware of that. I'm very lucky that I'm in a country that has access to healthcare. And I'm really lucky, really lucky that when I really needed like a lot of intervention, I could afford it. But you also volunteered for it. A lot of people resist it or they don't have that tiny little piece in the back of their mind. I didn't want it, mate. That's still clinging to reality. Like you're like, I need to call this person. and I need to call this person. This person says, come here and let me help you and you show up. Don't let me, don't let me mislead you.

1:24:54Okay. Sir, like here's this antipsychotic. I want you to take it only when you need it. Aha. If I don't take it, I don't need it. I'm not sick. All right. And I would do that, you know. Right. I would, I did not want, I didn't wanna accept that I had this. I did not want it. And I avoided dealing with it for a long time. Way too long and I'd caused myself and others a lot of damage doing so. It's one thing to raise your hand and say, my name is Rich or my name is Osher and I'm an alcoholic or I'm an addict. We're in a culture now that's forgiving and understanding and has a grasp on the recovery process.

1:25:37And we understand that on some level. It's another thing altogether to say, you know, my name's Asher and, you know, I have psychotic episodes or sometimes I don't know what's real and expect people to be like, cool, you know, are you good? You're gonna show up for work, it's okay. Like, so what I'm getting at is that I still think we have a long way to go in terms of understanding these types of conditions. And I think what's important about you and kind of how you advocate in this space is your willingness to be open about it. Like I remember when I was here a couple of years ago and you did a live show and you got up in front of that live audience.

1:26:16And I don't know if it was the first time you'd done that, but it was early in your journey of saying, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna tell this story. And it's hard, you know, it's embarrassing. I have to talk about things that like a lot of people might look at me a little bit differently, you know, as a result of it. But I think that there's so much power in your, there's a lot of courage to be that vulnerable in front of people. Well, firstly, like it's been a long time since I've had any breaks with reality. Like it's been a long time since I've had any of those episodes. And I live every day knowing that they are, it won't be tomorrow, it won't be in six months, but they're not far if I don't keep things ship shape.

1:26:57You know? You got the little, the balloon. Keeping the balloon, yeah, it's important. I gotta do, I've got to, there's things I need to do every day. But because of the things that I do every day, I have this incredible life that I'm more productive and, you know, than I've ever been in my career. Yeah, and you have like a million jobs. Let's be straight. I mean, you know, like, I don't know how many TV shows you host, but it's a lot. Only two. You seem to have many podcasts and you're doing this news thing now, like a live event. It's a lot of fun. You know, this sort of live Colbert type experience with news and comedians and performers here in Australia.

1:27:28Like you're incredibly productive. I don't know, man. I got a lot in my head and I've got to get it out. And I'm trying to get it out in the healthiest way possible. But there was something you talked about before that I've just lost it now. you were talking about. It's like, oh yeah. So when I first got sober, all right, I remember sitting, there was a particular meeting I would go to. And I'm a part of a fellowship of men and women who count days and take steps. There's more than 11, there's less than 13. You can figure it out. The secret thing that we're not supposed to talk about, but everybody knows what you're talking about.

1:28:00It's my super secret sober club. And I would sit there and I remember this particular place, it was on it was on Sunset it was above a bar I don't know if you ever went to that one oh I know exactly what you're talking about it was a really good one and I was sitting in this bar in the middle of the day and um it's a nooner that one it was really good I put my hand up and I had a chat after the after the show after the meeting after the show this guy comes up to me and he's probably about my age now and he goes mate it's gonna be okay I said you know I understand like I was literally sleeping on my friend Nick's spare bed you know I'd just been you know I had to get kicked out of my house I was like getting divorced.

1:28:37It was like, no one could have told me anything. And he goes, no, it's going to be all right. I promise you it'll be okay. You just keep coming. Do this, do that. Do the things that your man tells you. You'll be all right. He may as well have been telling me the story of Hansel and Gretel. It was a fucking fairy tale, right? It may as well have been, hey, Rich, come over and say hi to the kids. Come and say hi to Audrey. But I'm going to blindfold you. And when you get into the house, I'm going to take the blindfold off and say, hey, man, describe the colors of the cars on the street. He'd be like, well, I know they're there.

1:29:05you're like you're just blank like a complete blank from where i was standing that day to this guy he was wearing a gray overcoat never get him but i just needed to believe that that was possible and he was telling me it was possible and i had to believe that he was telling me the truth and i had to do was just go he told me just just do what your man tells you do it and come here every day do what your man tells you and it'll be all right and guess what it was and i'm just trying to give to others what was given to me because you can't be what you can't see all right and when I first came back here and I was like, I'm gonna go to these meetings, I'm gonna call my man, David.

1:29:38I'm like, I'm so famous. I don't want to go to a meeting, put my hand up. I don't know if you realize I'm really fucking famous. He's like, dude, shut the fuck up. Put your fucking hand up and you'll fucking save someone's life, man. Fuck you. I was like, okay. And, and since then, you know, it's not about me. It's not about me. It's about, I want to, I want me at 22 getting his, you know, long vomit-soaked hair getting pulled out of his mouth to see someone like me, not me, but someone, whoever they relate to, talking about this and going, yeah, it doesn't have to be that. You can have everything you've ever wanted more, more than you could have ever fucking dreamed of without that thing.

1:30:22It's okay. You've got a brain that when it gets that thing, bad shit happens. Doesn't happen to everybody. Sorry. It's like peanut butter. Not everyone gets to eat it, you know? I'm just trying to give to others what was given to me, mate. And it was, you know, I found that, you know, if you can't, you've got to seek out stories of people who are where you want to be. That's why people read your book. Cause they're like, they want to run a 5k. They read stories about you running Ultraman, but they want to, they want to get off their ass and go and do something. All right. So people go and read stories.

1:30:48They already read Goggins book, right? Cause they want to hear, they want to read a story about someone who's where they want to be and understand that another person has done this thing. And I'll do the same thing. Like when I was dealing with all the suicidality, I started a podcast. Um, I was doing it with Movember. I convinced Movember to fund a podcast and I spoke with, I spoke with suicide survivors for like, I don't know, I did 40 episodes or something. And so every like, I don't know, every third or fourth episode, I spoke with suicide survivors and I'm talking to these guys going, wow, you, and I'm like, literally, if you watch the footage, just before we did video podcast, you watch the footage, I'm like going through it and I'm speaking with them and like this shit flying through my head and I'm seeing shit.

1:31:23Like it was all happening. Oh my God. Dude, it was all happening. And I'm just going, hold, listen, listen. And it was really important to hear that, you know, these people had been through what I was, the kind of thinking that I was going through and having their brain trying to tell them, psst, here's a way out, psst, I can fix this, psst, it's going to be fine, just do this, just do this. And that after a while, just it's way more seductive than I thought. And when I heard that, I know you'll do a big warning at the start of this because there's a lot of, got to be really careful about how you communicate about this sort of thing.

1:31:53um i didn't realize how seductive the thought it was i didn't realize that at all talk more about that what do you mean i didn't well like i was saying earlier like i didn't realize i thought it'd be a big scary scary thought like and this is what i'm gonna have to do now oh well i've tried in this i know it was hey man i got you come over here let me put my arm around you just do this it'll be all better because it was so noisy mate it was so noisy it was like being i don't know stuck at the worst music fucking worst edm music festival ever and it's at a drag strip and you're five hours from anywhere and you can't get a ride home and you can't sleep because you've taken too many drugs and you can't get out of there because your friends are somewhere and you're stuck between the drum and bass tent and the trance tent and you got all this shit blowing at you from speakers either side it was just so noisy my brain was so noisy i couldn't fucking thing and you got this guy going I know how to make it quiet and that's fucking hell man it was like and it was my voice it was my feelings it was my idea you know the same one that goes oh man I'm gonna make a best chocolate smoothie it was the same thing it's like oh I'm really cold I'm gonna put on my favorite jumper it was the same thing and that's I was very lucky that I knew that so scary yeah and I that's the thing I needed to tell people about it doesn't come out scary it it comes out as the best idea you've ever had.

1:33:20And no, it's not. It's not. It's five minutes later. Yeah, but it's that thing, we were talking about this yesterday, like you're trying to solve the problem with the same brain that created the problem. Like you're living inside a brain that is tweaked. Yeah. And you're trying to figure out a way forward, but all you have is this tweaked brain, but you don't really know that it's tweaked. And so you're stuck. It's like a strange kind of like hall of mirrors. It is. You can't use a sick brain to think your way out of having a sick brain. It's like trying to bite your own teeth or trying to touch your right elbow with your right index finger.

1:34:00You can't do it. And when you're in that state, you don't know that your brain is sick. No, you don't. No, you don't. And this is why things like, things that I'd learned earlier, things like writing things down, things like talking to people, observing, meditating, had really helped. Now, look, I still have hard days. I had a hard day today. I rode a bicycle here because I needed to move my body a bit to kind of downregulate a bit from earlier in the day. Like it's still hard. It's not, it's not, everything's not fucking roses. And I'm a punish to live with sometimes because I can get very, very focused, very focused to the point where you might've moved on from a topic, but I'm still talking about three sentences ago and I can't let to go and it's really hard to speak with me sometimes.

1:34:45And that's really tough on the people that I love. And I struggle with what I put them through sometimes. Yeah, I've noticed in talking to you sometimes your brain moves so quickly that we'll be talking about something but then you'll throw a couple other things in there. And then I'm like, wait, what is happening right now? I'm not quite sure. Sorry. Yeah, and it's not, no, you know, I think in this conversation you've been very linear. but I've noticed it like just socially a little bit. It can happen. It's just like a, it's not like there's nothing negative about that. It's just something that I've noticed.

1:35:19It happens, yeah. Like the meds that I'm on now, they tend to wear off towards the end of the day. And so evenings can be a bit difficult because I can get back into those things. But look, that's all, you know, when I'm medicated, it works and it's okay, you know, But it's still, it's, look, it's like, you know, when I first got sober, I had to, I had, the thing that people may not understand about drinking is that people all understand it affects your memory, right? But that memory affecting, the effect of the memory also affects your ability to learn and feel the pain and damage emotionally that you've caused.

1:36:02So you don't connect this horrible feeling in your body with your own actions. and so ultimately I started drinking to blackout at 14 so here I am suddenly I'm 36 with the emotional ability of a 14 year old trying to get through life and I had to learn all that shit I had to really literally learn it like reading books about how to do it because I had no idea and similarly you know I have to learn how to do other stuff that people have figured out when they were six. And that's hard when you're 49, but I am here to learn and I'm here to grow and I'm here to, like, I know I'm getting it wrong. I know I get probably get it wrong more than I'd like, but I'm not here to pretend that life's fucking amazing and rosy.

1:36:46It's not, it's hard, but it's also, you know, it's worth, it's worth it. It's worth trying because who I get to be because of the trying is worth it. And look, I honestly, I would not, we've talked a lot about this, but we haven't talked about how incredible Audrey was in all this. So again, I met the woman who's named my wife when I was going through all of this shit, through all of it. And I remember speaking to her, just telling her about, you know, like all these like completely deluded things that are going on. And I'm like, you know, Pacific Island's getting washed away and entire cultures are getting destroyed.

1:37:26And, you know, like as real as real could be to me. And she just, she could see that I wasn't really, really bad. And she just said, look, if it does come to that, I'll be with you and it'll be okay. And that was the first time in years that I believed it might end up in a different way to how I'd been convinced that it would end up. And she, you know, it was like I was in a, they used to have these dance parties here in Marrickville Bowls Club, Black Market. I don't know if anyone remembers them, but they used to cover the mirrors in black plastic, right? And it was like someone had taken a pin because the parties would go all day from the night before.

1:38:08And they're like, someone had taken a pin and popped through the black plastic. And there was just this tiny little pinprick of light because I'd been in that darkness for so long. And when she said that to me, I was like, oh, oh, oh, right. So all the things that I'm thinking could happen and I could be holding her hand at the same time. Oh. And that was the thing that changed everything. That woman absolutely saved my life, mate. There's no question. No question. I'm very lucky because of that. because it was, I needed someone. It's worth it to be a better person for them. I was living alone before I met them.

1:38:51When you live alone, you don't have to, you're not accountable to anyone. You can be a bastard and you put your social face on and whatever and that's it, but then you're alone and alone's no fun. So, yeah. You also don't have anyone to give you that feedback and accountability on your behavior in real time. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the, you know, that's really, that's the thing. I suddenly had these two incredible people who I was, I couldn't help but be so completely hopelessly in love with her and just so much paternal love that just showed up and nowhere for G. She was 11. She's 19 now, you know, and I didn't know what to do with this thing because I'm a selfish prick, and suddenly he's just, I'm no longer number one, fuck no, you know, and it was all, that's it.

1:39:44That was like, okay, this is what I have to do this. I have to. And now you have a son. Now we are, yeah, Wolfie. And so how does that change how you think about all of this and keep you on track and?

1:39:58I guess it's very kind of two-fold, you know, Part of it is I try to communicate whenever I can, as much as I can, about how much work needs to get done. Because eventually everyone's going to get it. Eventually everyone's going to get how much work needs to get done. And the work will get done. It'll just be way harder. We don't have to change the diet after the heart attack. We could eat better now and not even have the heart attack. Or even just get a really kind of nasty scare. which is probably what we're having right now. We're having a nasty climate scare. All right, but let's not go through the heart attack.

1:40:39But, you know, humans are humans. We kind of wait for that, unfortunately. It's shit, man. I know, it's terrible. It's terrible. So on one hand, it's like, well, but then again, I don't know anything. I don't know everything. I rode a bicycle here. I could get taken out of the way home, all right? And so all I have is this day. All I have is this moment. Literally all we have is now, as Wayne Coyne would say. Like, this is it. And so when I'm, you know, every day with, it's very, you know, it's really easy and very obvious when they're little because they change so much so fast. But like, she's a new kid every six weeks.

1:41:16She just, you know, it's subtly different, but she's very, you know, she changes so often. She still grows and changes and thinks about things. And she's a very powerful woman and just try to be as present as I can and witness to it. And, you know, know that you only have to do today. You know, I look sometimes, I've got 13 years up the other day. And I put up a thing on my phone because I kind of stopped counting. And I put it up on my phone. I was like, fucking hell. And they say, oh, it's a day at a time. But honestly, mate, some days it was five minutes at a time. But you only have to do it for five more minutes.

1:41:50And just trust that you'll be able to cope in five minutes from now. Because you will. And so thinking about, you asked about what's going to happen, you know, looking, how do we think about everything? look, I just trust that whatever happens that I'll be able to cope. Whatever shows up, I'll be able to cope. It's not like some giant cataclysm is gonna happen and I'll suddenly forget how to do shit. You have that muscle memory. I mean, you've endured a lot. And so you know that you're able and capable of like, you know, getting through difficult situations. I have a lot of empathy for people who haven't been through that climate thing.

1:42:26I think it's really important, I think, to be with the reality of it. And sit down and really have a look, all right? Because during, we had some bushfires here, Black Summer, we called it. Yeah, I was here. Yeah, it was devastating. When that was going on. Devastating, all right. And people are texting me every day because I'd read the book and stuff like, are you okay? Are you okay? I'm like, mate, I saw this when it wasn't there for years. Like I'd close my eyes and it would be there. Like I've been through what you're going through right now. Because suddenly for a lot of people that are in my life, it was, oh, oh, fuck.

1:43:03Like, yes, yes, I get it. So I have a lot of empathy for people who haven't been through that and people who are resisting that, but it's really important. And I think a lot of the denialism that we see around climate stuff is trying to avoid that pain. All right. When you start talking about, you know, climate change, people think, oh, it's, you know, seawater or whatever. It's like, mate, it's food security. It's water coming out of your tap. it's immigration it's national security it's everything but the thing is because it's everything it means everything's a solution everything in the right direction is a solution there's everything to do it's not like there's nothing to do there's everything to do and so there's everywhere to get into action because being in action is a sense of agency and being in action is freedom from the pain that you're in the only way out of the flames is through pun intended the only way out of the flames is through you just have to keep moving just doesn't matter pick a spot, go in one direction, do that.

1:43:58And then at least you're moving. And that can give you what you need to get to bed that night going, well, what can I control? I can control it, you know, do what I can, do the next right thing. I got really lucky to get all the skills that I got from getting sober, really helped me in this part. On the mental health stuff though, in your journey, you know, with the book and the live events that you do and the amount of time that you spend talking about this kind of stuff behind a microphone, you must have a sense of the impact that it's making. You must have, you know, men, people coming up to you.

1:44:35Like it's a lifeline for a lot of people. There aren't that many people who are talking about mental health in its most severe form in the way that you do. Yeah, like once again, I got very lucky and I got to come off the antipsychotics. Some people don't. And I got very, very lucky because of that. But I think, you know, if I asked, you know, what does complex mental illness look like like what does psychosis look like? People might think, oh, it's the guy on the bus is shouting and stuff that I can't see. It can be, you know? It could be, you know, you in a finely tailored suit. Yeah, that's it.

1:45:05But that's what it is. So it shows up in unlikely forms as well. One in five Australians is affected by complex mental illness, all right? And that could be person suffering. But like for every person that has been diagnosed, five people are affected by it. So when you look at those stats, it's like - Which means there's a lot of people walking around undiagnosed. Oh no, diagnosed, but they're just not talking about it. Oh, I see. And they're managing it. And you asked earlier about, I got really lucky with my workplace because I know I'm a high value employee. And I was really honest with my boss and said, like, mate, this is what's going on.

1:45:41Just so you know, this is why I'm a bit strange. This is what's happening. This is the doctors I'm seeing. These are the meds I'm taking. This is the exercise I'm doing. This is the mediums I'm going to. And all of these things mean that I'll still be able, and I really need to keep coming to work because giving me something to do, it's like when someone gets injured at work, you want to get them back as quick as possible because that's a huge part of them getting better. And having a reason to get out of bed and a reason to go to work is a really important thing in getting healthy. And my boss, Stephen, amazing.

1:46:06He just said, well, what do you need from us? And like, because in one breath, I told him, I disclosed, and I wouldn't recommend, I'm done saying you should disclose, like only if you're really comfortable and you feel you're going to be okay. Because in one breath, I told him what was going on, but I also told him how I was managing it and told him that I was taking responsibility for it. And then that made it not his problem to fix. And I think that's a really important thing. Like you can, you know, it can happen to you or it can happen for you. You know, you can either let it have you or you can have it.

1:46:38You know, it's really, it's really, that's all it is. And if you take responsibility for it, then you have a bit more sense that you're not being sort of flayed around so much. which it still comes and grabs me sometimes and kind of fucks up my day as it did today. But it's, if I know that, you know, look, well, I'm doing what I can with what I have and it might not be that, you know. And how has all of this informed your relationship with your career as somebody who, you know, used to have that kind of fuck you mentality? Don't you know who I think I am? Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's exactly what it was.

1:47:18Yeah. Don't you know who you think I am? to now being really successful and being on these really popular television shows and being somebody who's gonna get recognized on the street and all of that, like how does that influence, like where does the ambition sit? How have you right-sized yourself and formed like a healthier relationship with all of that? It came from changing why I showed up at work. And, you know, as I said, how do you be a worker among workers when you're the fucking guy on the telly, you know, how do you do that? How do you have a head of humility around that? And what I tried to do was try to just be the most professional.

1:47:58What I tried to do was like, how can I make everyone else's day at work the easiest that I can make it? So I spent a long time probably not making it very easy. So how can I make it the audio person's easiest day at work, that camera person, that camera person, this person? How can I make their day the easiest day? By being on time, by being completely prepared, by being as professional as I possibly can be, by, you know, asking them about their day, you know, being, you know, getting in and out, getting it done. All right. And that in turn makes me very good at what I do because that's what I want to do it for.

1:48:29All right. There was a time when I did it because I wanted to have, you know, the rating success and all that shit. And we did, you know, Australia, very risk averse when it comes to TV. So we did the Masked Singer in Australia as well. And I host that. I'm very lucky too. It's a fucking super fun show. But there was a big, it was a hit. The first season was a hit and people are texting and calling and going, hey, congratulations, congratulations. I'm like, I didn't want to say to them, but I appreciate you congratulating me, but it's not like we don't work as hard on the ones that don't work.

1:48:56We work just as hard. This how or why it was successful has nothing to do with me. All I can do is show up, do it as best I can, try to push myself, try to learn something, try to make other people stay good and then go and that's the job. I don't do marketing. I don't do promos. I don't cut. I have no idea what the other networks gonna program against me. I have no idea. I can't attach myself - Yeah, it's very different from podcasting. Bro. You have to do the whole thing, all of it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. In network television, there's whole departments in charge of all that kind of stuff. You just, you say you do your bit and then you leave and go home.

1:49:38But I can't, I used to, I would definitely get tied into the outcome. And I know you've spoken about this, like, you know, and I've heard you talk about this with people who've done, you know, extraordinary athletic things. It's not like the gold medal that you hold at the end of it is the prize. Who you became to hold the gold medal, sorry, it's not like the gold medal that you hold at the end is the prize. Who you became to hold the gold medal is the prize. And that's why you do it. It's not like everything's gonna be fine when I hold this thing. No. That's not it. Who you become to hold this thing, that's it.

1:50:15And we've got to kind of ask backwards around that with success in our society, I think. You know, this amount of money at the end of the year, you've made it. Have you? Because I've had that amount of money and it just, you know, it swiftly went away, trust me. But it didn't make everything awesome. It didn't. Don't worry, it all went away. because, you know, internet gambling. Okay. It's all gone. Gone, gone, gone, gone. All right. Yeah. But it's who you become because of it. And that's the day-to-day stuff, you know, because ultimately that's all there is. And who would you say that you've become?

1:50:56Oh, man.

1:51:01I'm trying to... I don't know, Rich.

1:51:07I'm just, I just, I don't know, mate. I don't know how to answer that question. I don't know how to answer that question. I just, every step I take away from the person I was before I stopped drinking and using is a good place to be. I think if any of us can try to transcend the patterns of behavior that haven't served us and write new ones, then we have done the universe's service by not allowing those kinds of things to carry forward any further. And that might be, you know, someone's a racist granddad or someone's homophobic mom or whatever. Like that can stop with you. You can choose that.

1:51:49Or not that I had a racist granddad or a homophobic mom, but you can choose to stop that. So identifying the parts of who I am that don't serve me and going, do I really need that? Can I let go of that? Can I do something else? Like, it's a bit hard because I can get a bit robotic in my thinking sometimes. So it can be hard to get the new versions of things in, but it takes time, but it eventually works. And if I can just do that, then I'm all right. And as far as everything else, mate, fit, fit, fit, fit, dead. That's it. I'm not, I'm, there's no glide path for me. I am. I like how you distilled it down.

1:52:31But I do think it's worth noting that piece around interrupting the intergenerational transfer hereditary or inherited traumas and behavior patterns that cause havoc. And it could be from an ex relationship, it could be from a job. And you become very present with that when you become a parent, obviously, and you're looking at your young child and you're thinking about how you were raised or what your grandparents endured. And you realize that you can be a stop gap, like you can arrest whatever thing that runs in the background on autopilot. You have the agency to interrupt and perhaps make it the last stop on that line.

1:53:18So that Wolfie isn't like intuiting that and like exuding that and then passing it on. The worst thing about parenting, it's not the sleep it's not the you know being tired all the time or being crappy to each other that's not it they don't do what you tell them but they do what you show them that is the worst part because you see some shit in them and go you millivore oh you got that from me fuck and then you have to and that's the clue as to what you need to look at yeah that thing yeah sorry yeah And you have to sort that shit out because, and I think stuff like that is how another way that we can get a little closer to the kind of like society-wide change we're going to need to get us out of this mess.

1:54:06Like that kind of fear of change, this idea that, oh, that's how we always did it. That's how we're always going to have to do it. No, no. You know, we have the choice to to help our children become more open to change and more open to new ideas. We have that ability. And that's really, really important because - Well, and it starts with us and it starts in the home. It bloody does, mate. Yeah. It really does. I think that's a good place to put a pin in it for today. Mate, just bringing it around the corner. I love you, buddy. You know, the journey that you've been on is just, it's fucking unbelievable, dude.

1:54:45and the level of vulnerability and courage that you've demonstrated to weather this and come to the other side and be in a place where you can talk about it, you know, comfortably is an incredible service. Thanks, mate. Thank you so much, mate, for having me. And like, don't underestimate the role that you and Julie and your family have played. Because I don't know, like, I don't think you lived it. You never lived in another country, did you? Like, I was a long way, a long way from home, a long way from my family, a long way from my friends, and to be able to, like you felt it last night when you were at our place, to go, oh, a family.

1:55:23Ah, it's not my family. Ah. I can leave it there and go. Warm. Delicious food. Nice dogs. Yeah. Ah. Rattlesnakes. Bang. Nice dogs. You know, that is unbelievable. It's a lifeboat on the other side of the planet. You know, it really is. and knowing, you know, I sometimes just ride past your house. Not in a weird way, just to go, I saw my friends live, you know, just ride past your house. Well, you always have a home at our home and we didn't even get to the part about the importance of kind of fitness and physical activity as part of the mental health journey. Like we spent a lot of time on the bike together and the bike as a tool for, you know, kind of contending with demons and getting to the other side.

1:56:12There's a huge part of me feeling better that involves, and I believe now, because I listened to a man whose career you fucking jumpstarted, Andrew Huberman. There's a lot of references to people, but he sure doesn't reference you enough. Come at me, Huberman. No, I love him. I'll listen to him every week. It talks about the catecholamines, it talks about dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. Now, all these things exist within my body. And when my body was not well, I needed to take meds to help stimulate the production of those things. But these things exist in my body. Though there's things I need to do to release them into my body.

1:56:49And that we're designed to move. We're designed to lift. We're designed to be active. We're designed to move through space. We're supposed to be out and about getting our food, walking around, doing things, interacting with other human beings. All of these things, all of these hormones give my body what it needs to shift mood states throughout the day. and if I don't have enough of those, that can be a problem. I can get quite stuck. But, and I know you talk about it and Audrey certainly does to me. She's like, go swing some kettlebells, mate. Go get on your bike. Just go. And I understand that.

1:57:21You know, I sometimes, I've got a ergo now, I've got a rowing machine and it's, dude, it's great. It's 25 minutes. I can get whatever, you know, I can use that anxiety. I can use that energy that has been released in my body. There's a huge chunk of adrenaline. It's like, I don't need no pre-workout. hit me, give me some deadlifts. Sure. And I remember like during some of your harder periods where you were like, you were just out on the bike for hours, like the whole day. Right. And I was like, I know what that got, I know what that's about. Oh yeah. It's Wednesday. And you call me, I'm like, where are you?

1:57:55I'm here. It's like, that's 30 miles from your house. Yes, it is. up a mountain. But that's what I needed to do on that day to stay okay. Because there's a sense of agency. There's a great sense of I'm here under my own power. I have some control. I have some ability to move myself. Not everyone can do that. I'm very lucky that I could. And just the sense of mental space that you get and the kind of active meditative effect of being in a elevated heart rate and connecting with your breath that allows you to problem solve or try to make sense of your situation and what you're trying to work through in a way that doesn't happen when you're at home on the couch.

1:58:41No, and it's not like I sit there and I'm working through it like a math problem. No, it's in the background. I'll just be like running and going like, oh, seagull, tree. It happens in the unconscious part of your brain while you're doing that other thing. Yeah, and then it just pops up. Because you're not looking at it directly. Yeah, it pops up and you go, oh, there it is. and there's never a problem that I went I took on a run that I didn't come back with a solution with never not once but I I gotta say that this is the tricky part about dosages increasing I got that feeling from just walking around my block when I was super unfit the problem is now is like to get that again like I push myself well I've got a heart rate I've got a heart rate strapped now and you know because the meds I'm on I've got to be careful of my blood pressure and stuff like that so I send them some regular updates to my man and my psychiatrist he's I was like, damn, like, yeah, I know.

1:59:28Like, I just, when I got my leg done, I'm in the thing. The alarm kept going off because I thought I was Brady Cardic. Because it's like fucking 50 beats a minute, 49 beats a minute, like proper. Like, because I'd just been going in the first surgery, I went in as fit as I possibly could be back in 2020. I went in so fit. They're like, are you okay? Like, yeah, I'm fine. But I, you know, I know that I don't have to sustain that kind of heart rate when I'm really like doing intervals, like really hard. But I know you only have to be there for a little bit, you know, minute off, minute on for a little while.

2:00:03And that's enough. Just the fire hoses your brain down. It's a major state change. Oh man. Like you try to be angry or upset or scared after all that shit floods your brain. And that's for free, you know, that's for free. You can get there doing burpees. And not enough people know that, you know, it's amazing. Yeah, man. All right, well, we gotta get out of here, but let's close it down with maybe a final thought for he or she who's still suffering. Like I'm just imagining somebody who's watching this or listening who's thinking, maybe I have some stuff I need to look at. Usher's kicking up some stuff and it feels a little uncomfortable right now.

2:00:45I don't know where to direct that energy. Like, do you have resources that you can direct people towards or a thought that you could share to help you know, direct or guide that person who's dancing around the outer edges of seeking help? Well, I would say, look, I play a lot of poker. Like one of the things I'm really lucky for is I play a poker game every Wednesday and I've been playing a poker game since 2003. So it's the same group of 10, 12 guys. So I've got these guys in my life. And so, and we've been through a lot together. And there's a person who shows up at a poker table who doesn't know how to play very well and everyone spots them and they kind of play them and they basically treat them like a human ATM.

2:01:26And that person's called the fish. And there's this phrase going, if you can't spot the fish at the table, it's you. And so if you're going through life and you're like, everyone fucking, why doesn't do what I say? What's going on? Why is everyone, everyone's the asshole. might be you and just that's okay it's okay you are where you are with the skills and the tools that you've got, that's fine. There's more skills and tools and ways to deal. You just need to go ask someone to show you. And that's fine. It's okay. There's no shame in figuring out better ways to do things. If you're going through life and everything is constantly a rocky fucking road, it's okay.

2:02:08You're going in the direction you want to go to, but maybe you want to get a better set of tires. Maybe you want to get a better suspension. Maybe you need a better co-pilot. There's plenty of things that you can get on board. There's no need to gut through it. You're not alone and there's plenty of help, plenty of help. And look, I know I live in this incredible country with this amazing healthcare system, but there's just psychoeducation alone. Learn about cognitive distortions. Learn about what happens when your body's captured by anxiety. Learn the difference between an amygdala hijack and, oh, what's the other one?

2:02:38There's an amygdala one. There's a, I can't remember what it was. Learn, like when you're in anxiety, learn what your amygdala does to your body. Understand that, you know, if you're in a meeting and everyone's being an asshole and da-da-da-da-da-da and your hands are shaking, you've shouted the last three things you've said, oh, I'm in fight or flight. Right. Right. Someone said something that has nothing to do with this situation, but it has triggered a response from a long time ago. And I should probably not have to claw and bite my way out of this room. I might just take a bit of a breath here.

2:03:08you know understand understand that stuff and and and just kind of just learn and that you know what's amazing is like yeah youtube can convince you some pretty wrong shit but it's also a huge amount of like really clever um go for people who are actual doctors go for people who are from universities uh there's some really clever psychoeducation out there just just learning what it is naming it to tame it is a really important thing cognitive distortion cognitive distortions is really powerful. Like learning what the big cognitive distortions are, learning what anxiety is, learning what your prefrontal cortex does, you know, learning how to down regulate.

2:03:44You can learn how to, you know, you can do a thing called polyvagal breathing, which is really easy. It's just three in, six out. I do that in meetings all the time. I do that on air. No one knows I'm doing it. What am I doing? I'm stimulating my vagus nerve, like tricking my body into, it's a relaxation response. And it's super easy to do. A four in, and eight out, don't do any more than that if you're standing up, like, or driving. I guess there's so many things you can do. Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, I would echo all of that, but supplement it with this idea of not trying to, like we were talking about earlier, solve it in the confines of your mind quietly.

2:04:20No. Instead, raise your hand and let people in, find somebody you trust. It could be a friend, it could be a colleague, it could be a professional, but develop the habit of being open with somebody who can help guide you. All of these things thrive in the darkness and in isolation. And I think when you're in that situation, there's shame attached to it, which makes you wanna kind of deal with it privately. Yeah, it makes it worse. And all that's gonna do is prolong it and exacerbate it over time. If, you know, you, if I rode my bicycle here and if I got here and, you know, I'd fallen really badly and I'd had a mad double spiral fracture in my forearm, my hand was hanging down like that.

2:05:05Like, dude, we've got to get you to a fucking doctor. No, no, she'll be right, mate. You'd think I was fucking crazy, all right? But people do that every day when it comes to mental health. Get to a goddamn doctor and fast because these things don't get better. They get worse, as I've spoken about today, because I wasn't treating it. and it was getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and eventually it just it nearly killed me um but there's so much help and there's a huge amount of power that comes from taking control and taking control just to ask for help and that's that's that's really powerful particularly with men men like to be in charge well be in charge pick up the phone pal go do something about it and like if you're i use automotive analogies because they work you know there's this idea that it's weakness to do that.

2:05:54But if it's weakness to do that, then why are you so scared to do it? Yeah. So, I'm in the car and I'm flying down the freeway taking my entire family on holiday, right? And the front left tire blows out. All right. Do I pull over? Or do I go, no, I'm going to keep going. I'm doing 110 Ks an hour and everyone I love is in this vehicle and now it's super dangerous. And if I then pull over and refuse, if I don't have the tools to fix the car, what am I going to do? You know? Mate, of course you're going to call the roadside assistance. Of course you're going to pull the car over. It's the same with your brain.

2:06:30If you find yourself like getting really rigid in your thinking and you find yourself kind of getting cranky all the time or just crying or wanting to vomit out of nowhere, that happened to me as well. Like when I was in lockdown in Melbourne, I'm just like, out of nowhere, I just wanted to spew just like, like I've been drinking tequila kind of vomit. I was like, that's not good. It was just a signal going, boom, I was on the phone with my doctor like that because I know that happens about two weeks before the other shit starts. So being on top of that kind of stuff, like get some tools. You'd pull a car over.

2:06:58Like if you don't have that shit, learn how to do it. Get some tools and get your family there safely because that's ultimately who's going to get hurt if you don't look after things. Sorry to come all heavy, but that's the truth though. No, that's good. That's good. Maybe we'll get some links and some other resources we can fill the show notes out with. Oh, please, yeah. People with some places they can go and some phone numbers they can call. Start at Susan David and go from there. There you go. Start at Susan David. That's right, right? Dude, she is the business. Uncomfortable feelings are the price of admission to a meaningful life.

2:07:33Be with that. And that is half the work done. Right on, man. All right, to be continued. Oh, man. Love you, man. Really? Thank you. Yeah, we're done for today. I love you, dude. I love you. All right. No, I was like, really? You're gonna have me back? Plants. And go see Usher's live new NTNNNNN or whatever it is. If you're in Australia. I don't even know what it's like, not the new - Nighttime News Network, National Nightly News. There you go. Yeah. It's not a fake news show. It's a fake news show. Cause the news is a product, all right? A product like anything else. And depending on how exactly the fact is told to you, you can either think, wow, those people really need our help and we should look after them because as a country, we look after each other and we think everyone deserves a fair go.

2:08:23Or if you read it in another outlet, you go, fuck off, we're full. This fair go is only for white people. But that's what happens here in our country. And I think the way that particularly, I think the way the news media in our country has been behaving and really needs to be held to account. And you're the man to do it. Dude, I'm putting my entire network career at risk every night, I promise you. All right. Cheers. Love you, man.

2:08:58That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

2:09:43Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake.

2:10:21Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, as well as Dan Drake. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

2:11:03Thank you.