The Color Of Everything: Cory Richards On Big Peaks, Being Bi-Polar, Healing From Trauma, PTSD, & Alcoholism

29:00Young children. Maybe they just wanted me as a babysitter, a live-in babysitter. which is fine. Yeah. But you're, you're erratic. You're like, you're not like, I'm not a stable human. Yeah. Yeah. You're not at the top of the list, you know, for babysitting at that time. This is an incredible act of generosity. Huge act of generosity and love. And, and that was the moment of Christianity. That was the moment of getting three jobs. And so there's all this, this huge gift that they give and then, And, okay, we're going to give this money back. What do you want to do? You know, my dad had this group of climbing partners that were all late 50s at this point.

29:40But I kind of came up with a harebrained idea that maybe they'd want to go into the Alaska range, into the Ruth Gorge. And unsurprisingly now, in hindsight, they all said yes. They were like, of course, let's do that. And so we flew in and I asked my mom to borrow a camera. And she let me. And that's the beginning of the photography part of the story. Yeah.

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35:24It's so interesting looking at all the things that you've done and the many ways in which you've been celebrated for your accomplishments and your work. But when you kind of zero down on, you know, this young kid, it's not looking good. You know what I mean? Like it's not, it's not set up for success here. Like it's shocking that you crawled your way out and made your way into the world in the way that you did, because this appears to be a relatively, you know, kind of dead end situation. And I think people look at you and they see your face on the cover of National Geographic and they see the adventure of the year and these peaks that you've climbed and these incredibly stunning photographs that you've taken, many of which are in this amazing new book, Bipolar, which we're gonna talk about.

36:12And it's easy to just kind of create a mental framework of where you came from and who you are. And I'm aware of some of the criticism around your book, like you will be repaid for your vulnerability with criticism in the form of self-indulgence Right. Because you're a handsome guy too, which makes you a target, that you're just privileged or something like that. And your story is like, you don't have to read very many pages into your book to realize that this is not a story of privilege in any way, shape or form. Like it's shocking that you made anything of yourself. Well, again, thank you. I'm gonna sit with that.

36:50Thank you. I have a really hard time still just taking that on. I really do. Two things. is males who drop out of high school before 15 or before have some ungodly chance of dying, right? They're just the death rate. They're the young death rate for people who pursue that path is incredibly high. And so I am very, very lucky. I'm also very lucky that I was born a white male middle class in America. There's absolutely no argument against that. So when we talk about privilege, I acknowledge that. What I will stop and say and try to be very clear about is privilege in terms of mental health is access and resources.

37:38But mental health itself does not give a shit what color or gender you are. That does not equate. It does matter potentially your socioeconomic background and status because in poverty, there is more abuse and violence. And in more abuse and violence, there's more trauma, which begets more. But to think that we could lay this story off at the feet of privilege, that I could do what ended up happening because I was a white man is just not true. That's just not what the numbers say. Did I have a leg up because of the access to care? You bet. There's no argument there. But when we have the conversation about mental health, to start throwing around the word privilege is quite frankly, just uninformed.

38:32Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I understand that. I think that was well said. In hearing you say that, I think privilege is maybe the wrong word to use to properly understand this. But yeah, like let's acknowledge, you know, there, there is privilege at play here, but it doesn't tell the full story. Yeah. And I don't hear you saying that. I don't see, hear you having that criticism. I just think that's a, because it is easy to be like cool, cold white guy, great story, you know, cool man. Like you went to the middle. Handsome guy with cool tattoos. Right. Exactly. But that's the problem. Flirts with girls at the Patagonia store, you know, rough dude.

39:11Yeah. Rough. Your life has been so rough and you just need to peel back one layer. But I think that's a reminder too for, it can be a reminder for all of us that compassion in its fullness is omnidirectional. It's very easy to extend compassion to people who we actually think are somehow below us or have it harder than us. That's easy. Extending compassion towards people who have a different situation or we might view as above us, whether that's economically, racially, gender wise, but extending that same compassion is incredibly difficult. But that's what real compassion is. And it's dropping the idea that because you look a certain way that you don't have deep, deep, deep internal struggles.

39:58In fact, oftentimes you might have more. We're not prone to be compassionate about people who have more or more hands, all those things, In fact, we make a sport of trying to take them down a peg or judging them. For sure. So the camera is in your hands. The other story that needs to kind of be stripped back is perhaps a false notion that you took a photograph and then like your life opened up to you. Yeah. It was amazing in the book, like how many thousands of photographs you took and this kind of persistent submitting to all the magazines and all that kind of stuff. Even once you figured out like, oh, I really like this and I think maybe I'm good.

40:41You're just submitting all the time and it's just nothing but rejection forever. It's all rejection. It's so funny. I remember sitting with my dad and I was like, I think I wanna pursue photography. And he was just kind of silent and he's like, He didn't say it's a bad idea. He just said, I think that's a really big uphill battle. And my dad is a man of few words, in beautiful words, usually, but he chooses his words carefully. And I think that, again, like you point out, there's this idea that, yeah, I started taking pictures and I was immediately good at it. No, there were thousands, tens of thousands of pictures that were taken before anything got noticed or anything got published.

41:24It was an experience of rejection at first. And that was challenging. That was really, really challenging to just be rejected. But, you know, there's a story where I'm submitting them and I was submitting them to Patagonia. They were one of my first clients. And all of the slides had this like little, the date and time burned into the - That's how little you knew. That's how little I knew. Like those old like Kodak Instamatics. Exactly. With the kids. Yeah, yeah. And the photo editor, Jane Sievert, she's like, yeah, you can turn that feature off. You don't have to do that. She was kind about it though.

42:01She was kind. Yeah. And she said, keep submitting. So you have this opening like, oh, well now I know somebody there. And they said, keep submitting. Like that's all I need. Yeah. It's like you get that taste and we've all had that experience where something inside of us, whether we're learning something new, we're reading a book, we're experiencing something and there's this click where it's something that happens in your brain. It's so ineffable. And it's this moment where you go, oh, that's it. And so that little invitation, keep it coming, keep it coming. There's an invitation and you go, I'm going to do this.

42:40And sometimes it's a really bad decision. And sometimes it takes years before there's any kickback or feedback or success in it. And it took years. Yeah. Meanwhile, you go to Salzburg, you go and study photography like in Europe. Well, so I had, when I was Christian, I was going to be a youth pastor. And I went to this, I think it was called Simpson College in Redding, California. And I did the whole campus tour. And I was so fired up about Jesus at the time. Like, I mean, that was my life, you know? And I was like, well, I've had this, I was perfecting my narrative at the time. I have this really tortured past.

43:18So who better to be a youth pastor, right? I can lead these wayward teens towards Jesus. Nothing wrong with Christianity. There's, you know, of course we can have our critiques, but I actually hold a very high value around it because it changed my life. But something about that choice felt flawed. and instead I wrote, but I had terrible SAT scores. You know, I had a GED and so I just, I basically wrote like a short essay to a tiny school in Billings, Montana called Rocky Mountain College. And, um, and you know, basically begged for admission and I was there for about a year and a half. And then I begged to leave.

44:03And so I found this study abroad program in Salzburg. Yeah. But this is the self-preservation thing, right? Despite the fact that you're kind of out on a limb, like you're trying to take care of business. You realize like, I need to go to school. You know, I've got a GED, what's available to me and you're making it happen. Trying really, really hard and with a lot of failure and a lot of ups and downs, you know, because then now there's this idea that now stuff's sorting itself out. And it kind of was, it kind of was because now I had climbing, I had these anchors, I had faith, you know, so, and I could kind of keep a job.

44:39So yes, things were sorting themselves out. And where's mom and dad and bro at this point? So my brother and I hadn't spoke, we didn't speak for years. There was one incident where right before I went into the hospital, it was what precipitated me going into the hospital. The second time was, you know, we got in a all out brawl on the front lawn. And so we kind of swore each other off for a lot of years, actually. And mom and dad are, look, they're just fucking thrilled that I want to go to school at all. So they're doing anything. They're like, thank God this child is not like a full blown addict on the street.

45:22We have a lifeline. So we're gonna give, we're gonna try to provide as much opportunity as we can. But they also knew that because I was deeply, deeply volatile, it was not going to be a smooth path. Yeah. Yeah. And on top of the volatility, where are you at during this time with respect to drugs and alcohol? I mean, there's more than dabbling that's going on when you're a kid bouncing around. Yeah. And there's some risky sexual behavior. There's all kinds of, you know, things that accompany the sort of semi-homeless runaway teenager. I mean, there were a lot of things. I think chapter eight is one of my, if I can call it a favorite chapter, but it, you know, it kind of talks about a very dark experience when I'm on the run and end up squatting in this house.

46:14and what unfolds, I try to handle with care and grace, but in hindsight, I think it really affected me. And it was a sexual experience that - It's incredibly raw and vulnerable. Yeah, I mean - That you told that story. It was rough. And also I land somewhere in the middle with it. Yeah, and you signed up for it and you participated in it willingly. Willingly. And it would be really easy to look back and be like, well, this terrible thing happened to me, but again it's like no i i was present i showed up and i would i don't want to go back and sort of give away my agency but to your point there was you know hypersexuality um as it relates to bipolar too and even adhd well and bipolar is really really common especially when there's sort of a core belief of a value deficit and because sex and sexuality is a sort of an it's, it's like intimacy light.

47:15It can be intimacy full blown in its, in its healthiest expressions, but it's, it's kind of trying to matter and be valued and be desired. And so sexuality was one that wasn't just dabbling. I went full on into that at a very young age. Um, and it's continued throughout my whole life to be a, you know, if we talk about primary addictions or addictions later on, you know, like that I would say has been always my primary addiction. Drugs and alcohol. I loved being around them. And I did quite a bit. I used quite a bit, but I wasn't, there was, again, there was a self-preservation. There was a governor that was inside because I was very, very scared of them.

48:03And partly because I had been told that because my brain was essentially fragile, that if I did these things, that I would inevitably go crazy, like into pure psychosis. And I was likely anyway. So I was horrified of going too far with them, but I really wanted to be a part of them because I saw the community. I saw a community around them. Like it was cool. My sense also is that this is an outgrowth of the inner kind of chaos agent. And although drugs and alcohol were problematic at times, it wasn't your primary malfunction. No, no. Primary malfunction. What's that? Number five. What was that?

48:52That movie, Number Five Alive. Anyway, my primary malfunction, if I had one, was a misunderstood... How do I even want to say that? Was there a primary malfunction? Dude, I was just fucked up. I don't even know how to say it. Help me understand the lived experience of being bipolar. I mean, when I grew up, it was called being a manic depressive. And I have borne witness to people in full-blown manic states. I've been around it, scary experience. But I can't say that I fully understand what it feels like. And when you talk about like hypomania, I mean, I have some relationship with depression, but not the depths to which you've experienced it.

49:40But I'm not sure I know really what hypomania is or, you know, walk us through what it feels like and what it is. So what it is, there's basically two levels. Again, this is the way I understand it. There's mania and there's hypomania. Mania is full blown manic expression, i.e. you're blowing through bank accounts. You are selling houses. You're basically in a state of psychosis and it can go so far that you stop making sense at all. You're going so fast. You can feel a deep connection to everything. You are seeing auras. You're seeing all sorts of things. Now, you look at this from a shamanistic perspective.

50:20Maybe this is what people were experiencing all the time. And maybe in a container, it's not always totally bad. Who knows? In the mental health space, mania is dangerous, right? Because you are not in control of your faculties. Hypomania is different. It sits right below that, where you get all of the benefits without the immediate danger. So when you're cycling up, you'll be very, very social, very effective. You don't need a lot of sleep. you can take on information wildly effectively. It can be very, very pleasant. Sounds fucking awesome. Yeah. It's like euphoric. It is euphoric. And mania can feel euphoric too.

51:08It's like, did you see the movie Limitless? Yes. Okay, with Bradley Cooper. That's hypomania. Like you cannot be stopped. You're dialed in. You're dialed in. If it tips into mania, the wheels start to go off, but it doesn't even have to do that. the wheels will come off at hypomania anyway. There's an inevitable crash. It will come because you're exhausting all of your nervous systems to try to regulate. And how long does that state last for? It depends. I mean, it's person to person, but it doesn't, mania tends not to last too long because you're spinning off so much energy. Hypomania can last a little longer because you're, again, you're sustaining some, but as soon as you start to like just not sleep at all, you're staying up for days on end, you're nearing the end.

52:03Right, so like week, 10 days you're talking about? Like that's a long time. It's a long time. And I honestly, I would be dishonest if I said I knew the exact number. I just don't know how long it can last. Yeah, I don't know. And it's always followed by, it precipitates this crash and you go into a dark hole of depression. It's necessary. Your body's trying to regenerate and all of your serotonin and dopamine, they've been completely wiped out. So it's similar to what happens when people take too much something like MDMA, that suicide Monday kind of feeling is when you're just depleted. And that can go into suicidal depression.

52:49And what I experienced it as, you know, when I was 13 and I was sitting there and I was like, what is going on? I couldn't sleep. I mean, it was moody, but I was an insomniac, highly, highly irritable, very distractible. And then one night I was in the family den and it was just as if my brain sped up so fast that I couldn't make sense of anything. like the thoughts were coming so quickly that it's like trying to catch fragments you know a thought becomes a sentence becomes a word becomes letters to the point where if you almost like you're in the matrix and you're just watching letters fly by and it's so disorienting for me and then it was these flashes I'd close my eyes and it was like this you know it was loud but there's no sound.

53:43There's, it's so disorienting to the point where I just started. And then I was just weeping. I was just weeping. And I'm standing in our family's den basically. And I was so

53:59horrified because I just didn't know. I didn't know. And at the same time, that's this tip over into where you start to have really, really low depression. Because then the point is now you're having sort of what I always experienced was more mixed episodes where once it gets to that point, you're so, you're also getting depressed. Right. And then it was like, I just want to fucking die. And how long would those episodes go for in your case? I mean, they could happen intermittently throughout, you know, the day where I would just have to, I didn't know it was, I was kind of like, and then, but it would take, you know, a week or two weeks, but it was also during those times that I'm like completely ditching school and going and doing acid in the park with sort of like this carefree, like, I don't, you know, like zero future forecasting, zero.

54:53That's why people blow through whole bank accounts because they just lose the capacity to, to understand where's this going, you know? What does the latest science tell us or not tell us about what brings this on? Because it seems like it visits from time to time, like in an unmedicated state, but I don't know that I understand, if anyone understands, like, are there things that you can identify where you're like, oh, we're headed in that direction and this is gonna happen, or does it just happen? I found that once I've started to really be more embodied and paying attention to what my body's doing, I'm aware.

55:37I'm hyper aware of, oh, my thoughts seem fast right now. That's curious. Okay, then that's my cue to be like, how am I sleeping? What's my sleep doing? Once I start to notice a couple things stacking up, I don't want to eat. my thoughts are a little elevated and I don't want to sleep or I don't need to sleep or I can't sleep, that to me is an indication that I'm cycling up. And usually what precipitates that is a period of high stress and unregimented living, right? Where I'm off a routine, I'm not exercising, time is being eaten in all sorts of different directions. The demands are high. And so in some ways, it's almost like my body's reaction to step into the role that it needs to.

56:21But then, you know, if I'm being mindful, that's when I'm like, oh shit, things are, this could go sideways. But it's taken, it took me into my late thirties. I knew I carried this diagnosis from the time I was 14, but it wasn't until my late thirties that I really started taking it very seriously. And are you on a medication now that, that works for you? Yeah. I take Lamotrigine, which is one of, Limictal is the brand name. It's one of the most effective, low impact, high efficacy, bipolar management medications that there are. And I went through periods where I was like, fuck this. You know, like, in fact.

57:02Is it that thing where you're like, I just feel dulled out. I want to get off the medication. or you feel so good that you're like, I don't need this anymore. And that can be, that can be another indication of cycling up where you're like, I don't need this. I think we are a heavily over-medicated country. I think we're a heavily over-medicated world. I think some of the things you've talked about, we try to address the symptoms rather than the root cause. And I'm an advocate when and where it really has been, you know, there's been some curiosity about it. Does this help, you know? And so it's a yes and for me.

57:40Sure. Sure. Back to the photography. Yeah. So, so, you know, tiptoe me up to your first sort of breakthrough with this, where it occurred to you like, oh, maybe I can do this. This is working for me. Well, I kept climbing and I kept, so after the, the, um, I was working at a gear store at this point. And after the Alaska trip, before I went to Salzburg, I went back to Denali the next summer. I saved up and climbed Denali. And then I went straight to Peru and climbed in Peru. And I was just funding these with, you know, you're living on scraps. You know how it is. You're living out of a truck. And I had this, this folder of images.

58:22So when I went to Salzburg and I met Andrew Phelps, he looked at him and he's like, these are, you know, there's something here. I don't know what he really saw, but, um, he encouraged me. And then it was this, that summer I ended up living in basically a broom closet in Chamonix and I was climbing with two guys, Stian Hagen and Jamie Stryken on the North face of the Guitemidie. And I took a picture and I knew that picture, I knew I had done something. And that was the first picture that ever got published, but that was in 2000, I think it was 2004 that I had my first published image. So I've been taking pictures for five years before I had one image published.

59:05The guy in Salzburg though, this is another inflection point. Huge. He becomes sort of a mentor. He helps you understand the difference between a good picture, a great picture and a transcendent picture. Yeah, yeah. He gives you technique and form, but in sort of an offhanded way, he just says, you should keep doing this. It was sort of a throwaway comment. But it's again, sort of like the woman at Patagonia. It was like, just enough encouragement to keep you locked in. Just enough, right? But it's like with some of your coaches, right? When you expect them to do something, a big gesture, oftentimes it's the more subtle gesture that has the most impact.

59:48Have you like stayed in communication with him? Oh yeah. Did he, so he has seen everything that you've done. We talked to him. We talked the other day. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. He's, you know, cause when I was 20, he was like 33, 34. He felt miles older than me. And now I realize, you know, we're basically essentially in the same age demographic now. And so we, yeah, we communicate. We talk a lot about, we don't really talk about photography anymore. I was with him the other day, like a couple months ago, and I'm sitting there and I realized I was sitting at dinner with him in Salzburg.

1:00:24I looked around and I realized, oh shit, it didn't even occur to me to bring a camera on this trip. not that I thought about it and I left it behind. It didn't even occur to me to bring it. And that was, well, I mean, well, I'm sure we'll get to that point, but it was so interesting to be sitting. Because you're just so present in your experience, right? You don't wanna have anything in between you and experiencing the presence of the moment, right? Well, yeah, right. Don't you talk about like, you can confuse taking photographs for being present in a particular moment, but in truth, it's not that.

1:01:01It is a creative act. Like you're participating in that moment, but being fully present in a lived experience is something qualitatively different. Well, it was that moment where I was sitting with this guy who started photography. I realized I didn't have a camera with me in Europe at all. And I realized, holy shit, photography is done. Here's the guy that started it and it ends here too somehow. Has it though? I don't know, who knows? Yeah, that's a story too. I'm done with photography. For sure. Just as much as I am a photographer. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Good call. Fuck you. Right. So what is the difference between a good photograph, a great photograph, and a transcendent photograph?

1:01:42How do you describe in words what makes a truly transcendent photograph so timeless and fantastic? I mean, the way I describe it is there's, yeah, there's four kinds. There's bad photographs, which are most. There's good photographs, which are a solid understanding of light and composition. They're interesting. They draw you in a little bit. But that's the kind of stuff that you see on, you know, hotel walls that are, you know, you're like, oh, that's a good picture. Then there's great photographs, which are really articulate. They show this strong understanding of composition, light, serendipity, moment, all of these things.

1:02:22And they're really, you know, you see a lot of those in photojournalism. There's something about them that really draws you into a deeper emotional experience. And those are, I think, a lot more rare because they require more education. They just, you're so much more versed in lensing and how to layer things or how to capture a moment. And also which photo to choose that you put out into the world. and then transcendent photographs, which I think are the highest calling of photography are these ones that are so powerful that they, they, it's almost like they punch you. And, and the examples that I use in the book are like the, um, the napalm girl, um, by Nick Utt, you know, where it's this, even thinking about it, this pain of this naked Vietnamese girl running on fire in horror, you know, or Eddie Adams, you know, the judge jury executioner in Saigon where the guy's literally in the moment of shooting a Viet Cong in the head and you just.

1:03:38They have so much less to do with composition and lensing and all of it, right? It's just the indelible moment captured perfectly that says way more than what you're actually seeing in the image about the world, humanity, what have you. And I think usually those photographs have to do more with humans. Usually they're just, there are great wildlife photographs, but there's something about, for me at least, where people, you know, what's your, what's your favorite animal to photograph what humans are. The wildlife photographs are generally more majestic or tragic, and they can be transcendent, but it's those moments of humanity.

1:04:20And oftentimes it's in its worst expression that shake you, you know? The photograph of the surfer from this past summer, Gabriel Medina, what's his, I can't remember his last name, but where he's levitating and his board is perfectly lined up. He just looks like a Jesus-like figure. Right, right, right. I mean, that's pretty epic. I don't know, does that fall into the category of transcendent or great? It's definitely great. It's absolutely great. I'm not sure that it's transcendent. Can we judge those in the moment? It's only years later that we can make that call. Yeah, they're more time capsules.

1:05:02Or the photograph of Trump with the assassination. I mean, that's a pretty indelible image of our moment. That says a lot. Absolutely. And I would, all politics aside, that photograph is, it's powerful, man. It is a moment in time that will, and so that could be transcendent. But again, you make a good point. I don't think you can judge, we can't really know. You can have an inclination. I think, you know, the surfer is a epic sport moment that represents sort of this global coming together to celebrate sort of the human triumph of sport. Is it transcendent? Does it say anything deeper about the human condition?

1:05:45I don't know. Yeah, I don't, to me, not. But then again, remember, like it's all subjective. Sure, sure. Like some people are gonna hate this book and that's okay, right? And some people are gonna go, oh, this is really great. And that's okay. Same with photographs. But there are some that we can agree upon. Yeah, like the monk on fire. What is your relationship to your most iconic, most famous photograph, which is basically a selfie. It is. Right? Yeah, it is a selfie. Of all the like epically, you know, kind of intentional photographs that you've taken where you're like, you'd line it up perfectly and you've gotten the light and all of that.

1:06:25Like the most resonant and perhaps transcendent is the one that captures, you know, a very, unique moment in your life that I think does speak to the human condition and our relationship with life and death. I mean, so the photograph that you're talking about comes at as, well, the book starts there and kind of ends there, but comes back to it in the middle, but it's, you know, it comes in Pakistan, middle of winter. We've just climbed this mountain called Gashabram too, and we've just been in an avalanche and I'll leave a little bit up to the imagination there, But it, um, we were, it was about an hour after the avalanche, a long time people were like directly after the, it wasn't that it wasn't right after it was about an hour later.

1:07:13We were walking down towards base camp and I just, you know, I had all this, I could feel all this ice frozen on my face and my beard. And I, and the avalanche was still very present with me and I was still very much in a state of shock. And I just, I, I felt the urge to turn the camera on and take a picture of myself. that was the picture that was that's talk about inflection points that was when like life just changed that moment and I have so much gratitude for it and I hate it at the same time but it's mostly gratitude but it's so emblematic of something that is so begging to be addressed in me but I didn't really know it at the time but I think maybe that's what people see is this sort of, I don't want to get too poetic about it and too flowery, but I look at it now and I've had experiences with it.

1:08:08And I can talk about the circumstances and those where I'm looking at it and it feels as if I'm looking at myself asking for something, but I didn't know what it was. When I first saw the image, it's like, oh, this is a guy on the precipice of dying and he's reflecting upon his own mortality. In learning about your story and reading your book, now when I look at it, I have a totally different experience, which is I see a little boy crying for help. There's a desperation and a sadness in it, crystallized in this moment that very much is a before and after moment because in the wake of, you sort of buried the lead, which was like you were buried in an avalanche.

1:08:54Literally, like you almost did die You and the two people you were climbing with all buried in an avalanche, like very well could have died. In the wake of that though, that brings to the surface all this stuff that you've worked so hard to compartmentalize and repress that perhaps you've convinced yourself is in the rear view because now you're this mountaineer and you're this adventurer and you're working for National Geographic and you're making money and people know who you are. and all of that need for meaning and validation, it's all being met, right? So you're like, this is what I've been waiting for my entire life.

1:09:37And then you get smacked and you realize like, it's not actually it, that's the illusion. And there is all this stuff deep down in here that is now kind of roaring up and I'm gonna have to deal with it. You know, it took 12 years to deal with it. 14 this year where I'm pausing because it's really easy for me to get wrapped into a, um, a rehearsed narrative here. So I want to be, I don't want to do that. That photograph was in the moment, I think, and I've talked about it a little bit, I just in other interviews and the book, I think I was trying to just get away from it all, but I don't really know.

1:10:27It was just, it was reflexive. And so to say that I knew what was happening, it would be dishonest. To say that it's clear to me now that I was asking for something might be an applied meaning. I don't know. But to your point, there was a little boy that was really scared, really, really scared, not just in the moment, but really scared of, I think, if you really want to get metaphysical about it, what was coming? Because this was the point where I got lost under the photograph. I got buried under the photograph because with it, now there's all this added attention. Now there's real in a small container, right?

1:11:14And I say fame with a lower case F here, like fame within a community, right? And for a moment we are celebrated as some of the best climbers in the world, right? Whether you agree with that or not is inconsequential. That was the attention that we were getting. So it was easy to just not pay attention to it. But if, as I started to understand trauma later on in life, and I, and as I realized that there was actual acute PTSD, which I still have a hard time giving myself permission to actually have experienced. If you see it from that lens, if you see it from that angle, all of a sudden you see all of the childhood trauma, all of the violence, all of the chaos, all of it being displayed in this single image.

1:12:04Because I had learned that my mind is scary. so the best way for me to not go crazy is to go do crazy shit right and i learned that i you know at least i had a narrative i don't really matter so i'm going to prove to the world that i matter and here's proof that i matter and then there's all of the the violence and stuff that are like little seeds of trauma planted all through this big fertile field and then you take an experience like an avalanche. It's like just dumping water and fertilizer all over it. And that's what acute PTSD is. It's just this explosion of trauma. It's usually kicked off by a single event, but people who have a lot of developmental trauma are more likely to have acute PTSD, right?

1:12:55And so that moment is that where you're dumping water onto it. It's literally the moment. And that's what you're seeing, I think.

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1:14:51Further disorienting is the fact that this photograph ends up on not only the cover of National Geographic, but the 125th anniversary of the magazine. So it's like a special edition of this already highly prestigious magazine. So you being amongst this team of three, you were the first, and I think only American to summit an 8 ,000 meter peak in winter. So there's the accomplishment as a climber and then there's the accomplishment as an artist. And you layer those things on top of this traumatic incident that's bringing up all this other stuff, right? So you are going back into the world and being celebrated for this and getting invited to conferences and people want to talk to you and you're on stages and you're being celebrated as an athlete and as an adventure athlete and as an artist at the same time.

1:15:51Well, you're also trying to make sense of this experience that you just had and its relationship to all this other stuff that you haven't actually dealt with. Like it's a time bomb, dude. I've never heard it described in that term. It was a time bomb. It was a time bomb because then there's the stress of all and the adrenaline of all the good stuff that's happening, right? Which is pushing those buttons of feeling like you wanna matter, right? Like now I do matter and all these people are telling me that I matter and your dopamine is like going crazy. It's going nuts because now you belong. You're part of this special club.

1:16:29This is what you always wanted and now you're here. And now you're here, you've arrived. So the idea that you'd have to actually pay attention to anything that was really internally happening is, you know, it's just clouded by everything else. And coupling that with, then I go and get married, right. Which was its own added stress. And I thought it was what I was supposed to do and all the, you know, she was beautiful and a yoga instructor and just a kind person and, uh, had all these great, you know, benefits and, attributes. So I did that. And then immediately, immediately, immediately the attention of it all started to seep into my behaviors.

1:17:12And I started to just notice like, I just feel even more disconnected. And that's when I started kind of like drink more because fuck it, it's time to celebrate. And then I was on the road more. And that's when all of the hypersexuality stuff starts seeping back in and then I'm hiding. Then I'm under this mountain of shame as this newly married guy who has all this success starting to cheat and starting to lie about it and starting to do. So now there's this massive disconnect between what people are seeing and the reality of what I'm living. And there's the shame that's built in between that.

1:17:50That is just this, it's a time bomb. yeah it's a powder keg it's waiting to explode and how long was that fuse like what what actually caused it to finally explode it was more like a cluster bomb right right like there were things that exploded first and then i thought i was dealing with it and then like you know the first thing to go was i mean just there's just anger was so much anger there was rage that i don't even think I dealt with until really this past two years. And then there was the first thing to really come out was like the cheating. Yeah. And that was about four years into the marriage and it was the end of the marriage.

1:18:33And also, you know, if I look back, if I look back at pictures, I was gaining weight and I didn't drink, you know, you've been very open about how you drank. I didn't drink quite as, it wasn't like binge drinking as much. It was, um, like advanced medicating where I would come home from these hyper stimulating experiences, climbs, whatever they were assignments where I felt really, I was the guy, I was the, you know, the guy on, on set. Um, and I'd come home and I'd have nothing to do. And so again, it's time to celebrate, take the gas off, you know, and I'd go out and like, I'd have a beer for lunch and then I'd have, or maybe two, but then it's happy hour, call somebody else, go out to happy hour, have a couple more, you know, and I've had five drinks.

1:19:19Then, and then it's dinner time, you know, so you crack a bottle of wine or you have whatever. And then, you know, that's two or three more. And then it's time for your, for your nightcap. Right. And so by the end of the day, you're having 10 or more drinks. I was never highly, of course I got very much blackout drunk, but that was rare. one of the things that I really admired you talking about that you've been open about is the DUIs and one of my greatest regrets I have very few regrets well one of my greatest regrets is driving when I was under the influence like that and the irresponsibility and sort of the invincibility that I felt and that's something that all you can do is say you're sorry to everybody cops didn't get involved no accidents or anything like that yeah that's some decent you know yeah self-medication right yeah yeah and it's every day you know there's the travel in the hotel rooms and the anonymity that comes with that that leads your brain to start entertaining behaviors you probably shouldn't indulge you know it's like it's a whole hole of darkness yeah that thing right I mean, you've had Johan Hari on here.

1:20:32Sure. Love that guy. And one of the things he says is like, addiction is an adaptation. It's not you. It's the cage you live in. And then what I love, he says, the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety, it's connection. And when I look back, as much attention as there was, I was so disconnected. I felt so incredibly isolated. and the way to solve that isolation is through substances and sex and the hiding of that in the same way that you hide drinking becomes a loop of shame and that cycle of shame is the driving force behind continuing sure yeah because the shame is so painful it has to be numbed and especially when And the outside vision is so fucking different.

1:21:22Right. That plays into this fraudulent imposter syndrome thing, which makes you feel even worse. It just basically ratchets up and ratchets up, ratchets up and gets worse and worse and worse. On Johan Hari's point, I always push back on him on this a little bit. I feel like that idea, I think there's truth in that idea that the opposite of addiction is connection. but that binary, I have a big problem with that. Like I feel like for people that aren't really addicts, connection can be a solution to like addictive behavior. But if you're like a full-blown alcoholic or addict or gambling addict, you can surround yourself with people and connect with them, but this is not going to disabuse you of your malfunction entirely.

1:22:14It's like that idea, he always tells a story of the, I've told this before on the podcast. So people, the rats in the rat park and the cocaine and all of that. And it's like, well, then when you put friends around them, they don't want cocaine anymore. It's like, well, if that actually worked with human beings, all you'd have to do is surround the cocaine addict with a bunch of cool people and friends and he would stop doing cocaine. We all know that that's not, that's not what happens. But wait a minute, but wait a minute. I love this. This is so fucking, you know, you hit a point in a podcast where you like, you drop in.

1:22:45And like, it's like this really deep, like I felt it a few minutes ago where I'm like, okay, now like, like I love that. Like, you know, you click in, but then you get into these really interesting, cool points where I would argue that the strength and power of AA or NA is the connection. Sure. So you're surrounding yourself at that point. That's your rap park. It's not surrounding yourself with cool people outside of that. But there's more to it. For sure. I guess I push back on the reductive aspect of just saying this is what it is. For sure. And I, as you know, like my whole thing here is about avoiding binary thinking in some ways.

1:23:25It's not so reductive. It's not so simple. I just like being curious about what the solve is. And I think a huge piece of it is connection. Feeling connected. Like when I eventually started to sort this out, and I started going to AA, what I felt was, again, like when I had started going to church, which of course I'm not Christian anymore. I'm, you know, I'm one of those guys that says I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual and people can gag how much ever they want. But when I started going into the rooms and participating, what I felt was accepted and belonging, like I felt a deep sense of belonging.

1:24:08And I think for me, at least, that was the primary driver of my sobriety for a long time. And it was the most meaningful part of it. I think the self inventory is very clearly and amends and service, obviously. Yeah, there's the inventory, there's the amends, there's the spiritual connection. I mean, it's a spiritual program, there's service, there's these other things, but fundamentally it is community-based. It's about the community. So I get that aspect of it. I'm not discounting it. I'm just making the case for it being a little more complicated. It's way more complicated than... And I would say in the same breath, and I'm curious what you think, I love the work that Gabor Mate does where he basically traces adult dysfunction back to childhood trauma, whether it's addiction or whatever kind of, you know, maladaptations, you know, we all make as a result of things that happen to us.

1:25:08But I would probably push back a little bit on those who use that in an overly reductive way to say that like, well, all alcoholism, anybody who's an alcoholic, for example, it can always be rooted back to, you know, X, Y, and Z that happened to them as a kid. Maybe that's true. I don't know. Is there a genetic piece? Is there something that gets passed down? Well, it's not the alcoholism that gets passed down generation to generation. It's the trauma and the behavior, right? Yeah, yeah. Instills within that person the need to, you know, behave in that way. But I often think like, is that reductive also?

1:25:46Like, I'm not a clinician. My guess is that it is reductive a little bit. I think, you know, again, we're talking about so many contributing factors. And ultimately, I think it's an interesting question, but I don't think we're going to live in a trauma-free world. at least not for the next 500, 600 years until we start living in the age of Aquarius or whatever you want to, you know, like, and I don't think that it actually is really all that. In some ways, I don't think it's all that meaningful of a question, not your question, but the, the, the inquisition, is it all trauma-based? Because guess what?

1:26:20If you're fucking addicted, it doesn't matter. It like, yes, you can go back and trace to that. And yes, you can work on that. But if you're addicted and the best way for you to stay safe is abstinence, who fucking cares? You know what I mean? Well, that's the thing with AA. So I'm with you. I'm with you. It's so practical because it's not about looking in the rear view mirror and trying to make sense of the why. It's about like, what are you doing today? And here's what you need to do in order to move forward. I think there is value in looking in the rear view mirror once you've achieved some stability with your sobriety.

1:26:52to try to understand your past and to identify wounds that remain unhealed so that you can work towards healing them. And that's really like the latter part of your book is about this very thing. Well, and that's, I mean, again, it's like the other thing that I think can be complicated about AA is it's not looking in the rear view, but often one of the things that I found hard for me is that it felt like at times the environment would be about re-litigating or rehashing trauma. You know, you're in these rooms and everybody's telling their nightmare stories. And I'm like, and that to me felt at times like people were still chained to the identity of their trauma.

1:27:33If that's your process, by all means, I get it. If that's what's working and it keeps you safe, keep doing it. I think for me, there was a moment of curiosity where I was like, wait a minute, do I need to keep telling this story? You know, because the identity that I had around addict and addiction was one that was deeply shame-based. And so it just, it felt to me like perhaps I was perpetuating my own, I was reinforcing the cage. Does that make sense? Yeah, I understand that. I mean, that's a common relationship or perspective that many people have with AA. I mean, I would share or offer a different lens, which is this idea that shame can't survive the light.

1:28:19And when you're telling your story, you're exposing all of this to the light, which is like an antiseptic to that shame that you might still be harboring. And once you've made peace with it, it no longer triggers you. And part of sharing your story is to say, we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it because it doesn't own us anymore. Like here it is, like it's out here and I can laugh at it or whatever because I've done the work and it no longer holds that power over me. And the reason that I share it is A, to remind myself, this is where I came from because my brain wants to tell me everything's fine and I don't need to worry about this shit anymore.

1:28:58And secondarily, or perhaps more importantly, because it's of service to the newcomer who's in there for the first time and has never heard anybody get up and tell such a crazy fucking story and can identify their own emotions. Like again, to that place where we began this conversation, The facts of our experience are different, but we have a shared emotional relationship to it. And you tell that story because maybe there's somebody in that room who's gonna hear something that you share that they've never heard before that's gonna allow them to plant their feet in that room and take the next step towards sobriety.

1:29:35I think I just got taken to the mat. I mean, no, no. And I will also acknowledge, you know, that I think I would be disingenuous or dogmatic if I didn't say that there is something to be deconstructed about the idea of getting up and saying, my name is this and I'm an alcoholic or an addict. Like, are you not further entrenching yourself in an identity or a story that no longer serves you? This program has been instrumental in my life and it still is. And I feel fine about that. And I understand why it isn't for other people and I don't have any judgment about how people get sober and stay sober.

1:30:14But the larger issue also is a big theme in your book, which is the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and the power that they hold over us. And this is something I think about a lot and I'm doing some writing on myself, but this notion that human beings are storytelling machines and stories are how we make sense of the world and ourselves, But we all tell ourselves stories about who we are, what we're capable of, what happened to us, what our future might look like. But these are just stories. And those stories are only as powerful as we allow them to be. And none of them are actually true, right?

1:30:53They have a relationship to the truth. They're neither false nor true. Exactly. And memory is very unreliable. And those stories are formed by memories that perhaps are not objective in nature, right? At all, they can't be. So it's in service to the self to like try to deconstruct those stories and to see what's true and what is serving you and what isn't serving you and what's keeping you stuck. And I think where I related so deeply to your book and your story is the way in which these stories of success and identity can also entrap us and become their own prisons, right? So you are a photographer, you're a National Geographic explorer, you're a mountaineer, you're all of these things, right?

1:31:40And what's confusing and complicated about it is those things saved your fucking life. Totally. And they gave you this incredible life, this aspirational life that so many people would just kill to have, right? Right, right. And yet, these are the very things that are holding you back and keeping you stuck in a story that is basically just enhancing your wounding and keeping you stuck from the healing that will ultimately make you whole. Because all of these things, they're great, right? And I'm not casting aspersions on any of them. And I see myself in this very same story. They are serving that childhood need that went unmet to feel like you matter.

1:32:24Look at me, look what I've done. All these people are out in the world and they're saying, look at Corey, like he's amazing, right? And it feels really good. And you do feel like you matter, right? So that need is finally getting met. But - Is it a flawed need? The hole can never be filled, right? Like the hungry ghost cannot be sated. So the more that you receive that, the more you become dependent on it for a sense of self. And it distances you from the ability to love yourself independently and to have a relationship with yourself that isn't contingent upon external validation or anything external other than this internal, you know, animating force of self-love.

1:33:14Amen. Did I get that right? Amen. Amen. There's no, I mean, we'll add to it, but there's nothing to add to that in so many ways. You could end it there. Like truly that is the, and I don't want to end it there, by the way, I'm just saying like that is you encapsulated that the whole message of this in so beautifully and so articulately like that is, that's it. 100%. We are, we are mechanisms of the stories we tell. And the way I always refer to it is there's data that is sort of as close to truth as you can get. There's just hard data. and then we interpret that data, right? There's an experience, the table is hard, starts when we're really little and we just start taking on that data and then we start to form a rough framework of a story around that.

1:34:07I fall down, my knees bleed, right? That is what happened, but also now you're building a sense of meaning around what it means to exist relationally in the world to everything around you. And so there's data and then you start the stories and then the stories form the meanings and then the meanings form the beliefs, right? And then you come up with these strong beliefs that then inform or reinforce the stories and they're self-reinforcing to the point where they become what we call identity, right? And all of this happens unconsciously. Totally unconsciously. Our brain on an unconscious level is selecting things that happen to us, memories of things that occurred and making a decision that these are the important things and it will then select other things that have occurred and it'll create this matrix.

1:34:58And that matrix helps tell that story and ultimately craft that identity that becomes calcified until you're at a point where you don't even question it or wonder where it even came from in the first place. Exactly. And then you're saying, I am Corey, I am rich. That is a huge, huge story. Massive ball of yarn. And we're also applying, and everybody has that. That's why everybody is sort of this, we are all truly equal in that way. And we all have, in my experience, very similar experiences of forming stories, right? But the stories themselves, as you pointed out, can become very, very problematic over time if we're not courageous.

1:35:46And I do believe it takes a lot of courage to start questioning which stories are generative and which are corrosive. because what it asks of us or what it asked of me, I'll say, is that I stopped the hard binaries. It demanded, it demands continually that I live somewhere in the middle, not in ambiguity, but in curiosity. And I make space for the fact that it's not as clear as I want it to be. And that my ideas of truth are actually at times very subjective. and paradoxical and hypocritical. I mean, we're all walking paradoxes, right? We're all massively hypocritical by our very nature. This is where it gets interesting and tricky.

1:36:39You know, this is where the book, this is when in the writing process, it really started to come alive for me because I started to figure out, oh, this is what I've been trying to fucking say. It isn't one thing. I mean, you're this guy who, you know, basically is smoking cigarettes like a chimney and yet somehow was able to summit Everest without oxygen. Well, Adrian Ballinger, who's one of the world's greatest mountaineers, like struggled, like there's that, right? But you're also the same guy who in 2021 on Dala Giri, like backed out from an expedition where a lot of money was spent around a documentary.

1:37:20And there were a lot of people involved and a lot of anger and a lot of frustration a lot of judgment against you for pulling the ripcord under the rubric of like mental health, right? And I don't know if those wounds are even healed. I mean, the wounds that relate to the other people that were involved in that story, like this is the same person, but perhaps those experiences, those more difficult moments are the ones that allow you to kind of, that motivate you to deconstruct the truth of these stories and the identity that's crafted around them. But how do you have these heightened experiences and come down from the mountain and say, am I a mountaineer?

1:38:02Am I done with the mountains? I'm done with photography. How does that arise? And what does that relationship look like for you now? Well, it's like you mentioned earlier, you start getting the adoration and the accolades and all of it. It's a bottomless well, right? It's a bottomless hole. And so you need more and more and more to fill it up. And so in my case, I tried to do the same thing, but more dangerous and harder and at a higher level over and over and over again. Because you're on that hamster wheel. You're on the, yeah. Once you get that affirmation for climbing a mountain, the next one has to be bigger and the next one has to be bigger after that.

1:38:44And harder and more dangerous. And you're just, yeah, it's like a heroin addict. Like you're chasing that original high. You're never gonna get it. You're never gonna get it. And this identity as an high Alpine mountaineer become, like, as I said earlier, they become these traps and it's no different than somebody who does Ironmans. Like they discover triathlon, it changes their life. They find a community there. They feel so nourished, they feel healthy. They're back in their body again. They have this transcendent experience crossing the finish line at an Ironman, but rather than learn from that and move on to the next thing that allows them to grow, you stay stuck.

1:39:24And then year after year, you're just doing Ironmans and doing, and it's like, yeah, maybe you go a little bit faster. Maybe you go to this race or that race or whatever, but ultimately it becomes an impediment to grow. It becomes this blind spot as opposed to the accelerant that it once was. And you could see this in any community or in any movement. Any place where you're being asked to perform at a high level and you are rewarded for that performance, I think the, it's almost necessary that you keep going back to the well for a little while. It's human nature. It's human nature because the thing that feels really good is all the, the external love we, and I will speak for myself.

1:40:06I have been really, really great at mistaking attention for love. And, you know, it's this, oh, I'm getting attention. So I must be loved. And so you cross that finish line and there's so much transcendence around it that you revisit it. I see this with psychedelics all the time too. You go back to it over and over and over again and you think you're learning something new. And maybe you are, maybe. I don't wanna take that away from people, but ultimately you're not becoming more humble. You're building hubris, right? And crafting a new identity around that. A whole new identity around it. And then suddenly you're wearing a big hat and you got like a costume on.

1:40:52Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you are that guy and you see it all the time. I mean, you live in Venice. Yeah, I live in Venice. You got the flapper in half. You could throw a stone. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you're wearing, you know, your mala and your linen and you're the Topanga guy. Look, those are my friends, right? Yeah, mine too. I know these are my people. They're my people. But I also can recognize that. And I say that as someone who can recognize that proclivity in myself. For sure, I've done it. And I still am doing it in some way, I'm sure. I'm just trying to be more careful about those stories because like you said, there's this moment where I just, I let it all go.

1:41:38How did you do that? Well, so often there's a story that we self-discover through. We have this moment, we transcend, and then we achieve. And for me, it was very different. The moment of achievement came in a very different form. After Everest in 2016 with Adrian, where I'd done it without oxygen, had I been paying attention I would have seen that like I had kind of tapped out but I kept going and then five years later after another Everest climb after a second Everest attempt on a new route that hadn't been climbed ever COVID happened and I went to Dala Giri which is the seventh highest mountain in the world and I'm so happy we talked a little bit about what cycling up into hypomania looks like earlier because now this is a kind of the real life this is where the rubber hits the road so we flew to nepal i was with topo my climbing partner a guy named tommy joyce um carla topo's partner uh girlfriend and kellen and we were making a film about my dad who's got cancer he's still with us but he and uh it was sort of a dry run for everest this new route on Everest that we were going to try again.

1:43:02And we got to Nepal and I noticed I was just very emotional. Like I was very teary at things. And then I would like, and then I wasn't sleeping and I thought it was jet lag. I wasn't hungry. And I was just sort of like, my thoughts were a little fast, but I was just like, this is just jet lag. This is just traveled. And then we go to base camp and we fly to base camp. And this is interesting. There is a direct link to depression and altitude and higher suicide rates at altitude. I don't know if that applies acutely, but it sure does feel like that sometimes for me where I get far more moody as soon as I start going high.

1:43:41And we were at base camp. We were all exhausted. I got more exhausted, but I couldn't sleep. We had to really carve out this base camp area because we were at the bottom of the Northwest Ridge. So there's no established base camp there. And I got sick. I thought maybe it's COVID. It's not COVID. And then the team, I was sick in my tent and the team decided to go try to find a route onto the lower Northwest face. And I was in my tent and I just started, I felt that cycling up where the thoughts were just so fast that I couldn't keep track of them. And I was reading, I forget, I was reading a book.

1:44:25Anyway, there was a passage about love and I just started weeping, like uncontrollably weeping. And the thoughts were just so, so fast and I couldn't keep up with them. And then it was that flashing sensation behind my eyes again. And I just erupted. and I was, yeah, I mean, I was screaming as loud as I could into my sleeping bag, balled up. And it was horrifying. It was so, so scary. And I didn't, I couldn't make sense of it, but there was this deep inner knowing that at least for now, because you called me out on this earlier, at least for now, this piece of my life had exhausted itself. The climbing, the photography, the identity of all of this was somehow, it was wrung out.

1:45:23It was done. I couldn't do it. It was over. And yet here I am like screaming at the top of my lungs and sort of reciting mantras and having wild sort of daydreams of dying, but also success. And just, it was so disorienting. And I tried to calm myself down and it sort of abated for a minute. And then the team came back at the end of the day and I've been crying for hours, just hours and hours and hours. And I went into the tent and I was like, I'm done. And they all looked at me like, what do you mean you're done? and I'm like, I'm done. You know, what do you mean? And I said, I'm not going to climb anymore.

1:46:15You mean like this mountain? I'm not going to climb anymore. I don't want to take pictures. I don't want to do any of it. And it was this moment of like, just shock, just shock. And they're like, what are you going to do? And this is, it sounds crazy. And yet here I am four years later, I was like, I'm going to move to LA. so there was truth in it. There was clear direction. How do you parse the hypomania from the deeper truth message? Could it not just have been this idea that you're not going to climb anymore or take pictures? Could have that just been a manifestation or a symptom of the mania impulse?

1:47:01Yes, it could be, and it likely presented that way. But this is one of the things that I think is so interesting. And there's a moment actually in your book where you talk about this, where both things can be true. The hypomania might be influenced by the stress of the deep inner knowing that this is not working anymore, right? And at the same time, the hypomania might be informing wildly erratic decision-making. They can be concurrent and yet they can also be true even if they are erratic. And this is kind of the hard part about mental health, pulling it apart. You talk about a moment where you're completely out of gas, you're on a training ride, you're riding home and you start basically levitating and you have a moment of connection with the divine, right?

1:47:50And it changes you. It really fucking changes you. And you even know, well, maybe this is just like complete deprivation. I have no sugar in my system. My blood sugar is gone, right? But maybe it's something deeper or maybe it's both. And maybe that's why people use deprivation to achieve spiritual levels. All I'm saying is it's not either or. Both can be accurate and true. And as it turns out, so then the next day, does that make sense? I just want to say, yeah. And I think on top of that, in terms of both things being true, what's both true is the idea that the responsible choice is to back out if you're mentally not in a good place to handle this because the stakes are high.

1:48:42Yeah, you can die. And death is on the table and there are other people involved. Right. And what's also true is all these people have followed you, the Pied Piper, all over the world to this place to great expense and time and all the like on the promise that you're gonna do this thing together, you're gonna make this movie and for you to just pull the ripcord and say, not only am I not feeling good and I'm gonna get off this mountain, like I'm never doing this. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, Joyce goes on to say in the New York Times. And I, you know, it's like, this is could not have been easy for you to read.

1:49:20I think he figured that he could leave and go back to being a, quote, mental health advocate, Joyce, the filmmaker wrote in an email. Corey had to create a new narrative that protected his ego from his ever present fear that he doesn't matter. You know what? He wasn't wrong entirely. Not no. No. Not no. That was a very astute observation. And part of that came from the fact that he had been making a film about me and about my family. And I had shared very clearly that I felt a deep value deficit and a need to matter in the world. So he's not wrong. What was troubling to me in that, and I write about it a little bit, is not that he said that at all.

1:50:08And I hold zero. My God, I love the guy still. I really do. He is a powerhouse and wildly talented. It was more that I had expressed for so long that these things were real in me and they were very much a part of me. And yet when it, when the rubber hit the road and the monster came out of the dark and showed its head in a very, very tangible way that people just couldn't understand. They couldn't make space for it. Because conceptually, when we talk about mental health issues, it's very easy to be like, yeah, yeah, I understand you struggle. It's very, very different to watch somebody, as you said earlier, experience mania, hypomania, depression.

1:50:52It can be so confusing for loved ones and friends around them because it doesn't seem to make sense. And yet the decisions I was making while they were seemed erratic ended up being some of the best decisions I could make. So again, as you pointed out earlier, one thing that appears to be very negative can also be very positive in the same moment. It's the old Taoist good news, bad news, who knows, right? And so when I walked away, which again, I take full responsibility. Like you said, I was a Pied Piper. Follow me around the world, make this film, let's do this thing. When I walked away, people were furious, you know, especially Tommy and Topo.

1:51:42And they made it very clear that they were furious. I think that anger has abated over time. I did not feel like I was trying to go back and create this new identity or fall back into a mental health advocacy identity to matter. But I felt like actually this moment was where I started finally to understand. Somebody asked me the other day, like, when did you start to really understand your bipolar diagnosis? And I would say when I came back from Daligiri in 2021. one. Because? Because I sat across a desk from a, from a psychiatrist. And for the first time, I actually took on the information because it was so evident that there was something like, I, I don't know why it finally sunk in.

1:52:29He just looked at me and he goes, Corey, if you don't get this under control right now, it's probably going to get worse. and that's where all that fear that I had picked up as a child I'm gonna be crazy screaming at trees it all came flooding back in he's like you know in my mind of what I was hearing him say is that might happen that might happen you could lose all of this if you don't get this under control and at the same moment in that same moment you know I'd come home and I faced so much backlash and there was this very, very hard email sent to my parents that sort of accused me of this massive manipulation.

1:53:11And then on top of that, the brick through the window with Nat Geo. Yeah. And the scandal. And the scandal there that ended up making you have to part ways with them. Yeah. So that was - There's a lot of chaos, dude. There's a lot of chaos. So it's not like, oh, I had an epiphany and I walked away from these things. Like there's a lot of wreckage, right? That was contributing to. And I had just gone through a pretty, pretty rough breakup. And I'll leave that to the, to the reader to, to read about the Nat Geo thing. But like, yes, these pieces of my identity were already being stripped away and to come back and then be sort of a key.

1:53:50And the other thing I just want to point out really quickly is like this high level climbing for me had become like year long meditations on my, on mortality. I was constantly thinking about dying all the time in my visualizations and everything. So I was living in this fight, flight, or freeze. I'm basically living in my amygdala constantly, and I'm overtrained. I'm undernourished. I'm catabolic. All of it is going sideways for basically a couple of years in advance. The Nat Geo things happen. I go through this breakup. I end up in a highly stressful situation below this big face. Of course, I'm going to have an episode.

1:54:30And then I come home, there's this sort of accusation of manipulation. You know, I'm hiding behind mental health. Like I was like, fuck it. I'm calling it in. And, and that's when I don't call it a suicide attempt as much as I was, it nearly happened, you know? and I always, I've said this many, many times. It's not that you want to die. It's just that you don't want to live in the pain. It becomes unfathomable to wake up the next day and go through it again and again and again. And that's when the psychiatrist was like, this will kill you or it certainly can if you don't get it under control.

1:55:11This is what my wife would call your great dismantling and your divine moment. Yeah. Very, crisis is the point of growth. Yeah, yeah. And hence begins a new story for which caution flags must be thrown. Because as you kind of point out and talk about in the book also, we can craft an identity around our own innate brokenness just as much as we can around our accomplishments. And I think that you're absolutely right. And they can exist concurrently. Again, it can be at the same time. That's what's so confusing around it is we can harbor stories of brokenness at the same time that we're trying to mend those stories with other stories of accomplishment.

1:56:01Look at me, look at what I can do. But there's also, sorry to interject. No, no, no. In the same way you can be like, look at me, I climbed all these mountains. You can also say, look how fucked up I am, man. Like I'm more fucked up than everyone. That's a different way of getting attention and validation, right? And I had done that throughout my life. Even as I started to talk about mental health, I learned all the words. I learned how to talk about it and articulate it. And I knew it through and through conceptually. I knew the conversation of trauma. And then I learned that if I shared in certain ways, especially with women, I could hijack connection.

1:56:45You know, then you're the vulnerable guy. You weaponize trauma speak. Exactly. You weaponize, you trauma dump, you trauma bond. You're literally leveraging trauma to try to fix trauma. Right. And I will be the first to admit that that is a manipulation of the information. And it also is a place of victimhood. Even addiction. I think I used I will say this, I'll just speak for myself. I used addiction as a way to be special at times. I used my, well, I'm in Sobri, I'm in AA. It was a way for me to stand out. It was emblematic of my deep brokenness. And what another great way to get attention. What another great way to matter.

1:57:31I'm this fragile guy, care for me, pay attention to me. Look at this story of my fucked upness, balanced against my triumph, all stories, all stories that are all working and somehow not working and falling apart, you know? And then I started to really dive in, you know, in the process of writing where I started to dive in and go, well, wait a minute, like, is this story of brokenness actually the base story of all of it? And what if that story isn't fucking true? What if I learned something really early on that I've stuck with and clung to that I thought made me special, that actually amplified shame at times, and it's just not true?

1:58:22What if I've been telling the wrong story the whole fucking time? And what is the true story?

1:58:32For me, it's going to sound cliche. And I don't want it to. I want to say something more profound here, but maybe the simplest thing is the truest. I am. That's all I really know. I am. I wake up. I am. And my brain loves to spin narratives that guide me through the day. And of course, it does. That's its job, right? It spins narratives to protect me. It creates identities and ideas in order to guide me. But at the end of the day, I just am. And the more I can go back to that story, the more calm and peace I find within myself. The rest of it is helpful at times, but it can also will be really harmful, you know?

1:59:22And in the I am moment, when you have that, when you're there, when you connect to it, when I connect to it, there is the sense of ultimate.

1:59:36awareness of things around me because I'm no longer clouding my perception with all the stuff that's distracting me. Does that make sense? Sure. I'm reminded, I can't help but think of Tom Shadyak's documentary, I Am, and he was in here recently, so he's on my brain. I mean, it's a similar story and message that he shares. And this is how you conclude the book with this idea around I Am. But that notion comes from thousands of years of spiritual tradition, the Vedic tradition, from Hinduism and all these things. Judaism, Christianity. It's anchored in. It's ubiquitous. It is ubiquitous. It's different phraseology is draped around it.

2:00:24But in essence, it's this idea of oneness and the universality of the human condition and this disabusing of this notion of specialness as a path to anything other than separation and suffering, right? Yeah. So it's one thing to talk about these ideas from a place of intellectualization and another thing to actually feel them from a heart-centered place. And a lot of healing has to take place to traverse that crevasse, right? Nice, well played. What are some of the modalities that have been most helpful for you? I mean, you talk in the book, there's a lot, you've done a lot, right? So what's worked, what hasn't, what have you found most helpful?

2:01:13So, I mean, look, action, activity, finding a reasonable outlet does work to a degree, right? So long as when you realize you're chasing it so far, you stop and have the wherewithal to go, well, wait, why do I need to go to the extremes? That's the first thing. But having an activity that you really connect with, being outside specifically is so, so important. As far as therapy is concerned, I've tried everything from CBT to EMDR to, you know, TMS, everything, everything under the sun. They all have very specific impacts. Some people respond better than others. And then I, and then I've tried psychedelics and I will say this, I don't think psychedelics are a panacea and I hate when they're framed that way.

2:01:58I think it is absolutely a disservice to the community at large. I think they require a lot of special care and attention. And I don't think that having a big trip at Burning Man is necessarily therapeutic. It's okay. It's a great experience. I just don't think it's the same thing as doing it with set setting and intention. What I will say is that psychedelics did help me, when we talk about heart-centered feeling and experience, it's real, but it's very ineffable. It's very hard to put words to. and what psychedelics did for me and psychedelics coupled with meditation and building a strong community here, a strong community of men.

2:02:42What all of that did for me was start to allow me to actually feel like tangibly feel from my chest where it was, I was actually out of my head and I can do it at any moment now. It's hard to stay there, but where you're actually experiencing the world, not through thoughts, but through something so much bigger than thought. And it literally is a sensation that comes from here. So the heart is not a metaphor. The heart is essential in emotion processing. It sends signals up the vagus nerve to the brain, which starts emotion processing. There is so much going on in here. And yet, because of all of the conceptualization, all of the intellectualization, all of the hiding behind the knowledge, and all of the action, I had completely forgotten that this existed.

2:03:35It was just a word. It was, it was completely a metaphor. So meditation, I think therapy is very helpful. I think if, if psychedelics are, if you're curious, I think being very, very intentional with them help. Community has been one of the biggest things for me. Like I said, especially men. Tell me about this men's group. I am part of a men's group. I've been doing it for three years now. You know, we use some modeling where we start to understand where our time is going, but really time and energy is going. Of course, we bounce like business ideas off of each other. It's a support group in some ways, but beyond that, it's more of a, it's a group of men who have made the agreement to align on integrity, vulnerability, and authenticity to unburden ourselves from the isolation that so often comes with the masculine identity that we've been taught in our culture and this sort of idea of individual exceptionalism and that the idea that our primary value is in provision and divorcing ourselves from these ideas and coming together over our real emotions in a safe space that allows us to not navigate the world with anger and pain.

2:04:54but release some of that with each other in the container that masculinity can create for the safety of brotherhood. And I, you know, we get together every other Monday. I'm in two groups. I co-facilitate one. We have Sundays together where, you know, we sit around, barbecue, just hang out. That's informal. So we do this three-month chunks. Every quarter, you know, we read a book. and that can be sort of the, you know, the basis of discussion. We do exercises like one quarter can be writing your eulogy and you can write it from the perspective of anybody. One could be a quarter on a masogi, which is doing something that really, really scares you and challenges you, you know?

2:05:39And so if you, Rich, were to come to me and be like, I'm going to run an ultra, that's my masogi. I'd be like, bullshit, that's not your masogi. That's the comfort zone. That's your comfort zone. You already know what that looks like. Like Yuna Masogi might be not running an ultra. You need to sit down and not work out for six months. Right, see what that feels like. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the basic framework of it. And it's really about, you know, it's about learning how to be loved outside of the idea of accomplishment and provision. This is the Holy Grail. This is the golden chalice, you know?

2:06:14I mean, we are, of course, It's not unique to say that we're living in a world of, you know, mental, it is a mental health epidemic that we're living through right now. You can almost just reflexively say that. And I think it's important to say that there's an acute and specific aspect of mental health that challenges men, particularly young men who are in search of meaning, who are on social media and all the messaging is sort of hustle porn or outwork the next person, be strong, all these sorts of traditional tropes around masculinity and what it means to be a man in this world, right? And I think you and I can sit across from each other as two people who have played it out, right?

2:07:05Like, what does it look like on the other side of that and how do you feel, right? To report back and say, there's more to be learned here, right? and there's a different way. And I'm in the process of trying to navigate that. Like it's not easy, you know, to let go of these patterns and identities and stories and to really grok and embrace this idea that you have value outside of your ability to provide or your accomplishments in the world or the external validation that you receive. Like, can you stand on your own two feet and love yourself and feel that love is not a transactional thing that you're out there trying to seek to make you feel whole, but it's something universal to all of us that doesn't need to be earned.

2:07:56Yeah. It's fucking hard, man. It's so fucking hard. And the messaging, even with the best, you know, look, I don't love the words patriarchy and feminism, but I'm going to just basically, I'm going to briefly touch on them because I think they polarize people. As I learned about like the toxic expressions of patriarchy and how that's trapped men, specifically reading books like The Will to Change by Bell Hooks. I Don't Want to Talk About It by Terrence Reel, like these books that, and learning about feminism as well, I really started to unravel why, where so much of my anger came from. And it felt like this, in this incredible and unreachable point of, of shut up and do.

2:08:43And then what I found was when I started to speak. So there's this base level of patriarchal thinking, which is shut up and do be strong, sort of bottle the emotions, toughen up. And certainly there's a place for that in the world, right? We need some of that as in masculine sphere. But at the same time, as I learned more about it and I see how much the world demands that of young boys and how we grow up into it, I started to see also that when we express, when men are asked to be vulnerable and then we express specifically around frustrations around all of it and being confused. And oftentimes we're met with, well, stop being fragile.

2:09:22Well, that's just reinforcing ground level patriarchal. thinking. You'll just pivot back to. Exactly. You just told me that my actual expression, my truce expression, even if it goes counter to what your, you know, your experience as a woman or whatever, you just told me it's not welcome. That's my experience right now. And then what I think is also interesting is that so many people don't realize, and bell hooks was so good about pointing this out, that patriarchy is a system that we are all responsible for and all feeding into. Men tend to reap the socioeconomic and power-based rewards, right?

2:09:57But it's a system that we're all contributing to. And for example, like I love Scott Galloway. I think so much of what he has to say is really interesting. I watched him on a podcast the other day and he was saying, you know, get your shit together, do this. Like, and I really agree with it. Like kind of like find your purpose, go out into the world. And then he ended with, because the truth is, women want a man who makes as much or more than them. He had me right up until that point. He's not wrong, but he just reinforced what is. I understand. I think he would say, in his defense, he would say, I'm a social scientist and this is what the studies and the data reveal.

2:10:38So I'm just trying to basically tell these young men the way that it is and what the data says. And not that that's the way that it should be or that there aren't exceptions to that. Right. But if that's the soundbite on social media. Right. This is what women want. This is what women want. Yeah, I understand. I understand what you're saying. I'm not saying he's absolutely right. He's 100 % right. But in that way, that's where women in a system that we've been fighting so hard to make equal, if that's still their driver and their desire, well, then they're feeding back into the system. Because then men are going to continue to seek that in order to achieve that.

2:11:15And it's just going to keep it going. So we have to, all I'm saying is yes. And let's be more creative about what can be. Yeah. I think to your point, like it's risky to be vulnerable. And listen, the word vulnerability has almost lost all its meaning because there's so much performative vulnerability in social media. Yeah, it's sort of like, what does that actually mean? What is real? And I can wholeheartedly say that like the authenticity and the vulnerability that you bring to this book, like it's indelibly real. I can just feel it, but I'm curious, like when you're writing it, are you thinking like, is this, like you've been saying like, oh, is this real?

2:11:54Is this true? Is this not? Am I being honest? Like you're asking yourself those questions, which I think is part of what it means to be genuine and authentic, but in an environment where vulnerability has been commodified, it creates confusion. And then on top of that, you have the men who summon the courage to be vulnerable and to your point, like are then punished for that or it's not received in the spirit in which it's given, which is only going to, you know, reinforce the old behavior that led to the need for the sort of confessional vulnerability in the first place. We're in a cycle. We are.

2:12:36And we're also in a cycle of victimhood. And I think that's perpetuating this. And this relates to mental health, But our culture seems to be rewarding victimhood. And the question for me and something I've really been wrestling with is what are the mechanisms to honor what happens when terrible things happen to us, but not stay stuck in victimhood? and there is a certain element of victimhood that comes with like this sort of like poor white man trope. I don't believe in that. Don't give me that. But also there's a lot of victimhood and everything's fucked and the world is sort of, I have all this trauma and the world is sort of out to get me.

2:13:23And it's like, I'm not saying that's not true, but we cannot ask the world to accommodate for our trauma. Our trauma is our responsibility to address. It's not an excuse for your behavior. No, it can't be. It can't be. And it shouldn't be. And I don't like the word should and shouldn't, but it, look, man, the world's hard knocks, hard knocks. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for people to go through it. I look all around me in Venice and I see people on the street and I'm like, God damn, that is just pure trauma expressed, right? and that might be beyond repair. I like to think that it's not, but for most of us, it's not the world's responsibility to accommodate us.

2:14:09No, it's your responsibility. And I think, listen, I could talk to you all day. I can wind this down. I mean, maybe this is a good way to do that by talking a little bit about what you would say to the person who's been listening to this and is starting to identify something unhealed within themselves that might be producing maladaptive behaviors in their life, right? How does one begin to make sense of what that is and take that first step on the journey towards healing it? First of all, pay attention to, again, this word drives me nuts, but pay attention to your triggers. Triggers are the most powerful internal compasses we have.

2:14:53When stuff bothers you, when you get triggered, whether it's in a relationship, whether it's in society, culture, that is your first indication that something is unresolved or unhealed. Because when it is resolved, in my experience, it doesn't trigger you that way. You pay attention to it, you notice it, but it doesn't dysregulate you. So the first most important thing is don't avoid your triggers. Engage with them. Turn into them. Look at them. Embrace them. Because that is where all the information is. And nobody can heal that for you. Nobody. Look at your triggers. Love them. Because they are pointing you in the direction of your wholeness and your healing.

2:15:38The other thing that I would say is, you know, if you're chasing, if it feels, if there's a sense of fatigue and you're just going, going, going, it would be worth asking what's driving the extreme behavior right we're always like well if i do this next thing and you know you've talked about it a lot if if it's worthwhile to stop and go is the next ultra why am i doing it and when i answer this am i lying to myself is it truly honest because i just love the experience and we're so good at lying to ourselves We are the best at lying to ourselves. Or another way of framing it is, are you running towards something or away from something?

2:16:24And generally - Or are you just running? Maybe I'm just fucked up. Like, yeah, I'm just, I think it's like pretty much running away from things most of the time. It's rare that you're running towards it. We don't wanna run towards the hard thing. Right. We'll dress a hard thing up as running towards something, but in fact, it's running away from what we really should be looking at. That's a hundred percent it, you know? Or can you just run? can you just run for fun? Can you just run because it feels good, you know, metaphorically and physically? Right, right, right. So, because I mean, I think here's the thing, like the stories, you start to unravel them, you start to look at them, you start to just unpack them.

2:17:02And the more honest you get, the more, the more painful it can get, but also the more peace you feel. And the more you do that, or the more I've found that I've done that, like we talked about a little earlier. Like it is, and I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. It is so fucking profound that we wake up in the morning that, you know, I have the mathematical probability of existence tattooed on my hand. Um, whether or not it's accurate, I don't really give a shit. It's, it's a reminder that this is from the beginning of time, 13.8 billion years ago, something big happens and it sends 10 to the 80th atoms careening, a toppling over each other and becoming this shit, this stuff, right?

2:17:50Imagine every single thing that had to happen on that chain that happened exactly as it did all the way back through every ancestor that didn't die in your lineage back to our evolution and all the way beyond that. How many things had to line up for rich to be rich. That is absolutely astronomically mind-blowing. The fact that you woke up this morning, took a breath, and were like, I'm going to go do a thing called a podcast. It is so special. And the more we pay attention to how much shit is wrong and how broken stuff is, the more stuff is broken. So the reframe is, you have a body at all. There's always gratitude in that moment.

2:18:34And that's so much of what I hear you saying is the shift towards gratitude is the ultimate reframe. It doesn't mean you don't have headaches and life doesn't suck sometimes, that you have a body at all that gets to have headaches and gets to go through divorces and gets to be bipolar. How fucking cool is that? Beautifully put, very true and also so abstract that it's difficult for me to go, yeah, man. You know what I mean? It's like, cause it's so vast. It's like the difference between, look at those two people and there's a billion people. Like it's so vast and incomprehensible that I find myself detaching from the emotional resonance of what you just shared.

2:19:18Like that's my struggle, right? And this is why, you know, listen, I've said it a million times, like gratitude doesn't come easy. It's like, I have to like exert a lot of effort to like feel even the slightest flirtation with it. And what you share, it helps, but it's also like everything inside of me is like fighting against that. Like fuck off with you and your fucking vast, you know, like mathematical equation of the universal probability. Right, and that's fair. And I was there for a long time. Honestly, I didn't even know what gratitude meant until I was 39. I truly did not know. All I'm saying is that I've gotten to a place and it's true, fuck off with it.

2:19:58It's okay. But once that moment happens and I know you know it, even though it's conceptually difficult. Once that moment happens, you never forget it. It is, I don't know how else to say it than you woke up. That is miraculous. You're here with all of it. That is astounding. I think we did it. You're like, I still don't buy it, but I think we did it. No, I think we did it. We did the podcast. Yeah, yeah, we did it. How do you feel? I feel great, man. I think it was pretty good. I think I had a great time. Are there any parting thoughts that you wanna leave people with about the book? Like, what do you want people to get out of your story and the way that you told it?

2:20:45And there's one thing I forgot to mention about the way that you write. Like you have a very idiosyncratic style. Yeah. It's a very unique writing style that I love, but it's almost like in the stories that you tell, they're not linear. They're their own abstractions. They're like Picasso versions of the story or a - Collage. Like a melange. Yeah, it's a collage of portraits. Like each sentence is a photograph and these photographs aren't taken exactly one after another and you assemble them to create a narrative like this pastiche that evokes like a sense memory that allows you to kind of understand what happened, but you're sparing us all the details to make it like a technicolor, like 1080p image.

2:21:39Right. Well, first of all, I'm not a, like a trained writer. I don't, I don't, so. Thank God. Thank God. I like, I read a lot when I was writing and there were pieces that I liked. And of course, as you read, you start to emulate the reading that you're doing. And then, and it took, I think a year and a half before I was like, oh, this is me. This is my voice. And it is idiosyncratic and some people will probably hate it and that's okay. But I liked the sensor, the sense memory kind of idea. I just felt that it was more honest to what was happening inside. I was trying to write what was in my, not the experience.

2:22:19It's the way memory works. You don't remember everything about what that hotel room looked like. You only remember that one thing that was on the bedside table or what have you. Yeah, you remember the curtain. For some reason, that imprinted. So, yeah, I mean, well, I'm happy you enjoyed it. And I also, I think what I want people to get from this is right what you said right at the first. It's like you see me, but more important is that you feel seen. That's what I want people to get. I want people to go, oh, wow, I think differently about my brother with bipolar, or I think differently about, you know, mental health as a whole, or I think differently about my role as a man or a woman in society.

2:23:01But more like I just feel seen. I feel somehow more whole. Like I'm not alone in this. Even if the, like you say, the experiences are different, the internal texture is really similar. Well, I felt less alone reading it and even more less alone spending the afternoon with you. So thanks, buddy. Thanks, man. It was great. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's a real accomplishment. It's a work of art. It's an act of service. It's a beautiful offering that you've created and you should be very proud. Thanks, man. Cheers. Cheers. Peace. Lance.

2:23:54That'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, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and 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.

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2:25:14Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And 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.

2:25:39Thank you.