Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Steve-O

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Neal Brennan interviews Steve-O ('Steve-O's Wild Ride,' 'Jackass,' 'Wildboyz') about the things that make him feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how he is persevering despite these blocks. ---------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Jackass 3:54 Clown 7:35 Properly Homeless 9:03 Can’t Apply Self To Anything He Doesn’t Want To Do 11:40 Testing Drugs 16:08 Stuntman Dreams 28:40 Clown College 35:31 Haphazard Lifestyle 36:46 Overdeveloped Concern for the Opinions of Others 57:00 Aging as a Jackass 1:06:45 Separation between Steve-O and Steven Glover 1:09:30 Anxiety, Stress, Ambition and Happiness 1:11:13 Negative Self-Talk 1:13:34 Pettiness ---------------------------------------------------------- https://nealbrennan.com for tickets to Neal's tour Brand New Neal Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle ---------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors: GameTime App Code: BLOCKS for $20 off your first purchase https://babbel.com/Blocks for 55% off your subscription https://marinelayer.com/neal15 & promo code NEAL15 for $15% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Uber Reserve, you can book your Uber ride in advance, 90 days in advance. Perfect for all you forward thinkers and planning gurus. Reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. Uber Reserve. See Uber app for details. Hey everyone, welcome to Blocks. We talk about people's issues. We heal the world with our vulnerability it's a pretty special time my guest today jackass wild boys stevo's wild ride he's a comedian now i saw you talking to

rogan about it and when my name came up which i didn't know i'll tell you about uh you wrote a book two books two books fucking two books one one and uh steve oh i'm genuinely excited to to do this episode with you well thank you for having me have you had david letterman in here not in this room but on the show yeah my question for you well i you know what i the the watching you jack has started in 01 it premiered on mtv in october of 2000 okay so 2000 i remember seeing it and thinking i was like this is male uh relationships boiled down to a perfect soup i'd never i still don't think i've ever seen a better distillation of male relationships in my life to the point where i was like i should just walk i was like i just picked myself just walking out there and going like what do you need well i'll do anything

you want like not like i wanted to be one of you guys but i just i love the show so much i couldn't believe it i like couldn't believe how good it was well thank you i remember when the tv show premiered i didn't i didn't know about any of the footage that i wasn't a part of because we all shot it very separately so i'm probably having no idea what the aggregate would be largely and when the shows premiered they were all the footage was as new to me as everybody else. And I was just like, man, wow, I'm a part of something really cool. Immediately you kind of felt like that? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It was culturally significant, man. Yeah. It was like a big, it was a big thing. And how the world's changed since then i mean back then uh i mean we could argue that the video camera was not yet a household item i don't think we could i think it was not a household item until oh nine there wasn't even really reality tv except for uh i guess they had

survivor by that point yeah the real world yeah but that whole phenomena you know it's just crazy man it was just that such like it was just like what guys do in the break room on the loading dock in the room it's just like what people do what guys do when they're left to their own devices yeah um now the thing that i never occurred to me is that you are all on drugs in some form or another i'd say i mean ironically at the beginning bam was uh like pretty sober like super sober interesting yeah well yeah but once you guys started having like issues i was like why didn't i realize like of course you were on whatever you were on i'm assuming you're on like vicodin and i was never too into painkillers and at least i can

say i never took a painkiller for pain you just took it for the love of the game yeah i just took it to get get messed up what were your your choice My drugs of choice, I had a big cocaine problem before Jackass ever even started. I was in a circus before Jackass started, and I would be awake for days in a row and backstage peeling off my clown nose and tooting up you were a clown i was a circus clown yeah for how long well i graduated from ringling brothers and barnum and bailey clown college in 1997 okay didn't get the contract with the ringling circus which did break my heart at that time was it close do you know uh not not particularly close i didn't make a great impression at clown college so i missed out on that uh i think they made like 240 bucks a week or something yeah we were competing for a pretty bad job but i ended up

getting a job on royal caribbean cruise lines you know as a circus clown. Got fired from that. How many hours a day would you have to clown? It was a weird job. It was only, I think it was twice a week that we got in clown makeup. And we had like different things that we would do on the cruise ship. We would be the kind of warm up the crowd

in the 1500 seat theater on the cruise ship. We would assume these different characters and and mingle around and kind of like almost like disney uh you know like you see mickey mouse walking around kind of a thing and i mean it's so the hours didn't necessarily apply there were various duties that happened at different times. What were, like, just being other characters? Yeah, like when the cruise ship would leave the dock, we would be on stilts walking on the pool deck, you know, like celebration.

We would teach people how to juggle on the beach when we stopped in, like, the Cayman Islands. Right. What made you want to be a clown? I've never met anybody that wanted to be a clown, let alone did it. Right. I found the video camera when I was 15 years old through skateboarding. And I was never particularly great at skateboarding, but the skateboard led me to the video camera, which I fell in love with. And I decided that I wanted whatever career path I chose to involve the video camera. And when I was graduating from high school, I thought that becoming a creative advertising executive would be my goal. Yeah.

So I went to the University of Miami, the School of Communications, advertising. And I just couldn't bring myself to go to class. I was just getting wasted. And I was quickly failing out. I was kicked out of the dorms. Drunk? What were we doing? At that time, it was just mostly alcohol and weed.

Yeah. But whatever came by, I was pretty cool about. Got kicked out of the dorms dropped out you know the whole thing and and you know it's 1993 at that point and uh you know what are you gonna do now and i said you know what like i'm gonna become a crazy famous stuntman with my home video camera and in 1993 there was legitimately no precedent for that like yeah i was there yeah nobody ever pitched that right and everybody like nobody had video camera not nobody but like as many people as have like walkie talkies now right like you don't know nobody with a walkie talkie but you don't know

like there's enough home video footage to support one show america's funniest correct yes that was for chill that was mostly children and then right and and very violent things yeah great a great show yeah truly great show everybody i told my plan to as i left the university of miami legitimately felt sorry for me and it's that wow what a loser like this is such a tragic story and um i was uh properly homeless for three years ended up uh i mean i was just couch chirping around and um for three years how many nights did you sleep outside over the course of three years i probably spent a good few weeks outdoors. Do you just feel like a mooch every time? Oh, yeah.

Like you fucking hate asking people? Yeah. It was the worst. It was absolutely the worst. What did you tell yourself about why you couldn't get a job and a place to live? I couldn't keep a job. That was the thing is that I couldn't bring myself to go to class. I couldn't get a job and a place to live i couldn't keep a job that was the thing is that i couldn't bring myself to go to class i couldn't get through school and every single job that i ever got i was fired in short order so i with every time you agree with them looking back

pretty much yeah but you were so you were just a shitty employee you were just an asshole yeah i was i was just really bad i was like yeah you got me fair enough i can't argue like i got fired every denomination of days like i got fired from pizza delivery on the first day because it took me two hours to deliver a pizza that was like literally around the corner. What happened? I just didn't know. I'm not good. My sense of direction is bad. Okay. Great.

And, you know, but I couldn't keep a bus point. Were you nice? Were you like a nice person? Yeah, I was a likable guy. I just couldn't really apply myself to anything that I don't want to do. Like for me to be able to do something, this is a blessing and a curse. I have to be passionate about it.

Yeah. Like if I'm not passionate about it, then I cannot bring myself to do it. So it puts me in a like all or nothing, no safety net, no plan plan b no backup plan canada and my dead app when i apply myself to something it's like there's nothing i can't accomplish yeah but you have to like it yeah but unfortunately that's a fairly narrow slice of the pie yeah meaning that like most of life's duties i'm just completely if someone needs you to light your dick on fire.

Right, right. Pure passion. Right. Have you apologized to people once you get out of that? Like once you started making money, do you ever like, hey, can I give you money? Some of it? There's a little bit of that. Yeah. There was a guy

who when I dropped out of the University of Miami, I mean, we actually, there was a few of us who kind of dropped out at the University of Miami. We actually, there was a few of us who kind of dropped out at the same time. But one guy, we got in a van at the University of Miami. We drove all the way across the country to Lake Tahoe. And our plan was to become employees at a ski resort. And we would get free snowboard passes

and we'd become rad stuntmen we left miami for northern california with 600 bucks between us and um and i was just uh i was just kind of a jerk man like i was like uh i was a jerk to that guy i reached out to him and i was like man you know like jerk in what way like i smoked cigarettes and i would spend our money on cigarettes and like like uh i don't know if i feel like i was like trying to control like our little money yeah it was bad it's funny that you pulled it like we're all i'll keep our little pile of money like that did you get to did you get to the ski place we did and it wasn't snowing and they weren't hiring and we turned around we went from there to colorado where um where the my buddy did get a job

on the resort i didn't i became a i cleaned the meat room in a supermarket um that i was not enjoying that at all then i got in got in a car with another guy we drove to austin texas to have drugs tested on us uh by the government for fda approval what kind of drugs medical studies now like the the more dangerous the medical study the more they pay so we did the most dangerous one you could possibly get into which was where they were testing drugs for pigs and cows on people the reason being that they the drug was called rack dopamine hydrochloride the intention was to give this drug to pigs and cows, and it would cause them to have less fat and more muscle. It would make for leaner meat to appeal to a more health-conscious consumer.

But by the virtue of the fact that if they give this drug to the animals and the people eat the meat, that means a little trace of that drug is going to enter the human body. And any time anything, before drug is going to enter the human body and anytime anything before anything is allowed to come in contact with or enter the human body it has to be like rigorous rigorously tested so for some reason they had to like determine how much the human body could withstand of this stuff before they could give it to pigs and cows for meat. Do you know how much you were getting?

I know that the target of the study, the goal was to pump us full of it until somebody's resting heart rate went over 150 beats per minute. And it was supposed to be, I think, like a 10-day study, and they didn't quite get our heart rates to that dangerous level, so they gave us extra money to stay two more days. To get to 150? It was such a dangerous study that there were only six people in it, and we got like, I think it was supposed to be 1,500 bucks,

but we ended up getting a bump. And they're like death row inmates, the other five guys? There was a guy who was a gnarly drug dealer in the study. And he said, yeah, man, after we get out of here, because we were going to get $2,000 for the study, he talked us into investing in a pound of marijuana great and uh you know to make our two thousand dollars last longer and we went up to killeen texas with this uh this drug dealer guy and he drove us to the spot went in the front door and never came back out the front door. He had our money, 500 bucks from me and my buddy. And, uh, you know, and, and that, that sucked really bad,

but we found our way back to the guy's place and we're in a saying, you know, like, oh, you know, Hey, we just see what happened. Yeah. I'm sure he's confused. There must be some confusion. Yeah. Like what happened? And my, and my buddy had to fix the car if we're gonna get all the way back to colorado so i'm alone in this guy's apartment when he gets back he finds me in his apartment with his buddies how'd you get into his apartment i mean like he had a roommate who was home and his roommate was none the wiser about what's been going on yeah but but the roommate wasn't even there i'm sitting alone in this guy's living room. He gets back, finds me, and walks with his buddies. Like they beat me up,

like kicked me in the head, like really hard, and took the rest of the money that I had on me. And they'd said, he said, if you're here when I get back, like there's something bad that's going to happen. You're like,

yeah, I get that. Yeah, I better get out of here. So when my buddy came back from fixing the car i told him what happened and we gotta get out of here and uh we we ransacked this dude's place like uh we took all the clothes out of his closet and they'd like fit me pretty well um he had just bought this snake and we stole his snake and we stole everything we could possibly steal. And while we're in the middle of ransacking his place, we see these headlights pull into the driveway.

We're like, ah! And we go running through the back. We dive out the window, but then it turns out it was a false alarm. That wasn't him. We got back to ransacking and we loaded up the car and we got out of there. What did you get what

did you get mostly clothes and shoes okay uh and a snake with a pet with a with a like a shedding rock what kind of what became of the snake uh we gave it to the the nice girls in colorado who had let us sleep on their sofa while you you're doing this, is it fun? Is it? I don't think I've ever told that story on a podcast either. That's fantastic. Do you think like, this is my life, I'm living a good life, and it's going well?

That's a really good question. Thank you. And given that my goal, genuinely my goal is I'm going to become a crazy famous stuntman. And like everything that I did to that. That might be the dumbest goal I've ever heard realized. Right. The dumbest dream anyone ever realized. Right.

And so like I got drugs for pigs and cows. Because there was never a stuntman who was famous. Right. And so like, I got, I got drugs for pigs and cows. Cause there was never a stunt man who was famous. Right. Exactly. By definition, it's an anonymous thankless job. Yes. I mean, unless you count like Evel Knievel. Yeah.

But then he's a, he's a exhibitionist or something. He's, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like he's not just getting thrown out of a burning. Right. Right. I mean, I was thinking like I wanted to make Stuntman not anonymous. Were you always doing stunts?

When you jumped out the window, did you know how to land correctly or think you did? A little bit. Skateboarding taught me how to fall down. Is that the proper way? You're going to fall down. It behooves you to learn a proper way to fall down when the proper way is not don't use your hands and arms right in in a lot of cases i would say rolling out of something okay this is a good idea so you have this dream and you kind of feel like i'm on

my way yeah i thought that like the getting drugs tested on me like uh this this is just part of my down the wild guy i do crazy stuff you know like this is part of my day. I'm a wild guy. I do crazy stuff. This is part of my story. Notching my belt. That was 1994 that I did the medical study. Later in that year, I was following the Grateful Dead for an entire summer tour. I went to every single show and I would get to the Grateful Dead parking lot like on fumes.

I would have like, you know, and I would do like backflips for dollars to get like five bucks. And then once I had five bucks, I would buy like three hits of acid from like a deadhead guy. Then I would sell each of those hits of acid for five bucks

a piece now i had 15 bucks then i'd buy like an eighth of schwag and then i would turn around sell that for 30 bucks you know like by the end of the day i would have like a hundred bucks you know yeah then i'd be cool and i'd be then i'd just be worried about drinking and skateboarding would you buy go into the show no very rarely only if uh if um somebody gave me a ticket which happens sometimes yeah everything would kind of happen a lot sometimes that that sometimes that would happen it was just such a crazy thing the grateful dead man like they were in football stadiums which hold like i'm guessing like 50 50 60 000 and 100 000 people would show up arguable that there were times when there were more people outside the stadium during the show than there were inside and it seemed like the

cops kind of didn't care and they left a trail of people in prison oh they did yeah and selling acid is like a really serious crime that will have you in jail for like 10 years or something like there's like a there's just a trail of people okay so i'm dead one time it was in new jersey i think it was meadowland stadium and uh i i was i had a bunch of acid on me and i was selling a guy acid and um as we made the exchange i realized a cop was there and saw it and the cops hey and and i just took off running dude and i and uh i was not captured cops come on out it's over yeah i mean i remember i remember that very very well. I could have been part of this whole prison contingent. I didn't even know about that.

My thought was if they had a lot of black fans, a lot more people would have gotten arrested. That's my thought. That was mine. Like if Earth went in fire, 60,000 people were inside and 40,000 out, you would have seen a lot of arrests that's just my my guess sight unseen so then so then like uh you know but i i i ended up working my way back to the university of miami and and um just kind of was vagrant you were like hitchhiking ish my dad at a certain point i was like my i was like dad you know like man i'm like

everything's going really good except you know being homeless would be easier if i had a car and and uh i talked my dad into getting me a used car great yeah so that was the used car i never even learned how to drive until i was 20 years old. And I think it was like within six months, I got my first drunk driving arrest. And then within one month of getting my license back from my first DUI, I got my second DUI. And then I did the reasonable thing, which was I gave up driving. That's the DUI version of Irish Twins. Where you get your license taken and then you're right back at it.

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Are you liking my podcast? And thanks to Babbel, I know that. Do you? You know how I get when I go to a place and I'm like, I'm going to move. I'm going to learn a language. So I've been doing the Spanish course with Babbel, and you can too, because with Babbel, you can start speaking a new language in just three weeks. The best way to learn a language is through immersion, which means living where the language is spoken natively and using it every day. But that's not possible for everyone. I mean, if you want to learn Spanish,

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And then you can order food. You can have like converse. And I have a friend of mine in Mexico City. And we chat. We WhatsApp because that's how you know they're not in America. You WhatsApp in Spanish. It's fun. I seem charismatic and charming.

Here's a special limited time deal for our listeners to get you started right now. Get 55% off your Babbel subscription, but only for our listeners at babbel.com. B-A-B-B-E-L.com. That's B-A-B-B-E-L.com slash blocks, B-L-O-C-K-S, and get 55% off at babbel.com slash blocks, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com slash blocks. Rules and restrictions may apply. The second DUI was in January of 1996. And at that point, I was homeless and living out of this car which had expired tags and i was still like and i kind of was still driving drunk a lot of the time because i had no choice i was living in the car you know you don't want to and uh and then you know then these guys they they turned me onto this magic mushroom field.

They were like, dude, we're going to go pick mushrooms. It's going to be great. And I was like, oh, great, man. Maybe we can sell mushrooms. So we go and we picked lots and lots of mushrooms. And then at the end of our picking session, they were like, okay, now give us your bag. And I was like, what are you talking about? And they said, we're the ones who knew where the field was.

And I was like, well, I'm the one whose car we just checked to get to the field. These are my mushrooms. And I dug my heels in. I put my foot down and said, I'm not giving them to you. And they were very upset with me. And I was indignant. They were very upset with me, and I was indignant. I didn't want there to be a really bad vibe.

The next time they asked me, hey, can we borrow your car? We're going back to the field. I was like, you know what? All right. But they never came back with the car. They went to the guy's house? They destroyed the car. At this point i was at a low it was a low

point of my life and and and if i'm honest i had been thinking about using the car to carbon monoxide myself to death but i couldn't afford you need a garage and i couldn't afford to fill the tank yeah no there was a couple you were a couple there were a couple things that were going to prevent you yeah right and then your life was actually too shitty for suicide. Right. And then, uh, they,

then these guys, I would have been a step up. Right. Then these guys, uh, destroyed the car. I didn't even have the car anymore. And I was really just,

I was just out of options. And I, and I reached out to my sister. I said, I said, Cindy, like, I'm just like,

I can't anymore. I need help. And I knew that my dad had a standing offer. If I would go back to school and actually get A's and B's, that he would pay for my living. I could live with my sister. My dad would pay my half of the rent yeah if i got a certain grades yeah so i agreed to do that move in with my sister in albuquerque new mexico

and i was getting a's and b's and it was going great but i was drunk all the time i was a slob and eating my sister's food messing up her house my sister was working as a journalist at the Albuquerque Journal. And one day while she was at work, she was taking a dump in the bathroom, reading a book of trivia on the toilet. And she came across this question. It said, what is the only college that has no tuition? Something like that. She flipped to the answer and it it said Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College is free if you can get in but the caveat being that it is highly difficult to get into it statistically more difficult to get in than Harvard and my sister just thought that this would be a great way to get me out of her house.

So she left the number for Ringling Brothers Environmentality Clown College on the table. Where is it? It was in Florida, Sarasota, Florida. I got to say, not shocked. Not shocked. Yeah, Sarasota is a big circus town. That's where all the sideshow freak people live. So I got home, and it just made perfect sense to me i thought oh well you know i'm not really getting a lot of traction with my uh my like stunt career even though i had

you you're doing a lot of stunts i was doing the really i was actually getting really doing some really cool stuff like during my vagrant period being homeless and couch surfing people said that's your peak yeah well i mean if you think about it this way um the university of miami was an absolute bona fide olympics factory for swimming and diving yep and i befriended the um the university of miami dive team they just loved how i jumped off buildings and bridges, and I was the civilian and just wanted to do flips off high things. And there was one apartment in the student athletic apartment complex that had the number one, the number two, and the number three ranked NCAA platform divers. You had the senior national

diving champion, the current NCAA champion. These guys were the most incredible dudes ever. And they took me under their wing and really cleaned up my standing back flips, you know, like I was so I could just do a perfect standing back tuck. as soon as i learned that then i started setting myself on fire like pouring uh like rubbing alcohol over my hand my arm and i would light it on fire so that was my torch and then i would go into a standing back flip and use my flaming hand as a torch to simultaneously breathe fire while doing a back flip so you do the spitting thing yeah in midair just like a simultaneous fire breathing backflip which i absolutely invented and i could do that before clown college like these these diver guys also taught me how to walk up and

down stairs like on my hands would, no one got hurt on that? I got hurt. Yeah. Sure. Like there was a point, and this was what actually put me on the mat. Do you wear a glove? No, no, rubbing alcohol burns pretty thin, but I did get burned a lot.

And, you know, I was still super into skateboarding. Like my highest goal really was to be in skateboard videos at that time because I wasn't good enough at skateboarding my like my highest goal really was to be in skateboard videos um at that time because i wasn't good enough at skateboarding to be in the awesome videos but skateboarding would get monotonous nobody could watch it for an hour so skateboarding videos always had this crazy kind of comic relief irreverent craziness and i wanted to be that guy i made it my job to be that guy and uh the skateboard tour came through albuquerque and i met up with these i said oh guys you know like big brother magazine was the tour i just like i told him you guys i love big brother magazine so much i'm gonna be in your magazine i don't care if you like me i only was kind of the basis for jackass 100 the

basis for jackass and um my plan was that um was going to light all the hair on my head on fire by spraying hairspray all over my head. Light my head on fire, all the hair, so that my head was a torch for this big famous professional skateboarder, Chris Markovich, to blow a fireball off my flaming hair into which I would put my hand in my arm so that my hand would come out of that fireball that came off my head. Now it's on fire. And now I'm going to do the simultaneous fire breathing back flip with my head on fire. And then once I've finished that, then I'll put everything out and call it a stunt. But the problem was because I wanted to get my left hand into the fireball, I positioned the pro skater to my right, which left my whole face exposed. And this guy, I don't know if he blew the fireball with his eyes closed or what, but he blew that fireball point blank right into my face. And my whole head from shoulders up, face included, my whole face was just on fire.

And my best thinking in that moment was, man, I better hurry up and do this fire-breathing backflip because my face is on fire. So I went through with the whole thing. The footage is amazing because you see the back flip, and my back is to the camera, and as I rotate, I come around, and you see my whole head is engulfed in flames.

And I came up short, landed on my knees, so I wasn't able to... So I'm kind of struggling to get back up, and I'm going through this backyard keg party that's happened at. I ended up with all the skin from my face was like like came off and it was rolled up like a joint all this like the skin was just off my face and i knew they said in the footage they said they said dude are you okay and i go no dude

not even like i had to go to the hospital i was like i burned my face off and so i went so rubbing alcohol is not it's like it's it burns thin sometimes but like if you leave it going for yeah yeah it's pretty easy to put out but what happened to your face um it's second degree burns i went to the hospital and and they did they is it called debriding? They debrided it, meaning that the dead skin that's burned is going to cause an infection because it gets like rotten or something. So they've got to like scrape off. It's super painful.

They scrape it off. And this happened, this was so, so crazy. They said, I wouldn't be able to go into the sun for six months. They were fine with the flip fireball thing. They were like, you can still do that.

Just don't go in the sun. Right, right and and in the mornings for like two weeks my face was like they had all this stuff coming out of my this ooze like yes or whatever and so in the mornings i would like have to peel my face off my pillow and it was just a really dark time and while i was in the whole peel my face off my pillow phase was when I found out that I had been accepted into clown college. And it was bittersweet because I thought, man, how am I going to put on clown makeup? So was your life kind of always this haphazard? Yeah, sure. And then did it stop once the show once jackass started or it accelerated oh totally

accelerated so this with money and access kind of yeah uh-huh god bless yeah and and and these days like uh it's it's like all time crazy like the the this cup last couple years is crazier than ever. Last couple of days. Last couple of days. Yeah. I recently bought a smart car for no reason whatsoever, but to crash it fucking straight into a concrete wall to make sure the airbags work. And I've agonized over it for a long time because it's like the speed what is the minimum speed 25 uh the minimum speed for the airbag to go off is

only uh 10 or 12 okay and uh you want it to look awesome you don't want it to look too awesome yeah yeah and i see i got the great i got a crash test dummy yarmulke tattooed on top of my head fantastic yeah um commit commitment yeah yes yes yeah this guy got a fucking full ride to clown college all right i let's get some blocks okay good the all right All right. The big one. Number two, overdeveloped concern for the opinions of others. Yeah. Okay. Well,

we should talk about you are sober. I am. How long? 15 years. Okay. So do you look at your unsober years as some sort of escape or trying to get out of your, your experience or your skin or what do you see it as?

I look at my entire life as an exercise in being extremely uncomfortable with my own skin. From early? From as early as I can possibly remember. I remember feeling like not enough. I would go as far as to say defective. There's just something not right. You know, like everything's not okay. Yeah.

I'm not okay. Everything's not going to be okay. Like. To this day. Anxiety. Yeah. Just like, you know, like I'm screwed up and I'm screwed. Got it.

From parents? Who knows? I just think that's alcoholism, kind of. Oh, you just came out of the chute like that. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Because I had a perfectly privileged and loving upbringing.

Yeah. I agree with you. I know people that's like, I think sometimes it's just in you and that you like got to get it out of you. It's also in every single leaf on the family tree on my mom's side of the family. Everyone's kind of built the same way. I used to say that everybody on my mom's side of the family was either dead or dying from alcoholism. But now they're all dead like uh except for like my generation i've got a cousin i've got two cousins on my mom's side of the family and and all of us

and none of them went recovered in any way and nobody it's really like my mom her brother her sister her mom her dad and as far up the ladder as anybody's aware of is all like um alcoholism addiction gambling suicide all gnarly stuff yeah and they all dealt with it relatively the same way and did anyone ever come to you and go like hey i see what you're doing or were they like hey steve come drink with us it wasn't really either but but it's just it's it's testimony to how insidious the disease of alcoholism is that what i witnessed firsthand as a child would be enough you would think to educate me to scare me straight like i that happened to me like no my dad was an alcoholic and none of us 10 kids nobody wow none of us drank very much at all right i mean i was armed with everything that i needed to know

to to know better than to drink and i was just like man it's gonna get me anyway it's gonna get me anyway i'm just gonna try to have fun with it yeah all right yeah let go and let alcohol there you go and what was the why'd you stop why do you did alcohol what did alcohol do that you were like yeah it's too far i alcohol you weren't supposed to do all that i mean i got in with a lot more substances than just alcohol and um it was main one coke was it was yeah coke was really major i did everything i never got into heroin or crack and i was never like never turned down crystal meth but um i never really sought it out right was it available was it like readily available and whenever it it was right there and someone was handing it to me, I did it. How often would that be?

Not that often. It was more cocaine. Meth's not very social, right? So if you do meth, you kind of just do it with one other person? Some people do it fairly socially. Yeah? Yeah. It wasn't something I aspired to too much, but I thought cocaine was really cool.

I would base it off of what radical rock stars, like Motley Crue. You never heard about Motley Crue doing meth. You heard about him doing coke. I wanted to party like rock stars, so I was attracted to cocaine. Coke's good for drinking too, right? It's a good counterbalance. Yeah. It's like if I would do a line of

cocaine i would need a drink immediately and if i had a drink i would need a line of cocaine immediately so they were yin and yang perfect it sounds like a great night and i think but back to the whole thing with like feeling and you know this is it like uh this they call it restless, irritable, and discontent is kind of the default state of the alcoholic. There's just you're uncomfortable in your own skin. And I just felt like I wasn't enough and that that was a problem. What's coming up to me is like getting sober must have been fucking hellish no worse anybody else i mean the thing about getting sober when they say like you gotta hit a bottom you know like the idea is that you get sober when staying sick is so hellish yeah okay like it's actually the

better okay when i was a kid i had this whole like felt defective i wasn't enough and so like Yeah. Okay. dressing up in my Little League team uniform, in that uniform, it helped me because I was a baseball player. Yeah. It was a complete identity shift. You weren't yourself. It was like I would just take on- Cosplay or something. Yeah.

I would be wearing my Little League baseball uniform nowhere near a baseball field. Like when I was not playing a game, I'd be at the movies, the mall. On a Sunday night in your Little League uniform. Yeah, and when I was nine, I did a season of Little League football. And there's my Canadian citizenship card that I have

where it's like a passport photo and I'm just full pads like I felt the need to wear like my football uniform with my shoulder pads underneath like for a passport photo Halloween every day I wore it for Halloween too there's a there's a year for Halloween I was a football player and um and people go what are you and go a vampire and they're like why are you wearing it and you're like I'm a football player. And people go, what are you? And you go, a vampire. And they're like, why are you wearing it? And you're like, I'm a fucking vampire. Don't worry about it. It's a different thing.

So that was just this thing. And that's kind of how it manifested at that time. And then the Little League gave way to heavy metal. I discovered Iron Maiden. I was like, wow, this heavy metal. And then Motley Crue. And then Slayer. And you wear the outfits and the pants

and the shirts and the and i wanted to grow the mullet my parents wouldn't let me so it was hair spray make eyeliner no i didn't do that but but certainly the like the the jean jacket with your are you from canada i grew up in five different countries and I have three different, uh, citizenships because I was born in England. My mom was born in Canada and my dad was born in America. So I'm all three. Is that good? Three valid passports is epic.

Great. Yeah. They're all countries where you can have more than one citizenship. Great. And taxes only apply to where you're a resident. So. Which is California. Yeah. Yeah. great and taxes only apply to where you're a resident so which is california yeah yeah but then so then i became like this my identity became like you know with the one and

a half inch mullet because that's all my parents would let me grow it you know and the jacket and then skateboard and then skateboarding came and took over the heavy metal and that was just skateboarding was my identity and then and then i the skateboarding then it took over the heavy metal now just skateboarding was my identity and then and then i the skateboarding then it turned into like pot and the grateful dead and and you know they so i always had this this thing like where i wanted to you know like somehow amount to to to enough so it's like me plus metal it might be a full person yeah maybe yeah maybe and i would just listen to heavy metal music at people and then all the kids at school are like oh you satan worshiper and that would like really hurt my feelings even though i wanted them to think that

yeah like and um i was i moved so much growing up in five different countries like born in england moved to brazil when i was six months old because my dad became the president of pepsi cola in all of brazil and then he got promoted so we moved to venezuela when i was two years old and then we moved to darien connect Connecticut when I was four years old. At this point, I've spoken three languages fluently by the age of four, forgot two of them completely by the age of five, and moved to Miami when I was six years old because dad became a big tobacco CEO for R.J. Reynolds. This was during the 80, and they discovered that cigarettes were actually linked to cancer, like the kind of, and so the tobacco companies were freaking out

thinking that their business model- Did he testify in Congress, your father? He didn't, but he's got all kinds of funny stuff to say about the battle and how both sides of, but tobacco companies started buying up food companies because because if the business model of tobacco went away people are always going to need to eat yes so at the time the largest corporate merger or corporate takeover in history in history was, it was called the KKR merger. And it was where RJ Reynolds Tobacco became RJR Nabisco.

And my dad was part of that biggest, dad says that he had an aberrationally good year that year. He went on to become the president of Nabisco International. I think that was his deal. So at this point, I live in a huge house. In where? Well, we moved to England when I was in fourth grade. Then we moved to Canada, and then we moved back to England. I think maybe dad started out

like it was just nabisco canada but uh but yeah like my house got bigger as i grew up i got more uncomfortable and my mom my dad was never home and my mom was super drunk and um we moved all the time and i was just this like this this thing about me just made me really like aggressive and, and like, and I wanted everyone to add, there was this, this report card I got in sixth grade and the con the, the teacher wrote, Steve desperately wants the approval and praise of his peers, but the way he goes about it brings about the opposite result. I remember I found that my sister dug up all this stuff when I was making my first book,

and I saw that comment in the preface. It was just peers. Ooh. of stuff when i was making my first book and i saw that comment in the party it was just pierce oh yeah like it's there are a lot of dynamics where people really desperately want one thing and their way you were like a little dickhead about it yeah like i was uh i was just aggressive man like i was just i tried too hard i tried too hard like when i was in third grade, like I got all the kids around in the cafeteria and like unscrewed a salt shaker and just watch me consume a mountain of salt. Like, you know, and nobody thought it was, oh, that's creepy. Like, what are you talking about?

Yeah. Creepy. Like, no, it's awesome. Yeah. And you can really respect it. I remember fifth grade, I was 10 years old. I remember this one really, really well. Like all of my baby teeth had fallen out.

I was like down to like maybe the last. The last real teeth you ever would have. Yeah, right. Exactly. And I knew I could tell that this tooth, one of my last teeth was just like becoming loose and i knew that if like you rip it out before it's ready to come out it's going to bleed a lot yep i'm at the american school in london england i walk into my spanish class i go and sit next to like this super pretty girl who i would never sit next to normally and i brazenly tell this girl if you weren't going to bleed a lot you wouldn't

sit right i brazenly tell this girl i say i don't have to be in class today i can leave whenever i want and she's just kind of like oh like weird like you're creepy like you know and i sit down next to her and the class starts and i just violently rip out this tooth. And sure enough, all this blood is flowing. And I raise my hand and show the teacher my mouth open with all the blood. And I say, I need to go to the nurse. She says, go, go. And I stand up and I say to the hot chick, I'm like, I told you so. You know, like, and, you know, like just stuff like that.

Nobody thought it was cool. You know, like it was that nobody thought it was cool you know like it was just aggressive and it was creepy and everything about the way that i wanted people to like me like was too aggressive and it sounds like adults with motorcycles you know what i mean i'm like i get that you want me to like you and think you're unique and interesting this is the fucking worst way to go about it by by and bombarding me with noise with an unimpressive thing what are you doing support for today's podcast comes from marine layer it It's official. I'm cute. Do you see this shirt, guys?

It's a cute shirt. You know where I got it? Marine Layer is where I got it. You see how it's like a nice cut and a nice fit? I'll tell you why. It's because they have good sizing. They have like small, medium, large, and then they have like medium, large, et cetera, et cetera.

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to give a class presentation you get up in front of the class now you got to speak to the vocal terrified of it like i was the kid who when i had to give the class presentation like my voice was shaking more than any other kid in the class you know like and it's just so counterintuitive that i was just starving for attention yeah but terrified of it at the same time. You know, like, like I need your attention, like, and I need you to like me. And like, I'm just so afraid of that not being the case that when I get in front of you and speak that you can tell I'm just trembling and you know,

like I need to be the center of the attention, but I'm terrified of being the center of attention. It's like in between a rock and hard spot yeah yeah hard place hard spot i don't know if that's england i don't know where he got that he went to he was in a lot of countries guys he he forgot two languages before the age of six and he used to bring it up to people he'd go i motherfucker i've forgotten more languages than you're ever gonna learn i'm six and i need your attention yeah but i'm afraid of it the well that i it's like going to a show and get nervous right but when i i go to shows tonight right and i get nervous and i'm like this is a weird thing that you do. I mean, I always liken stand-up to skating,

which is you're at the top of a ramp, and your body's going like, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, and you're like, no, no, no, no, I like it, I think, or something. I have to do it. I just built a big-ass ramp in my backyard. Finally? You've never had a ramp before? I've had ramps inside the house he's finally reached the point uh okay that's fucking fascinating so there's over concern for

the opinions of others like um it's just been all my life. If you're not enough, obviously you're looking for external help. It's the thing I say to people. Me and everyone I know goes into every conversation 10 points down. We're like, okay. Story. Good to see you.

Just trying to charm people and overcompensate and you're doing backwards. I know. I think it's why I fell in love with the video camera the way I did because to see you like just trying to charm people and overcompensate and you're doing back i know i think it's why i fell in love with the video camera the way i did because with like the skateboarding i could edit out the failures and only string together the successes and it was like this process represented a way for me to physically manipulate someone's impression of me and make them think that i'm better than i am yeah you know which is almost a uh like a metaphor for just my life you know like i want so badly to manipulate like what you think of me and um

you know and then that's why i gotta go get the like oh drugs for pigs and cows epic this is gonna make people think i'm awesome you know and all these years later i love having crazy stories but like the reality of like i just wanted to live were you excitable while you were like were you like i was just in i just got into clown college were you like sort of like gregarious and like everywhere and like, Hey guy, like life of the party. Yeah.

That was the thing with Jackass when, when Jackass started that, like when the shoot was over, the cameras are turned off and put away. Like largely everybody was able to just kind of be, be done, you know, maybe now we're going to drink, you know, but whatever, like, and I be done you know maybe now we're gonna drink you know

but whatever like and i just you know like well that okay that's like we're done we're not shooting anymore yeah no wow like and i never had an off switch have you ever had a moment after a stunt where you're legitimately injured right you've had a few of those you've had like dozens of them do you ever think i wish i wasn't i wish i didn't have to do this yeah i mean like all this obviously i it's an amazing like i this shit you do means a ton to me i'm dreading all of the crash test dummy stuff that i have in front of me because it's not just with the car and then it's like the crash cube and then i've got the rolling clash crash globe like right you know you don't have to do it i know i don't have to do it yeah like i'm telling you

don't just because you got the tattoo you grow your hair out i don't know about the tattoo. Yeah. Yeah. Like you don't have to do it, but it is that thing of you might have enough money to not have to do anything. And you're still like, I, I have to do it. And you just wonder, I,

and I say, I asked this cause I feel this way. Like, why do I have to keep doing this? You know what I mean? It's a great question, man. I mean, I just am right now in the process with my fiance of purchasing a- Life insurance policy?

A 40 plus acre property outside of Nashville. We want to open up a big animal sanctuary right like and uh last night i went into a full like spiral panic attack thinking like like well you know the what am i doing you know like like what am i doing like i was throwing around around the math and what it would look like to be on tour for four months of the year, in LA for just under two months of the year, and a minimum of six months and one day in Tennessee so that I'm officially a legitimate Tennessee resident. And that kind of made sense to me. Oh, yeah, there's a real reason to do this. And then I thought, what am I doing? I'm just plunking down the most money I've ever plunked down on anything

to buy this property. And now I'm talking about just sitting there for six months out of the year, just going to kneecap my earnings potential. While all this building is going on, the property's money's flowing out and i'm just gonna cut off my right my uh earnings yeah what am i doing like i just had like but the earning i'm not even thinking about the earnings thing i'm thinking about like because i watch the i watch the latest Jackass, and a part of it must be like, there's a part of me that's a little sad watching it. Okay. Because it's because of the compulsion.

Sure. It's a weird version of the end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Meaning, they know how hard relationships relationships are and they choose to do it again they know the heartache they know that and it's like and i it's again it's like a new hour with stand-up or any of this shit where where you're like i'm gonna do that again i'm gonna like and and so when i watch you guys do this thing that is very hard on you and it's like you can't not. It's like salmon swimming upstream or something. It's like in you to do it.

And to hear you tell it, it's almost like it was in you before anything. Right. Yeah. ultimate example of that and what terrifies me like to no end is um like the stories the the one the one that comes to mind uh a movie called stan and ollie which is uh the story of uh laurel and hardy yeah these guys uh and and there's another one about buster keaton which is an actual documentary yeah like these people who are like physical entertainers and um like got raw deals in in their contracts like didn't like weren't good with their money found themselves in their sixties, seventies,

and like just suiting up and, and getting on stage, like to beat themselves up, like when it's just dark and tragic and sad to watch, you know, like the, the, the same feeling that I got from those I got when I watched the movie Judy or Judy Garland.

Yeah. It's like just, you know. There's something so physical about what you guys are doing. That's not. It's like and it gets more dangerous every time. Right. With every age, every day of aging. Right.

And so it's really scary to me. And I think that like what what's interesting is hearing your story you're like a real fucking raconteur like you like telling the stories you're telling them well they're interesting like you're not just a stuntman well i've definitely evolved and by the way thank you i appreciate the kind words. I've evolved with my comedy where it's a multimedia thing. And then the new hour that I'm putting together now, as violent as it is, it's an examination, largely an examination of how I am confronting middle age. Yeah. My aging process.

Yeah. And there's a lot of lashing out at father time you know like yeah i'm just taking it dead on and acknowledging that i'm at that that time yeah you know and and and here's here's how it goes so i think that there's something about like being deliberate and upfront about it and not just pretending that that's not going on that allows me to be authentic and and do it and what I'm doing at this age I hope anyway but but it strikes me as interesting too because I was about to say that there's the the sad and depressing buster keaton story and laurel and hardy story what's sad and depressing

about that is that they were in true financial distress right and having to do that to survive yes but like but there's a difference from what i'm doing where it's like uh you know i'm not in financial distress i'm doing it by choice yeah and that is an absolute like exactly the same thing as what i said about alcoholism you know like my my family members like you know i was gonna get me anyway you know yeah i'm just gonna try and enjoy it you know like it's like, I got alcoholism, but I'm going to, you know, like. I know. Well, that's what's interesting is like, are you a heat-seeking missile for, like, are you just a kamikaze pilot?

Like, is there just literally as you turned on, I see the crash, the dummy tattoo. And I worry. And then there's a part of me that's like i don't know just go out yeah or it's like a good example would be madonna right right oh that's a tough one you know what i'm saying now you see it yeah it's like i don't i don't know yeah i don't know how i can't call this one i truly don't know what to tell her right and why is it so different with dolly parton because she's not because she's always been cartoony it's always been cartoon boobs and cartoon makeup and car like and she's in on the joke right Right. It feels like a manifestation of the restless and dissatisfied. I can't remember what the I mean.

Restless, irritable, and discontent. Irritable, yeah. Restless, irritable, and discontent. Like having to do it to get – the whole thing is just a feeling. You're just getting your nipple pierced over and over and over. Right. is just a feeling it's you're just getting your nipple pierced over and over and over and over what you're doing is it the physical manifestation of restless irritable yeah i mean i don't know i don't know like uh i know that um yeah i've just taped my third comedy special and like my first

like sort of joke i tell is uh you know, guys, I'm in a really bad situation. I'm Steve-O in my 40s. That's great. That's a funny joke. And, you know, and I'm just trying to do the craziest shit ever before it becomes creepy to watch me do it. Yeah. And like that, you know, and that's just, I just leave that there. Yeah.

It's like you guys all used to be indestructible. Right. And now you're incredibly destructible. Right. And now like we're at now that now is really that line where it, it is creepy to watch me do it. And so like this new hour that I'm putting together now, like, okay, now we're into the creepy zone.

I acknowledge that. Let's get creepy. Great. Give me the, give me the give me the web is that where i find it yeah um this third special just got shot but uh okay so the the what have you done about the concern of others thing the opinions thing have you found like a middle have you found a way to disengage i I think that the answer to that for me is in finding separation between the persona of Steve-O and the person of Stephen Glover. That's the best I can do.

What's funny is Stephen Glover's a pretty good name. And you changed it. Steve-O's a little better, but Stephen Klobber's pretty good. I told you I got my second drunk driving arrest within a month of getting my license back from the first, which meant that I had to go to jail for 10 days. And I was in jail for 10 days. And I was in jail for 10 days. And while I was in jail for 10 days, in this big auditorium full of bunk beds with other inmates, they let me have sheets of paper and a pencil. I started writing my jailhouse memoirs, which I have to this day.

Fantastic. It said March, I forget the specific date, but March 1996. The first thing I wrote on that first page was they call me steve-o i'm thinking about switching back to steve glover because now i've kind of become begun a career and i don't know if i want a nickname when i'm famous look you were out of your mind but you were right you called all of it and in hindsight i only I only mentioned that because going with Steve-O and not switching to Steve Glover, I think, was the smartest thing I did. Steve-O, just somebody called you Steve-O. It's like Steve-O.

If you look at Jackass, the people that I feel have the most name recognition. Yeah. Wee Man. Yeah. Bam. Yep. Steve-O. that was part of the yep like it i think it uh it helped the people who went with the name on their driver's license

i feel did a disservice to themselves yeah by not having an easy to remember party boy who was yeah but that's pontius that was funny all right yeah i think he screwed himself the most because he bounced all over the place. Like, I don't know if he's Pontius or, yeah. Right, but bless his heart. And now, you know, I'm not like slinging anything at my bros. I think that the rest of the Jackass guys are a lot more healthy than I am.

Yeah? Because I've got this like attention thing and like this this crazy like you know I don't know I have to be working striving trying to accomplish something all the time and and and as a result like I'm always in a perpetual state of like anxiety and stress like uh and it's partially ambition you think sure yeah and and and you know it's partially ambition, you think? Sure, yeah. And it's something that in my second book, I just analyzed the question

because it's something that I noticed bothered me for just a long, long time, the question, are you happy? Like whenever anybody would ask me, am I happy? It would just make me uncomfortable. Yeah. It would ask me, am I happy? It would just make me uncomfortable. It would make me uncomfortable because my initial instinctual reaction is no, I'm not happy. I feel gripped by fear, anxiety, like everything's not okay. I've got to frantically try to scramble and hustle to do something so that everything might be okay.

That's my default. Yeah. And is that a bad thing? Does it bum me out? I certainly have always felt like it's just a rude and personal and really inappropriate question for someone to ask me, am I happy? That's funny. And I broke it down and I really thought, you know what? I think I know why like what it is is like like i don't want to be happy because i think like happy

like is uh synonymous with content right like content sounds dangerously close to lazy funny you got your father's yeah sense of capitalism and your mother's uh 100 you could you could not have nailed it more perfectly you have a capitalistic approach to self-destruction yeah steve-o ladies and gentlemen you even worded it better than i did in my first book well um bastard son of a bitch uh negative negative self-talk okay i'm not okay i'm not okay i'm not lovable i'm uh like uh you know like i had a thing in my in three mics that my first Netflix where i said i don't have the shelving for good feelings i could have a good feeling it says i don't have anywhere to put it and and like i look the idea that happiness is a like that's a personal question i want to say

that somebody at some point it's like fucking very funny how dare you yeah like you have no right to ask me this small talk um but i used to i also try to achieve my way out of depression and you're trying to achieve your way out of anxiety yeah for sure and and i've come a long way with with the negative self-talk thing man like um like last night like what am i doing what am i doing i'm gonna buy this house like i'm like ah you know like i've just poked a hole in my canoe and stopped rowing. Yeah. You know, like. I don't think you have to spend six months in a year.

Yeah. Oh, I think. Or six months in a day. I think you do. And I think that whatever time you spend on tour does not count. I think you got to physically be there. But I know that I can't do that. Like, we got the property.

We're going to get married on it. We'll start setting it up. But I just can't be there because I've got to work. I have to. I have to work harder and more and better than ever before. Because of the house or because of some weird thing in your head? Because I have to. You've decided.

I have to. You put a hex on yourself. because i just you've decided i have to you put a hex on yourself yeah i've i've i've built like i've i've uh yeah i'm pretty prolific with uh content creation like you know i upload to four different youtube channels regularly i've got all of the you know like some crazy combined social media following of 35 million it's like it's pretty crazy like and i've got more of like a media department like built around me just increasing overhead so all i'm like yeah like the overhead is is getting insane at this point and then now like because i taped the special like touring you know no touring it's just all money going out like yeah but you're making money off the youtubes yeah okay negative self-talk

pettiness petty okay yeah pettiness man like um when i uh reach out to somebody and and uh they don't respond how long like kind of at all know, like there's just like certain things where you reach out and then people just, you know, like if I ever feel disregarded, not responded to, like I really get into silent scorn. It's pretty gnarly. And I like to this day, maintain inventory. I've got the whole 12-step inventory thing where we catalog our resentments. And I do it in an app. And 80%, 90% of my resentments are like, someone blew me off. They blew me off they they blew me off you know and uh i i just managed

to take that so personally when like you know the best way to get over resentment is to put yourself in the shoes of the person who you resent and so obviously like like i was like oh have like like i blow people off sometimes yeah like sometimes i do it yeah and the best way that i've gotten over that i just allow people to not want to fuck with me and in turn i give myself the permission to not want to fuck with other people but do you believe it's as close as i can get it's a theory not a practice yeah yeah what do you think is happening you're just ego is so tender that any sort of abrasion is to is fatal it hurts to agree with that yeah i mean uh yeah when you put you put it that that was pretty eloquent and uh

poignant the way you worded that um but yeah it's not off the mark like i just i i want to matter man i want to matter i want to be uh acknowledged and if i'm not acknowledged but you also know that like there's a lot of matters at this point there's a lot of fucking people i know who and and invariably it's somebody who's got a shit ton going on in their life like uh and invariably like they i always end up hearing from them and like oh like they just couldn't have been they didn't know about it or less malicious yeah i'm that's i think by definition petty that i can take something personally that someone else isn't even aware of Yeah, I mean small shit right and what have you done about it? And how did it get very destructive? I mean with that it's uh

It's the inventory process. I write it down. I speak up about it How do you speak up about it to the people in recovery? Okay, you just say like I I'm mad at somebody for because i emailed them and they didn't email me back let's see let's see i love it a living inventory guys yeah i got uh my spiritual toolkit that's an app yeah i got okay uh blew me off blew me offw me off. Blew me off. Blew me off. Wouldn't do my podcast. Blew you off in what way? This guy blew me off after two of his biggest creators made formal intros by email and text.

Didn't even. I don't even mind saying that was the CEO of. Thinking about getting on this platform. The CEO's like, hey, you know, my buddy, my other buddy Steve will do it. Guys, I'm thinking about getting on both of them. Oh yeah, let me introduce you to the CEO. Think, oh great, man, they introduced me and crickets. I don't hear from the guy, nothing.

And I'm like, and everyone's like i will just upload under i'm like i'm gonna bend over backwards to bring all of my following to this platform this guy can't even but why do you want the guy you're doing great i just think another platform might be a bigger audience but but i don't think it'll be bigger than YouTube. What the fuck are you talking about? You can get away with more. Okay. You can finally really hurt yourself.

But that's just the first call. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what is this effect? Fear, self-esteem, security, pride. My mistakes. Where have I been selfish, dishonest, or afraid? Well, I feel entitled. I'm entitled. Like, this guy's not kissing my ass that's

entitlement uh self-important grandiosity i have no idea what's going on with this guy whether he kisses my ass or not has nothing to do with what's right for me professionally i bitched about it even did and that's not a good look i should be logical and strategic and not cut my nose off despite my face i'll probably bleep most of these names now but what i'm gonna say is just knowing the people you just named yeah makes you one of the most privileged access lucky people living on earth right now that's probably right and thank you for offering to bleep those names that's a great I believe because it's fucking it's whatever it's just not it's like it's like a blur like it makes it sexier yeah and people will be in the comments

gonna blow up it's gonna be wild i'm really it's gonna be on i'm talking to you right now um uh so you got off the phone yeah it's really good he's like he said he's got nothing going on um so what i'm saying is you're doing so incredibly well and yeah you got again far be it for me but i'll tell you what i've done i it's it's involved like different plant medicine aka drugs that have really made me significantly more grateful oh yeah like significantly more grateful and maybe it's short term but but it's maybe more grateful and no no less talented i i gotta add that to my fourth column there lack of gratitude yeah it's just like how and i'll tell you this is a negative self-talk thing that i've come to how much better could it

be going steve what are we talking about how many how who's doing better than you well i mean there are a lot of people doing better than me but uh how many in what way by the way if you want to talk about emotionally everybody's doing better than you i'm saying professionally how many people are doing better than you are thinking about a 40 acre farm right yeah you know leave it to black people meal whatever you do what you know leave it to black people meal whatever you do what you want um it's just the right amount of acres that's all i'm saying black guy eight feet away um he's in the market for a fucking 40 acre farm um so what you're like the amount of shit that's going your way and again i and and i also happen to be a perennially

dissatisfied ambitious person so i know what you're talking about right i know what you're talking about but i also i'll tell you the thing that's replaced a lot of my professional goals are just emotional goals how about that that's it because what am i what am what am i going to do with the professional goal what am i going to do with them right you know what i mean like you can't well you can you get a check but it's not it whatever with a year overhead it's gone immediately right uh but i'm saying i'm not telling you anything you haven't obsessed over and and you you put it very well too when i said the uh my jackass buddies i think are all happier than i am yeah um they're emotionally healthier i don't i but having said that i don't think you have

the fact that you've been able to remain sober is uh kind of amazing and and i will also say people that are alcoholics it's a tough yeah existence it is in terms of like minute to minute it's just like you have to you have to run a smart car into a wall right in order just for it to stop for fucking 90 seconds um yeah the the thing i wanted to ask you was uh what have you done that's gotten you like that's improved your life in terms of all this stuff obviously getting sober getting sobriety is the biggest yeah um because without sobriety it's this oh it's and then and it's this plus like real dangerous shit right yeah i mean without sobriety there's it's all bets are off um and uh what else I've done? I got into a little bit of an addiction,

like whack-a-mole situation where once I achieved chemical sobriety, like I just was really going crazy with sexual acting out, which kind of had always been going on anyway. But when I started touring comedy clubs like every night before i got off stage i said i'm gonna i'm not going anywhere until i take a photo with every single one of you guys that wants one and i would do a meet and greet with the entire audience and that meet and greet was a set effectively like an audition to see who I would act out with that night. And I would just act out sexually on the road constantly.

And, you know, it struck me that at that time I was approaching 40. I was like, it was 2013 when it got really pretty serious. And I was like, man, like this isn't the road to being happy. And I really subscribed to the belief that future happiness, like having a good life, forget happy, but just having a good life, that I needed to learn how to have a healthy relationship, how to be in a healthy relationship, to have a life partner to help me weather the storm of becoming an old attention whore because that's just an an ugly scary future so i promised myself i'm not going to act out anymore on the road i couldn't do it i just couldn't do it and uh like it was just too

humiliating and embarrassing yeah and and i uh ended up like getting into therapy i ended up going into like a sex addict rehab this like intensive outpatient program i ended up like really really putting in a lot of work and um i think that that that that's arguably the best thing i did for myself which um was not to put work into finding the right person but i put work into becoming the right person right because the right person would have been utterly useless to me i would have been useless for them like i you know not like everybody you're not going to find the right person but is it for yourself or for them um meaning i because i i can be like super boyfriend i can

be like what do you you know right right i resent them eventually but you got to do it for yourself yeah you know if you can view your relationship as uh always an opportunity to express yourself as the person who you aspire to be then like you're selfishly being a great guy, you know? Yeah. Now this is tough to apply and practice like all the time. Yeah, everything's hard. As a general way, like, I don't know, I just have super grateful for my relationship.

Yeah. And the, since I got sober, like, you know, not wasting all my time just being wasted and going you know yeah and then and then add the next layer of not wasting all the time chasing chicks around i mean you free up a lot yeah of time and like you uh you really kind of get a lot more focused and then on top of that, I've got this great life partner who helps me accomplish what I want to.

So I feel like life... So like the sobriety, but the sexual sobriety relatively was probably... It's like graduate school for alcoholics, sober alcoholics. Interesting. Yeah.

And it's just like... Hey, guess what? You just said something nicely. It's been just like i i hey guess what you just said something nicely it's been me most of the time but you just you just made a various well thanks man yeah you got it it's uh it's just really really um incredible how uh How when you don't waste your time and you don't have distractions or really go in the wrong direction, make a lot of mistakes, and you have all of your time to be focused on what you deliberately want to accomplish. You can actually accomplish them. Yeah, it turns out life's not that complicated yeah

you're just scheduling yeah it was great talking to you and uh i'm like pulling for you well thank you man i think that that like i think cathartic is the word where uh yeah you you benefit you make some kind of progress like a therapeutic like i think um yeah you've instilled in me a healthy dose of gratitude which might last until the sun goes down that's all you can hope for and then do another podcast guys and then hopefully you're glad there's not that's all you can do see how long you can keep the streak for. I'm grateful from MDMA on Sunday to Wednesday. Three days. Fucking pretty good. Let's see how long. And then you just try to make it so that you just become an insufferable, boring person who feels good all the time. Yeah, I love it. Ha ha ha.