Osher Günsberg Is Back After The (Psychotic) Break

Even in the darkest moments, there exists the potential for redemption, rebuilding, and the reclamation of one’s life. Today’s guest is a living embodiment of this truth. Meet Osher Günsberg—one of the most celebrated television hosts and media personalities in Australia. Longtime listeners may recall Osher’s first appearance on the podcast over nine years ago (episode #76) where we discussed his journey to the big stage and his transformation from being a chubby kid to a plant-powered, marathon-running host of Australian Idol. Shortly after that conversation, Osher experienced a public psychotic breakdown that left him terrified, distressed and convinced the world was coming to an end. But rather than hide this experience and internalize his struggles with his mental health and substance abuse, Osher bravely began to talk openly about his recovery. Today he shares that terrifying experience in vivid detail, what happened, how he clawed his way back to sanity, and the hard-earned lessons he’s garnered along the way—which you can also read about in his powerful memoir, Back, After The Break. Note: Today we discuss suicidal thoughts and ideation. If that subject is too confronting, perhaps skip this episode. If you are struggling, please raise your hand and reach out for help. You can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP and if you are experiencing suicidal ideation, I encourage you to call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1 (800) 273-TALK. Osher demonstrated a huge amount of courage and vulnerability to share his story. My hope is that his narrative serves as a powerful reminder that taking responsibility for your mental health is crucial, and the bravest thing you can do is ask for help. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: AG1: drinkag1.com/RICHROLL Peak Design: peakdesign.com/RICHROLL Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:06Speaker 01

  It's not like the gold medal that you hold at the end is the prize. Who you became to hold the gold medal is the prize. It's not like everything's gonna be fine when I hold this thing. No. Who you become to hold this thing, that's it.

• 1:26Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:30Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? Welcome to the podcast. Today's guest is one of my very best friends in the world, who, I gotta say upfront, demonstrated a huge amount of courage and vulnerability to come on the podcast and share quite openly his rather harrowing brush with mental illness, more specifically psychosis, in which he became altogether untethered from reality. Can you imagine anything more frightening? And his profoundly inspiring journey back to sanity, back to well-being and happiness. His name is Asher. Asher Gunsberg, which will no doubt be a name familiar to pretty much everyone tuning

• 2:14Rich Roll?

  in from Australia, where he is one of the most, if not the most prominent and celebrated television hosts and media personalities. Over the course of his career, Asher has hosted Australian Idol, The Bachelor Australia, The Bachelorette Australia, and The Masked Singer Australia. He narrates the Australian TV series Bondi Rescue, and he hosts his own podcast called Better Than Yesterday. RRP hard cores may recall Asher's first appearance on the podcast over nine years ago, that was episode 76, where we discussed his journey to the big stage and his transformation from being a chubby kid to a plant-powered, marathon-running

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  host of Australian Idol. But shortly after that conversation, Asher, who was then living in Los Angeles, experienced a complete psychotic breakdown. It's a breakdown that left him terrified and distressed, wandering aimlessly around Venice Beach, convinced that the world was coming to an end. But rather than hide this experience and internalize his struggles with mental health and drug and alcohol use, Asher began to talk openly about his recovery journey. This experience ends up becoming the backbone for his beautiful memoir entitled Back After the Break, very cheeky title, which chronicles his journey through the depths

• 3:36Rich Roll?

  of addiction, mental health battles, and the arduous quest for self-discovery, all important topics that we, of course, dive into today. In this conversation, he shares that terrifying experience in vivid detail, what happened, how he clawed his way back to sanity, the hard-earned lessons he's garnered along the way, and what we can all learn from his experience about mental health generally, mental health hygiene specifically, and the critical importance of mental health advocacy. I've got a couple more things I would very much like to mention before we dig into this one, but first.

• 4:24Rich Roll?

  Okay, this episode is absolute gold and Asher's narrative serves as this powerful reminder that even in the darkest moments, there exists this potential for redemption, for rebuilding and for reclamation of one's life. My hope is that Asher's story inspires you to deepen your own resilience and serves as a call to embrace your own journey towards personal growth. A bit of forewarning before we dive in, however, suicidal thoughts, suicidal ideation is a topic that comes up. So if you find that subject a bit too confronting, perhaps skip this episode. And for anyone who is suffering, who finds themselves right

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  now in the acute grips, I want to say, please, don't keep it to yourself. Please reach out. Help is available. And towards that end, a list of resources can be found in the show notes to the episode at richroll.com. So check that out. With that said, please enjoy my conversation with Asher Gunsberg.

• 5:31Rich Roll?

  I love you. I'm so happy to be here. And, you know, we've known each other for a long time. I think since 2012, maybe a little before that.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it was. It was 2011, 12. I think so. Yeah. And I do remember when Finding Ultra came out and I did a book signing in LA. The Park La Brea.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  Three people came, two of which were you and Dan McPherson.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. My boy Dan.

• 6:02Rich Roll?

  Oh, man. Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  And the moment you spoke, you spoke to Dan, you're like, all of a sudden, you're like 10 people who you both know because of Iron Man community. Because he'd only just finished racing Iron Man a little while back.

• 6:13Rich Roll?

  Anyway, so, you know, you, Dan, Australia in general, always have a strong place in my heart. But I really want to. Get into your mental health journey.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  You've gone through a lot.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  You've come out the other side, but of all of my friends, you've weathered perhaps the most intense, you know, experience.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I don't know, man.

• 6:39Rich Roll?

  Survived to tell the tale. And it's really, you know, it's very impactful.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Being torn into a mountain of water, dude, like.

• 6:45Rich Roll?

  I know. Like, I want to go there. Like, do you want to go there?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I'd be happy to. Like, it's really important that we do.

• 6:52Rich Roll?

  Walk me through this, because, you know, I know, you know, from our history, you know, obviously, you know, through the recovery community, you know, I know your story with drugs and alcohol quite well. It's been so long since you've been on the podcast, so we can kind of get into that a little bit. But then what's really interesting is all the stuff that came after sobriety.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  What's interesting is where we're sitting right now, we're in the suburb of Sydney called North Bondi, and we are about 215 meters, which is a unit of metric measurement the rest of the world uses. But for our, you know, isolationist North American or American friends, it's about 900 feet, no, 600 feet, from one of the places that it all really started to fall apart,

• 7:39Speaker 01

  about something years ago. Because, like, look, I was, I was a jumpy kid. I'm 49 as we're recording this. I was a pretty jumpy kid. I remember going to, my parents took me to psychiatry at the age of five. Now, what's going on with a kid that you go to a psychiatrist? I don't know. I just remember going. But they were trying to help me best they could and realized that whatever they were dealing with was beyond their skills.

• 8:02Rich Roll?

  Jumpy, meaning like, hyperactive?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Terrified, anxious, mega anxious. Like, no, that stuff didn't come to quite later. It was just like full mega, mega panic attack, like ultra panic attacks. I remember like, like the kind of panic attacks that were just so overwhelming. And I distinctly remember being so terrified and going to hide under my bed at the age of five, I think. And I couldn't. But hiding under the bed didn't make it go away because the thing that was terrifying was in my own body and I couldn't escape it. I was, there was just a feeling that had kind of no real trigger to it.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  And I couldn't get away from it and it was really, really bad. And then I think, so my stomach would feel really bad. And then I found that, you know, a way to make my stomach not feel bad was to put things in it. So I started to eat quite compulsively. And at the age of eight, I ended up in Weight Watchers. So when I went to my first 12 step meeting, I'm like, I've, I know this. I've been here before.

• 8:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, I mean, my, my mom and my dad, they tried really hard. You know, they really did, did everything they could. Mom took me because that was the only, this is before kind of pediatric kind of weight control shit. This is in the eighties and that was all there was in Brisbane. And I think by the, about the age of 17, I left high school at a hundred and 12 kilos, which is 250 something pounds. Like, it was big.

• 9:26Rich Roll?

  I didn't realise you were that big.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was big. I was big and I still got the stretch marks and yeah, that's, you know, mega body shame and bullying and like terrified of having my shirt off and like so afraid of having my shirt off, like would, and I remember being, I was so big that I would always swim with a T-shirt on because I was so ashamed of my own body. And I distinctly remember being on holidays once with a mate up in Caloundra, oh no, Malula Bar. I was like 15, 16. I remember swimming in the ocean in the surf and I was body surfing because I always loved body surfing. And I stood up out of a wave and I looked down and there was blood spots on my T-shirt because the T-shirt had rubbed my nipples so much that I was bleeding.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was no fun.

• 10:13Rich Roll?

  So how did you, how did you like lose the weight and become this iconic surfer? You know, the, the emblematic of like everything, you know, youthful and Australian as like Andrew G on the channel.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, right? Well, the first thing that happened is like I was, I got unemployed in the early nineties. We were at, I think 12% youth unemployment in Queensland. It was a lot and I couldn't get a job anywhere. And I just, my, I didn't do very well in high school. And I ended up sitting, I was, I had lived at home, I was on the dole. And I just felt my brain just going to mush because I wasn't being, it's before the internet. You know, there's, so I'd read all my books twice, just sit there and watch TV all day. And I could just feel my brain just going to porridge because I wasn't getting stimulated and I wasn't able to do anything.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  And I just got fatter and fatter. And then one day, I um, I, I, I just felt, and it's like, I should, I've got to go for a walk. I've got to go do something. But I, I'd been trying to go for a walk, but I couldn't go out, I couldn't get out of the house for a couple of days. And you know, I had to do something. And so I tricked myself by saying, I'll just go check the mail. Because this is before the internet. Um, the most exciting thing that happened in the day was when the mailman came. And, oh, a sales catalogue. And so I, my mailbox was over here, down my driveway, but I went that way. And I walked that way and went up around the block. And I came back, it was about eight hundred meters or so. And I picked up the mail, went, oh, got the mail. And then I went and basically lay down for about four hours.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Because it was the most exercise I'd done in a long time. And I did that again the next day. And then the next, and the next, and it kind of got easier and I was less breathless every time, just walking. And then there was a larger block around, it was about a mile, uh, one, one and a half Ks or so. And I started doing that. And I did that for about a week and a half, two weeks. And then one day, I just, I was doing this every day. And then one day, I was like, I, I started to feel this thing. And when I read your book, I was like, huh, that's the thing that happened to me. I just felt this thing. I was like, I, I just, I just, I just have to. And I was suddenly, um, you know, Conor MacLeod on the beach with Sean Connery in Highlander. That terrible film, but it's amazing. I just, I had to start running.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  And I ran and it like, you know, wind in my face and I'm like, ah, and then I could feel my chest was exploding and I, my heart was going to explode. And I, I stopped and I just kept walking. I looked back and I'd run the distance between two telephone poles, which is about thirty meters. And then the next day I ran between one and then I passed the telephone pole and I stopped the one after that. So I ran three and the next day I ran four. It was literally just increasing above by thirty metres at a time. And then soon enough I was running the whole thing. And once I started that, the weight just fell off me, man. And I was about nineteen, so you know, right, had metabolisms on my side. And I lost so much weight so fast. I reckon I lost

• 13:14Speaker 01

  maybe ten, ten or twenty kilos about three months, like really quick, really, really quick. So I wasn't eating terrible food. I was actually eating okay. And I remember sitting next to a bloke I went to school with at a bar and he looked straight at me and didn't recognise me. I was like, holy shit. Oh, it's because I've got a chin. Um, it's been, you know, and then there was, that was, there was a couple of times that I went up and down through that. I got bigger, I got smaller, I got bigger, I got smaller. I never really got a handle on what it was to understand my own hunger. But it was quite a bit later that, that I did eventually, because I found out that my relationship to hunger was, I treated it like my, both my parents were refugees. Well, we grew up with my grandmother who survived World War Two and,

• 13:58Speaker 01

  you know, victory over Hitler was fat kids. So, you know, get those calories in, buddy. And, you know, that was, and that was it. So hunger was a thing to be terrified of. And this is not uncommon in the children of immigrants or, you know, children of people who've, you know, been through, you know, war or something like that. And so I, you know, kind of understood that, oh, hunger is just a signal. After a while, hunger is just a signal and I'll be okay. And after a while, I figured out I was, but that didn't come until only a little while ago. As far as, you know, getting, it was around about that time when I was, I was running a lot. Um, even though I was running, things were still hard. I did feel better in my head,

• 14:44Speaker 01

  but things started to get quite hard and I was very, very hung up. Um, and having really intensive obsessive thoughts about, um, of all things, sexually transmitted diseases. All right. And this is at a time when AIDS could kill you. It's a miracle that in my lifetime, you can be HIV positive and have an amazing life and take prep every day and not pass it on to somebody else. That's unbelievable. That is Apollo program level breakthrough. It's astonishing. Cause it was a death sentence. Do you remember it?

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  Sure, of course. I was living in New York City in my early twenties and yeah, it, it, it just, it just occupied a huge part of your conscious awareness.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  It was terrifying.

• 15:27Rich Roll?

  Lingering fear that, you know.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  It was terrifying. And I was becoming kind of somewhat sexually active and, um, you know, I, I had these completely irrational responses to, you know, having a, having a passion, you know, uh, not essentially sex, but you know, something between that with a, you know, somebody that I'd met at a, you know, at a, I was working as a roadie. I was on the road with a bunch of old road dogs and, um.

• 15:54Rich Roll?

  That's right. I forgot about that. You showed me how to coil.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  I did. Never forget. Over, under, Rich? Over, under?

• 16:00Rich Roll?

  I still think about that.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  I'll teach, I'll teach you how to, I'll teach you how to deliver a sick K night and roll a good cable. That's, you know, there's two things you'd be fine. And, um, so these really quite benign and non-risky at all sexual behaviors. I was a hundred percent convinced I was going to die. And so I would show up at the clinic and demand a blood test and go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I need you to give me this test because I'm sure I've contracted this disease and, um, and then you have to wait six weeks for the results. And those six weeks I'll be planning my funeral. I'm not even joking. It was so terrible. I think about the third time this happened, within about six months, this person in the clinic has said,

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Would you go see someone for me? Cause you've come here a few times now. I want you to go see someone and amazingly, you know, we've got this incredible public health system here in Australia that's free. Um, your country may want to look into that. It's fucking great.

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  It's a whole other podcast.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  I know, right? We also have no guns on the streets, but that's unbelievable. Uh, as much as I dislike the person and the government that did do that, that's they fucking did something with that. Uh, but, uh, I got extraordinary though, like it's so, so lucky. Cause I was starting to, by this point, not really look at strangers in the eye. I was starting to get a bit kind of barky rather than speaking to people who I didn't know and starting to get a bit, I was 19 and it was the first kind of tendrils of really kind of serious shit was starting to happen. And

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  Just neurosis driving your life.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yes, but then quite quietly up into the point of like, like literally not being able to look at people. And instead of saying, excuse me, just go, well, like just not really being, that's starting to happen. Not all the time, but it was starting to happen. And, um, so I went to this outpatient clinic in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, which is, I guess now it's gentrified and amazing, but then it was like the Skid Row or Hollywood, like Hollywood's not a nice place. Hollywood's a fucking awful, awful, awful place with.

• 18:07Rich Roll?

  Hollywood is an idea. Uh, sure. Not, not, not a geographic.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  What is, what does Greg Proops say? There's no such thing, no such place as Hollywood. It's a, it's a collective idea held at the same time by a hundred thousand assholes.

• 18:20Rich Roll?

  Basically.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  It's a perfect, but like the actual place Hollywood.

• 18:23Rich Roll?

  Intersection, well, the intersection of Hollywood and Vine has changed quite a bit in the last decade, but the idea, you know, I, I understand what you're saying.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:30Rich Roll?

  It's not like when you see a bunch of tourists lingering around there, looking for Hollywood.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Dodgy place, dodgy place and methadone clinics and stuff like that. And I went to this outpatient, this mental health outpatient clinic there and. I remember walking in and if you've never been to an outpatient clinic for a psych unit, that you'll never, you'll like this smell, you'll never forget because you're dealing with people who, look, I'm literally spending my days escaping Tyrion Lannister coming at me on a dragon, while a drum and bass party of hell angels is screaming in every ear. I don't have time to think about turning on a shower. You know, that's just not even anywhere near what they're thinking about.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Uh, cause there's no space. And so that and cigarettes at the time, nicotine, obviously, you know, easily available down regulator. I remember going in there going, fuck, I don't belong here. I don't belong here. And then I saw this really kind and lovely psychologist. His name was Mari. And Mari started to, I kept saying, look, I don't belong here. There's people out there that, you know, you should be seeing, not me. I'm, I'm not crazy. And then over time, it turns out I was, I did belong there. And.

• 19:46Rich Roll?

  It's terrifying. It's a terrifying realization, especially in the context of a place like that, where you, where you see people that are very unlikely to rebound and reintegrate.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  I was very lucky. I was so lucky to be caught by a public health system. And I, I love my country so much and I'll defend it to the end. Because it, stuff like that, you know, there's this, this safety net, this public health system caught, caught me. I don't know where I would have ended up had those incredible people not seen something and gone, you should really go and have a chat. And she got me to a pretty good spot. I ended up, um, you know, then I finally, I ended up in an actual relationship with an actual human being and that was nice. And then I kind of got into radio and,

• 20:35Speaker 01

  but it was about then that I started really quite intensely using alcohol and drugs to, to manage what was going on in my brain. Because, look, if you, if you don't know what's happening, but when you, like for me, I didn't really know what was going on, but I knew that when I drank or when I smoked weed, it was a little bit better. It wasn't all the way.

• 20:56Rich Roll?

  It's also highly reliable. You know exactly what you're gonna get.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  At first.

• 20:59Rich Roll?

  And if you're walking around, you know, with this like low grade to high grade anxiety and, you know, this bundle of nerves and, and, you know, the energy that you don't know how to contain or manage. And, you know, you, you. Drink a few pops or you do what you do and it's like, ah, there's a relief.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  It's it is.

• 21:19Rich Roll?

  It's hard to describe for somebody who who doesn't have the itch.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  I would I would say it's a release, not a relief. Cause a relief has an idea of like, it's it's going or gone. For me, it was just.

• 21:33Rich Roll?

  A reprieve.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, ah, just just but the true peace from it was always another beer. Or another bump or another whatever away. And unfortunately, the more that you drink or use, that gets further away like you're in a nightmare.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but we deal with that later.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:53Rich Roll?

  In the meantime, like this is, this works, you know, it works until it doesn't work. But I think it's important to say that it does work in the short term.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  It works.

• 22:03Rich Roll?

  You wouldn't keep doing it.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  It was my solution, you know, it's the oldest thing in the world. It's like it was alcohol was my problem was my solution. But then what I the amount that I needed to feel at all okay. To be around other people or when I was in my house by myself to feel that noises and the shitty thinking and all the horrible brain stuff going on to make sure all that stuff was quiet enough that I could just be still. That dosage became just too dangerous.

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Right. How long did it take for that to happen, for that to get unleashed? I mean, did you have, because it's socially approved of and you can do it out and open out in the open and public.

• 22:43Rich Roll?

  There is a sense of like, oh, okay, well, I'm okay for now. I can do this.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  There's a lot of.

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  Did you have an awareness from the get go, like that this is problematic?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  I think I was about 24 when my long time girlfriend at the time, I remember being just so hammered trying to walk, couldn't walk. And I was in her lap. She had a cross leg, so I'm in her lap and I have very, very, very long hair at the time. I was in a funk metal band. It was very long shorts. It was the nineties. And she was brushing kind of chunky vomit soaked hair out of my mouth so I could breathe properly. And she looked down at me. She's like, you maybe want to think about why you keep doing this to yourself. Cause it's starting to get pretty bad. And I'm like, I'm not an alcoholic. Back off, I'm gonna do whatever I want. So I think I was about twenty two. And I'm having to stop drinking. I ended up actually stopping drinking like six, fourteen years later. So it took fourteen years.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  And that wasn't the first, that was kind of the first time someone had really seen that because I was getting into amphetamines and things like that by a point. Um, which was great because I could keep drinking. But it kept getting told to me again and again and again. And there's that reaction just kept coming going, I can sit whenever I want, I'm fine.

• 23:51Rich Roll?

  And meanwhile, your, your kind of star is ascending.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:55Rich Roll?

  That seems to have all happened really fast.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:59Rich Roll?

  Did you always like want the spotlight in that way? Were you somebody who was like, I want to be on TV or I want to have this kind of publicly facing role? Like, how did that all come about from being a roadie to being on radio and then being on television?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  It started before that, actually. I remember like that same nervous kid that would, you know, be terrified and, you know, be possibly eating and going to Weight Watchers. I think I was about nine, eight or nine years old. We had a school assembly every Friday and our class had a, it was, every class would put on a, a sketch or something, a little play. Then we worked on it that week and we all took it in turns. And because, you know, it was always like, um, I don't know, pick up rubbish at school time or, um, whatever you're doing, don't masturbate because Jesus is always watching you. Like, it was that kind of school.

• 24:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  So it was our play, our turn, and, um, I'm on, I'm ready, I'm ready to go on stage. And I hear my cue and I walk out and I see all these like hundreds of kids all staring up at me like that. And the play was about, um, picking up rubbish.

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Um, I think the line was along the, it was something along the lines of, don't commit a sin, put it in the bin. And they all fucking laughed. And that was like, oh, like when I first did, you know, proper class A drugs, I was like, I know this feeling. I had this feeling on stage once. And it was where, like, what was anxiety for me? Anxiety was, uh, lack of control and lack of understanding what was about to happen next and lack of control of the situation and lack of, lack of certainty. When I'm on stage, I know everything that's going to happen. I know exactly what's going to happen next. I'm the only one talking. Everyone else is quiet.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  But my coping mechanism, I just started chasing that.

• 25:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And that you're associating those two things in a similar way.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:49Rich Roll?

  Using drugs and being on stage are giving you the same.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  It was the same feeling.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  And it was a, unfortunately, my coping mechanism became a career. And that worked.

• 26:02Rich Roll?

  But it does true for a lot of people.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that worked until it didn't. I have a very, very different approach to work now. But for a while, and it started to get quite toxic. There was definitely parts towards the very end of my drinking and using, when I would just seethe in resentment, like if we were doing a TV show together, I would look at the script and go, Rich, excuse me, Rich has 11 words, and then I have nine, then Rich has 10, and then I have seven. And I got all the jokes.

• 26:31Rich Roll?

  It's such a cliche.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I wish it was different, mate. I wish it wasn't true, but it's fucking true. And I was, I considered it a fucking, a wounding crime that this had happened. And how dare you. I was just the worst. It was awful. It was an awful way to be. I hated that it felt like that. I hated that feeling. I have a very different approach to work now.

• 26:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I know that, I know that. But you, so you become this Andrew G guy, right? You're essentially like a VJ on this Channel V, which I'm trying to imagine was probably not dissimilar from MTV.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  It was TRL.

• 27:09Rich Roll?

  In its heyday or whatever.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was TRL.

• 27:12Rich Roll?

  You're like a pop culture figure at that point.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:15Rich Roll?

  At least your generation, everybody knows who you are. You got the hair, you got the looks. You're sort of this symbol of Australian youth.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Somewhat.

• 27:25Rich Roll?

  And, and you're getting, you know, and you're right, and you're living large, right? You're living here in Bondi and, you know, lots of drugs, lots of partying, lots of attention.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yes, all of that, but it was also very much a, stop looking at me, why aren't you looking at me? Please stop looking, how come you're not looking? Like it was that. Complete oscillation that was unbearable. Um, it was really weird. It was very, very weird. Um, the, the, the weird thing that happened when I was on music television. Uh, was, you know, I was using alcohol to cope with this. It was a lot of stress being on. I was 25, you know, um, been in radio for a long time and then moved to Sydney, left everyone. Um, my girlfriend and I came here and, and I was a heap of, a heap of pressure. It was so much fun. It was the best job I ever had. It was unfucking believable. I love music, man. I get paid to talk about music every day. Three hours live TV a day.

• 28:19Rich Roll?

  All the biggest rock stars in the world when they pass through.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not only that, it was also talking to like just fans of music who live. And you know how huge, our country is as big as, as yours, all right? The lower 48 at least. And people live, people live 400Ks from a post office, mate. It's, it's, and I'm talking to people on satellite phones who really want to hear their favorite Ice Cube song. And how do you love Ice Cube? I love him. Like, you know, what do you do? Oh, on my farm, you know, and it was unbelievable speaking to people from all, all across our community. It was amazing. And, you know, working in live TV, there's nothing like it, mate. It's just, it's just the best working as a team and it's just so much fun. But it was a lot of stress and the thing was, is like the kind of refs per minute you need to get up to,

• 29:05Speaker 01

  to perform that kind of thinking three hours at a time. That doesn't stop at seven o'clock when you go off air.

• 29:12Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, whoa, what do I do? What do I do now? What do I do with like, I'm, I've got a lot, I'm coming in.

• 29:18Rich Roll?

  With no healthy tools for down regulating yourself.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  No, no. And to the point where we're like, we would, I remember we would go on the road and um, my floor manager would hand me a beer as I walked off stage. He'd take my mic off me and hand me a cold beer and, you know, I'm in the music industry.

• 29:39Speaker 01

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

• 30:22Speaker 01

  So I'd seen how badly it can go when even a couple hundred people decide they want to go that way. And then everybody else wants to go that way. It can be... People can die. All right? And I saw it happen once. It was awful, awful, awful. And so we could see that this gig was five minutes late and it was 10 minutes late. And the capacity was probably, I don't know, they probably thought they were going to have 1,500 people. Like 8,000 people showed up. And I don't have to tell you.

• 30:49Rich Roll?

  I think I remember that. Was it K-Rock put that on, maybe?

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:53Rich Roll?

  Was it out in the streets?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  That's right, it was.

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do remember when that...

• 30:56Speaker 01

  And I was heavy. No body searches, no weapons checks, no nothing going into the place. And it got later and later and later. And then it became... We sort of looked around and realised, we were standing with a bunch of media and we realised, everyone else has left. Oh shit. And we were kind of cornered in the back of this gigantic parking lot. And there was about between 5,000 and 8,000 people between us and the street. And they started to take the backdrop down and that was it. The place just erupted. And they were pushing over speaker stacks. We watched a kid, like she nearly got crushed by this speaker stack. We got footage of it, like it brushed the back of her t-shirt. And everyone's looking around and there's my cameraman, Jacko.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  We're filming all this and someone just grabs for his camera. It's about a hundred and twenty grand worth of camera and everything pulled together. And they grab it and he pulls it back. And then then it became this like eight people are on top of him and they're punching onto him. And, you know, my producer Ben drags him out of there. And then one of the one security guy stayed behind and he had it unscrewed a mic stand. And this metal bar just starts raining down on these people that are on top of Jaco. And I'm seeing four arms and shit like that. And then we dragged Jaco out of there and I pull up a chain link cyclone fence. Cause it was right behind Hollywood High. I pull up this chain link cyclone fence and we got out underneath. But then now we're in a a school with these twenty length, twenty meter high, like ten meter high fences all around it. Like, how do we get out of here?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  And some of those kids followed us in like, Jesus, how are we gonna get out of this? And we climbed over another fence and we we get out and so I can't remember what street it was. It was one that ends up right by the Montalbun Theater, right? And we get out and we look and there's like horses and riot cops loading up rubber bullets and like Jaco's covered in blood. I put the fuck is this? And then out of nowhere, between all these cops who were staging around the corner, ready to go. This cab just appears out of nowhere. And like, have you ever, have you ever held a cab on the streets in L A?

• 32:51Rich Roll?

  No, never.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. We were, it was really scary and we thought, you know, what's gonna be amazing if we, oh, fuck, let's get out of here. Jaco went to see Des Sino, he was pretty fucked up and like, yeah, it's gonna be amazing. Let's get the fuck out of here. This was September the third. Like in a week from now, we'll be in New York City and we'll be interviewing bands and we're having a great time.

• 33:10Rich Roll?

  Oh shit.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And then we were there, we woke up.

• 33:16Rich Roll?

  You were in New York City on nine eleven?

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:18Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. And we were safe, you know, but we were on like fifty first, something like that. But it was terrifying. It was terrifying and um so like the most an unbelievable panic attack and like I had a panic act so intense, I fell asleep. My body just went and shut down. And that was it. And it was terrifying. And it took us ages to get out and like physically, we were fine. Took us about two weeks and two and a half weeks to end up getting home to Sydney. We were coughing up black stuff for about six weeks, but that was about it. And I was physically fine, but I remember being back at work and just staring at the thumbtacks on the squishy wall of my cubicle.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  At four o'clock, I'd go on air and go, and Rich is asking for a Britney Spears song. And da, da, da, da, da, da. And we're clear. And I would do that. And one day I'm just staring there. I'm normally a fairly boisterous person sometimes. And my boss Jackie, she comes by and she goes, you okay? I said, no. Would you like to see someone? Yeah. And amazingly, she um, she organised a psychologist for me to go see. Who specialises in debriefing, you know, trauma response and things like that. And I went to go see this guy called Phil. And he had this amazing office up in Manly. So, you know, I went surfing with him. You know, we'd finish our session and go surfing. It was unreal, unreal. And he says, you've got PTSD. I'm like, fuck off, I don't have PTSD, I'm fine, mate.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  And he went, oh, okay then. And he gets up and he walks over to his bookshelf and he pulls off this book. It's the DSM four, which is like the, the back of the four, before maps on your phone. You would have this big map of the streets, right? So it's the, essentially a street map where psychiatrists can basically talk to each other. Every condition. Yeah. Defined. Yeah, well, it helps people who are talking about the same patient to have an idea of what's going on. Right. Are we on DSM five now? By now, we are. It was four back then. Four. And he opens it to, and he hands it over and goes, read that. And I was like, fine. And I looked down, I was like, okay, so someone snuck in here and uh, written some shit out that they saw while watching me. And then put it in the same font on the same grade of paper and snuck it into this book. Because it was like exactly what was going on.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  And I had to be in acceptance that this was happening. And um, because of that, I was like, okay then, well, what do I do about this? He taught me cognitive behavioural therapy, which is, I'd never known before. I'd never known that you could, just because I think it, it doesn't make it real. Took a lot of practice, but I started to work on that. And that was really interesting to get that initial kind of idea that just because I feel it, doesn't mean it's real. And just because I think this is happening, where's the evidence for that? Maybe I'm not saying that.

• 36:06Rich Roll?

  And developing that awareness and that recognition is gonna come into play later.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Well, absolutely.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  But the recurring theme here is, is a willingness to seek out and receive help.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Not as willing as I was to go, you know what, alcohol is way easier.

• 36:23Rich Roll?

  Let's delay that one, right?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's easier if I just, if I just drink and I'm, see, I'm drinking red wine by this point, Rich. I'm not just drinking beer, I'm a connoisseur, come on.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  I remember like buying this really expensive bottle of red, hammered, and I was gonna open another one. Older bloke I work with, he goes, don't open it, it'd be like feeding strawberries to pigs.

• 36:48Rich Roll?

  You could do all the CBT you want and talk, talk your ears off, you know, with a shrink. But if you're just hitting the bottle and, you know, doing all the other stuff, it's only gonna go so far.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but all that, the ability to question and double check my thinking came in really handy when it finally came time to stop drinking. Because that's really quite fun, that's a fundamental leap you need to make when you first stop drinking. You actually need to understand that just because you see it that way, doesn't mean that's the way it is.

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And that would have been a very hard thing for me to get to at the same time as everything else. But thankfully I had that experience and I was very grateful for that.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  I, you know, like most people, I reckon I took a good, I white knuckled it for a year. And all that was is, you know, what's, what's alcohol? It's a fucking freely available, widely legal, self-administered depressant. When, you know, in, in this country, you, there's so many drugs that are illegal because they worry that kids are gonna overdose. But I can walk across the street and buy enough gin to kill me for 20 bucks. But it's completely fine. That's bullshit, that's fucking bullshit, all right? There's a debate in this country going on about legalizing medical marijuana or legalizing marijuana.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Like, mate, there's two drugs, Rich, two drugs that if you are drinking them or using them to enough point and you stop straight away, you'll die. Alcohol and benzodiazepines, both are legal. That's not okay. That's not okay. And yeah, here we are. You know, um, it's just that culturally alcohols, I didn't know that you could not drink. I didn't know that it could ever happen.

• 38:33Rich Roll?

  I feel like that's changing though. The younger generation has a very different relationship with alcohol. And I don't know what it's like in Australia, but in North America, the habits of young people are very different. And possibly that's because, um, other drugs are just more widely available or cheaper or more accessible. Or, you know, don't give you the same hangover or what, what have you, but.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Do we dare admit it's because they don't want to look sloppy on a.

• 38:55Rich Roll?

  Maybe.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  On a Instagram thing, it's never gonna go away. Yeah.

• 38:58Rich Roll?

  There's that.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:00Rich Roll?

  And the whole, you know, marijuana thing is also, you know, kind of a whole other podcast as well. Lots of opinions.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  I have thoughts about that, mate.

• 39:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But anyway, so you, you get back, you're dealing with, you get back from New York, you're dealing with the PTSD. You're doing the CBT, you're drinking, your career is advancing.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:20Rich Roll?

  Um, at some point, you know, you, you, you move on and you're doing like, you become the host of American Idol.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, or Australian Idol. Yeah.

• 39:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Australia, of course.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a McDonald's franchise. All right. You sell the franchise. All right. You know, so, I don't know. So you create, you say you create Finding Ultra, the reality show, right? You would then, this is the format. Um, there's the coach, you know, Coach House or whatever.

• 39:47Rich Roll?

  You know, it works. Plug it in, plug it in over here.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You need the champion, you need the one who's got, everyone's got to have somewhere to go. You need the one who's trying to find redemption. You need the one who's trying to find a reconnect with her daughter. You need the one who cries. You need the one who. Mate, this is.

• 40:00Rich Roll?

  And you need the right host.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  And it comes in a Bible, Rich Roll. It's gonna be your host. All right, we'll get Simon Hill to be the chef. It's gonna be amazing. And then when you sell that turkey, they go, huh, okay, so who's the Australian Turkish version of this, this, this, this, this, this? And you make money in it. It's a, it's a franchise like anything else. And so, yeah, I was one of the hosts of Australian Idol, me and Jimmy. Hosted it for, I hosted it for seven years, he did it for six. It was unbelievable. It was incredible. It was unreal.

• 40:26Rich Roll?

  And it's capturing an audience share that probably would be impossible to do.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Never gonna happen again.

• 40:31Rich Roll?

  Right. So when you're hosting that, it had to be relatively surreal. I know that like even, wasn't there, what, what year was it where the, the, um, the finale was at the Opera House?

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, we did everyone there. Yeah.

• 40:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did the first, I think the first finale, the one in four adult Australians watched that. This is, this is like, the Olympics don't get those kind of numbers, you know, and it was just a, it's a cornerstone of Australian pop culture. And thankfully, you know, everything that, I mean, Jim and I had been on air at Channel V doing hundreds and hundreds of hours of live TV every week, every year, sorry. And so by the time we get to Idol, it's very funny, because all that kind of network people are like, yeah, but this is real television, boys. Like, you know what, get fucked, all right?

• 41:18Rich Roll?

  We put our reps in.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, don't worry, mate, don't worry.

• 41:21Rich Roll?

  We're in this spot. And where are you with, with your mental health and with drugs and alcohol at this point?

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Oh, I was pretty jumpy. I was very much a, you know, it was odd, because while I was thinking, everyone was looking at me, everyone was looking at me, you know? I had people walking up to me in the street. It's wild, because it's 20 years later right now. I've got the same haircut.

• 41:44Rich Roll?

  You're back.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  I've had like five haircuts, five haircuts and two names.

• 41:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this is the closest to Andrew that you've looked at in a long time.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely, without a doubt.

• 41:54Rich Roll?

  The current do.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. And people, I'll just be doing my groceries, man, and people will come up to me and grab my hair and pull it and, you know, it's not a wig, you know, and their mate's filming on their shitty phone. And like, that would happen in the middle of the day, you know, I'd be at, you know, at a bar or whatever, and people would come by and someone would bump my, and a beer would fly everywhere. And, you know, the guy would then turn around like, fuck, whatever. And I knew enough to start, I knew what to look for. And if a guy was there and he'd opened his body that way, if I looked that way, there's someone filming on their phone there, I'm like, sorry, mate, I'm sorry I was in your way. You know, that would happen every, that would happen all the time.

• 42:31Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  All the time. Um, it was, yeah, I mean, look, the thing, the thing when you, when you got a job like that, and I'm sure you, you know, understand what I'm talking about, you don't end up having to pay for drugs, they're just always there. People like, hey mate, there's one of them. Oh, thank you very much. Don't mind if I do.

• 42:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  You know, and it was just, it was just par for the course, man. It was just, it was just all over the shop. And I remember trying, I, I started to understand that I had a problem, real problem with alcohol when I, I met my ex-wife now. And there's a joke among the acting community in Australia, I won't say her name because she's quite a high-profile Australian actress, but she said, oh, you don't think you've got a drinking problem until you leave Australia. And then you get to America and go, so anyway. What, it's, it's five past twelve on a Saturday. I mean, okay, more for me. And I kind of realized, I went to the Middle East for the first time and I was like, oh, wow.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Our cultural relationship with alcohol here is quite fucking weird and not okay and quite damaging. And I came back and I, I tried to not drink beer for a year. So I drank heaps of vodka. And it was quite, quite a close, I got changed horses. But eventually, just like a duck to water, mate, I was, I was back on it. And then by about two thousand nine, I could, I was like bloated again. I was really fat. And I started to, um, I, I just do that I needed to stop. I knew that I'd, and I tried to stop a few times by myself. I tried a bunch of times by myself. Couldn't do it. I reckon I've got a couple of weeks up at a time, maybe six, maybe seven.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  And then I'll be right. And then half a sip of Heineken and then it's two AM and I'm doing Jägermeister and, you know.

• 44:16Rich Roll?

  You're off.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  It was, there was no ability.

• 44:18Rich Roll?

  You kind of have to have that experience to really lock into the powerlessness of the whole thing.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, but it got worse, you know, and then it got worse. And then that TV show ended, you know, and I had put no work in at all to see if I was going to have any kind of continuity career. I, I just expected that the, I was turning away more than I could say yes to. I just expected the phone would never stop ringing. I would just expect that they would just keep going, going, going, going, going, going, going. And then that show went away. And I didn't know what to do. Um, it was around around the same time that I was in America and um. Actually, Dan Cook person was in town and he and I went for a hike on the on the Runyon Canyon. And we was talking about shit. He was over there for pirate season and I slipped at the very top of Runyon Canyon. We were descending, it can be rocky and slippery there.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  And I slipped and I did a like a kind of exaggerated runner's lunge essentially. And I blew my M C L in my right knee.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  And at that point, it was the most painful thing I'd ever experienced. And I took about six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen that night. And I went to go see my doctor the next day. I was like, I sound to happen to my knee and like, it's really hurts. And he goes, I'll just take some ibuprofen. I was like, man, I took six hundred milligrams last night. It didn't work. He goes, I'll give you some Vicodin.

• 45:33Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  And like five minutes later, I'm standing downstairs with a hundred Vicodin pills in my hand. He didn't ask me any questions, didn't ask anything. And now. That is a, that's a slippery slope because it still fucking hurts. You just don't care. And when I mixed it with beer, it was like, so. Needless to say, that was, I reckon that was January. Yeah, it was like January twenty ten.

• 45:58Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  I was, I was in meetings by the middle of March.

• 46:02Rich Roll?

  Hmm. So that's what, that's what ultimately brought you to your knees.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Literally, yeah, literally. Cause I just could, I couldn't not do it.

• 46:09Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  I couldn't not do it. And um, it's a very, very slippery slope, that stuff. And so like, cut to like, the last couple of years, I've been through some pretty interesting stuff with my hip. And I've had a hip replacement and some stuff didn't go right with the surgery. And the pain was unfathomable, but I, I couldn't touch those kind of drugs.

• 46:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Cause like, there was one point where we have a, our, our, our M Es are called the Logies here. And it's TV, it's night of nights, you know. And uh, the first Logie Australian I'd ever won, I've, I've still got the scar on my hand. I'd broken my hand snowboarding and I'd, I'd come back here and I was off my guts on Percocet. Cause I was in, I was in North America and I said, I said, I've got to fly back and I'm worried about my hand. And it gave me this big tub of Percocet like that. And it's the kind of thing that I took a pill in Vancouver and I woke up in Sydney, you know. And I uh, I, I, I, I no way held the Logie in my hand. I have, I do not remember.

• 47:04Rich Roll?

  You don't remember it anymore.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Not a thing.

• 47:05Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Not a thing.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  I'm on national television.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  At the peak of my career, you know, I could have done, I could have done anything. And there was a bloke I now work with, the guy by the name of Dave Hughes is amazing. He doesn't drink. And a couple of months later, I'd seen him on, on radio and I'd, you know, typical fuckwit, you know, it's sunglasses in the morning and, you know, six AM, six thirty radio. I mean, they go, yeah, and he goes, this is Dave. G'day, mate. Mate, we've met before. I've never met you. Mate, I gave you a logie.

• 47:38Rich Roll?

  Remember. Oh my God. But the thing is, like in the, in the, you know, canon of like hitting bottom, it's, it's, you know, it's, you could have gone a lot lower, you know, but it is what it is. The pain threshold is what it is. You know, it brought you in.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  I'm, you know, and I've heard you speak about this and I really related to it. In that I just have this ability to withstand discomfort that is different to other people. And what probably have stopped others, and I've had a number of doctors now tell me going, how are you still moving? Well, how did you walk in here? They're looking at my blood test going, how are you standing upright? This doesn't work. How do you do this? I don't know, man. I just, there's a bit of my brain that won't stop. Um, part of it has given me the life and the career I have, but part of that is, has tried to kill me. And it's managing the shitty part.

• 48:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And untangling that is so difficult. Because when you're forced to confront and break up with your best friend, this thing that you think gives you superpowers. You also have to contend with that disposition to go the extra mile that you're convinced is the reason why you've been able to make your way in the world and be successful and do all the things that you do. And finding a, you know, a healthier, more sustainable fuel source, energy source, and, and, and putting like, putting that idea, you know, away and understanding that it's a lie is, is a very, you know, steep mountain to climb.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  It is. I, I was very lucky in that there's an incredible doctor here by the name of Dr. Ian Chung. I've had him on the show. He's an amazing guy. He really, really helped me. And he just kind of matter of factly told me, he goes, I don't know, yeah, this is OCD. And I was like, and I'd have floated like a bouncy castle after a toddler's birthday party. Like, you know, huh? And he goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, mate. Like, I can't tell you how many Olympians, how many, you know, Wallabies, it's a national rugby union football team. You know, like lawyers, like the amount of people that have sat there in that chair and have told the same thing to you. Like, come on, why do you think you got the career you've got? I was like, what? And he goes, he said, do you think, and he was talking about particularly like there's an Olympic swimmer.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  He says, do you really think that that kid who will stare at a black line on the bottom of a pool, four mornings a week from the age of eight, so he can do it in Tokyo in 12 years from now, doesn't have something like that going on?

• 50:07Rich Roll?

  Six mornings a week and then six afternoons a week.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Precisely.

• 50:10Rich Roll?

  12 times a day for, you know, two hours at a pop.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Do you think they don't have something like that going on? He goes, of course they've got something like that going on. Of course they do. That's how they can do that. It's, it's making sure that you only use it for, you know, see it as a superpower. And I was so grateful that he helped me reframe it like that. It's like the bits that have given you the life you've got, you don't want to lose those. The parts that can really, you know, be bad is when it gets out of control. And, and then it has, you know, it has got to the point where it's nearly killed me. And it's learning how to manage that stuff. That is, um, this is the kind of ongoing effort. And it takes, I don't know, there's this amazing TV show that I really implore you to watch. It's called Bluey and there's a game in a, a Bluey called Keepy Uppy where they basically just try to keep a balloon in the air.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  And it's basically that, you know, so we're at the balloon in the air part. It was holding the Atlas ball above my head like I'm, you know, Thor Bjornson in the, you know, whatever it is, the strongest man in the world thing. But now it's just keeping a balloon in the air. But if I don't, if I keep my eye off that, if I let the balloon fall, pretty soon, within a couple of days, things start to get pretty, pretty grim.

• 51:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What's interesting is with sobriety, so I meet you when you're like, I don't know, two years in or something like that at that.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but only, only a year of meetings.

• 51:25Rich Roll?

  Really? Okay.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  I'd only just, I'm my fourth and fifth that I met you. Yeah. I was pretty white knuckle. Yeah.

• 51:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I was like.

• 51:31Rich Roll?

  You were that raw.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I thought I could do it, but. By not drinking and then doing all the work, not doing any work.

• 51:39Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  I was essentially just come off my meds without anything.

• 51:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  You know, so I was like, you ever go on like butter smooth tarmac and then you miss a turnoff and suddenly you're on an ungraded gravel road? It was that.

• 51:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  I was like, suddenly I was like, what the fuck is this? I don't know what to do here. Yeah.

• 51:55Rich Roll?

  So that brings you in, but this is on some level, still the very beginning of your mental health journey and adventures.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  I was really lucky.

• 52:04Rich Roll?

  Like the bottoms that you've had with mental health in sobriety are much lower than the one that brought you in.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 52:10Rich Roll?

  Into the rooms in the first place.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  I was so lucky that I'd stopped drinking by then. So, so, so lucky.

• 52:15Rich Roll?

  You wouldn't have made it. There's no way.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  No way. I would be dead. Absolutely. Um, yeah, things got really bad and it was like my, like many things. It's, um, you know, I'm a fan of the, um, uh, uh, Robert Gonzalez book, I think that's his name, Lawrence Gonzalez book, Deep Survival. It's really good. I try to read it like once a year. It's fantastic read. It's about what happens to your brain in survival situations. And, um, he, he talks about like real proper, proper cataclysms, like mega, mega airline disasters and things like that. It's not one thing. It's not two things. It's like five to seven things in a row that happen. And by the time number seven happens, it doesn't matter because you've got nowhere to go. And it was like

• 52:57Speaker 01

  that, you know, I was, I was living in Venice Beach. Um, I, we had yet to get the green light for another season of the show that I was working on. So I had no work. I was paying rent out of my savings. Um, I was in a relationship with someone who was wildly inappropriate. Um, it was extraordinarily, you know, uh, interesting and volatile.

• 53:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, okay.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  But wildly inappropriate. And, um, I was under a lot of stress. Um, my father was ill back here in Australia. And I didn't, you know, I was, I was not sleeping. It'd been weeks since I'd had actual sleep. And I would, I would, if I did sleep, I would wake up and the, I'd strip the bed like it was laundry day. I'd, I was just thrashing around that much that I would like to pull the actual elastic corners off the, off the, off the bed. I was thrashing around in my sleep that much. So I hadn't, it didn't wick since I'd had a decent sleep. And that's a real, that's pretty bad if you, that's happening. There's a lot of red flags that I was totally walking straight past.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  And then like just one day, I, I woke up and I read, I had a mate coffee like I always do. And I picked up my iPad and I was reading the New York Times like I always do. And like they always do, they wrote in the corner, oh, it's gonna be, you know, sunny and seventy two, cause it's LA. And it's, that's what it is every goddamn day. But then they wrote in the tiny little Times New Roman font, oh, by the way, this is the hundred and fourteenth warmest consecutive month ever recorded. Passive aggressive bastards that they are, but they would do that. And something in my head just went like that. And as far as I was concerned, like there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop the full and completely cataclysmic,

• 54:43Speaker 01

  untold terror, destruction, end of the world, climate change, disasters. And it was as far as I was concerned, it was happening today, it was happening right now. And I was the only one that knew about it. And it was terrifying. My brain just went on this cascade of, of, of horror and fear. And, and I couldn't stop the thoughts. And what I normally would do is I would run to manage my, my mental health. And I've been really useful and I'd got to the point and I loved it. You know, I'd got to the point where I, I was running ten Ks a day, just, that's what I'd do. I'd run from my house, I'd go touch a Santa Monica Pier, turn around, run back. And um, on the weekends, you showed me that um, where the Nike missile silo was. All right, I'd just go run that on a Saturday. I'd go run a trail half on the, on a weekend to do that. That's what I did on Saturdays.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  I just do, and I was that fit, I loved it. And I was, and it used to make things pretty okay, you know, that did a lot to regulate me. But I remember running and I reckon I got about.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  I got past the skate park and I think I got, I got almost to, somewhere a little further past the skate park. And, you know, I'm, I'm seeing things. I'm seeing like those kind of Baywatch towers. Um, and they're, they're, they're floating like they're on there. They've got a big concrete block and a chain underneath them, right? And they're pushing against these chains floating in a now higher sea level. All right. And I look up and these, the tops of the palm trees, I look up and now I'm, I'm looking at them as if they're underneath of lily pads, you know, cause I'm now on the new sea floor. And I can see the, I'm seeing like, do you ever watch Mr. Robot?

• 56:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. They did that really well. When I watched Mr. Robot.

• 56:19Rich Roll?

  When he's having those breaks, breaks from reality.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  It's like when I watch Bojack Horseman, I'm like, someone knows, someone knows. In the writers room, someone knows. So in, in Mr. Robot, they, I remember talking to Audrey going, it's that, it was that, it was that, where it kind of glitches in and out.

• 56:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  And like, it wasn't all the time, but I wanted to, I wanted to warn people. I wanted to grab people and go, don't you understand? Like it's all gonna, duh, duh, duh, duh. And I knew, I knew enough, like if I want to grab people and warn people, and you see that, you see people who are struggling really badly shouting on the streets. You see that, cause that's the symptom of, you want to try and help everybody. I was like, fucking hell, I want to, I want to, and I was, the thoughts hurt. They were coming and they wouldn't stop and they hurt like I was chewing on Alfie or, or you'd poked me with a barbecue skewer, right? And so it's like this, and they would come at me and I started to flinch and push them away like they were mosquitoes. I was like, fuck, I gotta get home. So I turned around, I didn't run that far, maybe only two, three Ks. I turned around and came back and I'm, I'm running and I'm grunting, like I'm making

• 57:19Speaker 01

  noises like every time I hit and I'm flinching like this. And, um, up ahead of me on this, on the path, I see this guy and he's shuffling. Now, if you've never been to that part of the city, of that part of the world, like complex, untreated complex mental illness on the streets in California is terrible, it's terrible. It's a complete tragedy that the richest country in the world allows it to happen. And the police are untrained and unable to deal with it when it goes bad. And they, people would die by cops all the time. And it was awful, awful tragic. And up ahead of me on the path, I see this guy, he's kind of shuffling along, he's got no shoes on, his pants are too big for him, so he's clearly not eaten in a while. He's got this big bloom of urine, he's clearly peed himself.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  And I run up along next to him and two things really hit me is like he's younger than me. He's got this kind of shaved piece of his scalp there. So I don't, I don't know what's going on, but he's got a shaved part of his scalp. And he's doing the same thing. He's going, and he's doing this. I was like, oh, fuck.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  And I knew at that moment, the only thing was I knew something was wrong. I don't know if he knew something was wrong. I ran home, I ran upstairs and I called my, um, my mentor, David. Uh, he is a guy that guides me on my sponsorship. He's, he's my sponsor. So I called David and I'm like, he's like, hey buddy. I'm like, climate change is gonna fuck.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Did not draw breath and the forest fires are gonna, the whales are gonna die. No food, just water. Get your family out of here. I know you live in a city.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  I just couldn't stop. It was like, it's, it's called, um, positive speech. Right. I was just, and he says, okay, two things, mate. Number one, this is way beyond my pay grade. You need to get to a doctor right now. And number two, you're really lucky because crazy people don't know they're crazy. So you better get to see your doctor fast.

• 59:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you had a little bit of self-awareness of what was happening, but at the same time, this is real. Like in your mind, these things are actually happening.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It was, they were and they weren't. And that also caused a huge amount of pain. Because I knew they kind of were and kind of weren't. And I, I didn't want to accept that it was happening. And it was enormously painful. And this went on and on and on and on. And eventually I went to go see my psychi, my psychologist. I finally got to go see him. I had to wait the whole weekend. And then I go see him.

• 59:45Rich Roll?

  Did it fade or you were in this persistent state?

• 59:47Speaker 01

  It was pretty bad. It kind of came and went quite a bit. It was really bad. And I went to go see him. And he had these Eames recliners, like it was beautiful, beautiful place. And I sat on the edge of this and I said, mate, do you have a gun? You get a gun, can you hide up in Big Bear? Because like you remember Rodney King, you remember the rights? Remember how the seed was on fire? That's gonna happen again. There's gonna be. I was just like going for it. And he goes, hmm.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Mate, you're experiencing a form of psychosis. This is paranoid delusions. And at a moment, I was like, oh, he's in on it. He's a fucking climate denier. And at that point, I was like, oh, fuck. Part of me, whether it's God or Buddha or Prince or whoever it is that watches over me. I was like, hang on a second. If you don't believe him, you're in trouble. And I was like, okay, well, what does that mean? But that was the first thought in my head.

• 1:00:42Rich Roll?

  You had a shroud that was still tethered to the real world.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  My first thought was like, he's in on it. He doesn't know, he doesn't know.

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  It was so scary. It was so scary. And he told me, you know, he told me what psychosis was and that you're really gonna need proper medication. And you need to go see a psychiatrist and da, da, da. And I'm like, yeah, fine, I'll be fine with that meds. Dumb idea. Dumb idea. Eventually, I did get meds. And it was terrible, it was terrible because, and this is a really hard part. It's like, this shit doesn't stop. And it's really painful. And it was happening every five to eight seconds. And eventually, my brain started to consider and come up with ways to make it stop. Unfortunately, it was a very permanent solution to what was a temporary problem. I was, I was back in the Middle East. I was shooting a TV show.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  I had a job that I was gonna go do. And so I was doing this job in the Middle East. And I was in this hotel room and this idea popped into my head. And it wasn't like, oh, my God, I've got to, it's just not working out with this girl I'm seeing. I'm gonna have to call her. I gotta be a man. I gotta fucking call her and I'm gonna see her and I'm gonna look her in the eye and tell her it's not. And like, you know, the kind of nervousness you might feel with an idea like that? Like, I'm gonna have to break up or whatever. I'm gonna have to fire someone. It wasn't that. It was like. When you're doing your ocean swimming, right? When you were doing your Otalo thing. Around about, I don't know, mile forty. That thought of a hot shower. And you went, oh, man, that's gonna be so good.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get out of the hot shower and I'm gonna peel this sweatsuit off. And I'm gonna do a wee and I was gonna care and I was gonna feel so amazing. I feel my body warm up. Ah, that's what it showed up as. I thought it would show up as some super scary thing. It showed up as like the best, kindest, most amazing thing that I could do. Hmm. And again, Rich, I was so lucky because I'm like, hang on a fucking second. If I'm convinced that the forests are on fire right now and the sea is rising, like, how is this not also a distortion? How is this not also not real? And I got on the phone. I just started calling people because I had been trained through my time in, you know, sobriety is like before you pick up a drink, pick up the phone. So I just started calling people and I reckon I was on the phone. I just looked at where the sun was, wherever it was in the world.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

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

• 1:03:35Rich Roll?

  That vacillation between catastrophe and then that blissful state and understanding that that's just a different version of the same thing is also a level of self-awareness that probably saved your life.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:48Rich Roll?

  But the thing is, dude, like, I, I remember when you went to the Middle East. Like, we were hanging out around that and you would share with me, like, I'm having issues with my mental health and. I didn't fully appreciate or understand what you were actually going through.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:05Rich Roll?

  I don't think it was until, and this I think was much later, when you came over to the house and Mel, our friend Mel, was over and we were having like a tea ceremony.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Oh, with Wudah, yeah.

• 1:04:16Rich Roll?

  We served you tea. Oh yeah, when Wudah was there.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:19Rich Roll?

  And you were convinced that the tea contained some kind of mind altering substance?

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Without a shadow of a, as far as I was concerned.

• 1:04:26Rich Roll?

  And you literally freaked out and laughed and it really scared me.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I may as well have done ayahuasca.

• 1:04:30Rich Roll?

  Cause I was, I bore witness to a small slice of what you were going through and that, it wasn't until then. And this probably, this was much after, this was, this was a couple of years after that.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  I was still pretty fragile. I was still pretty fragile at that time.

• 1:04:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And that, that's when I realized like, oh wow, like this is, this is serious?

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Rich Roll?

  And what is the, what was the diagnosis? I mean, you had this psychosis, this episode with psychosis, but is it, is it bipolar? Is it like schizophrenia?

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't schizophrenia. It was, from what I understand is like, what I was experiencing was a really acute, it was like, this is what, like untreated anxiety and OCD. And as I found out later on, ADHD, all that stuff spinning me up into this place of extraordinary anxiety. Well, then start to pop up into, up into psychosis because what's, uh, neurosis is when I, you know, you, you break a leg or you lose a job or, you know, your, your partner leaves you.

• 1:05:36Rich Roll?

  You have an irrational fear.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  And it's, well, it's, it's the pain caused by not being able to accept reality. All right? That's essentially neurosis. Like this is the thing that is actually happening. I don't want to accept it. So it really hurts. All right. Cause I know I have this job or my lover or can walk. Psychosis, I've got to explain to me that psychosis, when that pain becomes so great, your brain starts to reinterpret, interpret the reality to keep you safe. And so I started to realize that I was observing things through my sight, my taste, my, every input that I could touch was being filtered through this bizarre kind of distorted cataclysm of doom.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  And wonderfully and very gratefully, I'd learned how to meditate at some point. And I'm just like Watkins. Oh, yeah. Light. God, we're just dropping every Venice Beach name ever here, right? And. He's coming back on the show pretty soon. Oh, cool, man.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  And I was in Amsterdam because I was going to business school over there. And I'm I'm meditating in this amazing Airbnb on the canal. It's unbelievable. And I'm in in meditation and I'm doing that thing that, um, what's his name? He's got a funky voice, uh, Austrian, sat on the bench. Ecarol? Yeah. You are looking at the pain body. What you're seeing like I was doing that, right?

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

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

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  And I really wanted to believe him because I was thinking about suicide 20 times a day. And that's a really fucking hard thing to do, hard thing to deal with. And that went on for a really long time. And this is the thing about about meds. Um, I think I was on, I'm on my ninth different iteration of medication right now. And it's actually doing pretty well, you know? Um, but it's all in titrating and it's all in getting the dosages right. Um, but, you know, for a while there, I was on two kinds of antipsychotics and SSRI. I was on an NSRI. I was putting on a kilo a week from all the, um, from away, because they fuck with your insulin. Mm hmm. The antipsychotics. And um but eventually, you know, it started to kind of get get better. And um the meds, the meds work, but the meds don't do the job for you.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  And the way I would describe, the way I would describe medication for this kind of thing, mate. It's like you are in the world of cycling. I can take all the EPO that I want, right? I can dose myself like, you know, I was on the postal service team and whatever. But I've still got to pedal my fucking balls off to get the top of the Alpe d'Ors. All right, you still got to do the work. It's not like I inject this and my bike magically gets to the top of the mountain. Hey, gold jersey. No, you've you've seen photos of those guys who are on the gear. They're pain faces. They're all on it, but they're all, you know, they're not all of them. Depends on which documentary you watch. A lot of them are on it. Like, you've got to really do the work and the meds let you do the work. If you don't do the work, it doesn't get better. The meds give you the space to do the work.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  And wonderfully, through the support of a, I have a psychologist, an psychiatrist. So the psychiatrist is like the, like the mechanic who makes sure that the engine works right. And the psychologist is the rally driver, the navigator. It's like, you know, forty five turn in five, three, ninety degree turn. They shout all the turns to the rally drivers. They shout all the turns to the rally drivers. So I've been working with two people for quite a while now. And getting back here, I met this amazing guy. I had him on the show the other day. He's Dr. Adam Bays. He's actually leading, uh, leading the research into psilocybin and the treatment of, treatment resistant depression here in Australia. It's amazingly smart.

• 1:09:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Are you, are you, what is your perspective for yourself with respect to those compounds?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Mate, I've, I've seen, I did a whole documentary about suicide prevention. It was incredible and I've, you know, I've met people who are going through TMS and DTMS and experimental ketamine therapy and stuff like that. So I've, I've actually spent a fair bit of time with people who are, you know, dealing with chronic catastrophic treatment resistant depression. It's horrible, horrible. It's not the sort of thing, you can have a smoothie and nice walk and you'll feel better. Like, there's your brain switches completely set to doom and you cannot move them.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  What's really interesting about psilocybin is that the way, what it does to the brain is that, and certainly the way that Adam describes his study, is that with very little treatments, maybe only two treatments, but they're quite intense. There's two psychologists, they go on for a long time and it's really, really important and it's done in a very particular way. With only one or two treatments, you can have a humongous, and that's amazing because I'm someone who, you know, dealt with the side effects of medications. Like your testosterone goes out the window and I met Audrey in the middle of all of this, all right. So I mean, the woman is now my wife and the mother of our kids. With the testosterone, that's like, to try to explain what no testosterone is like from these drugs, it's like, hey, you're in the woods and it's raining and you need a

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  light of fire, here's a box of matches. No matches in the box. You're like, it's really,

• 1:11:24Rich Roll?

  yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  It's hard. I mean, it's not hard, but you know, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's a real drag. Look, unfortunately, Adam told me because I've had episodes of psychosis and I'm not allowed to participate in the trial. I'm like, fuck, motherfucker.

• 1:11:37Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. That, that obviates you from.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not allowed, I'm not allowed to play.

• 1:11:41Rich Roll?

  Interesting. No, I mean, I ask, certainly, you know, there's all kinds of, of evidence of the efficaciousness of these compounds with these resistant conditions. I mean, there's no question about it. And I think it's very exciting to see that unfold and, and, you know, with the development of these new therapies that are undoubtedly helping lots of people.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  We've just got to be really careful.

• 1:12:05Rich Roll?

  But it's tricky, especially when you're in recovery. Like, it's like, is this, because, you know, my brain lights up and says, yes, please.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Well, it's, this is the thing, we're 50 years behind on the research because this stuff started to escape the labs and there was studies, I don't know how they got approved, but there were studies where the doctors were taking it at the same time as the patients and all the research got shut down. So.

• 1:12:24Rich Roll?

  No, I know. Yeah. And that, and we lost decades of.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we could have helped a lot of people.

• 1:12:28Rich Roll?

  Knowledge, you know, that would have, that would have advanced that.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  And it's certainly, it's not something that you want to, you know, do in your backyard with a bloke whose name used to be John, but now calls himself, you know, Panther Forest or whatever.

• 1:12:39Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of those.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Wears a bearskin hat.

• 1:12:40Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of people, there's a lot, yeah, there's a lot of that going on right now.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  No, you want a proper psychiatrist. But my Adam, so, so Adam was super smart and is super smart and was willing to question his initial hypothesis because I'm on all these meds and it still wasn't right. It's like, what else is going on? Something else is going on. And so we came down off all these meds.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  I had to do a week without them and I was doing breakfast radio at the time and I had a, you know, this fucking living the dream. I was doing breakfast radio from my house. I had a line into my house.

• 1:13:09Rich Roll?

  I remember that.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Unbelievable, man.

• 1:13:10Rich Roll?

  Just go down to the basement, you're doing radio.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  It was the best. And so he said, okay, you need to do a week without to give you, so it can work when you come back on the other ones. And he said, here's some, you know, Valiums. And I came home and I had them in my hand and I gave them to order and I said, hide that, give them to me when I'm being a bastard. Don't tell me where they are. Because me and Valium are, I've made Prince Valium has ridden me into the sunset.

• 1:13:34Rich Roll?

  But also you're titrating off all of these powerful psych meds.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Oh, it was over quite a while. It was over a number of weeks. But that one week, man, I remember telling the radio people I was with. It was one morning. I had three people I was on the show with. Within the space of the first hour, each of them texted me going, fuck your fast this morning. Fuck your funny this morning. Man, what the fuck? You were amazing today. And I was like the radio person that I always wished I could be. But the rest of the day I was like, oh, I just couldn't, I couldn't handle that operating speed. Like, no wonder I used to, you know, drink and use so much.

• 1:14:09Rich Roll?

  To slow it down a little bit.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't. And that broke my heart a bit because I was as funny and fast.

• 1:14:15Rich Roll?

  Also, you must be thinking, oh, wow. Like, let me just like, that's a, you know, how can I have more of that as my career superpower?

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Well, maybe.

• 1:14:25Rich Roll?

  Is there a euphoric kind of feeling with that also?

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Um, I think it was more the, you know, that I, it's the thing that I guess got me in the door and got me quite quickly up the ladder. But by this point, it was unsustainable. And it kind of broke my heart because I had to face that. I wasn't able to, you know, I mean, even Lewis Hamilton's got brakes, you know, I didn't, I wasn't able to stop it. And that was the hard part. I wasn't able to regulate from that. And that was a bit sad. But I understood I was able to come to like, well, I can do this or I can be safe and have a life and be able to have relationships with people. And I think I'd rather the latter. So Adam, we started, he said, he started treating me for OCD. And once we changed on the OCD meds, things started to work really well. And within a number of weeks, things got pretty good.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

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

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

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

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Like the bull in downtown, and we're near Wall Street, that big bull statue. It's like 90 centimeters above the high tide mark. All right. And there was this picture and you could put your finger on it and swipe it that way. And it would give you an artist's impression of what, you know, when the West Antarctic ice shelf melts, with three meters or so of sea level, what that's going to be. And I would swipe it back and I would do this for about ten minutes, just shaking in terror and wanting to shit myself and wanting to vomit. And then she would kind of talk me down through it. And then we would, I'd go back, you know, a little while and then we'd do something very similar and do it again and do it again. And then it got to the point where I was shooting a TV show in Fiji, my wife's from Fiji. And people don't give a shit about sea levels in Australia because like it doesn't affect them.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  But let me tell you, in Fiji, there's villages that have been there for hundreds of years where, you know, the village used to be as big as this table. Now the village is this big because it's just been washed away. All right. And I would sit there and there was a village right next to where I was staying and I would sit there every afternoon. Um, sometimes when the tide was high and so I'd sit there as the tide was coming in and I'd look to my right. And I'd see the water washing up underneath the houses and, you know, you could see where they bury their ancestors on the land, you know? And you can see where the ancestors were buried and like pretty soon they're going to have to move the grave or they're going to be seeing bodies and. And it was horrible, but I did that every day. I did that. I just forced myself to be with it every single day.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  And I still do it every day. Like if I see, if I see a headline that I would, I would otherwise have previously shied away from. I will click on it and I will read it and I will be with the discomfort. And it is only, it's like anything, Rich. It's only in being willing to be with the discomfort that we then get the adaptation response. And that goes for your muscles, it goes for your endurance, it goes for your mental health. If you, the more you run away from it, the worse it gets unfortunately. Like the less you run, it's not, you don't run faster. The less you run, the slower you run. So, you know, it's only in willing to be with the discomfort that any change happens.

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  You don't have to do heaps, just a little bit. I think the magic number is like four percent or something. It's just a little bit. But just enough, just enough to.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  To be with it and then it's just a little bit easier the next day. But then you make the discomfort a little bit harder. And then slowly, the thing is, mate, if I, if I ran away from everything that scared me, I'd live my life on the head of a pin. And what does that give me? It gives me, it gives me no options. It gives me binary. It gives me, I don't want that, so I'll hide. And that's not a lot of choices to go through life with. But if I'm willing to be with the discomfort, suddenly I've got possibility. If I'm willing to be with the discomfort and go, okay, this is awful. I wonder what, I wonder what could happen here? Cause I've only ever known what that looks like. What could this be like? If you, if I approach it, try to approach it with curiosity and be aware of how painful it is, but also go, well, what else is happening here? Cause it might not be as bad as I think, or it might, I might, I don't know all the answers. Someone else has probably got a pretty good idea.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  It's in being with that curiosity and being with that willingness to be uncomfortable. That, that's, that is what has allowed me to actually have a, have a life now and I can sleep at night.

• 1:19:54Rich Roll?

  I'm so sorry that you've suffered so much and it's so much more than, than I originally realized. And it's a credit to you and your commitment to getting well, that you're able to sit here. Because I think, you know, a lot of people, perhaps the majority of people who have, who might've found themselves in a situation where, you know, they're seeing things that aren't real. They don't make it back from that.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:20:22Rich Roll?

  They end up in those institutions that have that smell that you can't forget. And unfortunately, that's the common sort of scenario. That's how that generally plays out.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  I got really lucky. I was said, I got really lucky because I learned that just because I think it doesn't make it real. I learned that a long time ago. Afford it, you know, and I didn't want to.

• 1:20:43Rich Roll?

  And how do you know today when to differentiate? You know what I mean? Like, is this happening right now? Are we here?

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're here.

• 1:20:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, we're here having this conversation, right?

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  Everything's fine right now.

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  You're, you're locked in, you're anchored.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  I have no problem really checking. I have no problem checking and, and for a while I would be, um, I. I will check, uh, sometimes I cannot understand uh emotions in a room. And um that it turned out that, you know, it's the ADHD diagnosis, but I'll not be able to understand things and I'll check else like say if I've done a promo thing and I'm doing a radio interview and I give one of the, you know, one of the anchors, the hosts some shit and they go, ah, seven fifteen, oh, see you later, man. And I'll walk out and ask the publicist, so did I fucking blow that? Are they upset? I mean, no. Like, okay, cause my head is telling me that I've just destroyed my career and my relationship with that person. And like, nah, you know, okay, okay. So then every time my brain goes, you fucking blew it, you blew

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  it. I'm like, but hang on. Um, no, Peter said it was fine. And I just remember that other thing that the other person talked about, like, you know, the person who doesn't have my brain.

• 1:21:46Rich Roll?

  I can't, you know, I can't imagine how terrifying it must be to not know whether something that's happening is real or not.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not fun. It's just absolutely terrifying. It's, it's cause you've never, we, we, yeah, it's so scary. It's so, so, so scary. Um, but I don't know, man.

• 1:22:05Rich Roll?

  And is there a sense of, of, like, what's the origin story here? Like, where does this come from? Is this a genetic thing? Is this, you know, a result of a series of traumas that went untreated for a certain period of time? Is it even worth trying to understand that? Or is it just about like, I know what I need to do now to be well and stay tethered?

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  I think it's, I think it's worth trying to understand it for the purposes of, you know, well then what can I do about it? And how can I deal with it properly? And, you know, I'm a son of two people that had to leave their countries because of war. All right? And that's gonna change you as a person and who they were when we were little.

• 1:22:45Rich Roll?

  So there's a, there's a, there's a possibility of like an epigenetic.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:51Rich Roll?

  Trauma passed down.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I wrote, when I wrote my book, I had to, I had to check. And I said, yeah, yeah, you're about fifty fifty. You're about fifty fifty fifty percent of like what comes from your parents and fifty percent of like what happens after you get born. Um, and so look, like I said, you know, the, this is the brain I've got. It's the brain that. Gave me the life I have. I probably didn't help it by drinking and using so much. And we're literally, you know, given it the Jimi Hendrix Zippo on the strat, you know, just drank holes in my brain.

• 1:23:20Rich Roll?

  Or maybe it saved you. Maybe it was what you needed in that moment, you know, to survive.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  Sounds like a demonic recall going on there, Richie.

• 1:23:29Rich Roll?

  Well, it was, it was a, it was a, you know, on some level a coping mechanism.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, precisely. Yeah. And that was.

• 1:23:34Rich Roll?

  And you were living a very surreal life.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was very weird. I'm very lucky. I'm very, and I don't, you know, like I'm a white, straight, middle-class man. Okay, so I can, I can, you know, I could have been weird on the street and walked past the cop and they would have not looked at me twice because I had this job on TV. Oh, I was just having a big night. If I was any other color, forget about it, you know? I'm very, I am aware of that. It's not like I'm not aware of that. I'm very lucky that I'm, you know, in a country that has access to healthcare. And I'm really lucky, really lucky that when I really needed like a lot of intervention, I could afford it, you know?

• 1:24:08Rich Roll?

  But you also volunteered for it. A lot of people resist it or they're, they don't have that tiny little piece in the back of their mind.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  I didn't want it, mate.

• 1:24:17Rich Roll?

  That's still clinging to reality. Like you're like, I need to call this person. I need to call this person. This person says, come here and let me help you and you show up.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Don't let me, don't let me mislead you.

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  Sir, like, here's this antipsychotic. I want you to take it only when you need it. Aha. If I don't take it, I don't need it. I'm not sick. And I would do that, you know?

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  I would, I did not want, I didn't want to accept that I had this. I did not want it. And I, I avoided dealing with it for a long time, way too long. And I caused myself and others a lot of damage doing so.

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  It's one thing to raise your hand and say, you know, my name is Rich or my name is Asher and I'm an alcoholic or I'm an addict. We're in a, we're in a culture now that's, that's forgiving and understanding and, and has a grasp on the recovery process and, and, you know, we understand that on some level. It's another thing altogether to say, you know, my name's Asher and, you know, I had, I have psychotic episodes or sometimes I don't know what's real and expect people to be like. Cool, you know, are you, you good? You're gonna show up for work? It's okay, like, so what I'm getting at is that I still think we have a long way to go in terms of understanding these types of conditions.

• 1:25:38Rich Roll?

  And I think what's important about you and kind of how you advocate in this space is your willingness to be open about it. Like, I remember when I was here a couple of years ago and you did a live show and you got up in front of that live audience and maybe, I don't know if it was the first time you'd done that, but it was early in your journey of saying, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna tell this story. And it's hard, you know? It's embarrassing. I have to talk about things that, like, a lot of people might look at me a little bit differently, you know, as a result of it. But I think that there's so much power in your, in your, there's a lot of courage to be that vulnerable in front of people.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Well, firstly, like, it's been a long time since I've had any breaks with reality. Like, it's been a long time since I've had any of those episodes. And I'm, I live every day knowing that they are. Won't be tomorrow, won't be in six months, but they're not far if I don't keep things shipshape, you know?

• 1:26:31Rich Roll?

  You, you got the little, the balloon.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Keeping the balloon up, yeah, it's important. I gotta do, I gotta, there's things I need to do every day. But because of the things that I do every day, I have this incredible life that I'm more productive and, you know, than I've ever been in my career.

• 1:26:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you have like a million jobs. Let's, let's be straight. I mean, you, you know, like, I don't know how many TV shows you host, but it's a lot. And you seem to have many podcasts. And you're doing this news thing now, like a live event.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  It's a lot of fun.

• 1:26:55Rich Roll?

  You know, this sort of live Colbert-type experience with news and comedians and performers here in Australia. Like, you're incredibly productive.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  I don't know, man, I've got a lot in my head and I've gotta get it out. And I'm trying, trying to get it out in the healthiest way possible. But there was something you talked about before that I've just lost it now, you were talking about, so, oh, yeah. So, when I first got sober, all right, I remember sitting, there was a particular meeting I would go to. And I'm a part of a fellowship of men and women who count days and take steps. There's more than 11, there's less than 13, you can figure it out. The secret thing that we're not supposed to talk about, but everybody knows what you're talking about. It's my super secret. And I would sit there and I remember this particular place, it was on Sunset, it was above a bar. I don't know if you ever went to that one. Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. It was a really good one.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  And so I'm sitting in this bar in the middle of the day and I'm. It's a nooner, that one. It was really good. I put my hand up and I had a chat and after the, after it, after the show, after the meeting, after the show. This guy comes up to me and he's probably about my age now and he goes, mate, it's gonna be okay. I said, you know, I understand. Like I was literally sleeping on my friend Nick's spare bed, you know, I'd just been, you know, I had to get kicked out of my house. I was like getting divorced. It was like all, I was, no one could have told me anything. And he goes, no, it's gonna be all right. I promise you it'll be okay. You just keep going. Do this, do that. Do the things that your man tells you. You'll be all right. He may as well have been telling me the story of Hansel and Gretel. It was a fucking fairy tale, right? It may as well have been, hey, Rich, come over and say hi to, you know, the kids. Come and say hi to Audrey.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  But I'm gonna blindfold you and when you get into the house, I'm gonna take the blindfold off and say, hey, man, describe the colors of the cars on the street. He'd be like, well, no, they're there. You're like, you're just blank, like a complete blank from where I was standing that day to this guy. He was wearing a gray overcoat, I'll never forget him.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  But I just needed to believe that that was possible. And he was telling me it was possible and I had to believe that he was telling me the truth. And I, what I had to do was just go, he told me, just, just do what your man tells you. Do it and come here every day. Do what your man tells you and it'll be all right. And guess what? It was. And I'm just trying to give to others what was given to me. Cause you can't be what you can't see. All right? And when I first came back here and I was like, I'm gonna go to these meetings, I'm gonna call my man David. I'm like, I'm so famous. I don't wanna go to a meeting, put my hand up. I don't know if you realize I'm real fucking famous. He's like, dude, shut the fuck up. Put your fucking hand up and you'll fucking save someone's life, man. Fuck you. I was like, okay. And so, and, and since then, you know, it's not about me.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  It's not about me. It's about, I want to, I want me.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  At twenty two, getting his, you know, long vomit soaked hair getting pulled out of his mouth, to see someone like me, not me, but someone, whoever they relate to, talking about this and going, yeah, it doesn't have to be that. You can have everything you've ever wanted more, or than you could ever fucking dreamed of without that thing. It's okay. You've got a brain that when it gets that thing, bad shit happens. Doesn't happen to everybody. Sorry. It's like peanut butter. Not everyone gets to eat it, you know? I'm just trying to give to others what was given to me, mate. And it was, you know, I, I found that, you know, if you can't, you've got to seek out stories of people who are where you want to be. That's why people read your book, because they're like, they want to run a five K. They read stories about you running Ultraman, but they want to, they want to get off their ass and go and do something. All right. So people go

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

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

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  important to hear that, you know, these people had been through what I was, the kind of thinking that I was going through and having their brain try to tell them, there's a way out. I can fix this. It's gonna be fine. Just do this, just do this. And that after a while, just, it's, it's way more seductive than I thought. And when I heard that, I know you'll do a big warning at the start of this, because there's a lot of, got to be really careful about how you communicate about it, this sort of thing. Um, I didn't realise how seductive a thought it was. I didn't realise that at all. Talk more about that. What do you mean? I didn't, well, like I was saying earlier, like, I didn't realise. I thought it'd be a big scary, scary thought. Like, and this is what I'm gonna have to do now. Oh,

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  well, I've tried and this, like, no, it was, hey, man, I got you. Come over here. Let me put my arm around you. Just do this. It'll be all better. Because it was so noisy, mate. It was so noisy. It was like being.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  I don't know, stuck at the worst music, fucking worst EDM music festival ever. And it's at a drag strip and you're five hours from anywhere and you can't get a ride home. And you can't sleep because you've taken too many drugs and you can't get out of there because your friends are somewhere and you're stuck between the drum and bass tent and the trance tent. And you've got all this shit blowing at you from speakers either side. It was just so noisy. My brain was so noisy, I couldn't fucking think. And you've got this guy going, I know how to make it quiet. And that's fucking hell, man. It was like, and it was my voice. It was my feelings, it was my idea, you know? The same one that goes, oh man, I'm gonna make a best chocolate smoothie. It was the same thing. It's like, oh, I'm really cold, I'm gonna put on my favourite jumper. It was the same thing.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  And that, I was very lucky that I knew that.

• 1:32:45Rich Roll?

  So scary.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, that's the thing I needed to tell people about. It doesn't come out scary, it comes out as the best idea you've ever had. And, no, it's not. It's not. It's a, it.

• 1:32:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but it's that thing that, it's that thing, we were talking about this yesterday, like, you're trying to solve the problem with the same brain that created the problem. Like, you're, you're, you're living inside a brain that is tweaked.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:13Rich Roll?

  And you're trying to figure out a way forward. But all you have is this tweaked brain, but you don't really know that it's tweaked. And you're, so you're stuck. It's like a, a strange kind of like hall of mirrors.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  It is. You can't, you can't use a sick brain to think your way out of having a sick brain. It's like trying to bite your own teeth or trying to touch your right elbow with your right index finger. You can't do it.

• 1:33:34Rich Roll?

  And when, and when you're in that state, you don't know that your brain is sick.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

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

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  them through sometimes.

• 1:34:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've noticed in talking to you, sometimes your brain moves so quickly that we'll be talking about something, but then you'll throw a couple other things in there. And then I'm, I'm like, wait, what, what is happening right now? I'm not quite sure.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 1:34:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's not, no, it, you know, I think in this conversation, you've been very linear. But I've noticed it like just socially a little bit.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  Can happen.

• 1:34:47Rich Roll?

  It's just like a, it's not like there's nothing negative about that. It's just a something that I've noticed.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

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

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

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

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  But it's also, you know, it's worth, it's worth it. It's worth trying because who I get to be because of the trying is worth it.

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  And look, I honestly, I would not, we've talked a lot about this, but we haven't talked about how incredible Audrey was in all this. So again, I met the woman who's now my wife when I was going through all of this shit, through all of it. And I remember speaking to her, just telling her about, you know, like all these completely deluded things that are going on. And I'm like, you know, the Pacific Islands getting washed away and entire cultures are getting destroyed. And, you know, like as real as real could be to me. And she just, she could see that I wasn't really, really bad. And she just said, look, if it does come to that, I'll be with you and it'll be okay.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  And that was the first time in years that I believed it might end up in a different way to how I'd been convinced that it would end up. And she, you know, it was like I was in a, they used to have these dance parties here in Merrickville Bowls Club, Black Market. I don't know if anyone remembers them, but they used to cover the mirrors in black plastic, right? And it was like someone had taken a pin, because the parties would go all day, uh, from the night before. And like someone had taken a pin and popped through the black plastic. And there was just this tiny little pin prick of light, because I'd been in that darkness for so long. And when she said that to me, I was like, oh, oh, oh, right.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  So all the things that I'm thinking could happen and I could be holding her hand at the same time. Ah, and that, that was the thing that changed everything. Like that woman absolutely saved my life, mate. There's no question, no question. I'm very lucky because of that, um, because it was, I needed someone. It's, it's worth it to be a better person for them. I was living alone before I met them. When you live alone, you don't have to, you're not accountable to anyone. You can be a bastard and, you know, you put your social face on and whatever, and that's it. But then you're alone. And loads of fun. Um, so yeah.

• 1:38:38Rich Roll?

  You also don't have anyone to give you that feedback and accountability on your behavior in real time.

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the, you know, that's really, that's the thing. I suddenly had these two incredible people who I was, I couldn't help but be so completely hopelessly in love with her and um, just so much paternal love that just showed up out of nowhere for G. She was 11. She's 19 now, you know, and I didn't know what to do with this thing because I'm a selfish prick, you know? And suddenly he's just, I'm no longer number one. Fuck, no. You know, and it was all, that's it. That was like, okay, this is what I have to do this.

• 1:39:20Rich Roll?

  And now you have a son.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Now, yeah, Wolfie.

• 1:39:23Rich Roll?

  And so how does that change how you think about all of this and keep you on track and?

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Um, it's, it's very, I guess it's very kind of twofold, you know? Part of it is I, I try to communicate whenever I can as much as I can with about how much work needs to get done because eventually everyone's going to get it, you know? Eventually everyone's going to get how much work needs to get done and the work will get done. It'll just be way harder. Like, we don't have to change the diet after the heart attack. We could eat better now and not even have the heart attack. Or even just get a really kind of nasty scare, which is probably what we're having right now. We're having a nasty climate scare.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  All right. But let's not go through the heart attack. Um, but you know, humans are humans. We kind of, we kind of wait for that unfortunately. It's shit, man. I know. It's shit. It's terrible. It's terrible. So on one hand, it's like, well, but then again, I don't know anything. I don't know everything. I rode a bicycle here. I could get taken out on the way home. All right? And so all I have is this day. All I have is this moment. Literally all we have is now, as Wayne Coyne would say, like, this is it. And so when I'm, you know, every day with, it's very, you know, it's really easy and very obvious when they're little because they change so much so fast. But like, she's a new kid every six weeks. She just, you know, it's subtly different, but she's very, you know, she changes so often. She still grows and changes and thinks about things.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  And she's a very powerful woman and just try to be as present as I can and witness to it and.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  You know, know that you only have to do today. You know, I look sometimes, I've got a, I've got thirteen years up the other day. And I say, I put a thing on my phone, cause I kind of stopped counting. And I put it up on my phone, I was like, fucking hell. And they say, oh, it's a day at a time, but honestly, mate, some days it was five minutes at a time. But you only have to do it for five more minutes. And just trust that you'll be able to cope in five minutes from now, cause you will. And so thinking about, you asked about what's gonna happen, you know, looking, how do I think about everything? Look, I just trust that whatever happens, that I'll be able to cope. Whatever shows up, I'll be able to cope. It's not like some giant cataclysm is gonna happen and I'll suddenly forget how to do shit.

• 1:41:48Rich Roll?

  You have, you have that, that muscle memory. I mean, you've endured a lot and so you know that you're able and capable of like, you know, getting through difficult situations.

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  I have a lot of empathy for people who haven't been through that climate thing. I think it's really, it's really important, I think, to be with the reality of it. And sit down and really have a look, all right? Because during, we had some bushfires here, black summer, we called it.

• 1:42:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was here.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:15Rich Roll?

  When that was going on.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  Devastating, all right? And people are texting me every day, cause I'd read the book and shit like that. Are you okay? Are you okay? I'm like, mate, I saw this when it wasn't there for years. Like, I'd close my eyes and it would be there. Like, I, I've been through what you're going through right now. Cause suddenly for a lot of people that in my life, it was, oh, oh, fuck. Like, yes, yes, you, I get it. So I have a lot of empathy for people who haven't been through that and people who are resisting that. But it's really important. And I think a lot of the denialism that we see around climate stuff is trying to avoid that pain. All right? When you start talking about, you know, climate change, people think, oh, it's, you know, seawater or whatever. It's like, mate, it's food security. It's water coming out of your tap.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  It's immigration, it's national security, it's everything. But the thing is, because it's everything, it means everything's a solution. Everything in the right direction is a solution. There's everything to do. It's not like there's nothing to do, there's everything to do. And so. There's everywhere to get into action because being in action is a sense of agency and being in action is freedom from the pain that you're in. The only way out of the flames is through, pun intended, the only way out of the flames is through. You just have to keep moving, it just doesn't matter, pick a spot, go in one direction, do that, and then at least you're moving. And that can give you what you need to get to bed that night going, well, what can I control? I can control, you know, do what I can, do the next right thing.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  I got really lucky to get all the skills that I got from getting sober, really helped me in this part.

• 1:43:51Rich Roll?

  On the mental health stuff though, in your journey, you know, with the, with the book, um, and the live events that you do and the amount of time that you spend talking about this kind of stuff behind a microphone, um, you must have a sense of, of the impact that it's making. You must have, you know, men, people coming up to you. Like, it's a lifeline for a lot of people.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:11Rich Roll?

  There aren't that many people who are talking about mental health in its most severe form in the way that, in the way that you do.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, once, once again, I got very lucky and I got to come off the antipsychotics. Some people don't, and I got very, very lucky because of that. But I think, um, you know, if I asked, you know, what does complex mental illness look like, or what does psychosis look like? People might think, oh, it's the guy on the bus is shouting at stuff that I can't see. It can be, you know?

• 1:44:35Rich Roll?

  It could be, you know, you in a finely tailored suit.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it. But that's what it is.

• 1:44:39Rich Roll?

  So it shows up in unlikely forms as well.

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  One in five, one in five, one in five Australians is affected by complex mental illness. All right. And that could be person suffering it, but like, for every person that has been diagnosed, five people are affected by it. So, um, when you look at those stats, it's like.

• 1:44:58Rich Roll?

  Which means there's a lot of people walking around.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:00Rich Roll?

  Undiagnosed.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Oh, no, diagnosed, but they're just not talking about it.

• 1:45:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  And they're managing it. And you asked earlier about. I got really lucky with my workplace because I'm I'm I know I'm a high value employee. And I was really honest with my boss and said, like, mate, this is what's going on. Just so you know, this is why I'm a bit strange. This is what's happening. These are the doctors I'm seeing. These are the meds I'm taking. This is the exercise I'm doing. This is the meetings I'm going to. And all of these things mean that I'll still be able to. And I really need to keep coming to work because giving me something to do. It's like when someone gets injured at work, you want them to get them back as quick as possible. Because that's a huge part of them getting better. And having an agent, a reason to get out of bed and a reason to go to work is is a really important thing in getting healthy. And my boss, Stephen, amazing, he's just said, well, what do you need from us? And like, because in one, in one breath, I told it, I disclosed, and I wouldn't recommend, I'm done saying you should disclose.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Like, only if you're really comfortable and you feel you're going to be okay. Because in one breath, I told him what was going on, but I also told him how I was managing it and told him that I was taking responsibility for it. And then that made it not his problem to fix. And I think that's a really important thing. Like, you can, you know, it can happen to you or it can happen for you. You know, you can either let that, let it have you or you can have it. You know, it's really, it's really, that's all it is. Um, and if you, if you take responsibility for it, then you have a bit more, a bit more sense that you're not being sort of flayed around so much. It still comes and grabs me sometimes and kind of fucks up my day, um, as it did today. But it's, if I know that, you know, look, well, I'm doing what I can with what I have.

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  And it might not be that, you know.

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  And how, how has all of this informed your relationship with your career? As somebody who, you know, used to have that kind of fuck you mentality, don't you know who I think I am?

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's exactly what it was. Yeah. Don't you know who you think I am?

• 1:46:53Rich Roll?

  To now, you know, being really successful and being on these really popular television shows and being somebody who's going to get recognized on the street and all of that. Like, how does that influence, like, you know, where does the ambition sit? How have you right sized yourself and, and, and formed like a healthier relationship with, with all of that?

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  It, it came from changing why I showed up at work. And, you know, they said, oh, you know, how do you be a worker among workers when you're the fucking guy on the telly? You know, how do you do that? How do you have a head of humility around that? And. What I tried to do was try to just be the most professional. What I tried to do was like, how can I make everyone else's day at work the easiest that I can make it? So I spent a long time probably not making it very easy. So how can I make it the audio person's easiest day at work? That camera person, that camera person, this person. How can I make their day the easiest day? By being on time, by being completely prepared, by being as professional as I possibly can be. By, you know, asking them about their day, you know, being, you know, getting in and out, getting it done. All right.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  And that in turn makes me very good at what I do.

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  Because that's what I want to do it for. All right. There was a time when I did it because I wanted to have, you know, the ratings, success and all that shit. And we did, you know, Australia, very risk averse when it comes to TV. So we did The Masked Singer in Australia as well, and I host that. I'm very lucky too, it's a fucking super fun show. But I'm, that was a big, it was a hit. The first season was a hit and people are texting and calling, go, hey, congratulations, congratulations. I'm like, I didn't want to say to them, but I appreciate you congratulating me. But it's not like we don't work as hard on the ones that don't work. We work just as hard. This how or why it was successful has nothing to do with me. Um, all I can do is show up, do it as best I can. Try to push myself, try to learn something, try to make other people stay good and then go home.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  And that's the job. I, I don't do marketing. I don't do promos. I don't cut, I have no idea what the other network is going to program against me. I have no, no idea. I can't attach myself to.

• 1:48:58Rich Roll?

  Very different from podcasting.

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 1:48:59Rich Roll?

  You have to do the whole thing, all of it.

• 1:49:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:02Rich Roll?

  And in network television, there's whole departments.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:05Rich Roll?

  In charge of all that kind of stuff that you just, you say you do your bit and then you leave and go home.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  But I, but I can't, I used to, I would definitely get tied into the outcome. And I know you've spoken about this, like, you know, and I've heard you talk about this with people who've done, you know, extraordinary athletic things. It's not like the gold medal that you hold at the end of it is the prize. Who you became to hold the gold medal, gold medal. Sorry. It's not like the gold medal that you hold at the end is the prize. Who you became to hold the gold medal is the prize. And that's why you do it. It's not, it, it's not like everything's going to be fine when I hold this thing. No, that's, that's not it. Who you become to hold this thing, that's it. And. We've got to kind of ask backwards around that with success in our, in our society, I think.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  You know, this amount of money at the end of the year, you've made it, have you? Cause I've had that amount of money and it, you know, it swiftly went away, trust me. But it didn't make, it didn't make everything awesome. It didn't. Uh, don't worry. It all, it all went away. Cause you know, internet gambling and blah, blah, blah.

• 1:50:14Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:50:15Speaker 01

  It's all gone. Gone, gone, gone.

• 1:50:16Rich Roll?

  Alright.

• 1:50:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, but it, it's, it's, it's who you become because of it. And that's the day to day stuff, you know, cause ultimately that's all, that's all there is.

• 1:50:26Rich Roll?

  And who would you say that you've become?

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  I'm try, I'm trying to, I don't know, Rich.

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  I, I'm just, I'm, I just.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  I don't know, mate. I don't know how to answer that question. I don't know how to answer that question. I, I, I just, every step I take away from the person I was before I stopped drinking and using is, is a good place to be. I think if any of us can try to transcend the patterns of behaviour that haven't served us and write new ones. Then we have done the universe's service by not allowing those kind of things to carry for, forward any further. And that might be, you know, someone's a racist grandad or someone's homophobic mum or whatever. Like that can stop with you. You can choose that. Or not that I had a racist grandad or a homophobic mum, but you, you can choose to, you can choose to stop that.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  So identifying the parts of who I am that don't serve me and going, do I really need that? Can I let go of that? Can I do something else? Like, it's a bit hard because I can get a bit robotic in my thinking sometimes. So it can be hard to get the new versions of things in, but it takes, takes time, but it eventually works. And if I can just do that, then I'm alright. And as far as everything else, mate. Fit, fit, fit, fit, dead. That's it. I'm not, I'm, there's no glide path for me. I am.

• 1:52:03Rich Roll?

  I like how you distilled it down, but I do, I do think it's worth noting that piece around interrupting the intergenerational transfer hereditary or inherited traumas and behavior patterns that cause havoc.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  And it could be from an ex-relationship. It could be from a job.

• 1:52:26Rich Roll?

  And you become very present with that when you become a parent, obviously. And you're looking at your young child and you're thinking about how you were raised or what your grandparents endured. And you realize that you can be a stopgap. Like you can arrest whatever thing that runs in the background on autopilot. You have the agency to interrupt and perhaps make it, you know, the last, the last stop on that line, right? So that Wolfie, you know, isn't, isn't like intuiting that and passing and like exuding that and then passing it on.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  The worst thing, the worst thing about parenting, it's not the sleep. It's not the, you know, being tired all the time or being crabby to each other. That's not it. They don't do what you tell them, but they do what you show them. That is the worst part because you see some shit in them and go, you mother, oh, you got that from me, fuck. And then you have to, and that's the clue as to what you need to look at. Yeah, that thing, yeah, sorry. And you have to sort that shit out because, and I think stuff like that is how, another way that we can get a little closer to the kind of like society-wide change we're going to need to get us out of this mess. Like that kind of fear of change, this idea that, no, that's how we always did it. That's how we're always going to have to do it.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  No, no. You know, we have the choice to to help our children become more open to change and more open to new ideas. We have that ability. And that's really, really important because

• 1:53:59Rich Roll?

  Well, and it starts with us, and it starts in the home.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  It bloody does, mate. It really does.

• 1:54:05Rich Roll?

  I think that's a good place to put a pin in it for today, my friend.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  Bringing it around the corner.

• 1:54:12Rich Roll?

  I love you, buddy. You know, the the journey that you've been on is just, it's it's fucking unbelievable, dude. And the the level of vulnerability and courage that you've demonstrated to weather this and come to the other side and be in a place where you can talk about it, you know, comfortably is an incredible service to a lot of people.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Thanks, mate. Thank you so much, mate, for having me. And like, don't underestimate the role that you and Julie and your family have played. Because, I don't know, like, I don't think you lived, you never lived in another country, did you? Like, I was a long way, a long way from home, a long way from my family, a long way from my friends. And to be able to, like, you felt it last night when you were at our place, to go, oh, a family. Ah, it's not my family. Ah.

• 1:55:00Rich Roll?

  I could leave it, I go.

• 1:55:01Speaker 01

  Warm, delicious food, nice dogs.

• 1:55:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  Ah, rattlesnakes, bang, nice dogs, you know. That is unbelievable. It's a lifeboat on the other side of the planet. You know, it really is. And knowing, you know, I sometimes just ride past your house. Not in a weird way, just to go, that's where my friends live, you know, just ride past your house, just to.

• 1:55:25Rich Roll?

  Well, you you always have a have a home at our home. And we didn't even get to the part about the importance of of kind of fitness and physical activity as part of the mental health journey. Like, we spent a lot of time on the bike together, and the bike as a tool for, you know, kind of contending with demons and getting to the other side.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  There's a huge part of, a huge part of me feeling better that involves, and I believe now, because I listened to a man whose career you fucking jump started, Andrew Huberman, there's a lot of references to people, but he sure doesn't reference you and I. Come at me, Huberman. Um, I love him. I'll listen to him every week. Um, he talks about the catecholamines, talks about dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. Now, all these things exist within my body. And when my body was not well, I needed to take meds to help stimulate the production of those things. But these things exist in my body, though there's things I need to do to release them into my body. And that we're designed to move, we're designed to lift, we're designed to be active, we're designed to move through

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  space, we're supposed to be out and about, getting our food, walking around, doing things, interacting with other human beings. All of these things, all of these hormones give my body, um, what it needs to shift mood states throughout the day. And if I don't have enough of those, uh, that can be a problem. I can get quite stuck. But, and I know you, you talk about it, and Audrey certainly does to me. She's like, go swing some kettlebells, mate. Go get on your bike. Just, yeah, go. And I, I understand that, you know, I, I sometimes, I've got a ergo now, I've got a rowing machine, and it's, dude, it's great. It's 25 minutes, I can get whatever, you know, I can use that anxiety, I can use that energy that's been released in my body. There's this huge chunk of adrenaline. It's like, I don't need no pre-workout. Hit me, give, give me some deadlifts.

• 1:57:11Rich Roll?

  Sure. And I remember, like, during some of your harder periods where you were like, you were just out on the bike for hours, like, the whole day, right? And I was like, I know what that guy, I know what that's about.

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It's Wednesday. And you call me, I'm like, where are you? I'm here. It's like, that's 30 miles from your house. Yes, it is. Up a mountain. But that's, that's what I needed to do on that day, to stay, to stay okay. Cause there's a sense of agency, there's a great sense of, I'm here under my own power. I have some control. I have some ability to move myself. Not everyone can do that. I'm very lucky that I could.

• 1:57:51Rich Roll?

  And just the sense of mental space that you get, and the kind of active meditative effect of, of being in a elevated heart rate and connecting with your breath, that allows you to problem solve or make, you know, try to make sense of your situation and what you're trying to work through in a way that. Doesn't happen when you're at home on the couch.

• 1:58:15Speaker 01

  No, and it's not like I sit there and I'm working through it like a math problem.

• 1:58:19Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  I'll just be like running and going like, oh, seagull, tree.

• 1:58:22Rich Roll?

  It happens in the unconscious part of your brain while you're doing that other thing.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  And then it just pops up.

• 1:58:27Rich Roll?

  Because you're not looking at it directly.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it pops up and you go, oh, there it is. And there's never a problem that I went, I took on a run that I didn't come back with a solution with. Never, not once. But I, I gotta say that this is the tricky part about dosages increasing. I got that feeling from just walking around my block when I was super unfit. The problem is now is like to get that again, like.

• 1:58:46Rich Roll?

  Here you go.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  I push myself. Well, I've got a heart rate, I've got a heart rate strap now and, you know, cause the meds I'm on, I've got to be careful of my blood pressure and stuff like that. So I send them, send my regular updates to my man and my psychiatrist. He's like, damn, like, I don't know. Like, it's just, when I, when I got my leg done, I'm in the thing. The alarm kept going off because I thought I was bradycardic. It's like fucking 50 beats a minute, 49 beats a minute, like proper, like. Cause I'd just been going in the first surgery, I went in as fit as I possibly could be back in 2020. I went in so fit, they're like, are you okay? Like, yeah, I'm fine. But I, you know, I know that I don't have to sustain that kind of heart rate when I'm really like doing intervals, like really hard.

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  But I know you only have to be there for a little bit, you know, minute off, minute on for a little while. And that's enough, just the fire hoses your brain down.

• 1:59:40Rich Roll?

  It's a major state change.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  Oh man, like you try to be angry or upset or scared after all that shit floods your brain. And that's for free, you know, that's for free. You can get there doing burpees. And not enough people know that, you know, it's amazing.

• 1:59:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. All right, well, we gotta get out of here, but let's close it down with, with maybe a final thought for he or she who's still suffering. Like I'm just imagining somebody who's watching this or listening, who's thinking, you know, maybe I have some stuff I need to look at. Asher's, you know, kicking up some stuff that feels a little uncomfortable right now. I don't know where to direct that energy. Like, do you have resources that you can direct people towards? Or, you know, a thought that you could share to help, you know, direct or guide that person who's dancing around the outer edges of, of, of seeking help?

• 2:00:34Speaker 01

  Well, I would say, look. I I play a lot of poker, like one of the things I'm really lucky for is I play a poker game every Wednesday and I've been playing that poker game since two thousand and three. So it's the same group of ten, twelve guys. So I've got these guys in my life. And so, uh, and I have, we've been through a lot together. And there's, uh, there's a person who shows up at a poker table who doesn't know how to play very well and everyone spots them and they kind of play them and they basically treat them like a human ATM and that person's called the fish.

• 2:01:01Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  And there's this phrase going, if you can't spot the fish at the table, it's you. And so if you're going through life and you're like, what's everyone fucking, wasn't it, do what I say and what's going on? Why is everyone, everyone's the asshole? Might be you. And just, that's okay. It's okay. You are where you are with your, the skills and the tools that you've got. That's fine. There's more skills and tools and ways to deal. You just need to go ask someone to show you and that's fine. It's okay. There's no shame in figuring out better ways to do things. If you're going through life and everything is kind of, it's, it's constantly a rocky fucking road. It's okay. You're going in the direction you want to go to, but maybe, maybe you want

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  to get a better set of tires. Maybe you want to get a better suspension. Maybe you need a better copilot. Like there's plenty of things that you can get on board. There's no need to gut through it. You're not alone and there's plenty of help, plenty of help. And look, I know I live in this incredible country with this amazing healthcare system, but there's just psychoeducation alone. Learn about cognitive distortions. Learn about what happens when your body's captured by anxiety. Learn the difference between amygdala hijack and, um, what's the other one? There's amygdala one, there's a, I can't remember what it was. Learn, like when you're in anxiety, learn, learn what your amygdala does to your body. Understand that, you know, if you're in a meeting and everyone's being an asshole and da, da, da, da, da, and your, your hands are shaking, you've shouted the last three things you've said. Oh, I'm in fight or flight.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  Right, right. Someone said something that has nothing to do with this situation, but it has triggered a response from a long time ago. And I should probably not have to claw and bite my way out of this room. I might just take a bit of a breath here, you know? Understand, understand that stuff and, and, and, and just kind of just learn. And, and that, you know, what's amazing is like, yeah, YouTube can convince you some pretty wrong shit, but it's also a huge amount of like really clever. Um, go for people who are actual doctors. Go for people who are from universities. There's some really clever psychoeducation out there. Just, just learning what it is, naming it to tame it is a really important thing. Cognitive distortion, cognitive distortions is really powerful. Like learning what the, the big cognitive distortions are, learning what anxiety is,

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  learning what your prefrontal cortex does, you know? Learning how to down regulate. You can learn how to, you know, this, you can do a thing called polyvagal breathing, which is really easy. It's just three in, six out. I do that in meetings all the time. I do that on air. No one knows I'm doing it. What am I doing? I'm stimulating my vagus nerve, like tricking my body into its relaxation response. And it's super easy to do a four in, eight out. Don't do any more than that if you're standing up, like we're driving. Like it's, there's so many things you can do.

• 2:03:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, I would, I would echo all of that, but supplement it with this idea of not trying to, like we were talking about earlier, solve it in the confines of your mind quietly.

• 2:03:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:03:54Rich Roll?

  Instead, raise your hand and let people in, find somebody you trust. It could be a friend, it could be a colleague, it could be a professional, but develop the habit of being open with somebody who can help guide you. Like if you use, all of these things thrive in the darkness and in isolation.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:13Rich Roll?

  And I think when you're in that situation, there's a, there's shame attached to it, which makes you wanna kind of deal with it privately.

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes it worse.

• 2:04:22Rich Roll?

  Um, and all that's gonna do is prolong it and exacerbate it over time.

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  If, if, you know, you, if I rode my bicycle here and if I got here and, you know, I'd fallen really badly and I had a mad double spiral fracture in my forearm. My hand was hanging down like that, like dude, we gotta get you to a fucking doctor. Nah, nah, she'll be right, mate. You'd think I was fucking crazy, all right? But people do that every day when it comes to their mental health. Get to a goddamn doctor and fast because these things don't get better. They get worse, as I've spoken about today, because I wasn't treating it. And it was getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And eventually it it just it nearly killed me. But there's so much help and there's a huge amount of power that comes from taking control and taking control just to ask for help.

• 2:05:13Speaker 01

  And that's that's that's really powerful, particularly with men. Men like to be in charge. Well, be in charge, pick up the phone, pal. Go do something about it. And like if you're, I I use automotive analogies because they work, you know.

• 2:05:24Rich Roll?

  Well, there's this this this idea that it's weakness to do that. But if it's weakness to do that, then why are you so scared to do it?

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, so I'm in I'm in the I'm in the car and I'm flying down the freeway, taking my entire family on holiday, right? And the front left tyre blows out. All right, do I pull over? Or do I go, nah, I'm gonna keep going? Like, I'm doing a hundred and ten Ks an hour and everyone I love is in this vehicle. And now it's super dangerous. Like, and if I then pull over and refuse, if I don't have the tools to fix the car, what what what am I gonna do? You know? Mate, of course, you're gonna call the roadside assistance. Of course, you're gonna pull the car over. It's the same with your brain. If you find yourself like getting really rigid in your thinking and you find yourself kind of getting cranky all the time or just crying or wanting to vomit out of nowhere. That happened to me as well, like when I was in lockdown in Melbourne.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  I'm just like, out of nowhere, I just wanted to spew, just like, like I've been drinking tequila kind of, I was like, that's not good. It was just a signal going, boom, I was on the phone to my doctor like that. Because I know that happens about two weeks before the other shit starts. So being on top of that kind of stuff, like, get some tools. You'd pull the car over. Like, if you don't have that shit, get, learn how to do it. Get some tools and get your family there safely. Because you're, that's ultimately who's gonna get hurt if you don't look after things.

• 2:06:42Speaker 01

  Sorry to come all heavy, but that's the truth.

• 2:06:44Rich Roll?

  No, that's good. That's good. Maybe we'll get some links and some other resources we can fill the show notes out with.

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  Oh, please, yeah.

• 2:06:52Rich Roll?

  People with some places they can go and some phone numbers they can call.

• 2:06:57Speaker 01

  Start at Susan David and go from there.

• 2:06:59Rich Roll?

  There you go.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  Start at Susan David.

• 2:07:01Rich Roll?

  That's right, right?

• 2:07:02Speaker 01

  She is the business. Uncomfortable feelings are the price of admission to a meaningful life. Be with that and that is half the work done.

• 2:07:10Rich Roll?

  Right on, man. All right. To be continued.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 2:07:14Rich Roll?

  Love you, man. Thank you. Yeah, we're done for today.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  I love you, dude. I love you, man. No, I was like, really? You're gonna have me back?

• 2:07:21Rich Roll?

  Plants. And go see Asher's live new NTNNNN or whatever it is.

• 2:07:27Speaker 01

  That's it. You got it right.

• 2:07:28Rich Roll?

  If you're in Australia. I don't even know what it's like. Not the new.

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  Nighttime, nighttime news network, national nightly news.

• 2:07:34Rich Roll?

  There you go.

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's not a, it's not a fake news show. It's a fake news show. Cause the news is a product, all right? A product like anything else. And depending on how exactly the fact is told to you, you can either think, wow, those people really need our help and we should look after them because as a country we look after each other and we think everyone deserves a fair go. Or if you read it in another outlet, you go, fuck off, we're full. This fair go's only for white people. But that's what happens here in our country. And we, I think the way that particularly, I think the way the news media in our, in our country has been behaving and really needs to be held to account. And, um.

• 2:08:12Rich Roll?

  And you're the man to do it.

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  Dude, I, you know, putting my entire network career at risk every night, I promise you. All right. Cheers.

• 2:08:20Rich Roll?

  Love you, man.

• 2:08:32Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well. Well as podcast merch, 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. Supporting

• 2:09:17Rich Roll?

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

• 2:10:01Rich Roll?

  as Dan Drake. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  Namaste.