189. Khalil Rafati: How Raw Foods and Juicing Saved My Life After Years of Drug Abuse

From 109-pound homeless heroin addict to multimillionaire entrepreneur, Khalil Rafati’s brain literally rewired itself using the same neurochemical pathways that once destroyed him. Here’s what blew my mind: he didn’t fight his dopamine addiction, he strategically replaced it with life-giving sources like cold-pressed juices, raw nutrition, and consistent morning routines. When you flood your system with nutrient-dense foods instead of toxins, neuroplasticity does the heavy lifting — your brain rebuilds itself at the cellular level. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community for Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Get Khalil Rafati’s books, “Remembering to Live: Lessons I Learned Crawling Out of Hell“ here: http://bit.ly/45nAmvP Check out his first book, “I Forgot to Die” here: http://bit.ly/4fl5noN Connect with Khalil Rafati Website: http://bit.ly/3JfAOVo Instagram: http://bit.ly/4mjXGkQ Instagram: http://bit.ly/3UOt2Es TikTok: http://bit.ly/3HithVh Facebook: http://bit.ly/3HhhuXe Thank you to our partners H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP: SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP: JOIN AND GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS: 20% OFF FIRST ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij CARAWAY: “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS: “ULTIMATE” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC GENETIC TEST: ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 03:01 Khalil Rafati’s Back Story 08:22 Healing from Generational Trauma 14:46 Recovering from Addiction and Homelessness 22:55 Discovering the Power of Whole Foods 27:12 Trying Out Sunlife Organics 28:48 Scientology Rehab Experience 33:14 The Impact of Going Back to the Basics 37:10 Deciding to Make a Change 41:12 Turning into a Domesticated Animal Bred for Taxation 46:14 Human Body’s Capability to Heal 52:46 The Power and Grace of God 58:51 The Journey with Sunlife Organics 1:17:02 Connect with Khalil 1:19:59 What does it mean to you to be an “Ultimate Human?” Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Most people don't want to change.

• 0:03Gary Brecka?

  They want the outcome of what change would give them, but they don't want to go through the change.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  I desperately wanted a change. I was in so much pain and there was so much self hatred that drugs just were a great solution. If you think about the fact that how many decades did I smoke cigarettes? How much poison did I shoot into my veins?

• 0:21Gary Brecka?

  And then to be sitting in front of me right now, you look healthy, your eyes are clear. You're obviously very vibrant. You're successful. That is the power of the resiliency of the human body.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  My willingness to raise my hand and have the humility to ask for help and then go work began to purify my soul.

• 0:37Gary Brecka?

  What makes you so passionate and purpose driven? Is that you used a lot of juices, whole foods, nutrient dense foods to actually heal you.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  I want everybody to have the same experience that I had once I started putting good shit in my body and stopped putting bad shit in my body.

• 0:54Gary Brecka?

  It is astounding what happens to human beings when you give the body the raw material that needs to do its job.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  I went from feeling like a worthless piece of shit that had no value to feeling powerful.

• 1:05Gary Brecka?

  What was the aha moment where you said, I'm gonna open a storefront, I'm gonna build a brand?

• 1:11Speaker 00

  It was overwhelming how much money was coming in. The challenge was.

• 1:27Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity and everything in between. And you know, I always talk about how podcasts, but you know, the most powerful, passionate, most driven, impactful people in the world have solved a problem in their life. And today's podcast guest, I think, has solved a problem that I pray none of you or your loved ones has ever faced and overcome it to be one of the most impactful in this industry. And I, I can't wait to run this podcast with him. Welcome to the podcast.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 2:05Gary Brecka?

  Khalil Rafati, man, um, you know, I've, I've really followed your stories. A lot of my team members have actually read your book and, and found it to be really inspiring and really impactful. Um, and like I said, So many of the passion, purpose-driven folks that have come on my podcast are not the most credentialed. You know, I've had people on the podcast that have had chronic Lyme disease, modern medicine had nothing to offer them. They became a citizen scientist, solved this problem, and now they've cured hundreds of thousands of people of this debilitating condition. And a lot of my audience is not familiar with your story. And I think that

• 2:48Gary Brecka?

  your story of being homeless, addicted to drugs, 60 pounds later than you were right now, I can't believe that you've took 60 pounds off that frame. In a time where being homeless, and I've heard you talk about this, was not as popular or as convenient as it is now, you know, where they gave out needles and crack pipes and blankets and bottled water. It was a time where when you urinated, you got arrested. When you slept on the sidewalk, you got arrested. When you were dealing drugs, you got arrested. There wasn't a compassionate sort of community around to really prop this up. And it's always fascinating to me when

• 3:30Gary Brecka?

  people that don't have a mentor, parent, a family member, a figure in their life to pull them out of something, somehow find something within themselves that turns their entire life around. Can you talk a little bit about that, that moment, that tipping point? And maybe from my audience edification that don't know who you are, talk a little bit about where that started, and we'll talk about where the journey's gone.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. God, there's so much I want to unpack. And I'm grateful that those people, compassionate people, weren't there because compassionate people can also become enablers. And if people were... Doing what they do now and, you know, giving me clothing and tents and food and money and water and clean needles and crack pipes, I would have kept going.

• 4:20Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, it's kind of convenient.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I, and I, and I hate to say that, but you don't clean up unless you bottom out. And, and it's hard to bottom out. That's why you see all of these luxury rehabs popping up all over Florida and Malibu and all these, you know, coastal cities, because you, you have people that have unlimited funds. Really difficult to bottom out when you have unlimited funds.

• 4:45Gary Brecka?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  So, um, in my particular case, um, it took homelessness, it took being destitute, it took being completely, uh, with no,

• 5:00Speaker 00

  with no other option, I, I, I was brought to my knees by my own ego. I literally just kept going until the fucking wheels came off. Um, in the beginning, binge drinking and blackout and, you know, drugs and partying and all that stuff, uh, which led to ultimately later, because it is progressive, shooting heroin, shooting cocaine, smoking crack.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  I was trying to extinguish myself. I was trying to nullify myself. I was trying to do anything other than feel me.

• 5:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  I didn't want to be me. There was so.

• 5:42Gary Brecka?

  Your book titles, I forgot to die.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  I forgot to die. Yeah, yeah. I, I, I was so, I was in so much pain and there was so much self hatred that drugs just were a great solution. So, um, yeah.

• 5:59Gary Brecka?

  And were they a great solution because you just, you didn't feel the pain, you didn't feel the, the loss? You didn't feel the hatred? You just were numb?

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean,

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Particularly with heroin and cocaine mixed together intravenously because I'm a control freak, I was able to, I think, you know, maybe our buddy Andrew would probably tell us why, but controlled chemicals going on in my brain, I felt, I felt love, I felt peace, I felt close, I felt close to God, I felt like that I was, I was higher than a fucking kite and it felt so good. And then I would come down and I would feel so awful. And it's just, you just keep going and going.

• 6:46Gary Brecka?

  You know, I've had the fortune of working with quite a number of addicts and addicts in different categories. And I've developed the philosophy and a saying that the, the absence of dopamine is the presence of addiction. And the reason why I say that is because dopamine is this neurotransmitter that's the main driver of behavior. And when we don't have it, we seek things that reward us with dopamine. And this could be as simple as an everyday American that has a sugar addiction, or as complicated as someone who has cocaine, heroin, or narcotic addiction. And it runs the full spectrum, workaholics, workaholics, you know,

• 7:26Gary Brecka?

  compulsive gamblers, compulsive promiscuity, these dopamine seeking behaviors. And I noticed the pattern in a lot of addicts, if not all of the addicts, is that they never said, I woke up one day and said, I want to get really banged up.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:42Gary Brecka?

  They woke up one day and said, I want to feel normal. And it was like the search for normalcy. And it's interesting that you describe it that way, because it's like that became your comfort zone.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:54Gary Brecka?

  Not your, you know, you sought that because that's where you felt normal.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I felt, I could make all the ouchies go away. And there were so many layers, there was so much trauma from my childhood. My parents were immigrants. My father was born in Palestine before Israel and was there, I think he was 12 years old when Israel became a state or became what it is today.

• 8:24Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  So he became a refugee in the land that he was born in. And regardless of which side of the aisle you're on, pro Palestinian, pro Israeli.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  What a horrible fucking thing to go through.

• 8:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, for anyone.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, for anyone. So he went through that. My mother was abandoned on a doorstep at four years old by her biological mother and left with two sisters during World War II and she was put into a work camp. So both of my parents went through an incredible amount of trauma and had horrible lives and had really in hindsight, almost no business bringing someone into this world because they were so fucking broken and they were really truly broken.

• 9:16Gary Brecka?

  Do you think that trauma is generational? Do you think that trauma can transcend? I mean, we know there's no gene for trauma. You don't inherit it per se. It's not transferable, but it does seem that, you know, and I've heard people talk about this a number of times that, you know, trauma can be generational. You know, your parents went through really traumatic experiences and now maybe that shaped the way that you deal with stress and experiences because you moved to LA to be an actor.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  I did, like most idiots. Yeah. Well, because I'm going to become famous and that's going to fix all my problems.

• 9:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I'm sleeping on the sidewalk shooting arrows.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, that's the, that, that's a lot of people come from the Midwest with those hopes. I think a lot of it has to do with lack of exposure to sunlight and I'm sure you and all your friends could speak more to that, but I definitely suffered from seasonal affective disorder.

• 10:12Gary Brecka?

  I'm a huge believer in that. I went to grad school in Chicago.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:15Gary Brecka?

  And same thing. You don't see the sun for seven months?

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Toledo, Ohio, in the dead of winter is so fucking cold and dark and miserable.

• 10:23Gary Brecka?

  And everything's dead and gray.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Dead and gray and God doesn't exist.

• 10:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  I mean, it is so depressing. And then you add in unfortunately incest and violence and whiskey and just all of the horrible shit that was happening to me as a child.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  It was, it was, it was fucking terrible. I mean, it was a terrible. I'm laughing because it almost sounds like I'm describing a book, but I've done so much work on it that it doesn't, it doesn't grab me like it used to. I've done, I've done a tremendous amount of inner child work. Every Wednesday for 90 minutes, I work with somebody.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  And I've healed a lot of that epigenetic imprinting, a lot of that generational curses, a lot of that. There's this woman, Kimmy, in Austin, Texas, who has pretty much held my hand and walked me through a lot of those ouchies. And interestingly enough, you know, oh, whatever, somebody touched my naughty spot. That's not why I shot heroin.

• 11:27Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  And I'm not trying to diminish what happened to me, but a lot of my real trauma came from when I was three years old with spinal meningitis and was dying in a hospital bed. And I never knew that. I never tapped into that. She took me back into that. And we walked through that and I went back into.

• 11:51Gary Brecka?

  You could get into a memory of that?

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Ketamine assisted therapy.

• 11:55Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I was able to go back and remember exactly what it was like laying in that hospital bed. First of all, where the fuck are my parents? Why aren't they here? Today, someone gets sick, you know, the parent is in the chair next to the hospital.

• 12:10Gary Brecka?

  No doubt.

• 12:11Speaker 00

  Not in 1973.

• 12:13Gary Brecka?

  They just dropped you off.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Not in rural Ohio.

• 12:15Gary Brecka?

  Call us when he's ready to leave.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  When your parents are immigrants and they, and they went through wars of their own and they, and they don't know any better. So, um, yeah, I very unfortunately remembered what it was like being alone in Toledo Hospital with spinal meningitis, with them doing a spinal tap to me.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Hearing them whispering off, you know, like, oh, he might not make it or whatever. That was the stuff that really fucked with me. Like, hey, I'm a child. I want someone to hold me. I want someone to, to love me. I want someone to like, take care of me. But my father, who was extremely violent, held my mother captive. My, my mother was born a Jew, but she was raised Catholic. My father was born a Muslim, but he was an atheist.

• 13:05Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  And my mother was this like angelic little five foot being. So white, she was almost translucent.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  And she thought she could fix him. She thought she could change him. And she was, she was suffering from Stockholm syndrome. So I always felt.

• 13:26Gary Brecka?

  Falling in love with your captor.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I always felt unlovable and I always makes statements like I'm, I'm unlovable. I'm a piece of shit. I'm, you know, I mean, my father certainly said many things like that, but throughout much of my adult life, I felt like a worthless piece of shit. And I felt like I, I wasn't worth anything. Well, it turns out there's a reason for that. In a plant medicine ceremony, when I was 17 years clean and sober, I did my first plant medicine ceremony. And I actually saw why I felt like a piece of shit. It's because my mom didn't love me. Doesn't make her a bad person.

• 14:04Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  She wasn't capable of loving me. But my mom didn't love me. My mom was being held captive through Stockholm syndrome by my violent abusive father. And, you know, he had his own set of shit and she had her shit. And here's this little boy that's growing up in the midst of that. And I felt no love. I, I didn't feel love.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  I didn't feel love until I was, I think 12. In my, in my first kind of like girlfriend relationship with a girl named Corey Kiefer. She was my little, my little junior high.

• 14:42Gary Brecka?

  She might want to come back now. Things are going pretty well, Corey.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  We're best friends.

• 14:45Gary Brecka?

  Oh, you are?

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're best friends. I love her. I love her daughters.

• 14:49Gary Brecka?

  That's awesome.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  That was the first time I felt love was 12 years old. So it was tough. It was really, really tough.

• 14:57Gary Brecka?

  You know, I think it's, um, for people that have never been an addict or known a true addict. I think it's hard to conceptualize. I mean, I think a lot of public perception is that it's a sign of weakness. That it's a choice. And, you know, I, I, I've read a lot and looked into your story. You know, you went out to LA and it's sort of a slow progression to then being on the street. And at some point you, you got comfortable being on the street, but was there a community there? Like, were there, did you feel welcome there because other people at the same level? And you could openly do drugs and nobody's judging you. I mean.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  I just wanted to get high.

• 15:39Gary Brecka?

  You just wanted to get high.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  I just want to get high. I didn't want to feel like myself. I, I, I.

• 15:44Gary Brecka?

  And at all costs, even if it just meant sleeping outside on the sidewalk.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  When I was a child, whether it was shoplifting or vandalism or masturbating or video games or at 10, 11, 12, drinking with the older kids in the neighborhood, taking a puff of a joint, drinking beers that were still full from my Billy Beer beer can collection. Do you get that reference? Billy Beer? Are you old enough to get that reference?

• 16:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Sadly, dude, we're the same age.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  I, oh, great. So I had, I had a bunch of Billy Beer because I had a beer can collection and they were full. And I would just go downstairs as, you know, and just crack one open and drink it and, and feel kind of that warmth. Which, you know, eventually the warmth came from the heroin, but in the beginning it was alcohol. I think like with, with many people. Um, so.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Anything that I could do to not feel like me was what I was looking for.

• 16:36Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Dysfunctional relationship.

• 16:38Gary Brecka?

  Just to be present, anything to avoid being present.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Yes, character assassination, you know, drama. I was, I was addicted to anything as long as I didn't have to feel me, which is so fucking crazy because right here, right now, all I want is to feel more.

• 16:55Gary Brecka?

  Right. Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  I just want to feel like me.

• 16:58Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. So, so it's, it's some point, um, which is fascinating to me. You came to a tipping point. There had to be, there was a point where you just raised your hand and said enough is enough, or I don't want this anymore. Um, and somewhere in the cloud of, of addiction and not ever really being, you probably never were truly sober. Um, you know, you had this, this epiphany or this tipping point. I mean, what, what was that about? Like what?

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Well, physically I couldn't go on. I, I mean, I had open sores on my face. I had open sores all over my body. I had scabies. I had ringworm. Um, I was filthy. I smelled, I'm not built for the streets.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  It just was disgusting. I couldn't go on anymore. I didn't, I didn't like.

• 17:45Gary Brecka?

  I've heard you talk about that. You said, I'm a pussy. I don't like to be dirty.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:48Gary Brecka?

  I don't like.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't like.

• 17:50Gary Brecka?

  Cut out for the shit.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Virtuously like, oh gosh, I should try sobriety. No, like I was in so much fucking pain that I had to stop. And so I stopped, uh, reached out to Bob Forrest. Bob Forrest put me in Pasadena Recovery Center, Pasadena Recovery Center, kept me there, drug tested me, you know, triage. It was triage. And then eventually went to, uh, New Perceptions and there was a charity named Musicians Assistance Program, MAPS, uh, which is now Music Cares. They've, they've merged together, but they, because I was making music and, you know, doing the whole like, want to be a rock star, want to be an actor or whatever, fucking anything, you know, to, because that was going to fix me. If I could become a rock star, then I would.

• 18:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that would have been great. Now you would just have money and an addiction.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  So, um.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  They, they kept me and in, in that sober living, transitional living home, I was with a bunch of other people that were total fuck up losers. I think the word was, is it indigent or indigent? I think it's indigent. Okay. But I don't know. So we were all like basically food stamps, like had nowhere to go, had no family, had nothing. And which was good because you put all the fuck ups together and then somehow for some reason, like you can't go any lower. So we shared our, our cigarettes. We rolled the cheap cigarettes. We went to um, Smart and Final and bought the big prego things of pasta sauce and made pasta for one another. We got that horrible fucking coffee.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  We, we survived, but we used gallows humor. We made wildly inappropriate, oftentimes racist jokes at one another because everybody there was different. Black, Mexican, Jewish, Arab, white, English would um, actually I was gonna bring up somebody's name, but you can't. Yeah. But, but there was somebody that was actually English who, whose father was like a famous rock star and he was very white and we would murderously make fun of him and call him a woman and a, you know, this and gay and whatever. Nothing was off the table. We used gallows humor, dark humor, inappropriate humor, whatever the term you want to call. We used humor as a means of making it through the day and those belly laughs were so fucking healing. All of that trauma that had been pushed inside and pushed inside and pushed inside.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  The beginning was, the beginning of the recovery was, was humor and laughter. Which I get into a lot of trouble because I still make wildly inappropriate jokes with this whole fucking cancel culture thing. People want to take something you say out of context. Dangerous time. Yeah. And it's just, and it's fucking silly. These are just words. Yeah. These are not, these are not like weapons. I'm not drawing blood, you know? Right. So um. There was a bond there and we bonded together and strangely enough Frank, my buddy, who was my roommate, still clean and sober.

• 20:39Gary Brecka?

  Wow. You're still connected to this.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  He's an archaeologist, Bob Forrest, the guy who helped me get in there, he's doing fucking amazing. There's a bunch of people from early on that were just all time fucking losers that were never ever gonna make anything of themselves, are living these amazing lives now.

• 20:56Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 20:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:58Gary Brecka?

  Listen, there's what I share on this podcast and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here, but my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the ultimate human community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I

• 21:43Gary Brecka?

  use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory, this is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than a hundred dollars a month. Your health is your wealth and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com/vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now, let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. So, you know, even after the addiction is dealt with, and so now you're getting sort of clear minded for the first time, as you're waking up and sort of having this epiphany

• 22:26Gary Brecka?

  and really seeing the world around you for what is truly around you and you don't have the addiction as a crutch anymore, like to me, that's almost more frightening than raising your hand and asking for help because at least you had comfort zone and something you could always go back to, which is, you know, drugs and alcohol and being in that space where you were numbed. But now. You gotta make something out of your life because now you're

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:53Gary Brecka?

  Awakens over.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  We were encouraged to become self-supporting through your own contributions. That was the thing they said in in 12 step meetings. So that was, you know, literally I had to like raise my hand and say like, hey, I'm still technically homeless. My sponsor's letting me sleep at his house, but like I need work.

• 23:07Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  And this guy, Daryl Cobb, picked me up at Starbucks at 7 a.m. The next morning and gave me some, you know, manual labor to do. The, the work and my willingness to work, which I think, I think comes from genes. I think that, that Polack in me, that Arab in me, that industrious kind of like, my willingness to raise my hand and have the humility to ask for help and then go work. That very difficult menial labor in the very beginning began to purify my soul.

• 23:38Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  But then I got very, very lucky and a guy that I used to get high with, who just decided one day to fucking quit. This yogi guy named Sean, who lives in LA, drives a fucking Volkswagen van, the whole nine yards. Vegan, you know, with the Mason jars.

• 23:53Gary Brecka?

  Van driver.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Green juice.

• 23:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  He was one of the only people who would take my phone calls and I reached out to him and I was like, hey, man, I'm alive. I barely made it, but like, I'm, I'm fucked. Like I'm, I'm like a hundred thousand dollars in debt and I'm on food stamps, but like I'm sober. I'm not doing any drugs ever again. Like I need, I need help. And he was like, where are you? I said, I'm, I'm staying up at Topanga Skyline. He's like, I'll come visit you. Couple, few years, maybe six years older than me, drove up there, brought me Mason jars of green juice and burdock juice and ginger and turmeric, brought me pure synergy greens powder. This is, this is 2003.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Bought me goji berries, brought me cacao beans, brought me raw macadamia nuts from Hawaii and sprouts. He's a fucking hippie, weirdo yogi guy. And he brought me this stuff and I didn't like it, but I obviously consumed it because I was fucking starving.

• 24:56Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  And two things happened. Number one, I immediately felt a life force.

• 25:02Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Coming into me immediately.

• 25:04Gary Brecka?

  Cause you just hadn't had whole food.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  Nothing.

• 25:07Gary Brecka?

  Nothing nutritious.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  I all of a sudden tapped into that life force. Those sprouts that he gave me, those raw macadamia nuts avocado. He also brought, oh, that was another thing. He brought me avocado. And when he cut it in half and, and he goes, he goes, give me that. What are you doing? I was going to throw the avocado seed away. And he grabbed it out of my hand and he washed it off and he held the avocado seed in his hand. He goes, do you see this? This is gold. This is life. This is life force. Hold this in your hand. I'm like, okay. And I held it in my hand. He's like, now go outside and throw that as far as you can into the woods and let it go. Do what it's supposed to do. It was a very pivotal moment for me. I've actually never talked about that before, but I just remembered that.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  That, that moment, I actually felt something in that avocado seed. And I felt something as I ate that avocado and the macadamia nuts and I drank that ginger burdock nasty fucking tasting juice. So one thing is life, life force entered into me. Secondly, I began to expel like nobody's business. The more of that stuff that I consumed, which kind of made me feel high in a way. The more bile and, and shit that came out of me.

• 26:21Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Because my body all of a sudden was like, oh, wow. We got a hold of real nutrition.

• 26:26Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Some nutrients.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Let's start to expel some of the toxins. And just like any drug addict would, there was nothing special about me. I grabbed onto it and I started to chase it and we started hanging out all the time. And any money that I could make doing menial labor, I would immediately go with him to Air One, the original Air One.

• 26:48Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Boulevard. Absolutely.

• 26:50Gary Brecka?

  Back in the, yeah.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  Back in the day, back in 2003, 2004.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Real Raw Live was another place in Hollywood. Giuliano's had a raw place. Now this was all vegan shit and I wasn't a vegan by any stretch of the imagination. But it didn't matter. I was getting that life force inside of me. And eventually what happened is this lunatic named Oginus opened up this place called Rawsome. Or like Raw Garage in Venice. And they sold raw dairy and raw butter and you had to be like a member to make it legal. And we.

• 27:27Gary Brecka?

  It's so crazy that raw dairy and raw butter is shady, you know?

• 27:30Speaker 00

  Well, and, and, and by the way, and me, me and my buddy Elijah would go there and we would take raw liver from Amish farms. And raw butter and berries and raw honey and raw cream. And we would put it into a blender and we would blend it up and we would drink it. I swear to God, it felt like drugs. When that shit got inside my body, it felt like drugs. And I just became obsessed. I became obsessed with it. The crazy thing, I'm a Libra, I'm insecure and I'm very vain.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  People started complimenting me. Wow, man, you look great. What are you doing? Because my face began to fill out, right? The collagen began to return to my body and the life force began to flow through me. So as any good addict would, I just fucking kept going and kept going.

• 28:22Gary Brecka?

  Thank God for that.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  I became obsessed, so much so, if anybody out there knows what Expo West is, it's the, you know Expo West, right?

• 28:30Gary Brecka?

  I've heard of it.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  In Anaheim, it's the biggest Whole Foods, health food, whatever thing in the world. I would literally like pretend I was like somebody else and I would sneak into Expo West.

• 28:41Gary Brecka?

  Get the gift bags?

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Because nobody wanted to pack up the shit. They just want to give it away.

• 28:48Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  So every Sunday at the end of Expo West, I would literally fill my, you know, 17 year old Volvo car with 250,000 miles on it. I would fill it to the ceiling with all of the samples that they were giving out. All of the chlorella, all of the spirulina, all of the nuts, all of the granola, all of the, basically life force, the things that my body was depleted of. And it made me feel high. It made me feel good. And so I'm, I'm going to chase that. And when I started doing the turmeric and the ginger.

• 29:21Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, we're going to fire these up.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:24Gary Brecka?

  Sunlight, by the way, is, is your brand.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Sunlight is my brand.

• 29:26Gary Brecka?

  Which one of these should I try first? The Fast Eddie?

• 29:29Speaker 00

  I like the Fast Eddie, yeah.

• 29:30Gary Brecka?

  Is it? All right. It's green apple, lemon, ginger and cayenne.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's got a little kick to it.

• 29:34Gary Brecka?

  All right.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 29:36Gary Brecka?

  Let's try this.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  So that was, that was similar to some of the stuff that, uh, that Sean was making me do. He would also encourage me to do these cleanses.

• 29:45Gary Brecka?

  They'd smell so fresh. Is that great?

• 29:51Gary Brecka?

  Oh, that is spicy.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  It's got a bite.

• 29:56Gary Brecka?

  It's got a little bite to it.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  It's got a bite. He would encourage me to do these cleanses where I would fast and only drink these types of juices for like five days, seven days.

• 30:05Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:06Gary Brecka?

  And then you were able to do it?

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, and take psyllium husk and then we would go get colonics and like, I got, I got fucking weird.

• 30:13Gary Brecka?

  Dude, this is, that's not weird, by the way. That's healing. I mean, those things have been around for thousands of years. And, you know, sometimes in modern medicine, we, we want to poo poo things that haven't done a randomized clinical trial, but things don't make it a thousand, 2,000, 3,000 years in the practice of medicine, Chinese medicine, or any other form of medicine, Ayurveda, without working.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  Right.

• 30:37Gary Brecka?

  I mean, something that they were doing 3,000 years ago that didn't work, it probably didn't make it to today. And so.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  That's true. That's true.

• 30:45Gary Brecka?

  I think, I think there's, I mean, we're like, you know, coming around to the benefits of dry sauna. Well, you know, welcome to the 21st century. The Finns have been doing that for hundreds of years.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  So.

• 30:56Gary Brecka?

  Russians, Indians.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  My buddy Ryan had gone to whatever that, I don't want to disparage any religion, but whatever that religion is in Hollywood that the celebrities do.

• 31:07Gary Brecka?

  Scientology?

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Scientology. So my buddy Ryan went to a Scientology rehab and he came back and he looked great. And I said, I said, what are you doing? Cause now I'm addicted.

• 31:15Gary Brecka?

  They do a lot of sauna there.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  So he told me they would do 20 minutes of sauna, three to five minutes of cold shower, 20 minutes of sauna, and they would do rounds of it. And he said, and we would take niacin. And I'm like, niacin? I remember when I was a little kid.

• 31:29Gary Brecka?

  B vitamins.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  Trying to lift weights. And he goes, yeah, we would take niacin and, and get flushed and we would scrub ourselves in the sauna with a boar's hair bristle brush. So I began scrubbing. My lymphatic, you know, my lymph nodes, my crotch, my groins. And I'm not, I'm not giving anybody medical advice. I don't know if any of this shit works or not works. I'm going to tell you what I did to go from 109 pound junkie who couldn't walk from here to the door without getting winded to being 173 pound athlete that is insanely strong and vibrant and full of life.

• 32:09Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  These were the things I did. I did the colonics. I did the saunas. I scrubbed my body with a Boers hair bristle brush.

• 32:18Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  I drank water first thing in the morning.

• 32:22Gary Brecka?

  Lymphatic brushing, it's good for you.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  Put salt in the water, a little bit of lemon juice.

• 32:26Gary Brecka?

  Amen.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Did yoga. Shawn, he's not just a yogi, he's also a masseuse. That's how he makes his money. That's how he supports himself. So he would, he would come and he would massage me and, and we would laugh. And another thing, it was very healing to have a man touching me in a way that was healing me and not harming me. Because as a child, I was touched for, for the wrong reasons.

• 32:54Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  And it made me feel dirty and gross. On the streets, I would let people do stuff to me so I could get money for drugs, which made me feel dirty and gross. But now all of a sudden, I'm putting this life force into my body and my friend's coming over and he's massaging me, right? I'm doing the saunas, I'm scrubbing my lymph nodes, I'm doing colonics, I'm, you know, taking, I mean, we were, we were pounding.

• 33:18Gary Brecka?

  Thank God for this guy, man.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  Thank God, thank God, yeah.

• 33:21Gary Brecka?

  What seemed like, you know, out of left field, you know, psycho is actually knew what he was doing.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:28Gary Brecka?

  You know?

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 33:30Gary Brecka?

  Whole foods, nutrient dense foods, you know, get your waste elimination pathways going.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:36Gary Brecka?

  Colonics, sauna, movement.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  He's 63 years old now and has the body of a 28 year old.

• 33:43Gary Brecka?

  I believe everywhere to that.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  He's fucking shredded.

• 33:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  He's shredded and strong and vibrant and has never done traditional medicine. So, you know, this isn't like. I don't want to say, oh, traditional medicine is bad or whatever it is. But, um, but I will say that the solutions that the people that were credentialed for people like me, going back to my childhood through my young adult life. SSIs, narcotics. Wellbutrin, Lexapro, Seriquil, Trazodone. I mean, that, that was the solution. Yep. Yeah, that was, yeah, 19, I was 19 years old when I first got prescribed Xanax. So the solution was put this into your body and you're going to feel better.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  And, um, and, and for a moment it works. I mean, Xanax is a bit of a panacea. If you're fucking anxious or you're on a transatlantic flight or, or, you know, there, there is a time and a place for things like Xanax and there is a time and a place for things like opioids, if, especially if you're getting something amputated or doing surgery or dental work or whatever. But, but to think that we should just throw a farm, a pharmacological or, or whatever the word is. Pharmacology. At, at, at someone versus addressing why that person is feeling that way in the first place. Yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  I mean, 22 years later, after years of yoga, years of breath work, years of, um, all kinds of different modalities of healing.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  I don't want to feel anything other than how I feel. In fact, I want to feel more. You want to be present, which is the polar opposite of where you were. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I went from feeling like a worthless piece of shit that had no value and was totally unlovable to, to feeling powerful. We won't go into what we were talking about before the camera started, but do you remember when I was talking about the negotiations and my business thing? Yeah, yeah, that was interesting. The, the man, the man that sat in that chair that felt bold and powerful enough to do those negotiations came about.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  As a result of putting clean, healthy food into my body, lifting heavy shit, sweating every day, getting exposure to sunlight in my eyes. All, all the basic shit.

• 36:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  All the basic shit.

• 36:12Gary Brecka?

  Isn't it astounding how, you know, we're returning back to the basics to actually find that life force within us? You know, I was on your Instagram and I saw one of my industry peers that I hold in very high regard, Andrew Huberman.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:28Gary Brecka?

  At your place here in New York. Yeah. Urbemate.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:32Gary Brecka?

  Taking pictures and having Urbemate with folks and, and I think he's absolutely one of the most brilliant pioneers in our space and one of the more authentic, you know, behind a microphone. He and I text each other a lot. But I saw, I saw him at your, your space. He's a good human.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:51Gary Brecka?

  I saw him at your place and, and then I started looking into your story, you know, in advance of the podcast. And I was like, wow, far this guy's come to have, you know, someone like Andrew Huberman endorsing and participating and, and, you know, putting his products in your, in your stores. And, and now I'm starting to understand that, you know, again, what makes you so passionate and purpose driven is that you use a lot of this, you know, juices, whole foods, you know, nutrient dense foods to actually heal you.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:26Gary Brecka?

  And I've actually had PhD MDs from Harvard University on my podcast that are treating patients with drug resistant mental illness with things like keto diets and whole food diets. I've heard and read the studies about, you know, Dr. Amen, looking at the brains of ADHD.

• 37:50Gary Brecka?

  Children, ADD and ADHD kids, and putting them on whole food diets, taking things like processed foods and grains, things out of their diets, and having these dramatic shifts in 14 to 21 days, just getting those. So in your case, a lot of it was getting real toxins, real poisons out of your body, but replacing it with nutrient dense foods that are actually, I call it feeding the temple.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 38:17Gary Brecka?

  And so was that the genesis of sunlight?

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:20Gary Brecka?

  This is how sunlight was born?

• 38:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:21Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  So I, I eventually through a lot of hard work and being, as I said, I think, I do think genetics, I do think ethnicity has a lot to do with it. I, like Arabs and Polish people are just some of the most resilient people on the planet.

• 38:38Gary Brecka?

  Grinders.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  When you put, when you put that together, I'm like a fucking fire hydrant.

• 38:42Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  It's, it's very difficult to harm me.

• 38:46Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  And, and I'm very, very resilient. So I rose up in the field of recovery. I, you know, became an interventionist and a sober companion and working at, at high end treatment centers in Malibu, eventually opened up my own place, Riviera Recovery.

• 39:01Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Was making money by being hand over fist. I mean, it was insane how much money was coming in. It was overwhelming how much money was coming in. The challenge was, most of the people didn't want to get better. Most of the people didn't want to change. Most people don't want to change.

• 39:19Gary Brecka?

  I agree.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  And that's what I found.

• 39:21Gary Brecka?

  They want the outcome of what change would give them, but they don't want to go through the change.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  They want their toys back.

• 39:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  They want someone to listen to their sad story.

• 39:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  But do they really want to change?

• 39:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  I desperately wanted to fucking change. I desperately wanted to fucking change. And I had just enough humility, which I struggle with, but I found just enough humility to ask for help. And.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Addiction then became a superpower. It became a superpower.

• 39:50Gary Brecka?

  Well, beating it becomes a superpower, right? Cause it's like, ah, did you have this attitude like I'm better than that? I'm not gonna go back.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Did I beat it? Did I beat it or did I switch ingredients?

• 40:01Gary Brecka?

  Ah, that's a good, that's a good point.

• 40:02Speaker 00

  I don't think I beat it.

• 40:03Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. I don't think anyone ever really beats addiction.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  If you're, if you're an addict, if you're an addict, you're an addict. That's how you're wired. I am, that, that's how I'm wired. I've made peace with it. I wake up three to five times in the middle of the night and I'm obsessing about the fact that my holy cow smoothie was a little bit runny yesterday when I was at Sun Life and it's eating me alive. Three to five times in the middle of the night.

• 40:27Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  I'm fucking obsessed.

• 40:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that fixation.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Yes, because I want everybody to have the same experience that I had. Once I started putting good shit in my body and stopped putting bad shit in my body. Put the cigarettes away. Eventually put the processed sugar away via Rick Rubin, who was a tremendous mentor in my early recovery.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Stop putting the gluten into my body, which I don't think, uh, it was necessarily the gluten. I think it was the, the, the, the nature of the wheat, right? The glyphosate and all the bullshit. I'm probably mispronouncing that.

• 41:03Gary Brecka?

  No, you're so true. My audience is well aware of that. I mean, a lot of people are not actually allergic to gluten. They're allergic to the glyphosate and the folic acid and the things that are in GMO modified crops that are mainly the gluten based crops. And because it has gluten, we've started this massive, uh, and I think it's good to be gluten free because you're avoiding the things that are generally bad for you anyway.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:25Gary Brecka?

  Because in most of those gluten containing foods, you have the, the highest amount of, you know, genetically modified foods. You have the highest amount of, you know, sprayed with folic acid, you know, they're, they're crops that are generally saturated with glyphosate. So there are a lot of other toxins that are on their way in, just like we talked about before, you're the, the old adage of I go to Europe and I lose weight eating the same foods that I blow up like a tick on over here.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Every summer, every summer for the last, I don't know how many, I have rich friends and they invite me to Europe and I hop on their jet and I go over there and. Eat the fuck out of pasta and pizza and Yeah, olive oil and wine. And I come back and I don't drink wine, but I come back and I'm like, this is crazy. I haven't put on any weight and I was eating like a pregnant woman. Mm hmm. And the difference is, is because it's real food over there. Yeah. We don't have real food. What, what happened, and I don't know how it happened, but I know why it happened. It's greed. Mm hmm. But what happened is all of a sudden, God gave a woman the ability to procreate in her womb, a woman. Good point.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  I know. Well, because, I mean, Tim Cook might argue with me because I know there's a pregnant emoji on my phone of a man, but um, Is there a pregnant emoji of a man? If you put in pregnant, it'll, it'll show a man. Hmm. Yeah. Um, which I didn't ask. I mean, as a human biologist, that follows me. Yeah. So, um, God gave a woman that right. I swore I wasn't going to get political and I'm, and I'm actually not. I'm, I'm. Yeah. Do it. Okay. So, so, um, God gave, God gave women the right to procreate in, in their womb and these beautiful, perfect beings come out. Mm hmm.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  And, and immediately they are just subjected to all of these fucking horrific aborted fetal tissues and mercury and all this poison. And they're just fucking. Yeah. Right? Attenuated viruses. And, and, and then, and then. Aluminum. All of that. And then, then the water that they are bathed in, that they drink is, is loaded with, with fluoride and chloramine and all this shit. The air that they're breathing is, is filled with all this, whatever weird shit that they're spraying. Aluminum. The food is loaded with, with, with, uh, with pesticides, insecticides, all this, everything is, is designed to.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  Turn you into a domesticated animal bred for taxation.

• 43:59Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  That's what happened.

• 44:01Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  That's what happened.

• 44:03Gary Brecka?

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• 44:47Gary Brecka?

  That's drinkh2tab.com and upgrade your hydration today. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  That is a stark wake up call. Yeah, it's well, it's fucking terrifying.

• 45:00Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  I don't want to be a domesticated animal bred for taxation. I am a particle of God. I'm a human being. I'm here to bring light to the planet. I want to shine. I want to dance. I want to do my dance. This is my dance and you're enjoying my dance.

• 45:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  And it's not, it's not for everybody, but this is my dance. And this is, this is what I'm here to do. And um, somehow, thank God, I was strong enough to survive all of that bullshit. All of that manmade bullshit. And I have returned to the source, which is when you take a sip of that, you're eating the sun. That's sun life. That's the life force.

• 45:45Gary Brecka?

  Oh, I like that.

• 45:46Speaker 00

  That's the life force that Sean brought to me up at the top of Topanga. When he made me hold that avocado seed in my hand, when he handed me those sprouts, when he handed me those raw macadamia nuts, when he handed me the pure synergy greens powder and the macadamia nuts and the, and the, I mean, and the goji berries. And I began to put that stuff in my body and feel that like, oh my God, I feel this life force. And like, I am, I am so. Fucking strong now. I am insanely strong. I'm insanely driven. I'm insanely energetic. And if you think about the fact that how many years, how many decades did I smoke cigarettes? How much poison did I shoot into my veins?

• 46:28Speaker 00

  How much processed fucking food? I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, for God's sakes.

• 46:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  We didn't know that that was junk food.

• 46:34Gary Brecka?

  Damn, they're so.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  It was just food.

• 46:36Gary Brecka?

  The body is so resilient. You know, it's fascinating to me. I've actually seen images of a human liver, which is roughly the size of an odd shaped basketball.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 46:45Gary Brecka?

  Big, big organ. Shrink the size of your fist and completely regenerate. And I've seen fibrotic lung tissue images become non-fibrotic, and which we used to think was not reversible. I have seen and met people and known their stories that have healed from autoimmune cancer, multiple chronic disease, type 2 diabetes. I am fascinated and deeply believe in the human body's capacity to heal itself. And I was reading a nature journal that, you know, the estimate of the total number of cells in the body, some, let's say 32 trillion, 52 trillion, whatever it is, there's a lot of them.

• 47:31Gary Brecka?

  Every day, 300 billion cells in our body turn over. So 300 billion cells that were with you yesterday are not going to be with you tomorrow.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 47:39Gary Brecka?

  And what this journal was talking about was the reason why most healing does not occur and does not become permanent. And we talk about five year survival rates and not cures. Or we talk about the percentage of remission and not permanent remission is because we don't change the frequency that we send those cells. We don't change the nutrition that we send those cells. We don't help those cells eliminate waste, repair, detoxify, regenerate. And we expect this different result. It's like the definition of insanity.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:11Gary Brecka?

  Right? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And we think that for a period of time, we're going to put a pharmaceutical or a chemical or a synthetic in the body, fix whatever the specific issue is that we need to address at that moment, and then go back to bathing our cellular biology in a toxic soup and get a different result. And you can't. And I think you epitomize that because I don't think there is a. Greater level of poison and abuse that a body could take to have shriveled to the state where you were and to, I mean, God only knows what your organs and your inside look like. If you had had blood work done, then it would have been

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 48:49Gary Brecka?

  Like a chemical experiment.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:51Gary Brecka?

  And then to be sitting in front of me right now, you look healthy, you're, you know, full of color, your eyes are clear, you're obviously very vibrant, you're successful, you made millions of dollars. That is the power of not just the human spirit, in my opinion, the Holy Spirit, but it is also the, the resiliency of the human body.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 49:09Gary Brecka?

  It is astounding what happens to human beings when you give the body the raw material that needs to do its job.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  A hundred percent, and it's for anyone, any, anybody out there that's suffering, anybody out there that's hurting can change. It doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter what the circumstances are, anybody can change, but I would strongly encourage anybody, everybody, rather, to tap in to the one true source of power, and that's God. It's as simple as that.

• 49:41Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  I am, I am, I'm not, I'm not sitting here because I'm strong, I'm not sitting here because I'm smart, quite, quite the opposite. I'm sitting here because in 2003, on day three or four of my horrific withdrawal that, that lasted about a month, I physically dropped to my knees and I said, God, please, meaning like, if you're there, if you exist, God, please, take this hell away from me. Those were my exact words, God, please take this hell away from me. And, and in that moment, in a, in a very real way, I felt the power and the presence of God. Now.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  The withdrawal did not go away. The cravings did not go away. I'm not going to bullshit people, you know? Still really wanted to get high. Of course. Yeah, oh, I was, I was sweating through my fucking jeans. I wanted to get high so bad. But I, I knew in that moment, I felt the power and grace of our living, loving Father. I felt it in that moment. Wow. I knew it was real. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to grab on to this. I'm going to grab on to this. Kind of like, imagine like you're in the fucking wilderness and you're fucked and it's freezing and you're going to die. But you know, you somehow managed to get a spark and you've got that weird shit bundled up and you're fucking, oh my God, you know, and you're trying to like, I did everything I could to keep that spark going. Everything I could.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  And by everything I could, because I was simple and not educated.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  It was just, God, can you please be with me now? God, can you please be with me now? God, can you please hold my hand? God, can you please hold my hand? God, can you please? I'm scared. God, I'm scared. Can you please be with me now? Fervently, just over and over and over again, all day, every day, from the moment I woke to the moment I went, I went to bed. And to, to go back into Malibu.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Malibu was not a place you want to be broke. No, definitely not. To go back into Malibu, living in my sponsor's house, which I was stoked to be by the beach for sure. And I was stoked for the free rent in exchange for detailing his cars, washing the dogs, whatever. But having to go down to Sherman's place and, and wash people's dogs as a grown man, 34, 35 year old man, I'm washing dogs, I'm washing cars and people are walking in to drop their dogs off at this dog grooming place and they're fucking laughing, they're pointing and I'm in the back and I'm covered in fucking dog hair. Like, it was, it was, it was horrible to go through, but whatever. It was that, you know? Yeah, yeah. The spark and like, keep it going and God, please be with me now. God, can you please be with me now?

• 52:25Speaker 00

  I built this relationship with a living, loving God, not my dad's. Well, my dad didn't have a God, not with my mom's God, because my mom got really into Catholicism. As a Jew, she got very into Catholicism because that's how she was raised. So she wanted me to be into Catholicism.

• 52:41Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 52:41Speaker 00

  Catholicism was fucking weird to me and I had some bad experiences with some priests at St. Patrick's of Heatherdowns, you know, keep an open mind, son, like, yeah, not, not, not my jam. And I don't want to disparage any religion because all religions are great at their core. But men fuck everything up.

• 52:58Gary Brecka?

  We sure do.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  Men fuck everything.

• 53:00Gary Brecka?

  My wife would agree with you.

• 53:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about God. I'm talking about, there's one God, like, right now, she can go look out that window and he can go look out that window. We can go look out that door. If we're all looking at the sun or the remnants of the sun or the rays of the sun, right? We might call it different names. We might describe it differently. If we go up to a certain level of stories, we might even see it as totally different. It's still the one and only sun. To me, that's God. And, and I'm, I'm, I'm gonna do something you're not supposed to do.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  You know, talk about religion, but like, I don't have a religion. I was exposed to a lot of different religions and I've, I've read about, I don't want to say study because I don't want to falsely represent myself like I'm some fucking scholar because I'm not. I make smoothies for a living. I make smoothies for a living, but I've been jammed up in my life, real fucking bad. So many times in my life, I've been jammed up, terrifying situations. At the scariest of scariest moments, I always went to Jesus. Now, why did I go to Jesus? I think because that's what I was exposed to as a kid, going to St. Patrick's of Heatherdowns, spent a year at St. John's.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  I had a lot of exposure to the teachings of Jesus Christ. I love the idea of Christ and Christ consciousness. And I will, I'm happy to report that every time I was in those foxhole type of situations and I went to Jesus and asked Jesus for help and Jesus hold my hand. Actually, one time in a fucking journey that went awry.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm with Jesus. Jesus is my Lord and Savior, whatever. Every time I've done that,

• 54:58Speaker 00

  help came.

• 55:01Speaker 00

  And everything worked out.

• 55:02Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  I've never been let down. Now, am I praying to air? Am I, am I delusional? Like, I don't, I don't think so.

• 55:13Gary Brecka?

  Oh, you're definitely not.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  I, I, I, I feel in those moments, a real, almost like a yellow light of protection and, and help. Here's the problem. When, when the challenge goes away and the ego kicks back in.

• 55:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Then I want to go back.

• 55:30Gary Brecka?

  He doesn't become as important anymore.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  I want to go back to the cool necklaces and I want to talk about my journey to India and Indonesia and my chanting and my TM and my this and my that. I'm seeking for the truth, but I will just be transparent with you and whoever cares to listen.

• 55:48Gary Brecka?

  I'll tell you, I deeply identify and believe every, every word that you're saying.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:51Gary Brecka?

  Okay. I got saved years ago at a Promise Keepers convention in Chicago. And it was like a Christian men's movement.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 55:59Gary Brecka?

  Seventy thousand men joined hands and said the Lord's Prayer in Soldier Stadium.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 56:03Gary Brecka?

  Soldier Field. And the, the power of that impacting me, you know, I just said to myself, 70,000 people can't be getting this wrong.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:14Gary Brecka?

  And I was in grad school.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:15Gary Brecka?

  At the time, and I'd gotten way away from the church because I was also raised Roman Catholic.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:20Gary Brecka?

  It's hard when you're a kid to really identify with the church because we had a little church in, in Lothian, Maryland called Our Lady of Sorrows. It's a great church. Remember sometimes the mass was in Latin, but it was very ritualistic to me. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down.

• 56:36Speaker 00

  Stations of the cross. Do you remember that shit?

• 56:39Gary Brecka?

  Communion.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  My fucking knees and then the smoke and I'm like, what the fuck's going on here? And like eat the body and blood of Christ. I'm like, whoa, that's very Dionysus. Like what?

• 56:47Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  I set all that shit aside.

• 56:52Speaker 00

  And, and just go to Jesus. Cause I don't understand all that stuff. That stuff's probably alright. It's probably the truth and, and all that, but like, I don't depend on a book. I don't depend on a man in a hat. I don't depend on anything.

• 57:06Gary Brecka?

  You don't need an institution.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  I just, I go to God and, and, and that God made me perfect. That God made me perfect. I mean, I'm misshapen. I got really short legs. I got a long torso. I got a massive head.

• 57:20Gary Brecka?

  Nice tracksuit on though, bro.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  I appreciate that. Thank you.

• 57:23Gary Brecka?

  The Celine tracksuit is fire.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Did you see the Basquiat socks?

• 57:29Gary Brecka?

  But the fact that you know the brand of your socks, what do I got on?

• 57:32Speaker 00

  No, Basquiat is the artist.

• 57:33Gary Brecka?

  Oh, okay.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat is a famous artist.

• 57:36Gary Brecka?

  Well, so is Adidas.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  Adidas.

• 57:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, Adidas. He's also very famous.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  So I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm misshapen. I have a massive skull and kids teased me mercilessly when, when I was a child and called me Pumpkinhead and Charlie Brown and, and whatever. I'm not saying like I'm, I'm perfect. Like aesthetically, like it's a lot of fucking hard work to, to keep this together. Got to keep the hair super short and got to build the shoulders and, you know, build up the, yeah, exactly. So I'm, I'm, I'm doing the best with the vessel that I'm in to be the man that God intended me to be. And I'm nowhere fucking near there and I don't know the truth and I am not a Christian and I don't claim to be a Christian and I'm not a spiritual man. I don't claim to be a spiritual man. I like to appear

• 58:25Speaker 00

  like I'm spiritual. I like the fucking necklaces and the bracelets and I like taking photographs with hugging saints and all that shit, but that, that, that's all ego. That's all ego. That's the little five foot seven Khalil who's still deep down inside, wants people to like him and whatever. But on a daily basis, to the best of my ability. I try to get 1% better each day, which I first learned about through Tim Ferriss, Kaizen.

• 58:54Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  The first book that he wrote about Kaizen and the Japanese car manufacturers and how they overcame.

• 59:00Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I've read a lot of his though. League of Titans, Four Hour Body.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, and then I read The Power of Habit, which blew my fucking mind. I only could get through about a third of it. And then I read Atomic Habits.

• 59:12Gary Brecka?

  Atomic Habits.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I, and I realized that like, I'm just a conglomeration. I'm just like a fucking, you know, composite of these little habits that I do every day. So like, if I get up in the morning and I drink some really healthy, clean spring water. And then I put some good stuff into my body. I can't wait for you to try that coffee stuff.

• 59:33Gary Brecka?

  I'm ready to fire that up, man. I like all, all your products so far.

• 59:36Speaker 00

  I appreciate that.

• 59:37Gary Brecka?

  Mushroom thing gave me a little, I was like, woo, palms started sweating there.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:41Gary Brecka?

  The podcast, I was like, alright.

• 59:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that's just a little ancient wisdom coming in to, to help us hopefully. Here, here's my goal. I don't know what your goal is for this, but there's somebody out there that's hurting and there's somebody out there that, that does want to change. There's somebody out there that does want to change. I'm your fucking poster child. I, I'm the guy that can show you that against all odds, if a fucking moron like me with the shit that I went through and the shit that I put myself through can become.

• 1:00:11Gary Brecka?

  You're a millionaire. You can say it. I'm successful.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  I did. I became, I became successful. I, I, I brought something of, of value.

• 1:00:20Gary Brecka?

  That's it.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  To, to the world. Um, I'm leaving the world every day a little bit better than I found it when I woke up in the morning. And, and when I pass, I don't know how many more years I have left on this planet, but I'm going to leave it better than how I found it.

• 1:00:35Gary Brecka?

  No doubt.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  And, and I want to inspire anyone out there that's hurting, anyone out there that can't stop looking at porn or taking pills or drinking too much wine or eating too many fucking donuts and pizza, whatever your thing is, I get it. I understand it. But underneath all of that, if you can get into.

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  The, the cause of it, rather than taking a pill for it.

• 1:01:03Gary Brecka?

  To mask it.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. If you can stop masking the symptoms and start addressing the core issues, you can find freedom. And the best way to find freedom is to simply say, "God, can you please hold my hand and walk me towards that freedom?" Whatever that freedom is going to look like.

• 1:01:23Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  "God, can you please be with me now?" It's never failed me.

• 1:01:27Gary Brecka?

  God, so awesome. And I want to get back to the genesis of Sun Life. Cause we didn't really start about, when was the, what was the aha moment and the action that you took? Where you said, "All right, I'm gonna go press some, cold press some juice. I'm gonna sign a lease. I'm gonna, uh, you know, open a storefront. I'm gonna build a brand." You know, when did that pivot come?

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  So I started Riviera Recovery in 2007 and it was massively successful right out the gate.

• 1:01:59Gary Brecka?

  Okay. So you had some foundation to launch this with.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  Massively successful. Money, money was coming in. This is going to sound stupid to people that actually make money, but um, like $40,000 a month profit was coming in. And uh, my father, for the first time in his life was impressed. Well, that ended badly, but um, uh,

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  I started to have some success financially, but I was, I was miserable because it felt a little bit like blood money. Because I'm taking checks from these people's parents or spouses or whomever's. And I know for sure that their significant other or their, or their child has zero fucking interest in getting better. So should I just keep housing them and taking this money? Not everybody's like my buddy Rick, who was like, "I've been trying to fucking quit smoking crack for 22 years. I heard you help people. I need help." I'm like, "Yeah, fucking move in with me. One year, no gambling, no this, no that, no whatever. We're going hiking every morning. We're jumping in the fucking ocean. You know, anytime you have a craving, we're gonna do our mikvos or whatever."

• 1:03:06Speaker 00

  Not everyone's like that. By the way, he never went back to the shit.

• 1:03:09Gary Brecka?

  That's great.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. He's 17 years clean and sober.

• 1:03:14Speaker 00

  Our other buddy Sarah, who I, who I met back then, she's, she's also 17 years clean and sober. And I don't know, but you know, whatever. Freedom from active addiction is the goal. I don't, I'm, I'm not like. I don't represent any 12 step shit or whatever. I represent freedom from active addiction.

• 1:03:33Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  So, um, so, uh, I was miserable. I was making a bunch of money. I did the right thing. I went back to Ohio and I bought my mom a house and I sent her to Poland because she hadn't been back to Poland in 39 years. So I sent her back there to go see her family and I, and I say that in quotation marks because it wasn't really her family. Her mom like dumped her off on a doorstep, but it was the family that, that she knew.

• 1:03:59Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  So I, I corrected the sins of my father who left her high and dry and I sent her, sent her back to Poland, bought her a house. But then this like soul sickness set in because I was like making money, kind of like housing spoiled, rich and famous people that didn't want to change.

• 1:04:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  But Sean kept coming over and teaching them yoga and giving them massages and making them the juices. And I'm making them the juices and I'm making them the smoothies. And I started to see miracles happen and I really, I mean, I mean that literally, I, I saw some, and this is not medical advice. But I, I started to see people go off their psychiatric medications. I started to see people stop smoking spontaneously. The more good stuff they started to put in because they were curious. They're addicts. They want to feel good. They're watching me and Sean glistening in the sun, doing upward dog and downward dog and fucking sauna and then jumping into an ice tub. And you know, we were doing that way back then.

• 1:04:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 00

  And, um,

• 1:04:54Gary Brecka?

  Dopamine hits. I mean,

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Dopamine hits.

• 1:04:55Gary Brecka?

  Real, real physiology.

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  And the more I started making the juices and smoothies for people, the more they asked for it. And it started turning into like around the clock type of deal. Like from the moment I got there in the morning until the moment I went to bed at night, people were asking for smoothies, asking for juices. My sponsees were asking for juices and smoothies. Um, I started to just think to myself, if I could just open up a little juice bar and serve a hundred people a day, then, then how great would that be? Like, like if I could just like eventually get a, if I could eventually get like a little townhouse and I could do yoga and I could paddleboard and I could just feed people and help people that actually wanted help.

• 1:05:41Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Speaker 00

  How great would that be? And eventually maybe I'll even write a book. So that was the dream.

• 1:05:46Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. The, the problem is the economy collapsed.

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  Two thousand and eight, the fucking Oh dude, that was the time? Yeah, everybody. Now, my rehab recovery center, Riviera Recovery was going up because everyone's falling the fuck apart and they want to, you know, get off the dope because they don't want to die. Right. Um, and, and, and so that was thriving. The recovery is sort of an evergreen business because there's always going to be people suffering from addiction.

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  Um, and all these businesses started going out and there was a shopping center called the Point Dune Plaza and there was like, out of, I think out of 11 businesses there, there were six vacancies. Wow. Yeah, just sitting there, empty. And I, I, in a very naive, Pollyannaic, similar to how I started Riviera Recovery on a shoestring and a prayer, I was just like, fuck it, I'm just gonna open up my own juice bar and see what happens. And right when it got going, my best friend that was running my business for me, um, my best friend in the world, um, I'm running the juice bar now. I'm going back and forth. My best friend's

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  running the business. I said to my girlfriend, you know what? I don't want to fucking do that shit anymore. He's cut out for it. I'm not cut out for it. I'm too fucking codependent. If people succeeded, I pounded my chest. If people relapsed, I went into a fucking depression. Hmm. So we're a year in and I said to my girlfriend at the time, just gonna give him the business. I'll keep 20%. He can keep 80%. He can run it. I don't want anything to fucking do with it anymore. I want to make all my money back and have a stream of income, but I don't want to do that business anymore. I don't want to be around sick people all the time. I want to be around these cool people. Yeah. Some really cool people were coming in. Yeah. People that I really looked up to. Conscious, awake. I mean, yeah. Well, I'm a little more shallow and pretentious than you. Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 00

  Famous and rich. Cindy Crawford's coming in, Owen Wilson's coming in, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are coming. I was fucking elated. I, I, I felt like, you know, I felt cool. And, um,

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  And the guy working next door uh comes over and he's like, hey, man, I need to talk to you. And I'm like, okay, I don't know this guy that well. I mean, I kind of knew him and I'm like, okay. So I go over there, bring a smoothie and he goes, hey, you know, one of the guys working for you is, you know, trying to steal your business and he's trying to start a competing business or whatever. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he goes, one of the guys working for you. I'm like, no, no, that, that's not happening. Trust me. And he's like, Khalil, one of your guys is trying to take your business from you. I'm like, okay, you're, you're fucking tripping, bro. I'm gonna go back. We got a line out the door. And he goes, Khalil, I represent him. I'm renting him a house in the Palisades. He's going to take all your clients.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  I'm like, who's your client? He told me it was my best friend.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  Wow. And I drove over there and I confronted him. And with no regret and no remorse, he looked me dead in the eye and he said, well, you're fucking rich. You've got money. You've got a girlfriend. You've got a fucking line out the door. Like, I want to have good shit too. So I'm gonna do my own fucking thing.

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  He didn't know that I was gonna give it to him. Wow. So I called our mutual friend, Jose.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  And I said, how much money you got? And he's like, I guess a lisp to this day. I don't know. I think I have like $20,000. And I said, if you meet me tomorrow at noon, I will sell you Riviera Recovery for $20,000. I want a cashier's check for $20,000. I will give you the IP. I will give you the furniture. I'll give you the crystals. I'll give you everything. I'll give you the, you know, everything, the website. And fucking Jose showed up and he gave me the money and I sold it to him. And um Good for you. I think, I think he's got five locations now. He's a multimillionaire. Wow. He's an amazing human being. He's helped a ton of people and he is wired for the business. Yeah, yeah. He's not codependent like me.

• 1:10:01Gary Brecka?

  And unfortunately, our other friend relapsed and died.

• 1:10:06Gary Brecka?

  And I don't say that with any pride. Yeah. And I, and I wish I could undo that, but that is part of the story. And that's what happened. Over the last 20 years in human biology, one compound I've trusted again and again is NAD+ It's critical for energy, focus, and cellular repair. But your levels drop around age 30. I used to administer NAD via IVs in my clinics, but now I take Ro Nutrition's liposomal NAD, the first oral formula that actually works. Their advanced delivery tech gets NAD straight into your bloodstream. I take one teaspoon daily and the results are real. Clean energy, sharper focus, and better recovery. You can try it risk free with the ultimate 15 code at checkout for 15% off.

• 1:10:50Gary Brecka?

  Just put in ultimate 15 at checkout, you'll receive 15% off and your cells will thank you. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. You know, I, I had a foray into the restaurant business for a little while. I own a restaurant in Naples, Florida called Beach Box. And it was, it was actually right next to the Ritz Carlton. It was a little beach bar across the street from the beach. And when I started it, I was like so full of life. I was like, this is going to be awesome. It's going to be the greatest place. And it's fun. My first, it was super fun. Yeah. And I had this first meeting with all my staff. And I was like, guys, you know, the rules are basically simple. Show up on time, work hard while you're here, don't steal from.

• 1:11:33Gary Brecka?

  If you guys can do those three things. Yeah. We're going to run a great business. We're going to have a lot of fun. We're going to build a family here and, you know, and literally six months in, I was like, if you guys could just show up on time once in a while, not steal a lot from me, like don't take all the money out of the register. Totally. And not get banged up at work. Yep. That would be awesome. And It just eroded my belief in the human spirit so much because we would just blatantly catch people stealing. I'd have a video of it and I'd have the aloha register keys because we keep all the keystrokes and we create these reports and I'd have video camera

• 1:12:15Gary Brecka?

  of it. And we would confront the employee and their reaction was similar to your friend. And they would say, dude, what's $500 to you?

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:12:25Gary Brecka?

  You're doing well, dude. Like, you know, what's $500 to you? I'm like, it's the same as $500 to you.

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Gary Brecka?

  You know, my dollar buys the same thing that your dollar does. I just took a lot of risks to get this open. I almost went, went broke in that business open. And, and it was just, it's strange. And now that I'm a lot more, I would say spiritually aware and I'm sort of pontificated about and I've let a lot of people that have taught me about the human emotion, I realize that there, there are victors and victims and there are people that just have this sense of entitlement. And what's strange is if, if you started for me as a bartender and then worked your way up to assistant manager and then a manager and, you know, eventually I probably would have given you a piece of the business and really wanted to keep you around.

• 1:13:11Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:13:11Gary Brecka?

  But they just wanted to fast track and quick money and, and I became the enemy for being the one that took all the risk.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Gary Brecka?

  And it was just, it was really a hard thing for me to get my arms around, like.

• 1:13:25Speaker 00

  The realization.

• 1:13:25Gary Brecka?

  You consciously stole from me and you felt fine with it.

• 1:13:27Speaker 00

  The realization that there are two types of people on the planet. There are people that talk shit and there's people that do shit. Most people talk shit. You're a doer. You've always been a doer. And my, my belief, you may appreciate this, God is not going to take the, the perfect seven tall, seven heads tall, high, perfect, symmetrical, whatever, quiet, humble, whatever. God is going to take the fuckups and the losers.

• 1:13:55Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:56Speaker 00

  And bless them beyond measure.

• 1:13:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Speaker 00

  And, and give them a voice and give them power and give them strength. And, and the dissolution of that business was my, my proof that I, I wanted to never go near it again. And even eventually about 15 years into my, my. Living essentially in 12 step programs, even that became a little bit toxic for me and I wanted to get away from that. So, so Sun Life became its own entity. I had a great idea, had a great idea. It was brilliant and it was 14 years ago. All organic, amazing colostrum, things that like everyone's talking about fucking colostrum. We would get, we would get yelled at by all the vegans 14 years ago because we were putting colostrum in our smoothies. They were like, that's disgusting. That's disgusting. We, we were putting mushrooms in our smoothies.

• 1:14:43Speaker 00

  We were bringing, I mean, we were bringing in matcha, like it's interesting and I'm glad, I'm glad it's now becoming a craze. I'm glad now that when you watch certain channels, news channels, you see advertisements for certain green powders, or you see certain advertisements for certain colostrums or whatever, even though there's a part of me, it's like, fuck you. I, I was there first.

• 1:15:05Gary Brecka?

  Colostrum was my idea.

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  There's enough, yeah, I think it was God's. Yeah, but there's, there's enough for everybody and I would rather have that than have another fucking Pfizer commercial, right? I'd rather have that than another fucking medication that's going to cause five different types of things wrong with me. So, or with people. So we're moving in the right direction and there is a great awakening that's taking place and God, I believe with a sense of humor, chose some of the rejects. Some of the people are polished and perfect and amazing, but you have a calling. I have a calling. We're here to wake people up and we're here to get people to retake their power that they were born with. We were born

• 1:15:49Speaker 00

  as a particle of God and society and the world and the evil fucking people that control the world have done everything in their power to extinguish that spark, that particle of God. And I'm doing everything I can to awaken my own and to watch other people awaken and, and seeing kids come in whose parents like make them get a job so they come to Sun Life because it's cool.

• 1:16:12Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:12Speaker 00

  And watching them for the first time touching vegetables. Drinking juices because it's part of the training, drinking smoothies and watching them slowly come alive and slowly feel the life force of these ingredients and slowly find humility. And then all of a sudden they're bragging to their parents like you need to drink this.

• 1:16:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:32Speaker 00

  And then their siblings, the siblings come in because the siblings want to be like the older brother and sister. So then they start coming in and then they want a job.

• 1:16:40Gary Brecka?

  Apostle becomes the prophet. They're like prophets. That's amazing.

• 1:16:43Speaker 00

  In a very tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny way, I am changing the world.

• 1:16:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you're building a community, man. I mean, that's, how many locations do you have now?

• 1:16:53Speaker 00

  Nineteen.

• 1:16:54Gary Brecka?

  Nineteen from that one?

• 1:16:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Gary Brecka?

  Are they all in New York?

• 1:16:57Speaker 00

  No, there is seven in California. There's two in Miami, three more opening in Florida soon. There's two in Nashville, one in Vegas, another one opening in Vegas. We just signed a licensing or about to sign a licensing deal. It's like that. Anyway, we're about to set a licensing deal. It's all good.

• 1:17:18Gary Brecka?

  It's fine.

• 1:17:19Speaker 00

  But.

• 1:17:19Gary Brecka?

  Nobody knows where it is.

• 1:17:20Speaker 00

  But we're, we're doing, uh, we're doing a deal in South Africa for ten stores down there. Yeah. And, um, and I've met with several people from the Middle East about bringing this over to that region.

• 1:17:34Gary Brecka?

  I did a lot in the Middle East too.

• 1:17:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. They need it.

• 1:17:37Gary Brecka?

  Where in the Middle East? Dubai?

• 1:17:38Speaker 00

  Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar.

• 1:17:41Gary Brecka?

  Amazing.

• 1:17:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we're, we're, we're growing exponentially.

• 1:17:45Gary Brecka?

  They're on this bandwagon over there.

• 1:17:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're growing exponentially. Uh, the, the book has helped a lot of people. It wasn't junkies that read it, which much to my surprise, it's moms, it's women.

• 1:17:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Speaker 00

  It's, it's people that want to change that look at me and go, fuck.

• 1:18:02Gary Brecka?

  Well, I think the circumstance is less relevant than, than the method, you know?

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Gary Brecka?

  I mean, you know, a lot of business philosophy and business knowledge, which I think some of the best knowledge comes from the Bible, but, um, it's the best business book ever written. A lot of business knowledge is, is transferable, you know, it's not, just doesn't apply to tech or to textile or, you know, to the automotive industry. It applies to the philosophy of how you approach, you know, operating a business. And I think your story is, while it may not be heroin to millionaire or, you know, just streets to mansions, it, it's very applicable about, you

• 1:18:44Gary Brecka?

  Taking self-responsibility, becoming aware, wanting to change, raising your hand to get help, doing all the things that embarrass people and are, you know, would keep people where they are. I think, I think the way that society is structured, especially corporate America, is to kind of try to keep you in a box.

• 1:19:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Gary Brecka?

  You know?

• 1:19:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they do a great job.

• 1:19:08Gary Brecka?

  They do a really great job.

• 1:19:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Gary Brecka?

  I mean, I was just talking on the last podcast about how my mom, who worked for Delta Airlines for 30 years.

• 1:19:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Gary Brecka?

  When she retired, got a Seiko watch and a sweatshirt.

• 1:19:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Gary Brecka?

  That said, "Thank you." And it was 30 years and it had a little Mickey Mouse or something on it, but it had a little emblazoned character on it.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Gary Brecka?

  There it was, the large sweatshirt and literally a Seiko watch. And, I mean, that was the third, more than a third of her lifetime.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. The best years of her life.

• 1:19:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, and the best years of her life. Now, it also afforded me, because she worked for the airlines, I don't want to, I don't want to put her career down. She, she did, she enjoyed it and, and gave me a very good life. And we, we were able to travel because at that time, you know, I was born in 1970, travel was very expensive in the 70s and 80s. We were nowhere near capable of affording it, but we traveled and because of the benefits. So we were in Rome and Korea and Egypt.

• 1:20:07Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 1:20:08Gary Brecka?

  So growing up, I traveled a lot and experienced a lot of the world because my father was in the military. So we would get, you know, free flights on Pan Am over to Seoul, Korea, and we'd stay at Youngsang Air Force Base for $12 or $16 a day.

• 1:20:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:21Gary Brecka?

  Stay for a week and a half, Seoul, Korea.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 1:20:25Gary Brecka?

  So that experience was invaluable.

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Gary Brecka?

  And, and I also grew up on a farm and my whole life, I wanted to get as far away from the farm as I could. And now I want to get back as fast as I can.

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:20:36Gary Brecka?

  It's, it's really interesting how those experiences really shape you. Khalil, this has been amazing, man.

• 1:20:42Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:20:42Gary Brecka?

  I hope that we can continue to

• 1:20:44Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:20:45Gary Brecka?

  to follow your journey. Will you tell my audience where they can find you, where they can find more about Sun Life?

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

  Sun Life Organics is all over the country, sunlifeorganics.com. The book is I Forgot to Die, available on Amazon. The second book is Remembering to Live. The challenge with the first book, although it was a bestseller and did incredible, the criticism was like, oh yeah, so you stopped smoking crack and shooting heroin and now you're a millionaire? What the fuck? Yeah. Like, wow, how? Second book is how? The how, okay. Yeah. Remembering to Live was what I did in those early days, the washing of the dogs and the running errands for Cindy Landon and, you know, being a manny for Billy Bob and Pietra Thornton and taking care of their boys and teaching them how to boogie board and, um, I, the second book

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  is an A to Z, um, on how to go from being piss poor to being financially independent. I don't do Twitter. I think I have a Twitter, but I don't do Twitter. I don't do TikTok, although I have one. Um, I'm, I'm mostly Instagram. I stopped going on Facebook because it's just a cesspool of discontent and it's an echo chamber and political divide is, is, is beyond insane. As if one side is better than the other. I mean, they're all fucking bad and, and the revolution that's taking place right now that, um, in a small way, I'm a part of and you're a part of and I'm so grateful. I am too. Fuck the system. The system needs to be broken. Spiritual awakening. Yes, it's a spiritual awakening. We need to return to God. If there's anything that I

• 1:22:12Speaker 00

  can say to anyone, the, the, the number one thing that we have to do is go back to God. Our generation, Generation X, is the first generation to be raised without God. The generation before you went to church or temple or mosque. No doubt. Every week. My parents, yeah. We were raised without God. Generation X, first generation to be raised without God. Nowadays, nobody goes to fucking church. Nobody goes to temple. Nobody goes to mosque. People are on fucking TikTok. People are on Instagram. People are on. Too busy for that. Yeah, they're, they're, they're, they're so self engrossed and engaging in voyeurism and worrying about what people think. The greatest thing. That I'm enjoying right now is being older.

• 1:22:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, me too, man.

• 1:22:55Speaker 00

  I fucking love it.

• 1:22:56Gary Brecka?

  These are the best years of my life, too, man. I totally agree with you.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  But it's the best because I'm in shape and because I got some dough.

• 1:23:03Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  When I go back to Ohio for funerals and I look at my people that I went to school with.

• 1:23:07Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Speaker 00

  And their faces are that big and their distended bellies are this big and it's crushing their fucking organs and they're miserable and they hate the fucking Democrats or they hate the fucking Republicans and they're caught in that. I'm just like, guys, you're gonna fucking blink and you're gonna be dead.

• 1:23:24Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Speaker 00

  Go for a walk. Stop putting shit in your body.

• 1:23:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Speaker 00

  You know, so.

• 1:23:29Gary Brecka?

  So insane.

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, yeah, that's where I'm at. Please follow along if it pleases you.

• 1:23:34Gary Brecka?

  I will make sure to do. I'll link all those things in the show notes. I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question.

• 1:23:40Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:23:40Gary Brecka?

  No right or wrong answer to this question and is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  To be an ultimate human is to live fully from the center of myself, for myself,

• 1:24:04Speaker 00

  and try my best to be the man that God intended me to be. That's it.

• 1:24:10Gary Brecka?

  Great answer. That's a great answer. Well, we're gonna head over into my VIP room now. I have a group of VIPs, my stickiest community that I've built. And every time we end a podcast, I shut the cameras off and turn them right back on and they, I let them know what guests are coming on the podcast and they have some, they have some questions for you.

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  Cool.

• 1:24:27Gary Brecka?

  If you're interested in becoming a VIP, just head over to theultimatehuman.com/vip and for 97 bucks a month, you can become one of my VIPs. It's where I really pour myself into. I'm building the most incredible community of like-minded people dedicated to longevity, anti-aging, bio-optimization. But for the rest of you guys, I hope you enjoyed the podcast and until next time, that's your science.