Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Cohen Miles-Rath (on psychosis and recovery) About this episode Cohen Miles-Rath (Mending Reality: An Advocate’s Existential Journey with Mental Health) is a mental health advocate, author, and suicide prevention professional. Cohen joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up between two wildly different households in upstate New York, finding his footing as a distance runner while becoming the first in his family to go to college, and how injuries and pressure began to unravel his sense of self. Cohen and Dax talk about the psychotic break that led him to try to kill his father, the role weed and sleeplessness played in his crisis, and the unconditional love that helped him rebuild his life after jail. Cohen explains what hallucinations and delusions feel like from the inside, why recovery requires daily vigilance and a strong support system, and how sharing his story helps reduce stigma around severe mental illness.
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Transcript 26,960 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by a crying Lily Padman.
0:06 Speaker 01 No, there's like dust on my face.
0:07 Dax Shepard? You're having an allergic reaction right now?
0:09 Speaker 01 Well, we didn't finish something. We started and that's upsetting for me.
0:12 Dax Shepard? Are there high winds in here that I don't know about?
0:14 Speaker 01 Maybe.
0:14 Dax Shepard? Okay. This is one of the most interesting episodes we've ever had.
0:19 Speaker 01 Yes.
0:20 Dax Shepard? Our guest today, Cohen Miles Rath, is a mental health advocate and speaker, and he has a memoir out now called Mending Reality: An Advocate's Existential Journey With Mental Health. This is a firsthand account of someone who had a psychotic break, a schizophrenic episode that resulted in them trying to kill their father.
0:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
0:44 Dax Shepard? And the amount of bravery and honesty that Cohen brings to this is incredible.
0:50 Speaker 01 It really is.
0:51 Dax Shepard? It is very helpful to hear the firsthand account as opposed to the outsider's view of it. It's very powerful.
0:58 Speaker 01 I agree.
0:58 Dax Shepard? Please enjoy Cohen Miles Rath. We get support from Quince.
1:04 Speaker 01 I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait.
1:13 Dax Shepard? I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers, give me the boots, give me a reason to wear something other than a t-shirt. And honestly, that's why I love Quince, because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up. And everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at $60.
1:35 Speaker 01 $60. $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing. Gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories. They skip the middlemen and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't trendy. It's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time.
1:53 Dax Shepard? The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time, and he looks iconic.
2:02 Speaker 01 It's a uniform.
2:04 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
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2:21 Dax Shepard? Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that too.
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3:24 Speaker 01 That's the part people miss. It's not a one day fix. It's what happens when you stay consistent.
3:28 Dax Shepard? It's an easy everyday thing. I've added it to my morning routine and I'm going to tell you, I actually love the taste of it. It's like Pavlovian. I drink it and I know, I'm going to get that little vitamin buzz.
3:38 Speaker 01 Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.
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4:28 Dax Shepard? Dax, nice to meet you.
4:29 Speaker 01 Hi, Maja. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming.
4:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, thanks for having me. Where do you live currently?
4:34 Speaker 02 Sagittarius, New York, so about a couple hours north of the city.
4:37 Dax Shepard? Sagittarius?
4:38 Speaker 02 Sagittarius.
4:39 Speaker 01 Sagittarius, good name.
4:40 Dax Shepard? What's the fuck's up with all, like, Schenectady?
4:42 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
4:43 Dax Shepard? What happened up there with the naming?
4:45 Speaker 02 I think it's a lot of the Native American.
4:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:47 Dax Shepard? Do you have an explanation as a Native American?
4:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:49 Dax Shepard? I guess we have some silly stuff up in Michigan. Mackinac Islands.
4:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, that one's wild.
4:56 Dax Shepard? Sounds like, almost like a saltwater taffy flavor.
4:58 Speaker 01 Detroit.
5:00 Dax Shepard? Detroit's okay. What do you think about Detroit, Cohen? That's fine.
5:03 Speaker 02 I have never been to Detroit.
5:04 Dax Shepard? You haven't?
5:05 Speaker 02 Never been to LA either. It's my first time.
5:07 Speaker 01 Oh, welcome.
5:08 Dax Shepard? I would've said you're not missing much, but I will say the city has really rebounded.
5:12 Speaker 01 Detroit?
5:13 Dax Shepard? Rebounded. Detroit, yeah. You remember my review from January. I couldn't believe how nice it's gotten.
5:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:18 Dax Shepard? And you're up there with wife and baby?
5:21 Speaker 02 We're not married. Partners for life. And new baby in December, December 27th.
5:26 Dax Shepard? Ah.
5:26 Speaker 02 She's adorable, sweet little girl.
5:28 Speaker 01 Aww.
5:28 Dax Shepard? So just months old?
5:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, four months last week.
5:31 Dax Shepard? Oh, I love it. Over the course of the last eight years, we've got to interview a lot of folks I didn't think I would ever get to talk to. And in particular, kind of a new wave of people being honest about some of these conditions that you only could learn about in an abnormal psych class, like I did in college, right? And we'll get to what my current understanding of schizophrenia is based on a 28-year-old. Class I took, but increasingly, people with these conditions are coming out and talking about the experience. And I have to say, it has an incredibly powerful effect in that, take sociopathy. You're like, oh, sociopaths, write them off, stay away.
6:12 Dax Shepard? And then we interview someone who's clinically diagnosed as sociopathic, and you're like, oh, yeah, you're just born that way. You're different from your peers, and that's a rough situation.
6:21 Speaker 01 Exactly.
6:22 Dax Shepard? And then we have someone with borderline personality and it's like, oh, stay away from those people. And you're like, no, those people do just got dealt a hand. And so you will be the first person I think we've talked to who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
6:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, schizoaffective.
6:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah, tell me all the differences.
6:38 Speaker 02 Yes, the difference is schizoaffective can have symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions and hallucinations, but also bipolar or like mood type disorder diagnoses, depression or highs and lows, right? So it's kind of a combination. But I will say that how I like to frame it is I have a mild form or a mild severity because there is a spectrum to it. And obviously in my story, there's a lot of other factors involved, such as substance misuse and other things. So my particular incident is a unique and rare one, but it's one of the more difficult situations to talk about. But that's why I share my story.
7:13 Dax Shepard? For sure. Now, what I learned again, 20 plus years ago now, 28 years ago, in an abnormal psych class was schizophrenia has a genetic component. It can be seen in the genome. We know the loci for it. It can get passed down and that it can be dormant unless a very stressful situation happens and that there's a window of vulnerability between like, I don't know, 16 and 25 where carriers of the gene can express it if something traumatic happens or stressful. And if nothing happens in that period, they may carry that gene and nothing may happen. Is that still kind of the?
7:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, I will say that I'm not in the psychiatry field. I do more of macro mental health work, which I could expand upon that. But that is my understanding of it. But there's a wide range of perspectives on these diagnoses and definitely though, the science, I would say, still sticks with that.
8:03 Dax Shepard? Okay, thank goodness. Half the stuff I've learned is unraveling.
8:05 Speaker 01 All your anthropology stuff.
8:07 Dax Shepard? Every time I pick up any kind of journal, I'm like, oh, that wasn't right.
8:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:11 Dax Shepard? But let's start at the beginning in upstate New York. Because as you already say, there's all kinds of variables in this stew that leads to senior year of college. So explain early childhood.
8:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I grew up in Kohaktan, which is another Native American name. My parents were separated early on, about three or four years old. Actually, the first memory that I have is in my dad's arms. That I'm crying and pleading for my mom not to take me because they had separated early on. You know, I go back and forth between these two homes, one's in Cohocton, one's in Dansville, about 10 minutes away. So not super far from each other, but these two homes look very, very different. One side is my mom, she married someone else who had two children, so I grew up with five siblings in a small three-bedroom home. And on my dad's side, I was an only child.
8:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
8:52 Speaker 02 Going back and forth between these two homes were very different, very unique.
8:55 Dax Shepard? Because you had an older sister whom mom had before she married your dad.
8:59 Speaker 02 I'm the youngest, so my mom had three children before having me with my dad.
9:03 Dax Shepard? Okay, so when they got divorced, mom was leaving with four children.
9:07 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:07 Dax Shepard? One of which was your dad's biological child, you.
9:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:10 Dax Shepard? And then, yeah, new stepdad has two children.
9:13 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:14 Dax Shepard? Okay, you're very generous in your book to say, look, this is my memory. I remember wanting to stay with dad, dad remembers that, mom does not remember that and doesn't think that even happened.
9:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:25 Dax Shepard? All is possible, right?
9:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a bit of a chaotic mess, but that's okay because both of them were very loving at the end of the day. I write about it in my book because when I think about mental health, we have to look at the whole person and across the lifespan. And we know that adverse childhood experiences increases the likelihood of later mental health difficulties. Not everyone, though. It all depends on the person, you know, you could grow up in a perfect household and still face something difficult, of course. But, you know, I think that is an important part of my story is just to look back at that childhood.
9:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and ace scores, as they mount, the statistics get pretty unavoidable. There's all these really staggering markers as they mount up and you get above six or so aces.
10:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:05 Dax Shepard? So in the household you went to, there were two bedrooms for all the kids, right? There's a bedroom for three girls and a bedroom for three boys.
10:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:13 Dax Shepard? Mom's working her ass off?
10:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, she was working as a nurse, or actually as a lunch lady at the start, and she became a nurse eventually, still is one.
10:20 Speaker 01 Did they get along or no?
10:22 Speaker 02 That's a great question. I think they got along for the most part. Definitely when I got into high school, I remember them being very friendly with each other.
10:29 Speaker 01 Okay.
10:30 Dax Shepard? And what was your stepdad like? You said you don't really remember what he did for a living.
10:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, he definitely brought some challenges into the home. But I will say that actually later on in my story, and I don't write about this because I don't have the space. My book for it, but you know, I actually lived with him at my mom's right after I get out of jail. And he's super, super supportive and he continues to be.
10:50 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow.
10:51 Speaker 02 And he continues to reach out. So I wish I could have included that nice little story arc with him in there. I didn't have the space for it.
10:56 Dax Shepard? But that became weirdly an entry point for him to have a relationship with you that was different.
11:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:01 Dax Shepard? So obviously money was scarce. You guys were on welfare and had food stamps and the whole nine.
11:06 Speaker 02 Yep.
11:07 Dax Shepard? I can only imagine, but what was it like when you would go visit dad?
11:10 Speaker 02 Well, you know, my dad would take me everywhere. He'd take me down to Pennsylvania just to get Philly cheesesteaks. We love to drive places. We love to go to Florida, Disneyland. So he took me everywhere. I was his only child, so he was able to, even though he was fuel delivery driver, didn't make a whole lot of money. But since I was only his child, he was able to invest more into that type of.
11:30 Dax Shepard? And he lived modestly, right? He's living in a trailer in a rural area.
11:33 Speaker 02 Double wide trailer. And he definitely brought a little bit more structure to the home, a little bit more cleanliness, I would say. So when I moved in with him in the sixth grade, a little bit of a privilege there to have a space where I could start to become who I was.
11:46 Dax Shepard? My favorite parts of your book are how honest you are about telling on yourself for your own less attractive qualities.
11:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:53 Dax Shepard? Of which I had so many growing up. But just talk about this dynamic of having these five siblings who are living in one situation. And then you're kind of going off one day a week and every other weekend and what's happening in that social structure from that?
12:05 Speaker 02 Eighth grade, those teenagers years, like it's a really rough time overall, but I definitely formulated some judgments for my siblings for what they were doing.
12:13 Dax Shepard? You just feel a little better than them?
12:15 Speaker 02 Yes, yes. Yeah. And that can sometimes come with that privilege and like no one was going to Disneyland and my mom's house. So I was doing that.
12:22 Dax Shepard? And you were kind of rubbing their nose in it a tiny bit.
12:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, honestly, yeah, that's how it was. Even when they were smoking weed or stuff like that, I'd judge them for that, even though I would partake. So it was a weird dynamic.
12:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, your dad sounds like the sweetest dude.
12:35 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
12:36 Dax Shepard? He's a single dad. He's trying his best. He wanted you from the jump. You finally convinced mom to let you come live with him at 11, I guess. And he's taking you to church.
12:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, we go to church every once in a while. You know, he definitely wanted that to be a part of it. But also, like, I feel like he wasn't completely invested because the church felt like a hypocrite to him, to some sense.
12:57 Dax Shepard? Well, that's why I think he's even better. It's one thing if you're just super religious and you go. To me, it just seems like, I'm gonna try to do all the right stuff with this young boy.
13:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's so sweet.
13:07 Speaker 02 The values, like, taking care of each other. That's what he really wanted to instill in me. I think that was more important than going to church.
13:14 Dax Shepard? And he bounced permanently because you had left during service and they wouldn't let you back in. You went to go pee.
13:18 Speaker 02 That was a breaking point. The church basically kicked me out when I was a little kid, right?
13:21 Speaker 01 Because you had to go to the bathroom?
13:23 Speaker 02 This is what he had told me. I don't really remember this. We were in service and then I went out of the main room to go to the bathroom. And when I tried to come back in, the priest was like, you know, we can't let you back in because they were in service already. And my dad was like, what?
13:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was crazy.
13:38 Dax Shepard? But also dad's rocking a fucking mullet.
13:40 Speaker 02 I was rocking a mullet too. I mean, that thing was sexy.
13:45 Dax Shepard? Dad's wearing leather jackets. He's got earrings, a mullet. He's fucking driving fuel around. Like, he's presenting as a rough customer, but then there's this completely sweet side. How did he get labeled bipolar? And when did that diagnosis come about?
14:00 Speaker 02 So, yeah, I didn't learn about that until after everything had happened, until many, many years later. So he had lost his brother early on in his life, 13, 14 years old, my uncle that I never met. I can share this because he has shared this. He's had some suicidal thoughts after that. I think around that time, he'd been diagnosed with a bipolar. But again, he didn't really believe in it or want to talk about it.
14:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so he's receiving this term bipolar. It's certainly the first time he's ever heard it. Nowadays, everyone's quite familiar with that word. But I'm sure when he heard it in the 80s.
14:32 Speaker 02 Different time.
14:32 Dax Shepard? He's like, what? You know, no one had heard of bipolar. What does that mean? If he had. Not felt any discomfort about it, embraced it and was open with you about it. Who knows what your kind of like base awareness would have been.
14:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:45 Speaker 01 It would have taken a very special person to be very open about it back then.
14:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think big time.
14:51 Speaker 01 Especially, I think, being a man, too.
14:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:53 Dax Shepard? So, once you get in with your father, walk me through middle school and high school and Finn and kind of finding yourself then.
15:01 Speaker 02 I mean, my best friend Finn, in sixth grade, he was wearing a Tupac shirt with bling on it. We had a school project together, we just meshed, we vibed, and he becomes a brother to me during that time when I kind of like lost my siblings, although they were still there, but you know, it's a different home. I didn't really care about academics, I didn't really care about studying, I was a slacker, 100%. But then I find like a talent in distance running, I was just fast. Eighth grade, I started to just win races.
15:26 Dax Shepard? It also gives you an identity in a moment where you're really trying to figure out like, oh, what is my thing? This dude's that and she's this, it's a nice little anchor, I think. Oh yeah, I'm a runner. People around school know that I'm the runner.
15:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, especially when you just start winning and gain some popularity, like I was made fun of for my mullet, I was picked on. I did, in eighth grade, get rid of it, I conformed to the teenage fashion standard and started to gain some popularity and that definitely brought that identity in me.
15:52 Dax Shepard? At this point, you've started playing drums, you and Finn form a band.
15:57 Speaker 02 FISM, five incredibly sexy men.
15:59 Dax Shepard? Were there five members?
16:00 Speaker 02 There was, and there was some drama, band drama, you know, we went down to four at some point.
16:04 Dax Shepard? Okay.
16:05 Speaker 02 But it still worked, still worked, still worked.
16:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, FISM, that's great.
16:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, if you're not below that, you might have to start using different languages.
16:11 Speaker 01 No, you gotta, yeah.
16:13 Dax Shepard? I think you keep the letters right.
16:14 Speaker 01 Or you get 50 or something.
16:15 Dax Shepard? Now, how good of a runner were you? Go ahead and brag, I'm gonna give you full license to brag, like, walk me through the progression to 12th grade.
16:23 Speaker 02 I made my first state championship, oh man, I haven't thought about this in forever. It must have been 10th grade, maybe, I made cross-country states for the first time, which was a big deal. In junior year, I get some records, and then senior year, I actually qualified for nationals.
16:37 Dax Shepard? And when does Dan, the coach, come into your life?
16:39 Speaker 02 Dan came in in my freshman year.
16:41 Dax Shepard? Okay.
16:41 Speaker 02 And he definitely instilled this idea of being a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week athlete, and because I'd showed some success. He really wanted to bring me out because he was, you know, a runner himself. He was very passionate and now he still coaches at SUNY Genesee, actually. So he's, he's a role model for me, a huge protective factor, a huge role model. And I get to the point where I qualify for this national race. I had finished.
17:03 Dax Shepard? Second in states.
17:04 Speaker 02 Second in states.
17:05 Dax Shepard? New York states.
17:05 Speaker 02 New York states. Almost a state champion. There's always one.
17:08 Dax Shepard? I'll add, at this point, this is kind of also pivotal because you start becoming open to the notion like, wow, I'm actually going to get to go to college for this. And initially you were like, I gotta go division one and you weren't getting any bites on those applications.
17:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:22 Dax Shepard? And then Dan convinces you, you know, fuck all that, go D3, be a big fish and just win. Your times will speak for themselves. So you've kind of adjusted, right? You've recalibrated by the time you go to state.
17:32 Speaker 02 I definitely had this big vision, right? This idea of being a D1, full scholarship, because you know, money was also an issue. No one in my family had graduated college. It wasn't on the radar of my siblings. My dad and I, we really didn't want that financial burden, going back to Aces here. Running got me there. That completely shifted it. And I now had a chance to do something I was really passionate about, but it became the only thing. I like definitely was like, I'm going to college for running. And that really set this standard and this pressure on me from the start.
17:59 Dax Shepard? You gotta wonder what overlaps and what's driving what, but you're already smoking weed in middle school. You're also having these elevated experiences physically through running, right?
18:08 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
18:09 Dax Shepard? So you're touching this other realm of like very heightened experience, kind of frequently.
18:15 Speaker 02 Yeah. And then going to nationals, when I get to the big stage and I have this just lights out, best race of my life.
18:22 Dax Shepard? So there's 20 entrants and your goal is to hit 15, right? You know, that'll be a good showing.
18:27 Speaker 02 I was just happy to fricking be there. I didn't think I even belonged there. I did good in states, but not national level. So I was definitely just aiming for like, you know, top 15. It's a big wish. But then I just had this lights out moment and it was a combination of just this passion, this drive, and then that heightened experience. Cause when that last lap came and I kicked two other runners ass, I think it was a 63 second last lap in a 5K and you end up finishing fricking sixth place.
18:53 Speaker 01 Wow.
18:53 Dax Shepard? Which makes you All-American. That's the cutoff for All-American.
18:56 Speaker 02 Right on the cuff.
18:57 Dax Shepard? You're younger than everyone. You have a November birthday, so you could have either been a year young or a year older.
19:02 Speaker 02 Yep, November 21st is my birthday.
19:04 Dax Shepard? So here's where we get a little bit of like, all the different variables that add up to a life. It's like, who knows, maybe if you had been a year older and you had done that in 11th grade.
19:12 Speaker 02 That would have been like scholarship path right there, a full ride potentially to D1, completely altering the trajectory of probably my running career.
19:20 Speaker 01 But you'd think this being sixth would still get you there.
19:24 Speaker 02 It was too late in the season.
19:25 Speaker 01 Oh.
19:26 Dax Shepard? Everyone's already declared.
19:27 Speaker 02 Everyone's already declared. I think I got actually a really last minute offer from like a D2 college. But I was like, I'd already made my decision, I'm gonna respect that.
19:34 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you go to SUNY, which is in New York.
19:37 Speaker 02 I actually go to St. John Fisher first semester.
19:39 Dax Shepard? Okay.
19:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, which is up in Rochester, Pittsburgh area. I pretty much transferred after a semester there into SUNY Geneseo.
19:46 Dax Shepard? How does that go?
19:47 Speaker 02 You know, I think I wanted to join Geneseo because they had a better team. Their team often qualified for nationals on a regular basis.
19:53 Dax Shepard? Freshman year, not so great.
19:56 Speaker 02 Freshman year, I was the first freshman at the university to break 15 in minutes in the 5K. I don't know, did you see this marathon that just happened? Broke two hours in the marathon, I can't even remember the name.
20:07 Speaker 01 Two hours? Oh my god.
20:09 Dax Shepard? So they're running under five minute miles the entire time?
20:11 Speaker 02 Oh yeah, yeah, they're like 430 something.
20:13 Speaker 01 That is crazy.
20:14 Dax Shepard? I couldn't run a five minute mile for a billion dollars.
20:17 Speaker 01 For also, continue for 23 or 26.
20:21 Speaker 02 Six miles.
20:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I couldn't run a single mile.
20:24 Speaker 01 Oh my god, that's insane, wow.
20:26 Dax Shepard? What is the vibe? I have a stereotype for like, symphony musicians, right? It's like, that's all they do. So what is the vibe for these kind of elite, long distance runners? Is there a personality type?
20:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, I would say so. And I mean, at Geneseo, when I was there, you know, I got a mix. I had those who were the 24/7 athletes, right? The ones who were like, pure dedication, dry seasons, no drinking, no partying. And then you also had people on the team who liked to be a part of that running culture atmosphere, but also, you know, won the party during college.
20:56 Dax Shepard? And you fought back and forth between those two groups throughout your time there?
21:00 Speaker 02 Pretty much. So when I was a freshman, you know, I had that stellar 5K time. I had qualified for this junior national championships, which is for the Fastest nineteen and younger athletes. So I'd qualified through my time, but then I got my first injury. And that was the first time that I had experienced an injury.
21:16 Dax Shepard? You fractured a foot bone, is that what it was?
21:17 Speaker 02 It was a stress fracture, I think in my shin. So you take like six weeks off, or maybe more than that, I can't remember. But you know, what do I do when I have that time off? I want to engage in partying.
21:26 Speaker 01 It's college.
21:27 Speaker 02 It's college, I want to have fun, like I had friends who did.
21:30 Dax Shepard? So you partied and then you recovered.
21:32 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
21:33 Dax Shepard? And then how long do you go until your next injury?
21:36 Speaker 02 Pretty much in the next season of cross country, I face another injury. I showed some success, a little bit, not even close to what I wanted to, but then I face another injury. And this actually happens pretty much every year. Where I would show that success, work really hard, train really hard, and then get injured, and then party. And it happened every year.
21:55 Dax Shepard? You'd regulate. You would be depressed and you would be directionless and your identity would be in threat. And then you would medicate.
22:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, and you know, I wasn't shy about smoking weed or drinking. I liked that experience, that heightened type of experience, and that made me feel better.
22:14 Dax Shepard? So there's one terrible race.
22:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, there was the big one, cross country nationals. You know, I had really shown some success early on in that season. And then once I hit nationals, my entire team has a bad race. And this was my last chance at cross country.
22:27 Dax Shepard? Also the day you turned twenty-one, is it on your twenty-first birthday?
22:29 Speaker 02 Day before I turned twenty-one, which is a big deal in college, right? Have this horrible race, I finished like, I think a hundred something, which was back where I finished a freshman year. So that was very crushing. And you know, in between seasons, you took time off to rest and recover, prepare for the next one. What did I do? I did what I'd become used to doing. Probably a lot more, because now I was twenty-one, I could go to bars.
22:51 Dax Shepard? We bought booze for the bus ride home from the
22:54 Speaker 02 Yes.
22:55 Dax Shepard? Meet. You started medicating the second that race was over.
22:58 Speaker 02 Pretty much.
22:59 Dax Shepard? Okay, now we get into a nice, real degenerate level of use. You're coaching, but you have a fucking one hitter on you at all times. You're like stealing hits from the pipe while you're coaching, you're smoking when you wake up, all day long.
23:12 Speaker 01 Smoking what, weed?
23:13 Dax Shepard? Weed.
23:13 Speaker 01 Okay, okay.
23:14 Dax Shepard? You're an addict, at this point. When you're carrying around a one hitter and you're supposed to be coaching people and you're stealing hits.
23:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, while they're doing Mallory pizza out in the airport field, I'm like smoking weed by my car.
23:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's getting to that point that it's isolated. You're not at a party, you're not with friends, there's nothing social going on.
23:31 Speaker 02 No.
23:32 Dax Shepard? You are just like regulating, regulating, regulating.
23:35 Speaker 02 Every minute.
23:35 Speaker 01 And did you recognize it? You recognize like, this is a little, I know this isn't great.
23:40 Speaker 02 No, I was like loving it.
23:41 Dax Shepard? You traded the one high for another. Unfortunately, this one has a very predictable law of diminishing returns. So it all works for a while. That's why we all become addicts. If it didn't work, we wouldn't do it.
23:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's true.
23:54 Dax Shepard? But that isn't necessarily even what takes its course. So when does your sense of reality start getting questionable? Or what things first start happening?
24:07 Speaker 02 So this is about a year after I basically quit running Close to It. And I actually become really obsessed. Now that running was no longer in the picture, I was like, I need something else to do. And for some reason, I became obsessed with screenplay writing, movie writing. And it's mainly because I had this big idea for this movie. I was like, this is going to be an instant hit. The movie happened to relate with the relationship with my coach, Dan, Right What You Know. And I would just spend hours in the library studying screenplay literature and movie writing. Late into the night, I'm kind of like not really caring about my school academics anymore. My GPA drops. So that was an early sign of mania, rapid thinking, grandiose thoughts.
24:46 Dax Shepard? That ride up is also kind of euphoric, right?
24:49 Speaker 02 It is.
24:50 Dax Shepard? You're like on meth without being on meth.
24:51 Speaker 02 Pretty much. I love that I was passionate about that, but it was to an unhealthy level.
24:55 Dax Shepard? Right. I was gonna say this later, but I guess now I want to know about right now. There's all these elements of it. One of them, I think that's unavoidable is like, there is some bizarre level of narcissism that accompanies the manicness. You're important, you're gonna write the best screenplay ever. It's kind of fantastical thoughts of grandeur.
25:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, you think you're like bigger than what you really are.
25:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. And there's like this lovely dose of it. Everyone in college should think they can be Spielberg.
25:25 Speaker 01 It's complicated.
25:26 Dax Shepard? But there's just like, I don't know what the line is.
25:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, because you don't actually get to be any of those people without some level of grandiosity. You do have to believe, like all of us, that we came here and we're like, well, out of these millions of people here, I guess it'll be me. That rises to the top. We don't.
25:44 Dax Shepard? You're dancing on the line.
25:46 Speaker 01 Because it worked out. But if it doesn't work out, yeah, it's a weird, fine line.
25:52 Dax Shepard? And even as I hear your story, everything's a spectrum, right? I can see my own life really riding a little bit of a similar way, but just not reaching those heights.
26:02 Speaker 02 Even my vision of being a professional runner, that was kind of an early flavor of that for me.
26:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that was at least backed up by some really concrete evidence that that was a possibility.
26:12 Speaker 02 It's still a possibility, right? Even though it's always like less than 1% ever really make it big in anything, even relating to like artwork, right? It's the same thing. So yeah, that was definitely going on and it was taking new form.
26:23 Dax Shepard? And how many months would you say that period was?
26:25 Speaker 02 A few months throughout the fall.
26:27 Dax Shepard? So just feeling really kind of energized with this new pursuit, ignoring other things? And then what's kind of the next step?
26:35 Speaker 02 I like to share this specific example. You know the movie Inside Out? Of course you guys know.
26:39 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
26:40 Speaker 02 Fantastic movie. I'd saw this movie at some point during this time. I think it had come out at some point. And I remember just sitting in this theater and I'm watching it and you know, it's about these cartoon characters and the main character's head, each color represents a certain emotion. But I'm watching this and I'm starting to think, are there little beings inside my head controlling me? Who is controlling me? Who am I? And this started to be some bizarre thinking, right? Which I would say resembled an early sign of psychosis. So that was starting to come into play.
27:10 Dax Shepard? And colors take on some really heightened relevance for you, right? Break down what's happening with colors at that point.
27:16 Speaker 02 I would get to the point where as my symptoms kind of worsened throughout the fall semester and then into the spring semester, colors and patterns definitely started to capture my attention in a certain way. And this is not uncommon for schizo-related illnesses. Red became a sign of danger, which, you know, is, but it was a bit different for me. It was like when I see red, I'm literally in danger. And it could be just, you know, like a book or something like that.
27:40 Speaker 01 Oh, interesting.
27:41 Dax Shepard? Wild that you put red on the cover of your book.
27:43 Speaker 02 That was my idea.
27:45 Speaker 01 Intentional?
27:46 Speaker 02 It was intentional because I really wanted to be forward with it. I wanted to just own it. And I wanted to really portray that I'm coping with that.
27:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:56 Speaker 02 I'm comfortable with it.
27:57 Speaker 01 It's like if you see red, it's a sign that something bad is going to happen? Or is it imminent danger?
28:04 Speaker 02 It's hard to really justify any logic in psychosis states. It varied. One specific example, even I was driving. If I saw a red car on the highway, I'd have to stay behind it. Cause if I passed it.
28:15 Dax Shepard? It might start following you or something.
28:17 Speaker 02 Or I might be in some form of danger or risk is gonna happen if I pass that car.
28:21 Speaker 01 It's kinda OCD a little.
28:23 Dax Shepard? Everyone's a comorbidity on the other one. When did the hallucinations start? These are arbitrary definitions, like the emphasis on the colors is already some interesting form of an hallucination, but very low grade.
28:37 Speaker 02 And it could also be considered a delusion of reference, where you're interpreting something in your environment as of special meaning to you. But yeah, there's a combination of hallucination and delusions going on simultaneously.
28:47 Dax Shepard? I do wanna take one second, cause I thought it was a really great definition to know as we go forward. It was hallucinations are defined as internal generated voices or images that your brain labels is coming from the outside world. Like if you can really think that through. It originated, it was your own concoction, but you seem to receive it from the outside world. So this is how the breakdown of reality is occurring. These things you've generated, you think you're witnessing.
29:15 Speaker 02 Typically the five senses, right? Touch, tactile hallucinations, smell is olfactory hallucinations. And then you have the visual and the auditory. And then what's the last sense? Taste.
29:26 Dax Shepard? I've never even considered, when I think of hallucinations, I only think of people hearing voices auditory or seeing things. I've never thought taste or touch. Did you experience any of those?
29:36 Speaker 02 I definitely did at some point, yeah. I experienced all of them at various points. I think when it become a lot more severe later on in my story, it was all things.
29:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So I guess a couple of the touchstones along this route are like, you see glittering gold running through your veins?
29:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, at some point, it's a blister on my toe. But I'm thinking that I'm a god at that point. That was pretty later on and when I was at a very severe level. So I thought it was gold. I thought my blood was gold.
30:01 Dax Shepard? Yes, when you watch TV, you're seeing naked gods dance on TV.
30:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, commercials, the visualness from our screens, and even the phones was completely altered to what it was actually being on screen.
30:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah. When you experience it, is the frontal lobe pressure testing this and saying like, well, hold on, this can't be happening, or is that voice gone?
30:23 Speaker 02 That was gone.
30:23 Dax Shepard? It's gone.
30:24 Speaker 01 But do you know enough to like know not to tell anyone else?
30:28 Speaker 02 Being in that state, it was just honestly like a completely different person, completely different identity. I feel I actually lost my identity at some point where I was like nothing.
30:37 Dax Shepard? But you were a god at some point.
30:39 Speaker 02 I was a god. I was Jesus. I was, I think Lucifer at some point.
30:43 Speaker 01 Wow. But were you telling people that? I guess that's my question.
30:46 Dax Shepard? You do tell a professor, which causes your first kind of red flag situation.
30:50 Speaker 01 This is good. At some point, I mean, I want people to be saying it because keeping it under wraps is the scary part.
30:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I even had a conversation with my dad about my theory. There was a delusional narrative that was happening and I was vocal about certain things, but also like not, and I don't really know why.
31:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
31:08 Speaker 02 But that delusional narrative, if it related to what I was determined to do, which was write a sentence to discover the truth of the universe, I was pretty vocal about that.
31:16 Dax Shepard? And when his dad recounts this experience, it's so sweet. He's like, you know, he's gone to college. He's become really smart. I don't know. Maybe what he's saying is true. You would think dad would focus on the merit of this story or the logic of it, but I would imagine interpersonally dad's just going, or I would be going, oh, my child's entered a world. I might not be able to join him. I mean, who knows what he's going through when you're on that rant. You would think he'd be going, that doesn't seem to make sense. But more, he might be feeling like, oh no, are we going to have a relationship with this new egghead version of my son? Who knows what he's experiencing in that moment?
31:56 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
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34:00 Dax Shepard? We get support from Superhuman. I'm someone who wants to do big, meaningful work, but the small stuff eats up my day before I even get to it. The endless emails, docs, scheduling, follow-ups that pile up. By the time all that's cleared, there's no energy left for the ambitious stuff. Most AI tools promise to fix that, but they require opening a new tab, re-explaining everything from scratch every single time. A week later, it's just another thing collecting dust in the browser. Superhuman, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already embedded inside the tools people are using. Email, docs, browser. It's not waiting to be found. It's already there, working alongside, clearing what's in the way, so the focus stays on what's actually worth doing. A thought partner that's already up to speed.
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35:30 Dax Shepard? And it doesn't have to be some big life crisis. Maybe it's a work thing that's taking up too much space or hard relationship moment, or just a feeling that something's off. That's enough. That's worth talking about.
35:41 Speaker 01 You know, I love therapy more than anything. Gets me through. Often I'll want to cancel because I'm like, I don't really have anything to talk about. And then I'll go and I have some major revelation.
35:52 Dax Shepard? You know, I was just talking to a friend who has just started it. And I said, one of the most powerful elements of it is just hearing yourself say out loud the thing that's been ruminating in your head and how different it sounds once it's out into the world. You gain perspective immediately just by hearing yourself say it.
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36:42 Dax Shepard? In order of events, when do you think you see your professor proclaim to the class that you are a prophet?
36:50 Speaker 02 This is my spring semester, so I was taking humanities, right? Philosophy, studying human nature. And that's where this idea, you know, the idea of the screenplay transformed into a theory to explain everything. It was kind of stimulated by the-
37:01 Dax Shepard? A unified theory for the universe?
37:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, wild, wild line of thinking. I feel like maybe a couple of weeks into that semester, I do meet with the professor because I had this burning idea about this theory and I wanted to talk to him about it. I always question like, what is a hallucination? What's an illusion? I never really know unless I go back and talk. But basically, I was given the task to create this one-sentence summary. And then I did that. I achieved what I thought I achieved.
37:28 Dax Shepard? Probably couldn't wait to share that.
37:29 Speaker 02 As soon as I discovered it, it was a Thursday. I had humanities class, and that's when I shared with the professor.
37:34 Dax Shepard? And he called the police?
37:36 Speaker 02 I don't think he called the police. He connected me with someone at the university, a support person, because he'd noticed my bizarre behavior in class. Because after I write this sentence, I fold up a piece of paper and I put it onto his desk. And I'm late to class by like a couple of minutes because I was focused on this big idea. Casual big idea. And I sit down and I'm like drawing out my theory now in like this bizarre-
37:58 Dax Shepard? Cartoon that only makes sense to you.
38:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, piecing it together. And he's watching this. He's definitely like, something is up. I'm going to connect this student of mine with a support professional. So that when I got home that day, there was an email from him saying like, I should go see this person and it's someone he trusted. And at that point, in that class, he talked about how I was the prophet. But that was an auditory hallucination.
38:18 Dax Shepard? So probably you thought, oh, great, he's sending me to the next rung of the ladder by which I'm going to disseminate this great truth I've discovered.
38:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:26 Dax Shepard? You don't know you're walking into a situation where someone's gonna challenge your delusions.
38:30 Speaker 02 No, because he became a voice of sacred commands to some sense. So if he said, "Go see this person," no question, no question in my mind, because he had declared that I was the prophet.
38:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's obviously gonna help you.
38:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:43 Dax Shepard? The result of this is you do get prescribed medicine, you're on a five-day kind of hold.
38:46 Speaker 02 After that class, the next day is when a police officer shows up at my door. I think it was a support person at the college who made that call. And that's when I get taken to the emergency room and then into my first psychiatric hospitalization.
38:57 Dax Shepard? Do you remember what you thought was occurring while the police was taking you to a holding area?
39:03 Speaker 02 I did not think he was a police officer. I thought he was working for the professor. He actually did an amazing job. I commend this officer. He kept the situation de-escalated, he worked with me, he didn't challenge me. I think he said something like, "The professor would want you to do this." Right, so he worked within my, my state of mind, because he could clearly tell that I was very unwell. And building that trust in that type of situation is hard to do, but he did an amazing job.
39:26 Dax Shepard? Oh, can I ask quickly, how much sleep do you think you're getting in this period?
39:29 Speaker 02 Oh, I was not sleeping for days. I was not eating, I was also just not taking care of that basic physiological need. That was off the door.
39:35 Dax Shepard? And smoking weed the whole time?
39:36 Speaker 02 It did fall off at some point, but I had been, in the weeks leading up to this time, I was smoking regularly, yeah.
39:43 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you get a diagnosis in that five days.
39:46 Speaker 02 They kind of go back and forth between diagnoses, right? And this is sometimes a challenge, because they say, "Oh, maybe it's bipolar, maybe it's schizophrenic, maybe schizophrenia, maybe cannabis use disorder."
39:57 Dax Shepard? They write you a prescription for Zyprexa?
39:59 Speaker 02 Respirdal.
40:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, Zyprexa comes the second.
40:02 Speaker 02 Yep.
40:02 Speaker 01 Is that an antipsychotic?
40:03 Speaker 02 It's an antipsychotic, and I remember a lot from this hospital visit. But I remember before getting into the psychiatric unit, they had put me to sleep. They had injected me with like Ambien at the emergency room. So I had finally slept for like hours, right? So when I woke up, I was like in this very stunned state. Cobwebs were like in my mind. I couldn't even process what I had just gone through, let alone explain it to them at the hospital.
40:28 Dax Shepard? How long was that chunk of time, would you say, that you were in the manic spell before you ended up in the holding?
40:35 Speaker 02 Definitely was a progression. I would say probably at the highest point, maybe like a couple of days, maybe like a week.
40:41 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you get out, dad is informed. And how do you and dad process what just happened?
40:47 Speaker 02 It's so interesting because like I kind of go back to my typical state. I'm like all of a sudden going again and just ready to get back to college class, back to my campus job. I mean, we have a meeting with like a psychiatrist at the place who says I'm a good role model for the other patients needs to. Because I was very social, I'm kind of a social person.
41:04 Dax Shepard? Social butterfly.
41:05 Speaker 02 A little bit, and I didn't want to take the medication. Any idea that if I had someone in a psychiatric unit was like what I saw in movies growing up. People acting crazy, wild.
41:14 Dax Shepard? One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
41:16 Speaker 02 Yes.
41:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're like, that's not me.
41:18 Speaker 02 That's not me. I did not want to be associated with mental illness at all. So therefore I also did not want the medication. I agreed to take it so I get out of the hospital. As soon as I left, I stopped taking it and my dad, he agreed as well.
41:30 Dax Shepard? And he himself had decided to not take the medication that was offered to him with the bipolar diagnosis.
41:35 Speaker 02 Yep, he'd kind of always had some sense of not wanting to partake in that level of treatment.
41:42 Dax Shepard? Right.
41:42 Speaker 01 But he didn't really see you in your manic state.
41:46 Speaker 02 He did in a way, but I don't think he knew what was going on. Right, so she's just kind of seeing me act bizarre and all this, but not really understanding what I'm actually going through.
41:54 Speaker 01 Right.
41:54 Dax Shepard? Right. Okay, so what's the timeline between then and your dad's kitchen?
42:01 Speaker 02 I think it was about a month in between those two times.
42:03 Dax Shepard? Were you allowed to go back to college?
42:05 Speaker 02 Yes, those five days happened during spring break.
42:07 Dax Shepard? Very convenient, you time that nicely.
42:09 Speaker 02 What a coincidence, it was almost like it was a sign. A couple of weeks go by, I'm just kind of like my typical self. And then I remember going to play a show at a bar with my friend Finn. I play the drums, he plays guitar, and we stayed at one of his buddy's house. I remember waking up at that house and for some reason I brought my humanities homework with me. Because I was like, I'm gonna do homework. And I was studying Sigmund Freud's Civilization of its Discontent. And I remember sitting in the kitchen, reading the book, and he talks about this oceanic feeling. I don't know if you're familiar with the oceanic feeling term.
42:38 Dax Shepard? No.
42:38 Speaker 02 Freud is struggling with the concept because it talks about this feeling with the universe, this kind of like oceanic. Like, uh, high, right? In some sense.
42:47 Dax Shepard? Connection to everything.
42:48 Speaker 02 Connection, spiritual connection.
42:50 Dax Shepard? We're all moving together.
42:51 Speaker 02 We're all moving together. It's kind of like this flow. And Freud is struggling, understanding the science behind that. But I read this concept, I'm like, that's what I was experiencing before the hospital.
42:59 Dax Shepard? Right.
43:00 Speaker 02 That was that feeling. So I remember as soon as I read about it, I'd stored my work in my backpack, the work that I'd done in my manic, that sent in, it was a blue folder, actually, in which I kept all these paragraphs, all these writings. For some reason, I just kept it with me, but I didn't ever open it until that point. But then, once I start reading it, that's when I was basically all back in. Someone shows up in the kitchen in the morning, there's someone at the house, I don't know who it was, who I would later associate with Jesus, because he had like this long hair and this flow. And I was back in it at that moment.
43:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah. When you break the window of the...
43:34 Speaker 02 So how the timeline went, when I regained my belief that I'm the prophet, that I have to do this mission, I had my truth, I had the sentence, and I want to share it with the world.
43:45 Dax Shepard? Do you have a memorized?
43:46 Speaker 02 Yes, yes, I do.
43:47 Dax Shepard? Is it triggering to say?
43:48 Speaker 02 It's not.
43:49 Dax Shepard? What is the sentence?
43:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, so the sentence was eternal life occurs when you balance thinking and doing while feeling both.
43:55 Dax Shepard? I don't know that it unlocks the truths to the universe, but it is a very nice sentence.
43:58 Speaker 02 I think it was my mind's way of trying to find some wellness and comfort in the existential portion of my experience, which is interesting.
44:06 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you leave the house.
44:08 Speaker 02 Couple of things go down, I actually end up due back in the hospital again. Before the incident, before breaking the window, I end up back in the hospital. And I would consider myself being in crisis at this high severity of psychosis for about a week. And I had this idea, like now that I have my theory, I had to share it with the world. I had created a Facebook page to do that, because social media had become a big thing at the right, exact time in my life. And I also thought that I had to marry my ex-girlfriends. I would show up at this church with the big red doors, thinking that my ex-girlfriend was just going to be there to marry me. And I'd went there often, right? Just believing that it was gonna happen. So a couple of days go on and it was a Thursday night. I go there at like two o'clock in the morning. I like sneak out of the house. Actually, I think my dad did wake up at that time
44:52 Speaker 02 because as soon as I got to the church, cop cars are there. He had like knew where I was going because I'd said something prior to this. So I get there and they take me back to the hospital. I go back to the emergency room and it's kind of similar to the first time where I finally sleep and I wake up and I'm kind of in this hazy state.
45:09 Speaker 01 They probably gave you IV medication would be maybe not.
45:12 Speaker 02 This one's a little fuzzier. There's a common knowledge that the more often you experience psychosis, the more it's harder to come back and to process it. So time was a little bit more fuzzy for me. And you know, I've read the medical records from this hospital visit and it's so strange because I'm saying things like I'm excited to graduate. I'm excited to go on to a professional job. I don't remember any of that.
45:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:35 Speaker 02 What I remember is saying something about color coordination. So it's almost like psychosis dominated my consciousness and yet a part of me was still there.
45:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, man, how do you unravel? Yeah, you have a memory of what was happening and there's a record of what's happening. Of course, they don't match. That's the whole point of the psychosis.
45:52 Speaker 01 But also what you were saying, you were seeming normal. So then they're gonna be like, okay, well, I guess he's not that bad. Let him out.
45:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:00 Dax Shepard? You're also in the emergency room and you're trying to work through the highest probability explanation. It's like this dude hasn't slept. This dude's probably been on meth or this dude's been on Adderall. Like you're not gonna jump to he has one of the rarer conditions.
46:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:16 Dax Shepard? Not necessarily. I mean, or maybe they do, but I can see where you would also get easily misdiagnosed.
46:22 Speaker 02 I don't blame anyone. I mean, I've showed those records to colleagues of mine who are being a social worker now. They said like, we would have let you go too.
46:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course.
46:30 Speaker 02 So I get out and I was pretty much still in severe psychosis. Unlike the first hospital where I kind of reverted back to my typical self, this time I did not. And it was only one night too. I was there for one night. Could they have justified keeping me there just knowing how early that I was starting to experience the symptoms? Maybe, but I like to say that the system worked in getting me to a place where support was possible, but it failed to give me that actual support when I was there. So I get out and I'm immediately back on my mission and my theory. And three days later is when I tried to kill my dad.
47:04 Dax Shepard? I think people would love to know. What in your mind could convince you I must slash Dad's throat?
47:12 Speaker 02 So, you know, I had this Facebook page in which I was sharing my theory. I was supposed to get married on Sunday before that day. It happened on a Monday. And the way that psychosis works, it justifies when things go wrong, right? There's always a way to justify. At least that was my experience, so I can't speak to everyone's. Even though I had gone to the church several times and my ex-girlfriend was never there because she was never gonna marry me, I was like, oh, Sunday's the day. And that makes sense because it's God's day. Why would I get married on a Sunday? So I go there at like 1 o'clock in the morning. So again, still not sleeping, and I go through this very bizarre experience of like a self-sacrifice. I mean, there is some wild shit happening in my mind and just in my mind.
47:56 Speaker 02 But basically, I don't get married. So now I'm lost. I'm starting to become lost. The things are not lining up in the way that they should be.
48:03 Dax Shepard? Yes.
48:04 Speaker 02 And I'm starting to get really confused.
48:07 Speaker 01 Scared.
48:07 Speaker 02 Scared and looking for signs in any way that would make sense to me.
48:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:14 Speaker 02 So that day on Monday, I was supposed to go to school, work, and I don't. I do go back to the church, thinking once more, maybe she'll be there. She's not. So I go home. And on my way home is when I had this idea about colors, that red was Satan, and I had to remove all the red things in my car. So I stop at this restaurant called Steve's Place. There was this connection to my uncle and Stephen with this place for some reason. And there's also like a white and red building. But I break into this restaurant. I throw all my red stuff into this place, and I bleed red. A lot of things happen that just continue to foster this uncertainty and confusion about what I was supposed to do with my mission.
48:55 Dax Shepard? Right. And then you go home, and you're in there before Dad, or Dad's there before you?
49:00 Speaker 02 I'm there before my Dad. You know, I'd stopped at this like old junkyard outside of town to dispose my car because I couldn't get the taillights off because they were red.
49:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
49:09 Speaker 02 So my grandma picks me up. She takes me there, and she tells my Dad. So my Dad shows up while I'm already there.
49:15 Dax Shepard? How does your Dad look to you? What is he representing to you?
49:18 Speaker 02 So being a field driver, you know, he often wore black pants and black shirt under his uniform. He's wearing these black clothes and also black was associated with evil and demons.
49:28 Speaker 01 Wow, we're literally all wearing black today.
49:31 Dax Shepard? You're right, all of us.
49:33 Speaker 02 He was frustrated, right? Because I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. I wasn't going to college.
49:37 Dax Shepard? He's scared.
49:38 Speaker 01 He's so scared.
49:39 Speaker 02 He's scared. He's so uncertain himself.
49:40 Dax Shepard? He loves you so much. He's taking you to all the places. Yeah.
49:44 Speaker 02 And here I am, just almost throwing it away to some degree. So he's frustrated and justifiably so. But he has these red cheeks, right?
49:51 Speaker 01 Because he's getting mad.
49:52 Speaker 02 Because he's mad.
49:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:54 Speaker 02 When I talk about intervening when someone's in crisis, right? De-escalation is one of the top things that is very key to helping someone in that type of state. And my dad did the opposite.
50:05 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure.
50:05 Speaker 02 But that wasn't the only sign. I was on my phone, again, going back to this theory. And there was several things that happened on the phone that brought me to that state of mind.
50:15 Dax Shepard? But you're convinced your father has been taken over by Satan? And do you think you're going to liberate your father by killing him? Or you might not even be able to remember that?
50:24 Speaker 02 There was two specific signs on my phone that led to me thinking that the devil was in my dad in combination with his black uniform and cheeks. It was a random Facebook message that literally said Satan. And this was a real message. Like I went back and I pulled this message from the Facebook profile.
50:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
50:39 Speaker 02 And it was real. It was just some coincidental message.
50:42 Speaker 01 Oh, my God, bad sign.
50:43 Speaker 02 Sometimes strange shit just fucking happens, man. So there was that message. And then there was another image just on my Facebook feed that was like someone smashing their hands on someone else's head. And this angry ghost was flying out from this person.
50:55 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
50:56 Speaker 02 And there was some like yellow and orange colors near that action. So I connected the dots. Well, my psychosis connected the dots. I had to save the world with my theory. Now the devil's in the picture. The devil has to go.
51:08 Speaker 01 Right. Oh, my God.
51:10 Speaker 02 The devil was inside my dad.
51:12 Dax Shepard? And you see a knife with a white handle.
51:15 Speaker 02 You know, had like this holiness aspect to it. So I was like, that had to be the knife that I would use. And I didn't want to kill my dad. And when I read the police records after this, I say this in my statement. I did not want to kill him.
51:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
51:29 Speaker 02 I wanted to save us.
51:31 Dax Shepard? Kill Satan.
51:32 Speaker 02 I wanted to kill Satan to save us, right? So my intention was never to hurt my dad.
51:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:38 Speaker 02 But that's just how my psychosis narrative ended up.
51:41 Dax Shepard? So you grab the knife and you go at dad?
51:44 Speaker 02 I make some motion behind him. I'm also really troubled at this moment too, because I'm like battling with this idea of killing him. Because it's like, this can't be the next step. Like, I'm really challenged by this.
51:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah. This is the biblical moment where the guy has to kill his son to prove his love to God. It's like that test.
52:02 Speaker 02 Basically, yes. That's how it felt. I was like, this is the ultimate test. I was pacing back and forth, saying this can't be the next step, this can't be the next step. You know, I have the knife. At some point, you know, the knife gets out of my hand. I start finding something else. My dad was remodeling at the time, so there was drills and stuff in the house, but none of it was white. It was all red or black. So I had to use that knife.
52:24 Dax Shepard? Tell us about the physical struggle that happens.
52:27 Speaker 02 We're about the same height. He might be a little shorter than me now, but he was definitely bigger, stronger, 50 pounds heavier, being a laborer for all his life. I was still an athletic kid, but.
52:36 Dax Shepard? He's stronger. And he's your dad. He's got dad strength.
52:40 Speaker 02 He does. He does have dad strength.
52:42 Speaker 01 Now you have dad strength.
52:44 Speaker 02 I do, I do. That dad bod, you know? Yeah, so we start to fight and he fights me off. I think he punches me at some point. At some point, we tumble onto the ground. In that heat of the moment, I just, for some reason, bit his ear as like a reaction to like losing the battle.
53:00 Dax Shepard? Like bit his ear lobe off?
53:02 Speaker 02 A piece of his ear lobe off and at the bottom, he still has the scar today.
53:06 Dax Shepard? He and Holyfield have a lot to talk about if they ever run into each other.
53:09 Speaker 02 And then, you know, at some point, I have to blade at his throat. I keep coming at him. I'm not even me.
53:14 Dax Shepard? It's life or death and for the whole universe.
53:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. So at some point, I have to blade at his throat and he's blocking it with his thumb. And at some point, he's just like, I gotta get out of here. And he does. And he bolts.
53:27 Dax Shepard? His hand gets cut pretty bad. He then runs out of the house.
53:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, he runs out of the house. And I had this moment of like, what the fuck did I just do?
53:37 Dax Shepard? You did have a little snap of clarity?
53:38 Speaker 02 A little snap of clarity and I was like, holy shit, did I actually do that? And I run out of the house, I'm looking for him, cause I'm like, sorry dad, I'm sorry. And I go out by our dog cage to look at my dog, he was a cute little husky that we grew up with. And that's when the police arrived.
53:54 Speaker 01 Also grandma was here during this whole thing?
53:56 Speaker 02 Grandma was there the whole time.
53:57 Speaker 01 Wow.
53:58 Speaker 02 And actually at some point, when she was trying to stop me from completing my mission.
54:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:04 Speaker 02 I had a thought that I had to kill her.
54:06 Speaker 01 Right.
54:06 Speaker 02 She was wearing a green shirt.
54:08 Dax Shepard? She was wearing a green shirt.
54:08 Speaker 01 Oh.
54:09 Dax Shepard? Okay, and that's good.
54:11 Speaker 02 Green was good.
54:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. This is a total digression, but the brain is so fucking fascinating. It's just so endlessly fascinating. Cause I have had a couple of those moments of complete clarity when clarity should be completely impossible. With like my level of inebriation, right?
54:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:28 Dax Shepard? Or like I got in this situation where a guy tried to mug me and I was on top of him in the street in Santa Monica at three in the morning. There's nowhere to to break it up, I'm afraid he's got a gun, I'm banging his head into the ground. And I was hammered and I, all of a sudden like a bolt of lightning was like, oh, you're killing someone. This is that thing that happens and you're doing it and you need to stand up and leave. But it's like, I don't know where that bolt came from of like super object clarity of like, oh, this is happening. Get away from this. It's wild.
54:59 Speaker 02 And it happened again right after this moment, cause when I'd gone out to the dog cage, police officers were pointing their guns at me. They were ready to arrest me. They were like, raise your hands, raise your hands, cause that's what they do. And I did, right? Instead of running, cause they're wearing black, instead of bolting, I had this, a moment of raise my hands, get them up. And thankfully I did, because I think if I didn't, if I ran, I'd probably not be here right now.
55:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, or if you're still holding the knife. There's eighty ways this could have gotten worse and worse and worse.
55:27 Speaker 02 It's really a miracle.
55:28 Dax Shepard? A terrible miracle that brought you here and a terrible miracle that keeps you from.
55:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
55:32 Dax Shepard? And you're very good about, at the beginning of the book, listing like, there's so many people. That it didn't go that way. There are, in the US, 300 parents a year are killed by their kids.
55:44 Speaker 01 Really?
55:44 Dax Shepard? It's 2% of all homicides.
55:47 Speaker 01 Really? I would never have guessed that.
55:51 Dax Shepard? And you go into it, and that's how I want to end this, is like, all the things we should know and how we help deal with all this. But it makes so much sense because your interaction with your family is going to be the most interaction you have.
56:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:01 Dax Shepard? You know, there's all these different reasons why, in a bizarre way, it's kind of predictable. Anyways, you are arrested and you're put in jail. Tell me what happens after that.
56:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I think I'm on my way to hell. The mission continues, basically, but now I'm going to hell. I failed the mission. There's glimmers of hope in jail, where I think I can escape. I think I can fight Satan. And, I mean, at that point, I'm just experiencing so many hallucinations and delusions just for about a week into jail. Solitary confinement. At some point, I think I'm on the outside of the universe, and I see the universe on the floor. I wouldn't eat because the food smelled like dead bodies.
56:38 Dax Shepard? Here comes the gustatory and the olfactory delusions.
56:42 Speaker 01 Oh, man.
56:43 Speaker 02 And I think time had a big factor in me coming back. Also, like, I remember one of the correctional officers giving me a book about an architect. Can never remember what the name of the book was. I would love to find it again. But I remember starting to read that book in solitary confinement. And I like to think that it started to really ground my thoughts and just maybe help me come back to realize where I was.
57:04 Dax Shepard? And when did they start medication on you?
57:06 Speaker 02 So it would take a while to get prescribed. You know, the psychiatrist there had checked in on me often throughout that week. And basically, once they realized that I was back to myself, I could vocalize that I'm in jail. Right? Because they kept asking me a question, "Do you know where you are? Do you know where you are?"
57:21 Dax Shepard? Right.
57:22 Speaker 02 When I could finally say, "I'm in jail," that was a sign to them, like, okay, he's coming back. They moved me to a general population area so I could get out of my cell, interact with the other people in the jail. And that's when I started to take the medication. And at that point, I had... Huge cognitive shift in my mind because I was like rock bottom. I was like, holy fuck. I'm gonna do my hardest to understand why it happened because I don't ever want to happen again.
57:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah, my full mission now in life has to be preventing that from occurring again. Okay, at this point, there's a potential of probably 10 years in prison on the table.
58:01 Speaker 02 Two felonies, yeah. One for breaking that window, criminal mischief, and the other one was an assault against my dad. So the felony with my dad, it got rid of fortunately.
58:12 Dax Shepard? Because your father wouldn't press charges, right?
58:14 Speaker 02 My father didn't want to press charges. I feel like he felt like he was pushed to do that. He writes me a letter without his name because we had auto protection too. He's still obviously going through his own trauma challenge, but he's still more than willing to help me get out of jail.
58:29 Dax Shepard? It's really interesting, like had I heard this story before I had kids, I'd have one opinion. And then hearing the story, having kids, all of it makes so much sense to me like, yeah, either of my daughters could try to kill me and 100% the next day I would be there to help them get out. I just couldn't ever click into, let's throw them away. It would be impossible. And all I would feel is sadness and pain and hurt for them, not really anger and defensive, you know?
59:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's how my dad felt. Unconditional love, he really stuck by my side. And I thought at that time, like he was never going to talk to me again. I was terrified.
59:10 Dax Shepard? You've come out of this thing, you know how vulnerable you are now. You know, it's anyone who's got a disease that is terminal that comes into remission. It's like you just live with this thing hovering over your head. So it's like you're dealing with that reality, but then even I think probably worse than that is like, I tried to kill this man I love more than anything, who's been nothing but loving to me. Have I ruined that forever? That piece to me feels as scary as the other thing that's looming.
59:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, and honestly, I had gotten several letters from my family and friends. That first day I came back and into the general population cell, I just remember reading all through these letters. I'm bawling because I'm just like, there's still hope here. I was not feeling very hopeful, but those letters made the biggest difference.
59:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
59:53 Speaker 01 Lovely.
59:53 Dax Shepard? It's so important to love people when they're at their very worst.
59:56 Speaker 01 And to tell them.
59:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you get out in thirty days?
1:00:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, which is amazing in and of itself, because they didn't have to. The psychiatrist that I'm seeing is amazing. She's balancing this firmness with me, like, kid, you're in the fucking deep water here, but also a very empathetic and caring nature, because she really understood seeing me in a cell.
1:00:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah, this isn't your fault, but it is your fucking responsibility now.
1:00:20 Speaker 02 Yes, that just brought me to a point where I was like, I can do this. And I get out of jail after thirty days, and I'm ready to start anew.
1:00:30 Dax Shepard? Who's in the parking lot?
1:00:31 Speaker 02 So when I go to the courthouse, you know, I'm chained up, I'm in a green uniform, I stand before the judge, and I agree to everything, whatever he had said. In that moment, I was just like, I don't even remember what he was saying for the most part, but I'm not sure if I'm leaving, I don't know, I'm just lost. At some point, an officer comes by, unchains me, and lets me out the door. And it's a sunny day in our small little town, and there's my dad, just standing by the car.
1:00:56 Speaker 01 Oh, I love it, I love it.
1:01:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, they share a big hug.
1:01:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, again, this story has so many miracles, beautiful things, mixed with tragedy.
1:01:11 Speaker 02 I see the scar on his ear, and I'm just like, holy shit, that really happened? But yeah, he came in for a hug.
1:01:17 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:01:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, fuck, dude.
1:01:21 Speaker 01 Oh, what a good thing.
1:01:22 Dax Shepard? Oh, man.
1:01:23 Speaker 01 Wow, powerful.
1:01:25 Dax Shepard? Now, here's a piece of this story that I didn't see coming, and I have to say it makes me nervous, because I know some people who have a lot of things, and they won't take their medication, and it drives me insane. So you decide to wean off the medication.
1:01:36 Speaker 02 I was very hesitant on doing that, so basically, my conditional discharge was, I had to see substance use group therapy, substance use counselor, nurse practitioner, mental health counselor, four things every week. I didn't even need to be told to do that, I was like, all about it. I was like, I'm gonna take full advantage of all these resources in my community. And it was actually my nurse practitioner, I'm taking ten milligrams of Zyprexa, they started me on that in jail, so I'm continuing to take that. You know, he... Has at some point an idea to potentially wean me off.
1:02:09 Dax Shepard? Can I ask you, is it miserable being on that medication?
1:02:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, so when I was taking it, it reduced my creative thoughts. It made me feel sedated all the time, like struggling to think and foggy, like definitely. And I don't think anyone wants to be on medication.
1:02:23 Dax Shepard? I guess for us on the outside, we're constantly looking at everyone going like, okay, you're foggy versus the other. Like, we're a little bit like, you know, fuck you. If I'm being dead honest, and probably a lot of people are listening, they'll feel this way. It's like, yeah, tough shit versus, you know, so I don't know. I just want to deal with that. I think a lot of people will be curious about that.
1:02:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I still get that. But how I view medication and how I learned through that in my therapy was that it's a very ineffective tool to kind of be in a place where, to me, what was most important to my recovery was the therapy. Talking through it, learning the skills, learning about the symptoms, having these terms, having this knowledge and practicing with it. I was hesitant to go off medication, but I would have not done that without a professional's guidance. That is very, very important. So since he was willing to work in that space, all my treatment providers knew that I was tapering, starting to taper off.
1:03:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And is it fair to say in this process, you're also learning, these actually don't come out of nowhere. Sleep is an enormous piece that's integrated in this. Your diet, using weed, you're learning like, oh, there are a lot of things lead up to this. Is that fair to say?
1:03:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I would use the eight dimensions of wellness. I'm not sure if you're familiar with those. But it's spiritual wellness, intellectual wellness, physical wellness, emotional wellness. Oh, man.
1:03:44 Dax Shepard? There's only eight. It's a lot.
1:03:45 Speaker 02 It's a lot. It's a lot.
1:03:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:03:47 Speaker 02 But I remember you have the mental illness to diagnosis, the DSM five, which gives you this language to help you understand these symptoms. That's one part of it. And then you just have general mental health and wellness where like you're working on making sure that you feel like you're financially well, you're physically well, and that you kind of feel good in those spaces as well. Because when you start to lose some of those things, they add stress, they add pressure.
1:04:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, stress is the one I left out that's huge.
1:04:12 Speaker 02 Yep, stress was a big trigger. When I'm under high pressure and stress is when I start to really feel unwell.
1:04:20 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
1:04:27 Dax Shepard? We get support from Skims. So Monica just informed me that she's a girl's girl and I nodded like I knew exactly what that meant.
1:04:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, but the girls who get it, they get it.
1:04:38 Dax Shepard? Okay, but for those of us who are clearly not girls, walk me through it.
1:04:42 Speaker 01 Well, you know how much I love my Skims fleece joggers because the plush fleece is so soft, it's cozy, it's really comfortable without feeling too heavy. Well, I went to friend them and she would not stop talking about how comfy they were. She almost didn't give them back to me, which was upsetting, but I'm a girl's girl, so I let her have it.
1:04:59 Dax Shepard? Great, great, great.
1:05:00 Speaker 01 So the sleep sets are awesome because they are very soft and comfortable, but they're cute. If I'm in my sleep set, I feel fine about going down the street to pick up my food. I'm still looking cute, but I'm comfy and I'm cozy.
1:05:14 Dax Shepard? Roger.
1:05:15 Speaker 01 A really fun thing to do is if you're going on vacation with your girlfriends, to get matching Skims pajamas. I've done this with Callie and it is so fun. First of all, the pics are so cute, but also it's just fun and friendship.
1:05:27 Dax Shepard? So a girl's girl is looking out for your friends with better loungewear. I get it. Am I one of your girls now?
1:05:32 Speaker 01 You are. You and the other girlies can shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select our show in the dropdown menu that follows.
1:05:47 Dax Shepard? We get support from Instagram teen accounts. So we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up. And one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?
1:06:03 Speaker 01 Which is a fair question.
1:06:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So Instagram has got something called teen accounts and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them and time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM. 7 a.m.
1:06:30 Speaker 01 Sleep mode is genius.
1:06:32 Dax Shepard? Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age-appropriate experiences for teens.
1:06:47 Speaker 01 I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.
1:06:51 Dax Shepard? Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not-so-dreamy parts, the stuff that gets in the way of the actual work. Now, that's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work, they actually do it, start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. So you and your team can focus on what
1:07:36 Dax Shepard? matters most, which for me is, are they obsessed with male bodies on the same level as I am?
1:07:42 Speaker 01 They never are.
1:07:43 Dax Shepard? To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.
1:07:55 Dax Shepard? So you start applying all these things and then you get kind of a list of things to look out for? Like, can you be objectively good at recognizing when it's slowly starting? And what's been your, because that was 10 years ago, the situation with your dad?
1:08:10 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:08:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, from leaving and a year afterwards, titrating off of the medication and having like a game plan, what's been the ride over those nine years with that approach?
1:08:21 Speaker 02 Recovery is hard work. It's not easy. And it's a never-ending process of change, internal change and constant diligence.
1:08:28 Dax Shepard? And AA, we say you get a daily reprieve.
1:08:30 Speaker 02 I actually have this tattoo on my arm, right? It's the mental health ribbon and it's my daily reminder to always think about my mental health and where I'm at. And that's how I approach it, right? And the skills- That I was learning in therapy, I continued to go on to practice them. And when I got to grad school.
1:08:44 Dax Shepard? You had been kicked out of your school, we should say.
1:08:46 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
1:08:46 Dax Shepard? Completely kicked out of your school.
1:08:48 Speaker 02 Expelled, yeah.
1:08:49 Dax Shepard? And are you even nervous to start that process again? Like, will that be another trigger? Will I get stressed in returning? I don't know how one evaluates which things are gonna be too much.
1:08:58 Speaker 02 I mean, yeah, I had to go before the college and testify. And I remember being actually triggered in the moment because it's a corporate feel. People in black suits and microphones on the table. And I have to sit here and tell my story so I could get back into college and finally finish my undergrad degree, right?
1:09:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:09:13 Speaker 02 And my dad has to do it with me. And he does it, though. And he breaks down. I get back in. It was triggering in the, in the moment. It was definitely not easy. But I was doing the work to do what I had to do to get my life back on track.
1:09:27 Dax Shepard? It's funny too, how your life makes sense in reflection only. But, you know, this whole running histories, this is where that comes into play. It's like you have lots of experience with extreme dedication and routineized behavior. This isn't your first go with.
1:09:43 Speaker 01 You know how to be disciplined if you need to be.
1:09:46 Speaker 02 That I attribute to my athletic identity, that drive, that character to just be dedicated to something.
1:09:52 Dax Shepard? Push through pain, push through discomfort.
1:09:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that definitely helped me get on that path.
1:09:57 Dax Shepard? So you end up, yeah, you get a master's, you become a social worker. Have you had any periods where you've had to return to the medication?
1:10:05 Speaker 02 In my graduate school, the first sign of a mental health challenge, what did I immediately do? Go see a therapist. I always kept the medication door open. It's a very important tool. I never would ever push against that. But my first step was to see a therapist. Do what I loved, which was to talk about what I was going through. So that's what I did in grad school when I started to be really challenged. Because there's a lot of stress and pressure. I had an on-campus job, like masters in social, which can be demanding, a lot of classes. I don't go back on medication, but there is, when I get ready to graduate with my master's degree, I'm struggling to find a job. And I had like a dozen interviews probably, and I just could not get a job. Part of me always felt it was like these news articles. We didn't talk about the news articles, but after the incident, you know, my name.
1:10:49 Speaker 02 Was in the headlines, this man who bit off his dad's ear, crazy person. There were seven articles. So like, I'm really struggling with this job search. I think it's that. I think it's multiple things. And there was a time I had actually had to move back home to my dad's house after graduating. And I was really defeated because I had done all this work and financial wellness was a very important part. You need a job, right?
1:11:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:12 Speaker 02 So I was like very stressed out and I got to another crisis point at this moment to where I was willing to take myself to the hospital.
1:11:19 Dax Shepard? Okay, good. Of course, the paradox of it all is like you need your mind to evaluate whether you're losing your mind. It's very tenuous.
1:11:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I was willing to go back on medication when I had kind of got to the point where it's actually a very touching story. So I actually had a job interview where I went to grad school. It's a seven hour drive from my home. And I had got the hint that my interview didn't go so well. And this was after a twelve failed interview. So I was like, I'm not gonna get this job. And I'm driving home on this long drive. It's late at night and I'm starting to fester on everything. I'm having rapid thoughts about everything that was going wrong in every single interview. Just bam bam bam. I get home, it's late at night. I say goodnight to my dad. I didn't want to be vulnerable with him. I was not in the headspace to open up about what I was going through. I was just like, I'm gonna go straight to bed. And I go into my bedroom and I can't sleep.
1:12:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you're ruminating.
1:12:12 Speaker 02 Ruminating. And at like three o'clock in the morning, I look at my alarm clock and I'm just like, holy shit, I should be sleeping right now. This is not good. And then there's a light coming through my window from my neighbors and it's a bit too symmetrical.
1:12:26 Speaker 01 Oh boy.
1:12:27 Speaker 02 And I'm just like, I'm really, really unwell.
1:12:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:12:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:12:31 Speaker 02 So that's when I was like, I want to go to the hospital.
1:12:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, good for you.
1:12:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:12:35 Speaker 02 I thought about waking up my dad. I thought about calling my friend Finn, but that shame and stigma. I had also like woke up my dad late at night before during all of this.
1:12:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:12:43 Speaker 02 So I was like, I feel like he's gonna be afraid and it's not gonna go well. So I did what I knew I could do, which was mindfulness meditation. I had practiced this, right? Over the years, this is three or so years after the incident at this point. So I've gone through this process and I was aware. Of these symptoms, right? At some point, I may have not been able to be aware of it, but I was aware of it and I was able to catch it in the moment. And I did what I knew what I could do. I put on my headphones. I put on an instrumental playlist and I meditated and I put my hands on my chest.
1:13:12 Dax Shepard? Cause you were dysregulated, extremely dysregulated. And there's all kinds of tools that get regulated and this is one of them.
1:13:18 Speaker 02 And I fall asleep for like a couple of hours and then I wake up at like six AM and I'm still feeling like this feeling like I still gotta do something. So I go to the living room and I wait for my dad to wake up and I'm thinking about how I want to approach this with my dad. Cause I want to tell him and this is, you know, keep in mind the same space where everything happens.
1:13:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:13:36 Speaker 02 So he sits down and before he turns on the TV, cause he always did that, I was like, dad, I need to tell you something. And I said, I'm very unwell. I do not feel good.
1:13:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, good for you.
1:13:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:45 Speaker 02 And it was clear to me in my dad's response that he had done some work with his mental health as well. Because he kept the space de-escalated. He worked with me. He helped me find a resource that actually happened to be right in my community where I could access crisis intervention therapy. Which I would compare to like urgent care, right? I didn't have to go to the hospital, but I could get a therapy appointment with a crisis therapist in a couple of hours. So I go there and turns out I didn't have to go to the hospital. I just had to make mental health my priority again. Basically, his instruction was to just focus on your day to day chores, like your sleep chores. Go for a run if you can. Do that for a couple of weeks. Forget about the job. Cause that was the big stressor.
1:14:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:28 Dax Shepard? I'm always astounded by how much overlap there is with all these things. They seem so different. But like this is the same roadmap for addiction, right? Which is like, there'll be all these guys will be like, well, I can't go to a meeting because I have X, Y, or Z, or I got my kids this and I have this work thing. And it's like, yeah, but you'll have none of that shit permanently if you don't make this number one priority. That stuff is only a result of you. Keeping this number one priority in check. Because the other stuff you think you need to miss it for, you'll lose.
1:14:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:14:59 Dax Shepard? It's hard to get us to accept that. That's hard to accept.
1:15:03 Speaker 01 This is so hard.
1:15:04 Dax Shepard? Wow, so in just doing that, the refocusing, fuck the job. We're not getting anything if we don't get right.
1:15:11 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:15:11 Dax Shepard? Was effective.
1:15:12 Speaker 01 Good for you because you were able to recognize like it's happening and I gotta get on the right track.
1:15:17 Speaker 02 Still kept the medication door open there, right? I was like, one of the first things I actually said to the crisis therapist, like, I'm going to go back on meds.
1:15:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:15:23 Speaker 02 He held back. He's like, let's try this first.
1:15:25 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:15:26 Speaker 02 I started seeing weekly. He was monitoring me and we worked together and I didn't have to go back on meds. And then a few weeks later, I had another job interview. Or not a few weeks, it was probably a couple of months at this point. I had another job interview and then I got the job.
1:15:38 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
1:15:39 Dax Shepard? And now you work for the New York State Mental Health.
1:15:43 Speaker 02 Office of Mental Health.
1:15:44 Dax Shepard? Office of Mental Health.
1:15:45 Speaker 02 So I do suicide prevention. I work more in like a system, you know, statewide approach to designing programming, advocacy. That's just how my mind operates. I like to think in, in systems. But, you know, being in the Office of Mental Health, like they have an office around peer specialists, which is people with lived experience who can help provide another valued support system for someone aside from your traditional clinical support.
1:16:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, like a sponsor in some ways.
1:16:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's many spaces to go here and I'm just happy to be a professional in this space.
1:16:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:15 Dax Shepard? And now you also do public speaking and you're a huge advocate to spread awareness. So what is your approach? I think you're great and you should list some of them. As much as you focus on like some of the aces in childhood, you're very readily listing all the many lucky things that were happening in your life.
1:16:37 Speaker 02 The first time I shared my story, I wrote a blog post for the National Alliance of Mental Illness. I actually mainly did that because of those news articles because I wanted to regain who I was.
1:16:46 Dax Shepard? Reclaim yourself.
1:16:47 Speaker 02 And that kind of turned into like, when I did that, I got all these responses from people that were like, wow, thank you for sharing your story. So like, I didn't go in that direct service work, but I was starting to experiencing the impact of being vulnerable in the public space. And that kind of started to fuel this drive. For me to to share my story in much greater depth. And that's kind of how I ended up with, you know, the book.
1:17:09 Dax Shepard? Well, and you reached out to a guy who had written a book about his brother killing their mother.
1:17:14 Speaker 02 Vince Garnada, incredible man. When I reached out to him, I was at some draft in my book. And when I read his book, because it had just come out, I just related so much to his story. Although, you know, he brings a very different brother perspective. But I was like, I gotta reach out to him. And I did. And I did not expect a response, you know? Cold calls, you never get responses that often. But he responded and we connected, we met, and we just had this great bond.
1:17:38 Dax Shepard? And he ended up writing a beautiful foreword to your book.
1:17:41 Speaker 02 He became another role model for me. And when I think throughout my story, I mean, my dad has always been consistent. But Coach Dan was a role model, the psychiatrist in jail was a role model. The person who's my supervisor in my master's degree for my job on campus was a role model. And Vince became my next role model.
1:17:58 Speaker 01 And your best friend.
1:17:59 Speaker 02 And my best friend.
1:18:00 Dax Shepard? And I'll add, the other siblings that lived in the other houses with less resources. Some end up in jail. They had a rough road, a lot of your siblings, yeah?
1:18:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, they did. I mean, I won't go into a lot of details about their experience. But there's been a history of mental illness, addiction. I've gotten to a position where I've had a lot of success. And I think there's a great privilege in my story that I had my dad in running. That helped my trajectory as compared to my siblings. Not every kid finds hope.
1:18:33 Dax Shepard? Right, yeah. Do we have any sense of what percentage of the populations wrestling with this?
1:18:39 Speaker 02 One in five experience mental illness at some point in their life. I don't know the exact percentage of psychosis. I think it's a smaller percentage, right? It's usually not common, pretty uncommon. And then going towards like the violent aspects, right? Because that's a unique part to my story. Four percent, I think, is the number that says that kind of results in some.
1:18:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah, only four percent of people with delusions and psychosis will be violent.
1:19:03 Speaker 02 But they tend to get the most attention.
1:19:04 Speaker 01 Right.
1:19:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so I don't think people need to be overly alarmed about that aspect. Again, it's a very small percentage, but for the people who are. Listening who have someone on the left, because yes, as rare as it is, I know two people, they haven't gotten violent, but they've left for months and done stuff. You're like, what is happening?
1:19:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:19:22 Dax Shepard? And so all the people in this sphere, if you think people are under do with addiction, no one knows what to do in the medication issue and all this. So like, what do you advise people who might have a loved one in this situation? What's the best approach?
1:19:35 Speaker 02 I get this question when I do my
1:19:37 Dax Shepard? Solve this for us.
1:19:38 Speaker 02 My keynote presentations, I get a lot of parents reach out to me and it's always the most difficult situations. And I'm just like, I don't have an easy answer.
1:19:48 Dax Shepard? Well, de-escalation right there. That's a good thing to have heard.
1:19:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:19:51 Dax Shepard? And maybe even indulging the delusions while we get you to the safe place. Like, these are kind of simple things that I think maybe are helpful to know.
1:19:59 Speaker 02 Definitely. And I think I try to be that role model. That source of inspiration is a peer with lived experience who, you know, if someone is going through this and they hear my story or someone else's successful story, maybe they'll potentially come to a realization that they need help.
1:20:14 Dax Shepard? It's a treatable condition.
1:20:16 Speaker 01 I find the system to be very annoying in that so much of the mental health space is voluntary. Like you have to check yourself into places unless, unless something has escalated to this very scary thing. It's frustrating because as we were just saying, your brain has to tell you that you're in trouble. And when you're deep in the psychosis, it's not going to do that. Then they're not going to check themselves in. And I just hate that.
1:20:44 Dax Shepard? The powerlessness of it.
1:20:45 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:20:46 Speaker 02 Both my hospitalizations were involuntary. I didn't want to go there.
1:20:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:20:50 Speaker 02 I immediately resented that. It created this wall that I was just like, fuck no. It's such a complicated scenario because, you know, I was driving around 100 miles per hour because I believe the universe protected me. You can't do that.
1:21:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:21:03 Speaker 02 Like if a police car chased me, I don't know what would have happened. My story could have been very different. And this was before the incident, right? The violent aspect was only one result, but many other things could have happened before that. It's something I think we're still figuring out how to approach this because it's super complex.
1:21:18 Speaker 01 It is.
1:21:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you also have to protect individuals against the state from willy nilly being able to take people, you know, there's a, there's a lot of things you're weighing against one another.
1:21:30 Speaker 01 When police are involved, it does seem like it gets taken more seriously, which is something to maybe consider.
1:21:38 Speaker 02 And I think if you look at the history of psychiatry and this, we're like lobotomies, we're thing, you know, going back to the cuckoo's nest.
1:21:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:21:45 Speaker 02 It doesn't have a great history in this space. I think we made a lot of progress in the community mental health space. I just think it's such a long-term game to some degree to where we've gotten to a place where people can be open with the most severe instances and get the help that they need and not be shamed by that.
1:22:02 Dax Shepard? And not be, yeah, excommunicated from society is huge. Again, you're like one of the first alcoholics to be in public saying, yeah, I'm a recovering alcoholic. No one did that in the 50s. And then now no one has a problem doing that. And I would hope that's exactly where we're trending with this and the sociopathy and the-
1:22:20 Speaker 01 All of it.
1:22:21 Dax Shepard? All of it.
1:22:21 Speaker 02 All of it, yeah.
1:22:23 Dax Shepard? What a rebound, dude. So you've been with a woman now for three or four years?
1:22:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:22:27 Dax Shepard? You had to tell her, you're on a date and you're like, I gotta get out in front of this. She's gonna Google me.
1:22:33 Speaker 02 Yep. I never truly felt that my ability to overcome the trauma and find my resilience was really valued, right? It was always the opposite where people would hear my story and they'd be like, get away.
1:22:47 Speaker 01 Right, scared of you.
1:22:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I'm too scared.
1:22:50 Speaker 02 That has and still continues to be actually looming shadow, although I've found a healthy way of doing it and finding a significant other, right? I wanted to find someone who I could live with and grow family with. So I had to really consider how to approach that when I was on the dating scene. So I chose a social worker, you know, people who I know.
1:23:09 Dax Shepard? Trend high empathetically.
1:23:10 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:23:11 Speaker 01 And understand the space.
1:23:13 Speaker 02 It's a risk assessment, right? If she's a social worker, she might be open. You know, very strategic with how I interjected my past, left the door open. She had the choice. It was our third date, you know, if it stopped, it stopped.
1:23:26 Speaker 01 Right.
1:23:27 Speaker 02 We'll move on.
1:23:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:23:28 Speaker 02 But she was open and she continued seeing me.
1:23:30 Dax Shepard? But people in her life discouraged it. She had to kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:23:34 Speaker 01 I'm sure.
1:23:34 Dax Shepard? I also think of, again, another overlap with being an addict is like, you have to tell people and what you're signing up for is like, people monitor you more.
1:23:45 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:23:46 Dax Shepard? And-
1:23:48 Dax Shepard? That is what it is. You deserve it. It's how it's gotta be. But also, no one loves being monitored. You know, like, no one loves that sense of people are like trying to evaluate all the time. Like, just studying you, that's a kind of a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling. And I guess it's just the deal. That's what it is. But it's not the best feeling, right?
1:24:05 Speaker 02 It's not, and I definitely, with people who don't really have an open conversation with me about my past, I sense that all the time.
1:24:14 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:24:15 Speaker 02 But what we've created in our relationship is that it's, it's an open door. And it's not just about me, right? She has struggles with anxiety. She has her own.
1:24:23 Dax Shepard? None of us are fucking.
1:24:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, everyone has stuff.
1:24:25 Speaker 02 It's the family interpersonal culture there that, we both happen to be good talkers in the sense of social work too, so that helps, just having that background. But like, we've created a space where like, if I'm going through another challenge, I'll be open with her about it. If I'm going through something and I'm not really aware of it, she's in touch with the signs and would know what to do to step in and give me the help that I needed, right?
1:24:50 Dax Shepard? You're co-piloting.
1:24:51 Speaker 02 Co-piloting, yeah.
1:24:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not being oppressed, you're co-piloting.
1:24:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, and if you're understanding of yourself, then hopefully you are open to being co-piloted. You're open.
1:25:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and you have to be. I was just sharing in the, like, it's not great. It's like, I just do a normal thing someone else would do and all of a sudden it's like, wait, what? And I'm like, you know, like, it's just that feeling of like, everyone, no?
1:25:13 Speaker 01 It is kinda like the thing we were talking about earlier of, well, sorry you have to be foggy. Like, the rest of us don't, sorry.
1:25:20 Dax Shepard? If I was someone else, I'd have that opinion of me. And as the person that is in the situation, sometimes it's just like.
1:25:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, I understand.
1:25:27 Dax Shepard? You know, hey, I want autonomy too. This might not even be fair to do, but I gotta say, I've watched a few different docs on psychosis and there is this really common pattern where people think they're the Messiah. There's good and evil, it's Satan.
1:25:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:25:43 Dax Shepard? And I'm gonna be very exact with my language. I love religion for people who it benefits their life. But I will say, that is my issue with the whole thing. This notion of evil, again, the delusions emanate from inside. So you somehow have picked up along the way, even though you guys weren't like crazy religious, this really, I think, caustic concept of evil in Satan and God and perfection and good and bad. And I think it's so fucking dangerous and it's in there. And if you feel like you're fighting to defeat Satan, you're capable of anything. I just wonder what psychosis looks like on an alternate planet where those concepts don't even exist.
1:26:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, it is so fascinating that there's that common thread with psychosis. And even big ideas of science too. That was a part of my story with E equals MC squared being associated with my sentence and all that. These big existential ideas. And I don't think this really probably talked enough about in the framework of psychosis. And that's something I really tried to make a part of my book. It's called Mending Reality. Because when you break from reality, when you have this break, you're in this other world, this other space. And it is kind of like you're trying to know. I think that's why there's that thread, because you're trying to find some sense of greater understanding.
1:27:01 Dax Shepard? And it's the simplest story. It's such a simple, clean story. There's good, there's evil, there's Satan, there's God. It's very grounding and it's very comforting.
1:27:11 Speaker 02 And you see it, you see the churches. I think that's why it becomes kind of a part of it.
1:27:14 Dax Shepard? And you're right. I read this great book called Maniac, or there's no one, everything we know ceases to exist. There's a lot of these physicists who have come up with these things in psychotic states, in psychosis states. One in particular, this guy who has this crazy allergy during spring. He gets all these hives. He has to go to a little island in Germany. He's got a nurse caring for him. He loses his mind for six days. And in that time, he writes down all these matrices. And when he comes out of them, he doesn't understand them. He doesn't know where they came from. And they are the math that proves quantum physics. And it's like, what is that?
1:27:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's fascinating.
1:27:49 Dax Shepard? How do we like have the psychosis we want?
1:27:53 Speaker 02 I listened to your podcast with Michael Pollan, talking about utilizing mushrooms and these psychoactive things to kind of get in that space where you're experiencing some form of psychosis to some degree. Alternate reality to get into a space where you could think like that.
1:28:11 Dax Shepard? Well, I was thinking so much as I was reading your descriptions of these things. I'm like, oh yeah, I've been there. But when I've been on lots of psychedelics, the voice is still present that goes, this is just the shrooms. This is just the acid. And then without that voice. That's the only difference.
1:28:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:27 Dax Shepard? Right?
1:28:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:28 Dax Shepard? I could go like, oh, this is that and it'll end.
1:28:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:32 Dax Shepard? Well, it's a beautifully written book. You're a very good writer.
1:28:35 Speaker 01 I'm so glad you came to talk about this.
1:28:37 Dax Shepard? It's called Mending Reality and Advocate's Existential Journey with Mental Health. And it's out now. I really encourage people to read it. It's a beautiful, touching story.
1:28:46 Speaker 01 Tell your dad we said hello.
1:28:48 Dax Shepard? I know, I really like your dad. Will you give him a big hug for me?
1:28:51 Speaker 02 I will, yes.
1:28:52 Dax Shepard? And tell him I hope to be the dad that he has proven to be.
1:28:54 Speaker 02 He'll be listening. He called me on my way out here and he's like, he's like, is it Monday? Is it like live? And I'm like, they record it. It's gonna come out at some point, but he's...
1:29:04 Speaker 01 He's so supportive and sweet. Is he so happy to be a grandpa?
1:29:08 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:29:08 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
1:29:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:29:10 Speaker 01 That's so sweet.
1:29:11 Dax Shepard? Now, fire up the fucking truck. Oh, he's got a muscle car. What's his?
1:29:14 Speaker 02 It's a Roadrunner.
1:29:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Roadrunner, 68 Plymouth Roadrunner.
1:29:18 Speaker 02 Silver.
1:29:19 Speaker 01 God.
1:29:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, good for him.
1:29:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:29:21 Dax Shepard? That's his other baby. He's got two kids.
1:29:23 Speaker 02 It is. Sometimes it's like, oh, who's in one plane?
1:29:28 Dax Shepard? It's a car collector. I don't know either. Well, Colin, so nice meeting you. Thanks so much for sharing your story. It's...
1:29:35 Speaker 01 Very important.
1:29:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so brave in a world where people would be really wanting to hide this whole chapter of their life and move on. And I applaud you for not doing that.
1:29:43 Speaker 02 Thank you so much for having me.
1:29:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, good luck with everything.
1:29:48 Dax Shepard? Hi there, this is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check with Miss Monica.
1:29:55 Dax Shepard? Welcome to the fact check.
1:29:56 Speaker 01 Welcome, welcome, welcome.
1:29:59 Dax Shepard? Oh, you're doing a character. Your first character is me. Do it again?
1:30:05 Speaker 01 No.
1:30:10 Speaker 01 No, that's not how you sound.
1:30:11 Dax Shepard? How do I sound?
1:30:12 Speaker 01 It wasn't an impression. It was another guy.
1:30:15 Dax Shepard? Oh, really?
1:30:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, a competing podcaster.
1:30:18 Dax Shepard? Who also says, welcome, welcome, welcome.
1:30:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's copying.
1:30:21 Dax Shepard? I'm not gonna sue.
1:30:23 Speaker 01 You should.
1:30:24 Dax Shepard? I'm not. I don't believe in suing.
1:30:26 Speaker 01 Yes, you do.
1:30:27 Dax Shepard? Reliable, maybe. You know, there's a certain paradox with suing, which is, I think so often the people that get sued, they don't have anything.
1:30:35 Speaker 01 I know.
1:30:36 Dax Shepard? It's a real waste of time.
1:30:37 Speaker 01 I know, but it's justice.
1:30:39 Dax Shepard? It feels like justice, yeah. Have you ever sued anyone?
1:30:43 Speaker 01 No.
1:30:44 Dax Shepard? Have you been sued? No.
1:30:46 Speaker 01 No.
1:30:46 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:30:47 Speaker 01 I think I was, I had a threat of suing.
1:30:51 Dax Shepard? Some light.
1:30:52 Speaker 01 There was some light threatening. It didn't, um, come through.
1:30:55 Dax Shepard? Didn't materialize.
1:30:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. No one's named Sue anymore.
1:30:59 Dax Shepard? Women? Suzanne? Susan?
1:31:02 Speaker 01 I know, but.
1:31:03 Dax Shepard? Susan Downey?
1:31:03 Speaker 01 Does anyone, right, right.
1:31:06 Dax Shepard? Suzanne Sarandon.
1:31:09 Speaker 01 She doesn't go by Sue.
1:31:11 Dax Shepard? No, you're right. Yeah, I don't know a lot of Sue's.
1:31:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:31:15 Dax Shepard? I had an Aunt Sue.
1:31:16 Speaker 01 You did?
1:31:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah. That was one I thought was so beautiful.
1:31:19 Speaker 01 Wait.
1:31:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah. She's not my blood relative. It was my uncle's wife.
1:31:25 Speaker 01 Who? Your dad's brother's wife?
1:31:27 Dax Shepard? My dad's brother's wife. And I just thought she was so beautiful when I was a little boy.
1:31:32 Speaker 01 What did she look like?
1:31:32 Dax Shepard? She was so kind.
1:31:34 Speaker 01 Hmm, that's nice. You love, you thought she was beautiful on the inside?
1:31:37 Dax Shepard? Both, the inside and the outside, yeah. She was just so generous to, you know, my mom, she worked too, but I think she worked nights. Somehow she was around in the summer when I'd be at my Papa Bob and Grandma's. We'd hang out at my cousin's house a lot.
1:31:51 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:31:51 Dax Shepard? And she was always around to make macaroni and cheese.
1:31:54 Speaker 01 Oh, did she make mac and cheese Kraft? And it was so good. And like when your mom made it, it sucked?
1:31:59 Dax Shepard? Well, we never had Kraft. We had fucking cross cutter brand.
1:32:03 Speaker 01 What's that?
1:32:03 Dax Shepard? The Kroger in-house brand. It was called like Koss Cutter, but they spelled it with a K. It was garbage. I hate to disparage.
1:32:12 Speaker 01 Both K's?
1:32:13 Dax Shepard? No, the C was a C. We weren't in the South.
1:32:15 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:32:16 Dax Shepard? Krogers.
1:32:17 Speaker 01 Oh, right.
1:32:18 Dax Shepard? K, cross cutters. I think it was the brand of all this generic food they would sell us, my family.
1:32:24 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:32:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And what I really wanted, because my Papa Bob, first of all, my grandma had worked for Kraft when she came up from Kentucky. Uh, with the Honcho clan.
1:32:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:32:35 Dax Shepard? They all went off murdering and thieving, but Grandma Yola's got herself a really good job at craft.
1:32:41 Speaker 01 She invented them.
1:32:42 Dax Shepard? And worked there for long enough that she had a pension from there. Before she went and got her double master's degree and became a teacher.
1:32:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:32:50 Dax Shepard? So.
1:32:50 Speaker 01 So she get free mac and cheese for life?
1:32:52 Dax Shepard? Well, the family was very loyal to craft because of that. So we had all the craft products. And then, as you know, my Papa Bob worked for Wonder Bread Bakery, which either owned Hostess or Hostess owned them.
1:33:04 Speaker 01 Right.
1:33:04 Dax Shepard? So Twinkies, Ding Dongs, uh, the pies, all the Hostess products. He would pick up from the thrift store and with his discount, it was virtually free.
1:33:13 Speaker 01 Wait, from the thrift store?
1:33:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So there in our, in their town of Livonia, there was a little standalone Hostess thrift store. And it's where all the damaged Hostess.
1:33:22 Speaker 01 Cool.
1:33:23 Dax Shepard? So you'd get a box of dented Ding Dongs and it'd be like 90 cents. And then Papa Bob got some kind of discount. So.
1:33:30 Speaker 01 I was, it was one.
1:33:32 Dax Shepard? He's like, how many you want? And I'm like, like, how, how, he's like, just get as many as you think you can eat.
1:33:39 Speaker 01 Dented Ding Dong?
1:33:40 Dax Shepard? Forty-eight of those for sure.
1:33:42 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:33:42 Dax Shepard? I was like, great, let's get it. It's $1.
1:33:44 Speaker 01 Dented Ding Dong sounds like a diss, you know?
1:33:48 Dax Shepard? It does.
1:33:49 Speaker 01 You dented Ding Dong?
1:33:50 Dax Shepard? Well, I had a dented Ding Dong during my Peroni scare for a year. So for me, it really hits close to home.
1:34:01 Speaker 01 Is a Ding Dong a penis?
1:34:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:34:05 Dax Shepard? Get your Ding Dong out of my face. It's a con.
1:34:07 Speaker 01 I think it's just dong.
1:34:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:34:10 Speaker 01 I think Ding Dong is just a dummy.
1:34:12 Dax Shepard? It's also that, yeah. But a dong, a dick is also a jerk. Is like, you know, all these words, thank God, have multiple meanings.
1:34:19 Speaker 01 Of course, of course. But why didn't your grandma and grandpa give your mom craft? If they were just getting it all the time for free, they should've just given that to your mom. Why does your mom have to have Kroger, Krogs?
1:34:31 Dax Shepard? Right. Cro- cross cutter.
1:34:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:34:33 Dax Shepard? Well, you know, yeah, maybe they should've sent us home with some fun stuff, but they also might've felt like that would've maybe offended my mom or hurt my mom's feelings that we needed groceries. Now, they did come out with a generic brand. It wasn't a generic brand, but it was a sub. Brand, right? It wasn't as expensive as Kraft macaroni and cheese. If I recall, those were forty nine cents a box.
1:34:56 Speaker 01 Really?
1:34:56 Dax Shepard? When I was a kid, yeah.
1:34:57 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:34:58 Dax Shepard? And there was a, a, a brand called.
1:35:00 Speaker 01 Draft?
1:35:01 Dax Shepard? Golden.
1:35:02 Speaker 01 Let me look it up.
1:35:03 Dax Shepard? Golden Harvest?
1:35:04 Speaker 01 Golden Harvest.
1:35:06 Dax Shepard? Well, just maybe go do Golden macaroni and cheese, nineteen eighties.
1:35:10 Speaker 01 Golden Grain?
1:35:12 Dax Shepard? Yep, yes. So that was about a third less in price than the Kraft.
1:35:18 Speaker 01 It's the same brand behind Rice O' Roney.
1:35:20 Dax Shepard? Okay, great. It had bigger noodles and it was damn good. I was like, okay, I can definitely live with Golden Grain.
1:35:27 Speaker 01 Was that it?
1:35:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's really good stuff.
1:35:30 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:35:31 Dax Shepard? And cheap, but a little more expensive than cost cutter. Okay, so that's, that's where it's fallen in the, the mix. Or you just had the black and white box of macaroni and cheese. That was also terrible.
1:35:42 Speaker 01 Hmm, okay. I also, I didn't have mac and cheese, um, but then, you know, I'd go to friends' houses and their moms would make it. It was so good. It was so good. How did they make it that good? And then finally my, I like convinced my mom to make it.
1:35:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:35:57 Speaker 01 And then it wasn't good.
1:35:59 Dax Shepard? I'll tell you what parents I think do.
1:36:01 Speaker 01 Skim milk.
1:36:02 Dax Shepard? No, I'll tell you exactly what happens, because I've watched it happen in my own household. The parents, kind of rightly so, they look at that directions and it says, use a quarter cup of butter, which is a half stick of butter. My grandma didn't give a fuck. She's like, yeah, eat, eat ten sticks of butter. But I think my mom and most moms were like, I bet we can get away with a quarter stick of butter.
1:36:29 Speaker 01 Because of crudality.
1:36:30 Dax Shepard? Like, I'm feeding my kid a half of a stick of butter, margarine in my case.
1:36:34 Speaker 01 Margarine.
1:36:36 Dax Shepard? And so I think they skimp on the butter and I even noticed Kristen will prepare it that way. And when I make it, the kids are like, oh dad, you make the best mac. I'm like, yeah.
1:36:45 Speaker 01 Well, you use two packs of cheese.
1:36:47 Dax Shepard? I also use two packs of cheese and I use a full quarter cup slash half stick of butter.
1:36:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:36:53 Dax Shepard? I go, here's my thing, like, if we're doing it.
1:36:55 Speaker 01 If you're doing it, exactly. I agree. I think my mom used margarine and skim milk.
1:37:02 Dax Shepard? And probably didn't put the right amount of margarine in. I'm sure she was like, that's gotta be too. It looks crazy.
1:37:07 Speaker 01 I know, but I use.
1:37:07 Dax Shepard? And I ate a whole box. So I'm like, I am eating a half stick of butter.
1:37:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, whatever.
1:37:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:37:12 Speaker 01 Um, I had to drink skim milk because I, um, had high cholesterol.
1:37:17 Dax Shepard? As a baby?
1:37:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, as a little kid.
1:37:20 Dax Shepard? They knew you had, I don't think I ever had my cholesterol checked.
1:37:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, they would do physicals.
1:37:25 Dax Shepard? And check your cholesterol?
1:37:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:26 Dax Shepard? And you had like the cholesterol of a seven year old man?
1:37:28 Speaker 01 I had high cholesterol as a kid. That's why it's ve- it's like, when I have it now, I'm just like, yeah, duh. I've had it since I was a baby, literally a baby.
1:37:37 Dax Shepard? I had it for fifteen, twenty years, from whenever I was getting it tested, until two years ago, three years ago.
1:37:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't anymore, but I'm on statin.
1:37:45 Dax Shepard? Mine is fucking like mid to low now, and I can't believe it. I'm not on a statin, but I'm on red.
1:37:52 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:37:53 Dax Shepard? Rice yeast.
1:37:54 Speaker 01 Red yeast, yeah.
1:37:55 Dax Shepard? Which is nat- nature's statin.
1:37:57 Speaker 01 Golden grain statin.
1:37:58 Dax Shepard? I think it's the same active thing that's in a statin.
1:38:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:38:02 Dax Shepard? Then additionally, I'm on a medication called Zetia, which old Dr. Richard Isaacson gave me. And that dropped it significantly, and it doesn't work the same way as a statin. I guess you can either attack on a cholesterol scenario, you can either attack how much there is the overall, or how quickly your body absorbs it.
1:38:23 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:38:24 Dax Shepard? He's like, I think you have an absorption problem.
1:38:26 Speaker 01 Uh-huh.
1:38:27 Dax Shepard? Let's get you on Zetia. And that fucking overnight, Monica, I was like, well, now we're talking. This is what I was supposed to be. And I kind of almost resigned, like, it sounds like you have.
1:38:36 Speaker 01 Well, no, I'm on a statin and I'm on the GLP-1, and now it's lo- it's normal.
1:38:40 Dax Shepard? It's normal now, after all these years.
1:38:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:38:43 Dax Shepard? I hope you didn't do any damage. I hope it's all reversible.
1:38:46 Speaker 01 I mean, I was born with this. What am I supposed to do? I was just a baby, baby, baby.
1:38:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, no wonder your mom was cutting the margarine short. She's like, I can't feed this kid cholesterol. She's gonna have a coronary episode in fifth grade. But when you would go to your grandparents' house in Savannah?
1:39:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:39:04 Dax Shepard? Would they dump the butter in there and make it good?
1:39:06 Speaker 01 I don't think they made crap either, but my grandpa would, every day, he'd pick me up something from like, um.
1:39:13 Dax Shepard? Cassie's.
1:39:14 Speaker 01 Exactly, from Crystals.
1:39:15 Dax Shepard? Crystals, Crisies.
1:39:17 Speaker 01 Crystals every day.
1:39:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:39:18 Speaker 01 Um.
1:39:19 Dax Shepard? This is what the, this is grandparents.
1:39:21 Speaker 01 It's so fun. Or Taco Bell, or.
1:39:24 Dax Shepard? Anything your heart desires.
1:39:25 Speaker 01 Anything I wanted, he would get it for me.
1:39:27 Dax Shepard? Loved you.
1:39:28 Speaker 01 He loved me so much.
1:39:31 Speaker 01 He loved me so much, it's crazy.
1:39:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so did my grandparents. Isn't it the greatest?
1:39:39 Speaker 01 He loved me till the end.
1:39:40 Dax Shepard? Think that's how you're supposed, that would have been a big chunk of our lives if we grew up the way we're supposed to. You're supposed to live with your whole fucking family.
1:39:47 Speaker 01 I know.
1:39:47 Dax Shepard? And it would have been so nice. Everyone was so, I'm talking about Aunt Sue.
1:39:51 Speaker 01 I know, but Aunt Sue might have turned on you.
1:39:53 Dax Shepard? No.
1:39:54 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:39:55 Dax Shepard? No, no, no, no, no, no. Aunt Sue remained.
1:39:58 Speaker 01 Did she lie to you?
1:39:59 Dax Shepard? Sweetest woman, yeah.
1:40:01 Speaker 01 I'm sorry.
1:40:01 Dax Shepard? I loved her.
1:40:02 Speaker 01 I love her.
1:40:03 Dax Shepard? Such a wonderful woman.
1:40:04 Speaker 01 How did she pass?
1:40:06 Dax Shepard? Cancer.
1:40:08 Speaker 01 Is Uncle Randy still with us?
1:40:10 Dax Shepard? Fuck yeah, I was texting with him yesterday. He's in California, actually flew home last night. Yeah, he's out visiting my cousins and we tried to get a breakfast going.
1:40:19 Speaker 01 I was gonna say, you guys.
1:40:20 Dax Shepard? We failed, but we tried. But no, Uncle Randy, every text he sends me, it's him playing either pickleball or full court basketball. He's always been an athlete and it's just like.
1:40:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:40:32 Dax Shepard? He is reaping the rewards of that.
1:40:34 Speaker 01 That's great.
1:40:35 Dax Shepard? Like my dad, I think about this all the time. I'm fifty one, I was hiking the other day.
1:40:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:40:39 Dax Shepard? And when I graduated college in two thousand, I would have been twenty five, which meant he would have been fifty one.
1:40:48 Speaker 01 Who, your dad?
1:40:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, or fifty two.
1:40:49 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:40:50 Dax Shepard? He could not do anything with us. Like, they all came out for the graduation and we went to like Topanga to get my favorite sandwiches and we took a little walk, not a, and he's like, I'll stay in the car. Everywhere we went, he'd go like, go and get around. He was large and he just had been so hard on his body and he had so many heart attacks at that point. And, um, yeah, I just think of our, I think about him so often now. Cause I'm at the age where I remember thinking, well, that's it for him. He's like not walking anymore.
1:41:18 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
1:41:19 Dax Shepard? Fell asleep in the hot tub, that whole story. We got in a fight. Like, dude, you can't be in the hot tub by yourself when I leave. What are you talking about? I'm like, well, cause I woke you up. You were dead asleep in the hot tub and your fucking nose was a quarter inch from the water.
1:41:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, but also.
1:41:34 Dax Shepard? I'll handle it.
1:41:35 Speaker 01 Okay, but imagine. Your kid now, you're going up to you and saying, Dad, you can't go in the hot tub without us. You'd be, you would be like, what the fuck?
1:41:45 Dax Shepard? First of all, I'd be smart enough to go, okay, great, I won't. And then I would just go in and if that's what I was gonna do.
1:41:50 Speaker 01 Dicks!
1:41:51 Dax Shepard? But I would have been smart enough to not get, no, I would have recognized it for what it was, which is I was concerned about him. He should have felt loved.
1:41:57 Speaker 01 Fine, forget if it's your kids, if I said it, then you'd be mad at me.
1:42:01 Dax Shepard? Well, clearly, because I've not yet been discovered in a hot tub sleeping.
1:42:04 Speaker 01 I'm saying if you were, and I was like, or you didn't know you were, but I was like, hey, you, just so you know, like, I don't want you to go in the hot tub again. But without anyone else there, you'd be like, fuck you.
1:42:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:42:16 Speaker 01 And I'd be like, listen, I saw you almost die.
1:42:20 Dax Shepard? I mean, this is a hard hypothetical, because I have to imagine that that happened, that I passed out in the hot tub.
1:42:25 Speaker 01 Well, you've done some things that you don't like being called out on, trying to think.
1:42:29 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's a big statement. Maybe there's like three or four things in the chamber. But it happened last night.
1:42:35 Speaker 01 You fell asleep in the hot tub?
1:42:37 Dax Shepard? I fell asleep, which I know, this is starting to happen, listen. I said, we had a guest today and I had to watch that guest show. So we all got in bed and we were watching it. And like, you know, it wasn't voted, we had a detractor. We had one member that wanted to watch something else.
1:42:53 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
1:42:54 Dax Shepard? Uh, but three of us wanted to watch this anyways. And, um, I said, or someone said, well, Dad has to watch this for work, so we'll watch your show tomorrow night. So we're watching our show that we are watching, because I have to.
1:43:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:04 Dax Shepard? And I fell asleep, I dozed off.
1:43:06 Speaker 01 Oh, that's okay.
1:43:07 Dax Shepard? It was like eight o'clock, and we had had a, we had had a big.
1:43:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's not falling asleep in the hot.
1:43:12 Dax Shepard? But this is what woke me up, I hear. Well, if he's gonna sleep through this whole thing, can we just turn my show on?
1:43:18 Speaker 01 I agree with that.
1:43:19 Dax Shepard? And it's a great point.
1:43:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:21 Dax Shepard? So then I woke up, indignant.
1:43:24 Speaker 01 No, I'm watching it up this whole time.
1:43:26 Dax Shepard? I said, a guy can't close his eyes for two minutes?
1:43:29 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:43:30 Dax Shepard? You know, it's like being a funny grandpa.
1:43:32 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:43:33 Dax Shepard? Uh, and, uh, and, and then I was awake enough to finish the episode and then another. But I was like, oh yeah, we're at a phase where I fall asleep watching TV sometimes. I, I, I welcome it.
1:43:45 Speaker 01 I don't think that's an age thing, something.
1:43:47 Dax Shepard? You know, when you're at like a Thanksgiving and it's past Thanksgiving and like all the men go watch football on the couch. And about forty five minutes into the game, sixty percent of the men are asleep. I would always watch that and just be like, what is up with these guys? They can't stay awake all day? You know, because I was young.
1:44:04 Speaker 01 That's tryptophan and also that is not an age thing like I think people fall asleep all the time at young ages.
1:44:14 Dax Shepard? I think it increases as you get older for sure. Grandparents are always falling asleep. My grandma mid, she'd always go, I'm not sleeping, I'm resting my eyes. She was clearly asleep all the time. You know, she would fall, if she sat down for more than eight minutes, she would take a little nap. So yeah, I think it's age related and I think I'm there.
1:44:29 Speaker 01 You better listen when people tell you can't go in the hot tub.
1:44:31 Dax Shepard? Well, I will say this gets me further down the road into accepting that you could discover me dead asleep, dreaming in the hot tub.
1:44:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:44:40 Dax Shepard? Or in the, what, at the sauna?
1:44:41 Speaker 01 I was gonna say sauna, that's more likely.
1:44:44 Dax Shepard? It's, you're too miserable to fall asleep in a sauna.
1:44:47 Speaker 01 No, but you could pass out and then die. Don't go in there anymore.
1:44:51 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna go in there right after work. I already think I already turned it on.
1:44:56 Dax Shepard? But I'm gonna stay wide awake. Okay.
1:44:58 Speaker 01 Oh, I have something I wanted to talk about.
1:45:00 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:45:02 Speaker 01 I had a really crazy sim.
1:45:06 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow, tell me.
1:45:07 Speaker 01 Really crazy. After the play, no.
1:45:10 Dax Shepard? After Delta's play?
1:45:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, Delta's play. Okay, the day before Delta's play, Friday.
1:45:14 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
1:45:15 Speaker 01 I went to dinner with Jess and Anna at Oi Bar, a place in Studio City. Delicious. I really, again, I, I say all these places and then it can't get in anywhere and it's really annoying, but whatever, Oi Bar. Fantastic place. And we don't go there a lot. It's like, it's not in the rotation really, it's more random.
1:45:37 Dax Shepard? That's the first I'm hearing of it.
1:45:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, fantastic place. And we went and we had a server, wonderful, loved her, she was great. Have our dinner. Next day, we go to Delta's Play. After Delta's Play, we decide to go somewhere for an hour.
1:45:52 Dax Shepard? You and Anna, or are you Anna and Jess?
1:45:54 Speaker 01 Me and Anna, but then we, we texted Jess and said, we're going, we're going to Black Cat. Another place we almost never go.
1:46:02 Dax Shepard? Okay, where's that located?
1:46:03 Speaker 01 Silver Lake.
1:46:04 Dax Shepard? All right, other side of town.
1:46:06 Speaker 01 Exactly, not even anywhere close to Studio City, where Wayfarer was. So we go to Black Cat because it was so nice out and that was like outdoors. So we sit, Jess comes to meet us, he goes, that's our server from last night. Same server, two different restaurants, not even close to the same part of town. Not places we normally go. That is cra- that is-
1:46:32 Dax Shepard? You mean it's a duplicate?
1:46:33 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:46:34 Dax Shepard? I mean, it's a duplicate, a dupe. Well, my thought would be, cause you, you like Black Cat?
1:46:39 Speaker 01 I like it, yeah.
1:46:40 Dax Shepard? And you love the other place she works. I would be like, excuse me, where else do you work? I gotta try that.
1:46:47 Speaker 01 Huh.
1:46:48 Dax Shepard? Cause she's-
1:46:49 Speaker 01 She has good taste.
1:46:50 Dax Shepard? She has good taste in where she works.
1:46:51 Speaker 01 That's true, I mean, we did say, like, whoa, this is so weird. She was like, I know, yeah.
1:46:56 Dax Shepard? It seemed, it seemed hard to juggles two serving schedules at two different restaurants. Are they owned by the same company, maybe?
1:47:02 Speaker 01 No.
1:47:03 Dax Shepard? Wow, did she get into the logistics of her-
1:47:06 Speaker 01 She just said she needed two jobs, basically.
1:47:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but you know, one allows her to, that just seems hard, like they're gonna call for sure on the same day.
1:47:14 Speaker 01 They don't.
1:47:15 Dax Shepard? She's juggling it.
1:47:16 Speaker 01 Well, no, she's not, cause she's made up.
1:47:17 Dax Shepard? She only does lunches one place and dinners.
1:47:19 Speaker 01 She's not real, are you listening?
1:47:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, I'm so sorry.
1:47:23 Speaker 01 She's a made up lady.
1:47:25 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:47:25 Speaker 01 And she's a cutout.
1:47:28 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
1:47:29 Speaker 01 And it's like-
1:47:30 Dax Shepard? Where else will you see her?
1:47:32 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:47:34 Dax Shepard? What if she said, well, what if she had no memory of meeting you and then she's, she had a different name?
1:47:39 Speaker 01 Well, I know, that's like, we are gonna see her again and she's not gonna notice and then Jess will be like, hey, oh my gosh, you, and then you'll see this little, like, a little flicker-
1:47:51 Dax Shepard? Uh huh, reboot?
1:47:52 Speaker 01 Reboot.
1:47:52 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:47:53 Speaker 01 And then she's like, oh yes, oh my gosh, yes, I also work here.
1:47:56 Dax Shepard? They'll just fed her a lie.
1:47:58 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:47:58 Dax Shepard? A believable lie.
1:48:00 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:48:00 Dax Shepard? Yes, they modeled on all these different AIs.
1:48:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:48:04 Dax Shepard? I think you guys should get her in the friendship group.
1:48:07 Speaker 01 She's busy working.
1:48:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's true.
1:48:10 Speaker 01 But I just thought that was so weird.
1:48:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:48:14 Speaker 01 I mean.
1:48:15 Dax Shepard? I mean, what's next?
1:48:16 Speaker 01 I know.
1:48:17 Dax Shepard? I know.
1:48:18 Speaker 01 I got nervous. I did, you know, I was like, oh, you know, when we get, Eric says when it's getting too obvious, they're gonna pull the plug on us. So like,
1:48:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:48:25 Speaker 01 That did worry me, because that was way too obvious. Two days in a row? Makes no sense.
1:48:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. Lazy. It's weird that AI is lazy, because that's what we think they're industrious.
1:48:37 Speaker 01 Well, yeah.
1:48:39 Dax Shepard? Maybe to save energy, they.
1:48:41 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:48:41 Dax Shepard? There's a bigger goal, they're servicing or something.
1:48:43 Speaker 01 They have to save water that day.
1:48:44 Dax Shepard? Water and power.
1:48:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:48:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:48:46 Speaker 01 Yeah. Um, all right, should we do some facts?
1:48:48 Dax Shepard? Yes, please.
1:48:52 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
1:49:04 Speaker 01 This is an intense episode. The bravery of Cohen
1:49:09 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
1:49:10 Speaker 01 is astonishing.
1:49:11 Dax Shepard? It is.
1:49:12 Speaker 01 I hope people listen and give him what he deserves.
1:49:16 Dax Shepard? I think they will.
1:49:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:49:17 Dax Shepard? This is a very fascinating, unique, privileged perspective to hear someone.
1:49:23 Speaker 01 I know.
1:49:24 Dax Shepard? You hear about schizophrenia and psychotic breaks. You hear about it academically or reported on.
1:49:32 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:49:32 Dax Shepard? You never hear from the person experiencing it.
1:49:35 Speaker 01 I know, I know.
1:49:36 Dax Shepard? I feel quite lucky. We've gotten really lucky between the sociopaths. Uh, I mean, it's so cool. Yeah, yeah.
1:49:44 Speaker 01 Um, borderline.
1:49:47 Dax Shepard? Getting to hear the personal perspective has been so cool.
1:49:50 Speaker 01 It really has. It really has.
1:49:53 Dax Shepard? And every time it makes me, it deepens my empathy.
1:49:56 Speaker 01 Same.
1:49:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:49:57 Speaker 01 Same. It is.
1:49:59 Dax Shepard? And this one really challenged my preconceived stance on the medication.
1:50:04 Speaker 01 I know. You've really been.
1:50:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I've been kind of open to this notion that, yeah, it's, it's yet, it's one of the tools.
1:50:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:50:12 Dax Shepard? And yeah, you could say, well, why isn't every alcoholic on Anabuse for the rest of their life?
1:50:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a medicine that makes people.
1:50:19 Dax Shepard? You throw up if you drink alcohol.
1:50:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. How much can you drink on it? Like, you can't even have like?
1:50:25 Dax Shepard? No, I don't think you can. I've never been on it, but I know my dad was on it when he got out of treatment. It was like standard. It used to be very standard when you got out of treatment. I don't know if it still is, but when my dad went in the eighties, um, you were recommended to be on Anabuse for like the first month out of treatment.
1:50:40 Speaker 01 Oh, is it a pill?
1:50:42 Dax Shepard? It's a pill.
1:50:43 Speaker 01 Interesting. Um, yeah, no, it's like.
1:50:46 Dax Shepard? What if it's a placebo?
1:50:48 Speaker 01 Ah.
1:50:48 Dax Shepard? Like, if you're told this pill will make you throw up the second you drink alcohol, who tries it? Clearly, people have tried it.
1:50:54 Speaker 01 Well, definitely.
1:50:55 Dax Shepard? But I wouldn't try it. I'm like, if I'm gonna throw up the second I have it, I won't be able to get it in me. What is the point of trying?
1:51:02 Speaker 01 Wait, no, you don't throw up.
1:51:05 Speaker 01 You throw up from drinking.
1:51:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah, as soon as you have alcohol.
1:51:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:51:08 Dax Shepard? The medication makes you throw up.
1:51:09 Speaker 01 Right.
1:51:10 Dax Shepard? So you can't get blood in your alcohol or in your, you can't get alcohol in your bloodstream.
1:51:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:51:15 Dax Shepard? And, and you've just thrown up, which I don't mind, you know?
1:51:20 Dax Shepard? As you, as you've witnessed, I've become very comfortable.
1:51:24 Speaker 01 But if you throw up, then can you have more? Cause if you're an alcoholic, yeah, throwing up doesn't do anything. You don't care.
1:51:33 Dax Shepard? If it can't get in your body, cause you're gonna throw up every time you have it.
1:51:36 Speaker 01 That's true. It just like prevents it from entering.
1:51:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:51:39 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:51:40 Dax Shepard? So, you know, you could argue why every alcoholic should be on it for the rest of their life.
1:51:43 Speaker 01 Maybe some people should, I don't know. But I mean, I'm with you. It's a deeper issue. There are things that you have to, that are, um, emotional and mental health.
1:51:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:51:55 Speaker 01 Based underneath that, that need addressing.
1:51:59 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and then there's many, many things you could employ. And then if those are not working, then you can use that.
1:52:07 Speaker 01 I know, it's tricky. I have, I have a complicated relationship with, um,
1:52:13 Speaker 01 Medicine because I, and this is not fair, probably. But it is a little fair because I am medicated. Um, I'm like, just fucking take it.
1:52:27 Dax Shepard? For sure, but your medication also doesn't turn you into a zombie.
1:52:31 Speaker 01 Exactly, and I understand that. I, I, that's right. It does not affect me negatively that I, that I know.
1:52:39 Dax Shepard? I mean, you can imagine a scenario where the medicine makes life so unenjoyable to live that you just assume be dead.
1:52:46 Speaker 01 I know. That's exactly, and that is what the claim is. It's just like, I, and I, yeah, so I know. But it's like, but it's so hard.
1:52:56 Dax Shepard? It's like I have, I have categories. I'm, I'm up for that approach. I think you need a co-pilot. Like, he's married. He has someone in his life that can observe if he's not sleeping, can observe a lot of things. If you're fucking lone wolfing it, I'm, I think you should take the medicine.
1:53:13 Speaker 01 I know. It also just, and I know it's selfish, it's selfish on my part because I just can't stand the feeling of, um, being around someone who I feel like might be unstable.
1:53:28 Dax Shepard? Yes, unpredictable.
1:53:29 Speaker 01 Unpredictable. It's, that's very triggering for me.
1:53:32 Dax Shepard? Gives you anxiety.
1:53:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, it gives me anxiety, so.
1:53:35 Dax Shepard? Did it help to learn that only four percent of schizophrenics are violent? I found that helpful. I guess my, my, you know, barroom understanding of it was like, if you were schizophrenic, my hunch was like, you have a thirty percent chance of getting violent at some point. Well, not necessarily that you kill someone, but that you're gonna be in a fight with cops or you're gonna be in a fight on the street, you know?
1:53:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, for some reason, for me, it's not even the violence part that's triggering. It's like, what's going on in that person's mind?
1:54:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:54:04 Speaker 01 I find that scary.
1:54:05 Dax Shepard? I bet it's something like alcoholism too, where it's like, it affects almost everybody. You, you think you're the only family dealing with it, but like, I know, I know now in my life, several people who have disappeared for periods of times and they've done really wild things.
1:54:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:54:23 Dax Shepard? This woman that we knew very closely, family-ish member. Just left her family, she bought a crazy car. She, you know, just was in five states over on some journey that no one could comprehend what she was experiencing and. And then we have a friend that that's happened like it's I bet more people have maybe.
1:54:44 Speaker 01 I mean, I have, I can't go into too many details, but I have a very close person in my life that had
1:54:55 Speaker 01 a psychosis. And it was horrifying.
1:55:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:55:02 Speaker 01 And, um, and yes, everyone was not just affected then is still affected.
1:55:10 Dax Shepard? Hmm.
1:55:10 Speaker 01 And constantly affected and a constant, again, there's like.
1:55:14 Dax Shepard? Low level anxiety at all times.
1:55:16 Speaker 01 Always, always. And that's not their fault, you know, but it, that's why when it's like, you're not taking your medicine, like, okay, well now my anxiety has to be higher. I mean, that's also again, like it does, and I can work on myself and say like, that's not about me.
1:55:33 Dax Shepard? And powerless over you.
1:55:35 Speaker 01 Exactly. But it's hard. It is really, really hard. And it does affect absolutely everyone in your orbit.
1:55:42 Dax Shepard? It's hard to watch people you love hurt themselves.
1:55:44 Speaker 01 I know. Or hurt.
1:55:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:55:47 Speaker 01 Not have control over their brain. Like it's, I mean, none of us have control over our brains really. I guess it's a sliding scale, but.
1:55:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:55:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:55:55 Dax Shepard? I think it's closer than we think.
1:55:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, no, I'm, that's then I had like major PTSD after.
1:56:02 Dax Shepard? That you were gonna.
1:56:03 Speaker 01 A big incident. Yes. Cause I was like, oh, I'm, that's me. Like I'm, I have that too. Uh, yeah. So is schizophrenia a genetic? Also, my dad's oldest brother had schizophrenia.
1:56:18 Dax Shepard? Really?
1:56:19 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. Much older than my dad. Uh, but, and I met him, he was the ni-, he was very gentle. He was like a very nice, nice. Boy.
1:56:29 Dax Shepard? And he had been an admiral or something too, right?
1:56:31 Speaker 01 No, this is, no, the oldest who then like had a caretaker and, and stuff. I met him only when I was four in India. But he was like a nice boy.
1:56:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:56:42 Speaker 01 Yeah. Anyway. Okay, yes, it has a strong genetic component, but it is not determined by DNA alone. Genetics account for roughly 60% to 80% of the risk, meaning environmental factors and life experiences also play a critical role in triggering the condition. I wonder how many people just like have it latent and it's not been triggered.
1:57:03 Dax Shepard? Oh, I think a lot of people make it through because again, there's this window of vulnerability.
1:57:08 Speaker 01 Exactly, but like, what if I have it?
1:57:11 Dax Shepard? No, no, you've exited the window.
1:57:13 Speaker 01 No, I've exited the window for it to express itself in me, but what if I have the gene?
1:57:17 Dax Shepard? You wonder if you have the gene?
1:57:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. Oh, but it does say it's not caused by a single schizophrenia gene.
1:57:23 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:57:23 Speaker 01 So that's good. It's probably what we learned. What's it called? Polygenetic.
1:57:28 Dax Shepard? Polygenetic. Yeah, I had a girlfriend whose mother was schizophrenic and I remember then learning about it and going, ooh, I'm now scared.
1:57:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's scary.
1:57:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:57:39 Speaker 01 Um, it does say if one identical twin develops schizophrenia, the other twin has a 50% chance of developing it despite sharing the exact same DNA. This is the strongest evidence that genetics are powerful, but not the only cause.
1:57:51 Dax Shepard? That would almost imply that half the people with it are getting
1:57:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:57:56 Dax Shepard? it activated.
1:58:01 Speaker 01 Yikes. Oh, I just wanted to remind people of the aces.
1:58:06 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:58:07 Speaker 01 Um, do you want to take the test again?
1:58:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:58:11 Speaker 01 It's only five minutes.
1:58:12 Dax Shepard? It's only five minutes?
1:58:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:58:13 Dax Shepard? Okay, sure.
1:58:14 Speaker 01 This is discovering your trauma type.
1:58:16 Dax Shepard? This is a crude childhood, what is it?
1:58:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, ace. Adverse childhood experiences.
1:58:22 Dax Shepard? There we go.
1:58:22 Speaker 01 Okay. But rate each statement based on your personal opinion. I noticed-
1:58:26 Dax Shepard? These are a little hard, though, because I have taken this a few times.
1:58:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, but this seems different for some reason.
1:58:30 Dax Shepard? Like food scarcity is an interesting one.
1:58:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:58:33 Dax Shepard? Like, no, I was never starving.
1:58:36 Speaker 01 Right.
1:58:36 Dax Shepard? And also-
1:58:39 Dax Shepard? You went to the store and you got, you know, there was a gallon of milk and there was X amount of ground beef. There was a period where it was like you were hyper-conscious of
1:58:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:58:50 Dax Shepard? how much food there was.
1:58:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:58:52 Dax Shepard? You got in trouble if you ate too much of the food.
1:58:55 Speaker 01 Well, again, yeah, it's all.
1:58:56 Dax Shepard? But that's not starving. It's not like I went days without eating. It's just like, oh, I remember there was a period where there was stress around the food in the house.
1:59:05 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, that's hard for sure. Okay, so I'll read this real quick, but then the test, the five-minute test is different, but I still want to do it.
1:59:14 Dax Shepard? Are you sure you're not gonna have to pay at the end of it?
1:59:15 Speaker 01 I'm not sure, but I don't think so.
1:59:19 Dax Shepard? Boy, you're not sure.
1:59:22 Speaker 01 So for aces, there's categories. So it's like abuse and then under abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse. Then there's neglect, under that, physical neglect, emotional neglect. Three, household challenges. Under that, mental illness in the household, incarcerated household member, substance used by a household member, parental separation or divorce, domestic violence. Um, and then other common childhood stressors such as community violence, systemic discrimination, food insecurity and unstable housing. Yeah. So that's in there. But this fun test.
2:00:02 Dax Shepard? Fun ace test.
2:00:03 Speaker 01 Is about what kind of trauma or your trauma.
2:00:07 Dax Shepard? Tell me about your trauma. Tell me about your trauma.
2:00:11 Speaker 01 Okay, now this is strongly agree, you know, you know that whole thing. I notice small shifts in people's moods immediately.
2:00:17 Dax Shepard? Strongly agree.
2:00:18 Speaker 01 I often feel like I am, quote, "on my own" even when I'm in a crowd.
2:00:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, a- a- agree.
2:00:25 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:00:26 Dax Shepard? Oh, man. This is another, that's the other tricky part about answering these questions.
2:00:29 Speaker 01 Now versus.
2:00:30 Dax Shepard? Now versus most of my twenties and thirties.
2:00:33 Speaker 01 Let's do now.
2:00:34 Dax Shepard? Let's do now. Okay.
2:00:35 Speaker 01 See how your trauma has. So what do you think now? There's also neutral.
2:00:40 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna go between neutral and agree, but I think agree. I still think
2:00:44 Speaker 01 Okay, okay.
2:00:45 Dax Shepard? I gotta do this or it's not. Yeah.
2:00:47 Speaker 01 Okay. I find it very hard to say no when someone asks for a favor.
2:00:51 Dax Shepard? Disagree.
2:00:51 Speaker 01 Certain smells or sounds can instantly change my mood.
2:00:54 Dax Shepard? Agree, strongly agree.
2:00:56 Speaker 01 I am very cautious about who I let into my inner circle.
2:00:59 Dax Shepard? Hmm, neutral.
2:01:01 Speaker 01 I prefer to sit facing the door in a restaurant or public space.
2:01:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I strongly agree squared.
2:01:08 Speaker 01 I pride myself on not needing help from anyone else.
2:01:10 Dax Shepard? Strongly agree.
2:01:11 Speaker 01 I worry that if I show my true feelings, people will leave.
2:01:14 Dax Shepard? Agree.
2:01:15 Speaker 01 I sometimes feel like I'm reliving a past argument in my head.
2:01:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God. Strongly agree.
2:01:24 Dax Shepard? When am I not? There's no moment that in the background, I'm not having an argument with somebody.
2:01:28 Speaker 01 An old argument.
2:01:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:01:30 Speaker 01 I pay more attention to what people do than what they say.
2:01:33 Dax Shepard? Agree.
2:01:34 Speaker 01 I'm easily startled by sudden movements or loud noises.
2:01:37 Dax Shepard? Disagree.
2:01:38 Speaker 01 Except when, um, Eric.
2:01:40 Dax Shepard? Sneeze is, that's human.
2:01:41 Speaker 01 That got us all.
2:01:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:01:42 Speaker 01 That really got us.
2:01:43 Dax Shepard? If you're not startled by Eric's sneeze, you're dead.
2:01:46 Speaker 01 That's the only time I think I've ever seen you, like, like, actually.
2:01:50 Dax Shepard? And then I got angry, right? Yeah, it makes me angry if I get startled.
2:01:54 Speaker 01 Oh, that was so funny. Oh, my God. Okay. I tend to shut down when a relationship gets too intense.
2:02:00 Dax Shepard? That has been the pattern. That's, you know, not currently what I'm doing. Yeah, I say, agree.
2:02:06 Speaker 01 I feel responsible for making sure everyone around me is happy.
2:02:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, strongly agree.
2:02:11 Speaker 01 I have specific triggers that make me want to hide away.
2:02:14 Dax Shepard? You're shaking your head, yes. Okay, I'll say, agree.
2:02:18 Speaker 01 I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop in a good situation.
2:02:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, strongly agree.
2:02:23 Speaker 01 I find it difficult to fall asleep if I hear unfamiliar noises.
2:02:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, strongly agree.
2:02:27 Speaker 01 I feel trapped if someone depends on me too much.
2:02:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah, strongly agree.
2:02:32 Speaker 01 I apologize even when I haven't done anything wrong.
2:02:34 Dax Shepard? Oh, God, yeah, yeah. This is the endless, this is the shepherd.
2:02:38 Speaker 01 When you haven't done anything wrong?
2:02:40 Dax Shepard? No, just my brother and I are always in trouble.
2:02:42 Speaker 01 Oh.
2:02:43 Dax Shepard? Every, like, first question is, am I in trouble?
2:02:46 Speaker 01 Oh, right, but are.
2:02:47 Dax Shepard? What did I do?
2:02:48 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:02:49 Dax Shepard? You know?
2:02:49 Speaker 01 So, agree?
2:02:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:02:51 Speaker 01 Okay. I often feel like my life is a series of before and after moments.
2:02:55 Dax Shepard? It's abstract.
2:02:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, it is.
2:02:56 Dax Shepard? What do you think that means?
2:02:58 Speaker 01 Oh, I feel like my life is a series of before and after. I mean, maybe, is it like? Maybe this is who I was before.
2:03:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah, like this is before sobriety.
2:03:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:03:07 Dax Shepard? This is before I made it.
2:03:09 Speaker 01 Marriage.
2:03:10 Dax Shepard? This is before I had kids. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna agree.
2:03:12 Speaker 01 Okay, I have a very hard time forgiving people who lied to me once.
2:03:17 Dax Shepard? Disagree.
2:03:17 Speaker 01 I am constantly scanning my environment for potential problems.
2:03:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah, 100%.
2:03:21 Speaker 01 I'd rather solve a problem myself than explain it to someone else.
2:03:24 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, I agree. Not strongly agree.
2:03:27 Speaker 01 I am the peacemaker in my friend group or family.
2:03:31 Dax Shepard? To some degree, yeah.
2:03:32 Speaker 01 Neutral?
2:03:32 Dax Shepard? I have that middle child thing, right? Like if I'm with my family, I'm, I'm trying to adjust everybody's
2:03:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:03:39 Dax Shepard? mood and as tensions are swelling, I'm, I'm on it. So in that way, I think I agree.
2:03:45 Speaker 01 Okay, I can be physically present but mentally miles away in the past.
2:03:49 Dax Shepard? Hmm, I'd say neutral.
2:03:52 Speaker 01 I am suspicious of people who are overly nice for no reason.
2:03:55 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, strongly agree.
2:03:57 Speaker 01 God, I hope I don't have to pay. I feel uneasy, because I want to know. I feel uneasy in large, uncontrolled crowds. Uncontrolled crowds, yeah, right?
2:04:07 Dax Shepard? Well, it's interesting, uneasy versus aroused. I'm also quite aroused.
2:04:12 Speaker 01 But you're also, you're on alert.
2:04:13 Dax Shepard? I'm on high alert, but I think I can handle my business, so I'm kind of aroused.
2:04:18 Speaker 01 I mean, I don't think you're at ease.
2:04:20 Dax Shepard? No, no, no, no, I'm not at ease. I'm like, I'm like, fucking, this guy is, this guy's popping off. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:04:26 Speaker 01 So agree.
2:04:27 Dax Shepard? Okay, I'll agree.
2:04:28 Speaker 01 I value my freedom more than emotional intimacy.
2:04:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, freedom's huge for me.
2:04:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, so agree?
2:04:36 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
2:04:37 Speaker 01 I find myself changing my personality to fit in with different groups.
2:04:40 Dax Shepard? Strongly disagree.
2:04:41 Speaker 01 I get a heavy feeling in my chest when I think of certain years.
2:04:44 Dax Shepard? Hmm, disagree.
2:04:45 Speaker 01 I feel like I have a shield around my heart most of the time. Oh.
2:04:50 Dax Shepard? Disagree.
2:04:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:04:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:04:51 Speaker 01 I notice exit signs and escape routes where, whenever I enter a new building.
2:04:56 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
2:04:57 Speaker 01 I find it difficult to share my deep secrets with anyone.
2:05:00 Dax Shepard? Disagree.
2:05:00 Speaker 01 I feel a deep need to be liked by everyone I meet.
2:05:04 Dax Shepard? Strongly agree.
2:05:05 Speaker 01 I often have dreams that feel like warnings from my past.
2:05:09 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, strongly agree.
2:05:11 Speaker 01 I struggle to believe people when they give me a compliment.
2:05:14 Dax Shepard? That's evolved.
2:05:15 Speaker 01 Neutral?
2:05:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:05:16 Speaker 01 I'm highly sensitive to the tone of someone's voice.
2:05:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, strongly agree, yeah. Too sensitive to that.
2:05:23 Speaker 01 I prefer to live.
2:05:24 Dax Shepard? I'm actually imagining things, I think, a lot of times.
2:05:27 Speaker 01 Oh god. Wait, when you hear someone's voice?
2:05:29 Dax Shepard? Like, well, you and I will be in a fact check.
2:05:31 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
2:05:32 Dax Shepard? And I will detect something in your voice.
2:05:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:05:35 Dax Shepard? And then I will get like defensive.
2:05:36 Speaker 01 Right.
2:05:37 Dax Shepard? And then I will hear it later.
2:05:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:05:40 Dax Shepard? And I'm like, oh my god, I don't even hear it now. You know what I'm saying? I'll go like, this is curious. Was I wrong then, or am I wrong now?
2:05:48 Speaker 01 Right, but that's like-
2:05:49 Dax Shepard? Do you have that?
2:05:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, I, um, I'm very sensitive to changes and, yeah.
2:05:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:05:57 Speaker 01 Tone, or, or, but I don't normally-
2:06:00 Dax Shepard? But then when you're editing, are you like, oh, I, I, I, it was much more, uh, no, it stays consistent.
2:06:08 Speaker 01 I feel that I'm consistent.
2:06:11 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
2:06:12 Speaker 01 But I wonder if it means like, like, Kristen is like auditorily very sensitive. Like, if someone has like a weird voice or something, she's really gonna notice it? I don't think I'd notice it. I don't know what that means, whatever, I already put a great.
2:06:25 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
2:06:25 Speaker 01 Um, I prefer to live a life with as few strings attached as possible.
2:06:30 Dax Shepard? Again, that's how it was, and that's not how it is now.
2:06:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:06:35 Dax Shepard? So I would say disagreeing now.
2:06:36 Speaker 01 Okay, great. I prioritize other people's comfort over my own needs.
2:06:41 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna go neutral.
2:06:42 Speaker 01 Great.
2:06:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:06:43 Speaker 01 I find it hard to-
2:06:44 Dax Shepard? I don't think you can be a family member and not do that. You can't function.
2:06:48 Speaker 01 If, if you prioritize?
2:06:50 Dax Shepard? If you don't prioritize other people above your own thing. It's like, it has, it, it won't function.
2:06:55 Speaker 01 It's a give and take, though. If you're always doing it, that's one thing. If you're, but I think you make your needs known.
2:07:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
2:07:02 Speaker 01 But you also then decide it's not necessary.
2:07:04 Dax Shepard? Like, you should have heard the debate. Like, how, how we ended up at mess hall last night was like a fucking hour-long thing, right? And at some point, I'm like, I'm gonna surrender to whatever, and anything they agree on will go along with. At this point, there's a lot of that when you have kids.
2:07:18 Speaker 01 Right. But you have like, you have a need to be yourself.
2:07:23 Dax Shepard? Sure.
2:07:24 Speaker 01 That's, that's a need for you. It's like, to not compromise who you are.
2:07:28 Dax Shepard? That's true.
2:07:28 Speaker 01 So you're not gonna not do that so that someone else feels comfortable.
2:07:32 Dax Shepard? No, I'm not gonna be someone else to suit somebody, yeah, no, no.
2:07:35 Speaker 01 Okay, I find it hard to focus on the present because my mind wanders.
2:07:39 Dax Shepard? No, disagree.
2:07:40 Speaker 01 This is a lot longer. They said five minutes.
2:07:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:07:43 Speaker 01 Why?
2:07:43 Dax Shepard? And they didn't say it's gonna cost anything, but we're gonna find out.
2:07:46 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
2:07:47 Dax Shepard? We're at the cost part?
2:07:48 Speaker 01 No, but there's a lot more.
2:07:50 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:07:50 Speaker 01 Should we stop?
2:07:52 Dax Shepard? I see the pattern emerging. I can, I feel like I can predict what the outcome is.
2:07:57 Speaker 01 I don't even know what the, what the options are, though.
2:08:00 Dax Shepard? Super duper. Kind of, what is it? Kind, you're kind of this, you're super duper. Whatever is, I don't even know what word they're gonna use. Traumatized?
2:08:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think so, yeah. Oh, fine. You know what? I'm going to, um, give up my need for the audience's comfort.
2:08:21 Dax Shepard? Wow, good job.
2:08:23 Speaker 01 Thank you.
2:08:24 Dax Shepard? Good job.
2:08:24 Speaker 01 Thank you.
2:08:25 Dax Shepard? Although I don't know if it's a good job, because we didn't find out if that's good or bad, but.
2:08:28 Speaker 01 Well, there's no goods or bads. It's just who we are. Um, who broke two hours in a marathon recently? Um, a Kenyan runner, Sebastian Saw, and Ethiopian runner, Yomif.
2:08:44 Dax Shepard? God, I love when you get these names.
2:08:45 Speaker 01 Kejelka? Kejelka?
2:08:48 Dax Shepard? That sounds German.
2:08:49 Speaker 01 It's K-E-J-E-L-C-H-A. It's, I, I just don't know how to do it. Um, but yeah, two of them.
2:08:59 Dax Shepard? That's bonkers. What is the time?
2:09:01 Speaker 01 I know. Uh.
2:09:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, once a mile, uh, marathon's 26.4 miles, is that what it is?
2:09:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, 26 point, I don't know, maybe, yeah, four sounds right. Um, Sebastian was 159.30.
2:09:16 Dax Shepard? Okay, so 159.30 is 100, uh, is 119, 119.5 minutes divided by 27, 26.4, we think?
2:09:35 Speaker 01 26.2.
2:09:38 Dax Shepard? 26.2. So it's a four minute and 30 second mile, 27 times. That.
2:09:46 Speaker 01 That is so insane.
2:09:49 Dax Shepard? That does not feel possible. I, I couldn't run a five minute mile to save everyone on planet Earth.
2:09:55 Speaker 01 Well, you probably could for that, but only once. You couldn't do it for 26 miles.
2:10:01 Dax Shepard? I don't even know if I can run that fast, like, for, I don't know what my sprint is.
2:10:06 Speaker 01 I know.
2:10:07 Dax Shepard? We could figure out how, how many miles an hour they're running.
2:10:10 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:10:11 Dax Shepard? Poof.
2:10:12 Speaker 01 Is this a need?
2:10:13 Dax Shepard? No, okay.
2:10:16 Dax Shepard? Oh, I could do it really easy.
2:10:17 Speaker 01 Okay. Oh, yeah.
2:10:19 Dax Shepard? How many miles per hour are you running if you're running a four minute and thirty second mile? This is so much better than me trying to remember.
2:10:26 Speaker 01 No, it was more fun when you were doing fast math.
2:10:29 Dax Shepard? Thirteen point three miles an hour. That is full line. Think when you're on a treadmill and you try to run it nine miles an hour or ten. You're like sprinting.
2:10:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, you are. Yeah.
2:10:39 Dax Shepard? Fuck me, thirteen mi- I don't even know if I could ride a bike.
2:10:43 Speaker 01 For twenty-six miles?
2:10:45 Dax Shepard? Fuck.
2:10:46 Speaker 01 Oh, my God. They're.
2:10:48 Dax Shepard? God bless them.
2:10:48 Speaker 01 Peace. Um, okay, party schools. Let's talk about the top party schools in America twenty twenty-six.
2:10:58 Dax Shepard? There's a few I better be on there.
2:11:00 Speaker 01 UCSB.
2:11:02 Dax Shepard? No way, it made it?
2:11:03 Speaker 01 That's a, um, that is an Easter egg.
2:11:06 Dax Shepard? It's an Easter egg.
2:11:06 Speaker 01 For upcoming guests.
2:11:08 Dax Shepard? One of the most likeable guests we've ever had.
2:11:09 Speaker 01 Incredible guest. UCSB, that's number one. Number two, Florida State.
2:11:16 Dax Shepard? FSU and ASU are always right. They're, they're always duking it out.
2:11:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you know what's number three on this list? Although this is from niche.com.
2:11:24 Dax Shepard? What the hell is that?
2:11:25 Speaker 01 I'm not so sure, but this says Tulane is three. Well, that makes sense. New Orleans.
2:11:33 Dax Shepard? I guess.
2:11:33 Speaker 01 That can make sense.
2:11:36 Dax Shepard? I was just there. It felt very academic.
2:11:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, it can be both.
2:11:40 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:11:41 Speaker 01 As you'll see.
2:11:41 Dax Shepard? UCSB, that's a damn good school.
2:11:43 Speaker 01 Well, and number four is USC.
2:11:45 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. I don't believe this list, but go ahead.
2:11:48 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
2:11:49 Dax Shepard? I mean, do you think, do you think USC is a bigger party school than ASU?
2:11:54 Speaker 01 I mean, I find it.
2:11:54 Dax Shepard? ASU, they have a lazy river around one of the dorms, we found out, right?
2:11:57 Speaker 01 Well, I think I said that, but then this.
2:11:59 Dax Shepard? Well, we were saying it was at the school, which turned out to be not correct, but I do think it was at one of the living, the housing.
2:12:05 Speaker 01 I mean, I agree. I'm ve- I'm skeptical of USC.
2:12:08 Dax Shepard? Yes.
2:12:09 Speaker 01 But also, well, mainly because I'm like, where are they going?
2:12:12 Dax Shepard? You're in the middle of the fucking raunchiest part of LA.
2:12:15 Speaker 01 Right. Okay. Now, this five's University of Wisconsin-Madison, six, Roll Tide.
2:12:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I mean, they gotta be above USC. Alabama.
2:12:26 Speaker 01 Exactly.
2:12:27 Dax Shepard? You go there to black out.
2:12:28 Speaker 01 I'm surprised. Okay, there we go. Um, seven is Syracuse.
2:12:33 Dax Shepard? Never even heard that.
2:12:34 Speaker 01 Syracuse, this is a big school.
2:12:35 Dax Shepard? No, I've heard of the school. I've never heard it's a party school.
2:12:38 Speaker 01 Well, we've, we've never been. Um, eight, Go Dogs.
2:12:43 Dax Shepard? UGA? ASU has not been on this list yet, right? Just confirming.
2:12:47 Speaker 01 I'm literally not seeing it at all.
2:12:49 Dax Shepard? Of this list?
2:12:50 Speaker 01 And I'm like, really, now I'm scrolling.
2:12:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:12:53 Speaker 01 Okay, this list forgot one. But, uh, Georgia.
2:12:58 Dax Shepard? Good job.
2:12:58 Speaker 01 Happy it's on there and it deserves it and it is so fun. I just had a really interesting meeting with, um, someone at Georgia about you getting involved. They're doing some really, I'm, I'm really proud of it. They're doing some really cool stuff there to help get people.
2:13:17 Dax Shepard? Pumped about UGA?
2:13:18 Speaker 01 Well, to school.
2:13:21 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
2:13:21 Speaker 01 It's great. All right, we're gonna discard this list because ASU isn't on it.
2:13:26 Dax Shepard? And if I went to ASU right now, I would be taking action against this list.
2:13:32 Speaker 01 Okay, this is, wow, though, I'm looking at some other. UCSB is on all these, though.
2:13:41 Dax Shepard? They are.
2:13:42 Speaker 01 So that seem, that's.
2:13:43 Dax Shepard? That's comforting.
2:13:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:13:44 Dax Shepard? Okay, good.
2:13:45 Speaker 01 Okay, wait, what about College Vine? Let me just do a quick, just like.
2:13:49 Dax Shepard? You trust that one? I never heard of that either.
2:13:51 Speaker 01 Oh, this one, yeah, no, this one has Alabama first.
2:13:54 Dax Shepard? I believe that, though.
2:13:56 Speaker 01 But it has UCSB second.
2:13:57 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:13:58 Speaker 01 Okay, has Georgia?
2:14:00 Dax Shepard? As long as it has Georgia.
2:14:01 Speaker 01 Seven.
2:14:02 Dax Shepard? ASU?
2:14:03 Speaker 01 None of these have it, Max.
2:14:04 Dax Shepard? Have they clamped down at ASU? What has happened?
2:14:06 Speaker 01 I mean, something, cuz these are all, like.
2:14:09 Dax Shepard? I am curious.
2:14:10 Speaker 01 Oh, Business Insider, let's look at that.
2:14:12 Dax Shepard? I am curious as male attendance has fallen dramatically at all these colleges.
2:14:19 Speaker 01 Oh, if it's affected?
2:14:20 Dax Shepard? How, how much it affects the party? Boys are much more right of passage, go too far, you know?
2:14:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, but in Georgia.
2:14:31 Dax Shepard? The girls be getting fucked up, too?
2:14:33 Speaker 01 Everyone's, yeah, it doesn't feel like that.
2:14:34 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:14:35 Speaker 01 It's like, as many fraternities as are sororities, everyone's downtown the whole week and weekend.
2:14:41 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:14:42 Speaker 01 And football games are everywhere, you know, so, yeah.
2:14:44 Dax Shepard? Drinking.
2:14:45 Speaker 01 It's egalitarian.
2:14:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:14:48 Speaker 01 Um, all right, well, Business Insider made me pay, so I didn't do it.
2:14:52 Dax Shepard? No, I don't like that.
2:14:52 Speaker 01 Okay, um, what are the eight dimensions of wellness? Oh, this is good, it has an acronym. SAMHASSA.
2:15:03 Dax Shepard? Sam Harris? Sam Huss in Menage?
2:15:06 Speaker 01 Sam, yeah. This is not a good acronym. You can't say it.
2:15:12 Dax Shepard? You gotta be able to do better with those letters.
2:15:14 Speaker 01 Okay, if I'm gonna rearrange it, I'll do.
2:15:17 Dax Shepard? Shashimi.
2:15:18 Speaker 01 No. Mosh.
2:15:21 Dax Shepard? Oh, Mosh.
2:15:22 Speaker 01 No, ma- mash ass.
2:15:25 Dax Shepard? Oh, I like that. Well, read me the, yeah.
2:15:28 Speaker 01 Okay, physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual. You're already yawning.
2:15:36 Dax Shepard? No, sorry.
2:15:37 Speaker 01 Spiritual, environmental, occupational, or vocational, and financial. Ow!
2:15:45 Dax Shepard? He's getting stung by a bee over there?
2:15:47 Speaker 01 No, I have a burn.
2:15:49 Dax Shepard? Oh.
2:15:50 Speaker 01 And like, something weird's happening to my burn. I think because it's getting heated up by the sun. I haven't been wearing sunscreen on it.
2:15:57 Dax Shepard? Okay, it's burning again?
2:15:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. Um, okay, so physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, occupational, and financial. Those make sense to me.
2:16:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah, me too.
2:16:06 Speaker 01 All right.
2:16:07 Dax Shepard? I believe them.
2:16:08 Speaker 01 Me too.
2:16:08 Dax Shepard? Unlike that list that would exclude ASU.
2:16:11 Speaker 01 Well, like you said, maybe it's changed.
2:16:12 Dax Shepard? If we didn't read that they had shut ASU down, it's too much partying. We gotta end this.
2:16:18 Speaker 01 Okay, percentage of people with psychosis, who have psychosis. Approximately 3% of people will experience a psychotic episode at some point in their lifetime.
2:16:27 Dax Shepard? Whoa.
2:16:28 Speaker 01 While a diagnosable psychotic order like schizophrenia is less common, affecting roughly 0.25 to 0.64% of the population.
2:16:38 Dax Shepard? Good, that's better.
2:16:38 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. Psychotic symptoms can affect anyone and frequently appear during late adolescence or early adulthood. Remember the Armchair Anonymous?
2:16:46 Dax Shepard? Which one?
2:16:46 Speaker 01 Remember Bad Roommate? That girl was like, had a psychosis.
2:16:51 Dax Shepard? Yes, I do remember, yeah. She thought that the boyfriend was abusing her.
2:16:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. Oof. Um, alright, well, that's it.
2:17:01 Dax Shepard? Okay, great job, great job.
2:17:03 Speaker 01 And I'm gonna let it go, so we don't...
2:17:06 Dax Shepard? That we didn't finish.
2:17:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:17:08 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:17:08 Speaker 01 We didn't finish our quiz. I'm gonna let it go.
2:17:12 Dax Shepard? Well, it seems like it's rolling right off your back.
2:17:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, really, I'm doing a great job letting it go.
2:17:16 Dax Shepard? Alright, love you.
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