Randy Blythe on How to Make Peace With the Wars Inside Your Head | 574

What if your deepest struggles could become the fuel for your greatest transformation? In this compelling conversation, Lamb of God frontman Randy Blythe shares his raw and personal journey of confronting addiction, navigating self-doubt, and ultimately finding peace within his inner battles. Randy opens up about how alcohol nearly consumed his life, the moment he knew he had to change, and how he turned his pain into a powerful force for creativity, resilience, and intentional living. Now, as an acclaimed writer, photographer, and artist, Randy channels his experiences into his upcoming book, Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head, out February 18. He also discusses his upcoming spoken word tour, where he shares stories that illuminate his path to self-discovery. Link to the full show notes: https://passionstruck.com/randy-blythe-make-peace-with-your-inner-battles/Key takeaways: How Randy confronted alcoholism and the mindset shifts that led to lasting sobriety The connection between creativity and resilience—why art can be a survival toolWhat it truly means to make peace with your inner battlesThe role of music and writing in self-expression and healingThe moment Randy knew he had to quit drinking—on tour with MetallicaWhy fear is one of the biggest obstacles to living intentionallyHow he channels pain, grief, and struggle into meaningful artistic expressionHis reflections on mortality, purpose, and leaving a lasting impactConnect with Randy Blythe: https://www.lamb-of-god.com/Sponsors:Rosetta Stone: Unlock 25 languages for life at “ROSETTASTONE.com/passionstruck.”Prolon: Reset your health with 15% off at “ProlonLife.com/passionstruck.”Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.”Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit. Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSIONNext on Passion Struck:In the next episode of Passion Struck, John sits down with Katherine Morgan Schaffler, a renowned psychotherapist and author of The Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control, a Path to Peace and Power. Katherine challenges the conventional view of perfectionism, suggesting that it can be harnessed as a personal superpower rather than a flaw. Don't miss this enlightening conversation that could transform your relationship with perfectionism. For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals. Join the Passion Struck Community! Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content, actionable advice, and insights to help you ignite your purpose and live your most intentional life. Get access to practical exercises, inspiring stories, and tools designed to help you grow. Learn more and sign up here. Speaking...

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

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck. Here is a real MF'er, a top shelf, grade A, son of a bitch that will let you ruin your whole week if you let it run the show. That's a sentence in the book. In this world of so much information coming at us all the time, it's hard to filter out what we should be worried about and what we shouldn't. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help

• 0:40John R. Miles?

  you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Welcome to episode 574 of Passion Struck. Whether you're a longtime listener or tuning in for the first time, I am absolutely thrilled you're here. You're now part of a global movement dedicated to living with intention, unlocking your potential, and making what truly matters

• 1:24John R. Miles?

  matter most. Just let me ask you something. What if embracing discomfort, facing your fears head on, and channeling your struggles into creativity could actually transform your life? What if art isn't just a means of expression, but a lifeline, a way to forge meaning, resilience, and purpose? Today's guest, Randy Blight, is here to explore these questions and more. As the legendary lead vocalist of Lamb of God, acclaimed writer, photographer, and author of Just Beyond the Light, Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head, Randy has lived a life defined by transformation. From overcoming addiction to confronting mortality, his story is a testament to the power of intentionality, art, and self-discovery. In today's episode, we'll explore

• 2:10John R. Miles?

  How Randy confronted alcoholism and the mindset shifts that led to lasting change. We go into the connection between creativity and resilience, why art can be a tool for survival. We discuss how iconic spaces like the Hotel Chelsea and the CBGB shaped his artistic journey. I ask what it truly means to matter, and Randy explores how we can all leave a meaningful legacy. We also go into his insights on unembracing uncertainty and finding clarity in the chaos of life. If you've ever felt lost, struggled to find meaning, or wondered how to turn pain into purpose, this episode is for you. Randy's journey is a reminder that intentionality isn't just about planning, it's about showing

• 2:53John R. Miles?

  up, facing the hard things, and creating something that lasts. Before we dive in, let's take a moment to reflect on last week's incredible episodes. On Tuesday, Shigi Owishi explored the science of psychological richness and why a fulfilling life isn't just about happiness and meaning. It's also about embracing challenge, novelty, and perspective-shifting experiences. Then on Thursday, Catherine Morgan Schafler joined me to tackle the truth about perfectionism, breaking down how to harness it as a strength rather than as a burden. She revealed the five different types of perfectionists and how understanding each of them can transform your approach to success and self-worth. Each of these conversations sets the stage for today's deep dive into art, resilience,

• 3:38John R. Miles?

  and personal transformation. Whether you're an artist, a leader, or someone navigating life's uncertainties, intentionality is the common thread. If you want to go even deeper, if today's episode sparks something in you, check out our episode starter packs, curated playlists on themes like creativity, resilience, and personal mastery. You can find them on Spotify or at passionstruck.com/starterpacks. For weekly insights and strategies, sign up for my Live Intentionally newsletter at passionstruck.com. Prefer watching these conversations? Head over to our YouTube channel where you can catch all our episodes and share them with those in your life who are passionate about growth. Now, get ready for a conversation that will challenge you to rethink creativity, resilience, and personal transformation.

• 4:20John R. Miles?

  And what it truly means to live intentionally. And if you're a regular listener with kids in the background, this is an episode I would encourage you to listen to without them there. Let's dive in with Randy Blythe. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:46John R. Miles?

  I am so absolutely honored today to have Randy Bly on Passion Struck. Welcome, Randy.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Hi, how are you doing, man? Good to see you, John.

• 4:55John R. Miles?

  When your publicist reached out to me, I have to say I was a little bit taken aback. I've loved your music for a long time, but really didn't know the man behind it. And I think once we see the people behind groups we love, creators that we've seen over the years, it's really a privilege to bring those stories to light. So I'm really glad we get to do this today.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. I'm first and foremost a music fan, and I've gotten to know almost all the bands I listened to growing up and in my twenties. And it's just so cool for me to hear those stories as well. So I'm glad to talk to you, man.

• 5:39John R. Miles?

  Well, you and I are about the same exact age. I grew up in Pennsylvania, just across the Mason Dixon line in York, PA, and you grew up in Richmond, Virginia. And for me, music was always this really important aspect of my life. Now, I found myself back then going more into bands like The Smiths, The Cure, that sort of thing. You end up finding, yeah, you ended up finding punk in your high school days.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yes, but at the same time, listening to The Cure, one of my favorite bands of all time. Have you heard their new record?

• 6:19John R. Miles?

  Man, I think it's one of the best ones they've ever put out. And this last concert tour, they're better now than they were in the mid 90s.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Oh, see, I've never seen them, but I waited for their new record to come out. I heard the first two singles. I had it pre-ordered and then I waited until the night it came out and I got in my truck and I drove down this back road and listened to the whole record in its entirety. And it was just a magic moment. I did definitely become deeply involved in the punk rock scene, but at the same time, listening to The Cure. The Smiths came later. My best friend from middle school loved them. And when we graduated high school, he actually gave me the Smiths Greatest Hits compilation, the orange one, I think louder than bombs is a joke because I was like, the Smiths sucks. But now I like them.

• 7:14John R. Miles?

  I remember hearing The Cure's song Push for the first time. And ever since that, it's always been one of my favorite, just that long intro into it. I always wanted to ask him, could I use it for my podcast? Because I love it so much.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  I know a couple of people that know Robert Smith, but I don't think I have that much pull. Otherwise, I'd ask him for it.

• 7:35John R. Miles?

  I found it interesting as I was reading your book that we're going to talk today about, which is your new one, Just Beyond the Light, that your upbringing and mine in many ways were similar. Growing up, I always felt like I was a nerd. I was an introvert who loved books, loved diving into new ideas, was constantly asking questions. But in a way, I always felt like I didn't fit in. And I felt like I was an outsider. And that feeling like I was an outsider really impacted my confidence when I was younger. Did you ever feel any of those sensations?

• 8:17Speaker 01

  100%. And I do to this day sometimes. I still feel like a space alien at times. Like yourself, I was a very nerdy child. I had a very deep love of books. I was not a sports guy. I come from a really small town where, you know, if you were anything like you're playing football and I just sucked at that. So I wasn't interested in football and

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Just I suppose the normal, regular high school teenage things. And I found myself gravitating more towards definitely books and stranger things. And I felt like an outsider and was treated as such at times. It's like, you're a nerd because your social groups, when you're young, kids are trying to find their place. And I really couldn't find a place. I just knew it was weird. And that's where I, when I was really young, I tried to fit in for a little while, but it just didn't work. I just couldn't, I was like a square peg going, trying to go into a round hole.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  And I didn't understand, I didn't understand why someone would be mean to me because I enjoyed reading books. Or they're like, you're a nerd. I'm like, but that means I'm smart. Isn't that the goal to not be an idiot? This did definitely lead to a feeling of sort of separation from my peers. And when I discovered punk rock music, that's when I first started feeling, oh, someone else understands me there. Because by the time I had given up trying to fit in, I started to become mad because I was like, I just can't fit in. And people are judging me.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  So I was like angry, I was angry about this and I didn't really feel comfortable in my own skin. And then I started here, I first heard this, the Sex Pistols, Nevermind the Bollocks, a tape in the seventh grade. This other guy I knew who was a skateboarder gave me. And I was like, these people understand. I heard the music, they're angry and they understand. And I started delving into that subculture some and eventually going to shows and meeting people. And most of the people in that subculture were exactly like me. They did not fit in. So.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  As much as I would like to think of myself as I'm okay, I'm this stoic outsider sort of human beings are social animals and the quote no man is an island is absolutely true. We need social groups. We crave social contact. And so I found that within the music scene, this underground music scene. And it was the first time I really felt I belonged until my 11th and 12th grade year. I also wound up going to a high school for the arts half of the school day. And it was a bunch of other weirdos who didn't fit in. So I found my group, but for a long time I felt very much an outsider.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  And some of that may have been heightened by the, the very nature of being a teenager and going through hormonal changes and, and everybody feels crazy. But I think I definitely was an outsider and maybe just that teenage confusion that everyone goes through added to that.

• 11:47John R. Miles?

  I really want to make today's discussion real for the listeners because I think it's a really important discussion we're going to get into. And my listeners have heard me talking a lot about the need to matter. And

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:01John R. Miles?

  I think so many people today, you just look at the statistics. 64% of people feel excluded at work. 74% of people feel excluded from the communities they belong in. And 20% feel like they don't belong in any aspect of their life. And for you, when you say you didn't feel like you belonged at that point, that you didn't matter, what did that feel like?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Depressing, highly depressing, which manifested itself for a long time in outward expressions of anger. I was very angry that I could not fit in. And also at the same time angry outside, but also very self critical at the same time, pointing fingers at myself. Like I said, I didn't really feel comfortable in my own skin. And it's like, what's wrong with you? Why are you, something must be wrong with you. Why can't you fit in these? To my view, everybody else was. Okay, which of course is also probably colored through the lens of a teenage eye,

• 13:14Speaker 01

  where everybody looks at other people, but it was depressing. And I think as I get older, I talked to my parents about this because I dealt with some depression and unsuccessfully, few methods that I'm sure we'll get into in a bit. I tried to deal with depression and I'm older. I talked to my parents a few years ago. I'm like, do you think I had some depression as a child? If I was, I suffered from that? And they're like, yeah, I definitely think you were a very sensitive child. And I certainly felt that way. And I internalized that outsider feeling. And it was, it was not good. It was not good. Angry and depressed. That's how it made me feel. How about that?

• 13:56John R. Miles?

  Well, I hear people today describe themselves as feeling battered, broken, lonely, helpless. And I think they're all symptoms of what you, what I've, and I found myself for years and years, putting on a mask, because I was trying to project a version of myself that I thought society was. Did you ever feel like that at all?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  As if I was putting on a mask? Like I said, I think we all wear masks to a certain degree. I think that's how we function in social groups. We have to, there's an unspoken social contract where you can't say every single thing that comes through your mind. I don't know about you, because some crazy things come from my mind that I just shouldn't speak out loud from time to time. But for the most part, I gave up on the mask pretty much young, where I just didn't understand why people.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Would care. I don't come from money. So I never, when I grew up, I would wear hand me down clothes. And those were not the most in style clothes or whatever when I was younger. And people, they would make fun of me or they'd make fun of the neighborhood I lived in. And because it was not a wealthy neighborhood. And I, for a while, just did not understand why this was. I'm like, it's not my fault that I don't have the new clothes. And who cares? It's about being a good person. And that really affected me emotionally. I tried to fit in. As I said, it didn't work. I was just like, screw this. I am not changing myself.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  So as I said, I was a sensitive, very good natured child. That sort of nature, that the good natured sensitivity began transformed into a sort of external hard shell of anger, I think. And I don't know if it's so much a mask I was putting on, is it was just a reaction to my inability to understand the way my peer group functioned at such a young age. I basically became a walking middle finger for a long time. That, I don't think it's so much a mask. It was more like a protective shell. And that's not sustainable either, though, after a while, because you grow up and who wants to hang around the constantly angry guy?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  That's not cool. You don't get a lot of, oh, he's always mad. Let's invite him to the party. That doesn't work either. So now I didn't really, past a certain, like, right around like sixth grade, I just gave up. I was like, these people don't like me. I can't get a girlfriend like everyone else. They make fun of my clothes. They think I'm weird because I read books, which I thought was asinine even then. I even had teachers make fun of the way I read. And I was like, just screw these people then. And, and just started externally, externalizing that anger. And that's why the punk rock scene so appealed to me because it was, most of the lyrics were political or societal, based around social issues at the time.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  And I can transfer that anger in a righteous way to what I view as valid or just causes, things you should be mad about.

• 17:17John R. Miles?

  My aspirations of what I would become and my sister got it too. I think my youngest sibling got it to a much lesser extent, but I always felt like I was held to these expectations. And for me, that's what caused me to pretend in many ways. And really, because I didn't fit in, because I felt this enormous amount of pressure, alcohol became the thing that made me feel normal. And I remember I first really discovered it when I was about 14 years old. And it was my way that, as you were saying, I felt comfortable talking to girls. I felt more comfortable being in social circles. For you, was it the same gateway?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yes. And I think it was a combination of things because I came a little bit later to drinking than you did. I drank and did drugs pretty heroically for 22 years. Right. I mean, Olympic level drinking, especially for a skinny dude like myself. I could put away a case of beer a day, no problem, along with shots and whatever else I managed to shovel down my gullet because I was a garbage can. Right about my senior year in high school, I got my, a couple of things happened. I got my first real serious girlfriend and she was an extremely pretty girl.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  And everybody was all of a sudden very confused. They were like, how did you get that? How did you pull that off? And I'm like, she's an artist. We were talking about The Cure. She and I listened to The Cure together. So I got my first real girlfriend. I'm going to this art school. I'm becoming more and more involved in this sort of underground music culture. And I'm finding my people. But at the same time, during that same time, I started doing some drinking on the weekends with some friends of mine who we used to party in their garage. And that really made things better.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Finally, I felt, okay, you mentioned talking to girls or feeling comfortable in social situations. That did all that for me. It removed this self-consciousness or this feeling like, these people are looking at me and judging me to where I don't care. So what if they are? I'm having a good time. And at first, alcohol provided that sort of relief. It lifted that horrible blanket, that wet blanket of what I felt was societal judgment on me to where I did not care. And it was wonderful for a little while. And that's a very common thing you hear. I know a lot of sober people. I've been sober for

• 20:05Speaker 01

  14 years now. I know a lot of sober people and almost all of them will say, male or female, whatever, all of a sudden, I was a, I could talk to members of the opposite sex, or if they were gay to the same sex, I could hang out and go in public and I felt a part of. I felt as if something had changed. And that was very much the case for me. It just made life easier. It was an answer to this unnamed issue I had, this unnamed problem, because it wasn't, at 17 years old, I was not sitting there analyzing myself through

• 20:45Speaker 01

  a Freudian eye. Well, you're excluded. You have societal anger. It's your self judgmental, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was just like, something is wrong. Something is wrong here. And then all of a sudden, these few things happened and things started to feel right. And alcohol was definitely a big part of that. And I realized that more and more, the more I stay sober, the longer I stay sober, I look back at my earliest drinking and I realize it was fairly abnormal even for, like, people go to college and they drink some, or they drink a little bit in high school. Mine was a bit more intense.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  And I'm realizing that and seeing the signs now only with the benefit of hindsight.

• 21:36John R. Miles?

  I want to get into that in a little bit, but I wanted to go somewhere else first. So I told you I was a fan of your music and I

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:44John R. Miles?

  thought I would tell you the path to discovering it because I I told you that I was really in the new wave alternative type of music, but when I was maybe fifteen and a half, I was working at a supermarket called Giant. Not sure if you have them in Virginia or not.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I've seen them. I've seen them. I don't think we have them in Virginia.

• 22:05John R. Miles?

  Well, I I am still this young kid and I've always had this strong work ethic, but I had worked my way from bagger to working a cash register to being a produce manager. And then the store manager says, I need someone to manage the truck crew. So I'm the scrawny fifteen year old kid and he puts me on the truck crew and to earn any value in the truck crew, you've got to empty the whole truck by yourself, which I had to do until the next person came on. But every single other person on the truck crew was definitely over eighteen. Most of them were in their trying at twenties. And every single one of them was an ex-con and they all

• 22:47John R. Miles?

  love to Blair, Metallica, Megadeth, all these heavy metal bands. And that became my introduction, not only to heavy metal, but they all came to me with a proposition when I was that age that, hey, do you want to become popular? We've got a great way to make it happen. We can buy you alcohol and you can be the provider to all the high schools in the area. So I started a sub business off of being on this truck crew.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  A recreational beverage distribution manager. That's you.

• 23:23John R. Miles?

  That was me, man. And it forever changed my relationship with alcohol.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  I bet it did. I was a recreational pharmaceutical salesman myself for a little bit.

• 23:38John R. Miles?

  But it was interesting because those guys, even though they, where I grew up in York, Pennsylvania, we had a ton of gangs and they were all part of these different gangs. But it was the first time I just felt like I could be whoever I wanted. They didn't care. I could say whatever I wanted. I could curse. As you were saying, this, this new genre of music was bringing forth these powerful lyrics and really allowing me to vent in, in many ways that I hadn't seen before. So it was a really introduction. It was a real interesting introduction into me starting to get this foundation of becoming who I was meant to be, so to speak.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Through miscreants and criminals, they brought you to this world.

• 24:23John R. Miles?

  Yes.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 24:30John R. Miles?

  So in your early years of being in the band and being out on tour, what was that like for you? I, I mean, is it, I, I've talked to some people who have been in the industry who tell me it's almost like they lose track of the city that they're in. I understand you really like to get into the history of the different locations you go into, but what was it like being on tour?

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Well, in the beginning, we were booking our own tours. We weren't traveling around on a tour bus or anything. We were in a series of constantly breaking down Conno line vans. I mean, we, we've literally changed the transmission in a van in a Walmart parking lot before crazy stuff. And we were playing mostly like VFW halls or people's basements, punk rock squads, things like that, and hoping for maybe enough gas money to get down the road and maybe a plate of spaghetti to eat for dinner and someone's floor to sleep on. That's what we'd say, hey, who onstage, can anyone give us a place to stay tonight? Because there was no money for a hotel or, or anything. At that time.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  It was very exciting because you're doing this, you're doing this not certainly not for any hope of monetary compensation whatsoever. It's for the love of playing music. It's for this thing you want to express yourself. That's how this was a manner I had found by loosely call it singing by singing in this band. It was a manner of me expressing myself and surprise after a while, for the first time in my life, people I didn't even know started to enjoy the manner in which I was expressing myself artistically. So it was very gratifying, but

• 26:23Speaker 01

  it's also a very big adventure in those early days because like I said, we were not exactly making any money. It was just like, we're gonna go out and I, and wow, I get to go to Chicago and see what Chicago is. That was about the furthest we made it before we eventually wound up going in tour van, I mean, in tour buses eventually, and we wound up going to California and so forth. So it was very exciting, but is also a great place to really develop and hone a taste for alcohol and other substances because you're not beholden to getting up in the office. And if you are drunk on stage, that was expected. That's the norm. So you

• 27:08Speaker 01

  could get away with things that people at a normal job simply could not get away with, right? I mean, alcohol is my one true love. I managed to never get strung out on drugs, but I do not know how because I get a ton of them. But I used to stand on stage and be like, who's got the drugs? Who's got the pills? And like magic, people would come up and hand me drugs. And that's not something you can do in a normal job. If you were going to go into your job at a law firm, you can't just stand up on desk and be like, all right, I want some cocaine and who's got it? You'd be fired immediately. HR would come in with a security guard and carry you out. So.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Live existing in that sort of environment was a great place to develop my alcoholism. And it was a lot of fun at first until it wasn't.

• 28:03John R. Miles?

  Yeah, and I want to go there in a second, but I wanted to talk to you about creativity. Because as I was reading the book, you described creative energy. Your words were lingering in places where great artists have struggled to bring their genius to life. How has this belief shaped your own process? And how do you think the art that we create can truly transcend our deaths?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  I mean, the part I'm talking about, as I said, you mentioned, I really, I look at the history of where I'm going and so forth. And I really love going on tour. I love going to go see where writers lived when they were back in their early days of their career. For instance, Ernest Hemingway, a huge fan, very obsessed with his sort of lost generation period when he lived in Paris with Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein and all that stuff. So I'll go to Paris and I will walk the left bank and I will go have a coffee in the dome or the select, all the cafes where he wrote.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  And I'll go see where he lived and or I've been in Santiago in Chile and I will go to Las Chilasconas, which is Pablo Neruda's house in outside Santiago, one of his residences and go through there and just look at the environment in which he created, in which he wrote and or one of my favorite like more modern authors, this guy Pat Conroy, who's a masterful storyteller from Beaufort, South Carolina. I will go down there and walk through Beaufort, South Carolina and look up where he lived when he was a young school teacher there and was working on his first books, his beginning of his life as an author. And I will just look at these places and examine them and see the environment,

• 29:58Speaker 01

  or at least an echo of the environment that they existed in this place that brought forth this creativity from them. And I'll look and I'll examine it and I get this feeling like, oh, I understand why they would write about this, why this place was so critical to them expressing themselves.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  And it's just a, it's just like a personal belief of mine that I think that sort of creative energy may linger. Maybe it's wistful thinking. I don't know. So, but I love to go and see these places and immerse myself in these places. And in my town in Richmond, Virginia, Edgar Allan Poe got his start there. So I've been to where he had his first job at a newspaper and been to where his house was when he grew up and just sat around and thought about, wow, this place produced this person. And I'm thinking very much about the environment that they were in. And I look at what is there now? And then I think about my own environment. And I think, what is it about wherever

• 31:00Speaker 01

  I am right now that makes me want to create? And I think that that sort of energy maybe one day will linger from me. Hopefully, some young kid will be cruising through the alleyways in Richmond, Virginia, and they'll be like, oh, one dude, Randy from Lamb of God, he used to walk through this alleyway. Because I did all of them. Any alleyway you walk through in the fan, that's me. And maybe this is where he came up with this idea for this song. It's just something I really enjoy, going to go see where artists work. I don't know if that answered your question.

• 31:30John R. Miles?

  It did. And I find the same thing. It's always interesting me to see the backstories of where authors write, or where the Beatles recorded their album, or other bands like

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 31:43John R. Miles?

  Watching the story of Flitwood Mac making rumors and how that all came together. And then how when they did Tusk, the alcohol and drugs were tearing them apart.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:55John R. Miles?

  Along with all their relationship issues that they had in that band. But it's interesting to see the backstories, because it's those backstories that so much influence a creative loop, that you either produce shit, or you produce some of the greatest things that have ever been

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you're talking about the Beatles, not the biggest Beatles fan, but I've been to Made of Ale Studios to do like the, what became the inheritance of the Peel Sessions. John Peel was a producer there who used to have his own radio show, very influential in spreading new music in England. But we were in there and, and his producer, the guy who inherited the Peel Show was showing, see this two inch tape? This is just sitting in the corner, dusty. The Beatles did a record on that tape machine. And I'm just like, wow, it's so cool. I just love seeing the, the little pieces of history and inserting myself in that history in a way. That's also important. It's not just consuming these places, but I

• 32:58Speaker 01

  think it feeds my energy because like I said, I never thought we would ever make any money doing this music. My wildest, wildest dream was to play a club called CBGB in New York, because that was the birthplace of punk rock. It's where the Ramones and Blondie and those guys got their start back in the, the early mid seventies, even before the Sex Pistols. So I thought maybe one day we'll get to play CBGB. And in 1997, I believe it was, it's 97 or 98, we got to play CBGB for the first time. And I walked on stage and I, it's, it

• 33:38Speaker 01

  was just a dump, man. But so many great bands played there and it was such a great place to play. And I walked on stage and I felt as if I was walking into history. I inserted myself into the noble history of that smelly, smelly club. And I did, we got to play it several times and no one can ever take that from me. It's something very dear to my heart.

• 34:04John R. Miles?

  Yeah. Where I live here in the, in the Tampa area, we have this venue called Janus Live. I'm not sure if you've ever played there. But I happened to be talk, yeah, I happened to be talking to Stephen Jenkins from Third Eye Blind. And I asked him about some of his favorite venues he was ever played and he mentioned this one. And if you remember it, it's got like a tree in the, in the facility. And he was telling me the story of how he climbed up the tree in the early days when, and was singing from one of the tree branches during the concert with people all around him, which is a great memory.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Sure, absolutely. I've been known to climb things myself.

• 34:44John R. Miles?

  I'm going to get back to CBGB with a question towards the end, but I want to go back to sobriety for a second. And you are very well read, so I'm certain that you have read a lot by Henry David Thoreau.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. Sure.

• 35:02John R. Miles?

  Well, one of the things I've really explored is his term quiet desperation.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:07John R. Miles?

  And, and this is something that I found where I was living in quiet desperation. I found myself, I was doing the same things. I was numbing the same feelings. I was hoping for change, but then never taking the steps to invoke the change. And I remember in one of these moments that I came to the conclusion that alcohol was ruining my life. And it, for me, it wasn't some dramatic rock bottom. It was, it happened to be on my birthday and it was this just quiet crushing realization that I was stuck in an endless loop.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:49John R. Miles?

  It, it, it sounds like this resonates for you.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  100%.

• 35:54John R. Miles?

  That moment for you, when did you know something had to change?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Okay, so I remember precisely when it happened because like I said at first, alcohol really enhanced my ability to be social, to, to not feel like such a freak and to feel more comfortable in my own skin. And so naturally I pursued that. I pursued that to, to great lengths, to Herculean lengths. And then it stopped working and it stopped working a lot sooner than I thought. But because by then I was addicted to it. I was an alcoholic, so I drank and drank and drank. And it would shut up my head a little bit, the voices in my head, because the head is the killer.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  You can't sit up here too long. My, my head is a bad neighborhood that I should not go up in without adult supervision. So I just tried to shut it up by drinking, stuffing down these feelings in this horrible, I don't know, miserable existence that I was living. And one night, we, we were on tour with Metallica and we were in Australia. And we were mains, we, we did about a year over the course of two years of as main support for Metallica, which is the biggest metal band in history and one of the biggest bands on the face of the planet, period. And we were in Australia, which is an absolutely amazing place. I don't know if you've ever been, but it's just so cool. And I had money in my bank.

• 37:24John R. Miles?

  Probably 20 times to live there for a period of time. So yes, I know Australia extremely well.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great. It's great. So I had money in my bank account. I was still married at the time. I had my band. We had fans. We're on tour in Australia, opening up for this band that most metal bands could only ever dream of meeting, much less being main support for. And I went out on the night of October 17th, 2010, and I went out with some friends. And I went drinking, started at a Irish pub in Brisbane and ended up alone in my hotel room, drinking beer. And I drank and drank and drank and drank and it stopped working. I, I had, I was left with nothing but myself and I was miserable. I'd already

• 38:14Speaker 01

  been through a lot of consequences. I'd been to jail for being stupid and drunk. I'd been suicidal. I tried to kill myself. I wound up in a mental ward while drunk. I woken up in the hospital with broken bones on tour because I got drunk and walked off a roof at a house party, almost killed myself. I did that drunk. I went to Forest once, got drunk and did.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Broke before because I drank everything up. I just drank through all that, right? I just drank through it because I could drink at people. I could drink at my problems. Like this is the fault of everybody else but me. And then on this one night, I drank and drank and drank and drank and it stopped working. And I woke up on a hotel balcony on October 18th, 2010 in Brisbane, Australia. And I walked out on the balcony and it was sunny day and the Brisbane Botanical Gardens were down the street to the left and they're beautiful. And they have awesome plants and weird animals. And then across the street was one of my favorite bookstores I'd ever been to. And I love books. I'm a huge nerd. And then down the street were all these great restaurants.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  And I looked at all this stuff and I real, I had this feeling that I did not want to exist anymore. I didn't feel like I wanted to kill myself. I just felt, I just wanted to cease being, period. I felt utterly empty and I'm on tour with Metallica. You should not feel that way. You should feel like this is a huge part of my career. I felt completely empty. And I finally came to the realization, maybe what other people have been telling me, maybe there's a bit of truth to it. Maybe I ought to try and quit drinking and things will get better. So I looked at, on this table, on this balcony, and I saw all the beer bottles from the night before.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  And because I have, I'm OCD about things, I had arranged them extremely neatly. All the labels were facing the same way and they were in a very neat row on this little table. And I looked at these beer bottles and I realized they were a metaphor for my life. Because I had become nothing more but an empty container to pour alcohol into. And while everything on the outside of my life, like I had a job, had a wife, had money. Everything looked orderly, like those beer bottles, but all it would take would just be a little push, ding, and everything's broken. Everything falls and shatters. So I, it was not a big dramatic thing like you.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  It wasn't like I woke up under a bridge in a trench coat, you know, clutching a bottle of rot gut wine with no money in my pocket. I just woke up on a hotel balcony and wanted to cease to exist. And I'm like, I have to try something different. And, and I haven't had a drink or any drug since that day.

• 41:06John R. Miles?

  For me, and I can totally hear what you're saying. For me, it really gave me this false sense of control in this chaotic world that we live in. And I remember my time in Australia, I had so much fun because the Australians, man, they work hard, but they party even harder.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  The entire continent is nailed down by pubs. There's one on every corner.

• 41:30John R. Miles?

  And boy, can they drink.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:33John R. Miles?

  The only people who sometimes I think drink more than them are the Japanese and you don't think about it, but in their culture, they try to get you so drunk during their 10 hour long dinners. And that's when they try to go for the jugular of getting what they want out of you.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. If you're a geishin, you're there doing business. But that's interesting that the relationship of alcohol in the Japanese corporate culture, because you'll be in Tokyo or Osaka on a weeknight and you'll see these businessmen in these suits just completely trashed, unable to walk. And it is my understanding that within that, what they call the salaryman culture, if the boss says, we're going out drinking, then you are expected to go out to drink with the boss. And they get it in. They get it in. And I think they have a different view of the state of intoxication as well, because I've heard that from several different

• 42:32Speaker 01

  places, if you're drunk and the boss makes you come out and drink with you and you say or do something rude or embarrassing, it's not talked about the next day. Oh, he was drunk. That's okay. So it's like a pressure valve, I think. There's tightly constrained social roles. There's many beautiful things about Japanese culture. And I don't know if you've been there as well, but it's one of my favorite places on earth. But they have a saying, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. I don't think I'd make it too long as a native Japanese guy.

• 43:06John R. Miles?

  I've been there a bunch too. Not quite as many times as I've been to Australia. I've actually been to India more than I've been to either one of those two countries.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Wow. That's beautiful country as well, man. We've been there two or three times now. Crazy shows there for us.

• 43:22John R. Miles?

  What I found with alcohol that was so profound is that it dulled the edges for me, but it also dulled me. How did you go from like numbing the chaos to finding meaning in it?

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing. It's trying to numb the chaos. It was, I keep on talking about the voices in my head. I'm not schizophrenic. It's not literally like I had someone saying this or that or the other. And just speaking of the constant state of emotional agitation within me and upset at the fact that the world continued to behave in a manner that I did not see as acceptable. So I would drink, I'd drink to numb that. And but it was also numbing and dumbing me. And I got away with that for a long time also because I believed in the cultural myth

• 44:20Speaker 01

  of the alcoholic slash addict writer slash musician slash artist. That's a great cultural myth. And some of my favorite writers were these masculine dudes like Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson and Bukowski, like every other angst-riddled 20-year-old male or whatever. I love these writers and I still do. So I did all the things that these great writers did, like I drank and did a respectable amount of womanizing and even got in some fistfights from time to time. I did all the stuff that those great writers were doing, except for the writing part, right?

• 45:05Speaker 01

  I'm practicing to become an artist. So I bought into that cultural mythos of the damaged artist, the alcoholic. Artist and it certainly that's a fear, I think, amongst musicians, writers, artists of all sorts that become alcoholics or drug addicts, that when they stop doing whatever their preferred poison is, their creative abilities will abandon them. I have found it's complete nonsense. In fact, my, I did not become a published author until I became sober. I talked a lot about writing a book one day when I was drinking, but it wasn't

• 45:48Speaker 01

  until I stripped away that poison I was putting in my brain that I was able to exert myself creatively long enough to complete a book. And it's, as you well know, it's not an easy task, writing a book. So I think for me, I didn't have much choice but to jump into the chaos as a sober person because I realized on that day, I realized when I woke up on that day in Australia, that I'm going to die if I keep doing this. It's going to kill me because I did not drink just a little bit. I drank a lot and I had tried to quit drinking while at home a few times and it didn't work. I would not drink,

• 46:32Speaker 01

  but still take drugs of some sort to level out until I could go back on tour and get drunk again. So I'm on tour in Australia with Metallica and I have this moment and I'm like, I have to stop and I have to stop now. It cannot wait anymore. I cannot push this to the side anymore. And my first day sober, I woke up and had this sort of realization that I had to at least try. And there were some sober guys on the tour from Metallica's crew, including James Hetfield, guitar player. So I went, I didn't drink until I got to

• 47:14Speaker 01

  the show that evening. And I'm like, please help me. Please, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm losing my mind. And there were actually three of us got sober on that tour, three or four of us from me and some of Metallica's crew. So there was this group of dudes who were sober. And I'm like, please help me, please help me. I know you guys quit drinking, please. And they're like, just breathe, dude, and talk to me and calm me down and told me I could do it and gave me some advice. And so I walked on stage that night with a banging hangover.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  On stage in front of 14,000 people and I had luckily I had long hair still then because it was in my face because I was weeping uncontrollably onstage in front of 14,000 screaming Australians and I'm just like my life and then luckily I'm not paparazzi. I scream for a living. So screaming, screaming out these lyrics in front of 14,000 people just crying for the whole 45 minutes I was onstage with my hair in my face and nobody noticed. I got through it, but that was my first day sober. That was my first day sober. And I think it had to happen that way for me. I think I had to inject myself into, I

• 48:29Speaker 01

  had to raw dog reality right from the start on tour because I think in order for me to understand that I could do this, I have to get sober. I have to maintain that sobriety no matter what my surroundings are. And if I can get sober on tour surrounded by free alcohol and free drugs, anybody can do it. And I know guys who've gotten sober living in a crack house before too. There's different levels of difficulty, but if anyone is having a problem, you think you can't get sober because this situation isn't right or this condition isn't right. It's nonsense. If you have a problem and you know this and you want to change, you can't wait, but only so long because it might kill you. You're

• 49:14Speaker 01

  eventually going to have to try it. And for me, it was on tour. And so I didn't really have a choice about how, not if I wanted to continue being a musician. And I got sober when I'm 39 years old. It's not, it was a little bit late for me to go back to school and become a lawyer or something. My career choices are limited at this point. So I'm just grateful I was able to do it and I did it with some help.

• 49:39John R. Miles?

  Randy, thanks for sharing that. I want to talk to you for a second about fear.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:44John R. Miles?

  For me.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  It's the worst.

• 49:46John R. Miles?

  Yeah. For me, fear was like a liar. It kept me stuck for years. It told me. I'd never be good enough. And I think it's part of what leads people to whatever addiction they have. It could be addiction to sex, drugs, alcohol, even work.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Shopping, all of it.

• 50:07John R. Miles?

  Do you think fear is at the heart of why so many of us feel like we don't matter?

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely. 100% fear. Can I cuss on this? I like, I'm trying not to be vulgar.

• 50:22John R. Miles?

  I mean, you can.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  I won't. Let's just say, I believe there's a sentence in the book, right? Since I am here to talk about my book in a way, there's a sentence in the book and it's about fear. And it talks about how fear is, there's a whole thing about different fears that I have faced. So there is, fear is a real MF'er, a top shelf, grade A, son of a bitch that will let you ruin your whole week if you let it run the show. That's a sentence in the book. And I think in this world of so much information coming at us all the time,

• 51:05Speaker 01

  it's hard to filter out what we should be worried about and what we shouldn't, I think, in one way. And I think that's apparent in the rising level of anxiety in young people as well. But it's affecting people our age, definitely. I feel it myself. There's so much information and there's this 24/7 news cycle and much of it is horrible and much of it is bad. And there's just conflict and national, natural disasters and political instability and warfare. And it's just like this constant bad. And it causes this automatic sort of reaction in our nervous system.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  The limbic system starts working up and you start internalizing these things and feeling them. And after a while, it becomes.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  You know, this constant grinding state of low level anxiety, I think. And I think once something has passed, a danger or whatever, something that you should be afraid of. Let's say a crocodile attacks you or something. Once that danger is passed on, the adrenaline dumps down and you move forward. I think now the fear has been ratcheted up. And in fact, Lamb of God has a song called Engage the Fear Machine on one of our, not this last grid, and it's about this constant media doom and gloom, like constant negativity. And it is true that there are bad things happening in the world at all times. There is no doubt about it.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  And right now I'm experiencing quite a bit of anxiety and fear for friends of mine in Los Angeles. Cause we're recording this while Los Angeles is on fire. And I've spent the last few days texting every day. I remember someone else who lives out there. I'm like, are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you use your house there? And it has been this overwhelming feeling of anxiety and that is really happening. And, and these are not abstract people to me. These are people I care very deeply about, friends of mine that have had long-term relationships. All that being said, I'm over here on the East Coast. I'm not in the middle of a wildfire in California right now. Right?

• 53:17Speaker 01

  So this feeling of fear and anxiety has been ratcheted up within me. And if I do not dial it back and, and I do not take stock of the reality of my situation, which is I'm sitting here in my study with all my books on the internet, doing this lovely podcast with you. If I don't, if I don't stop that anxiety, it's just going to ruin everything. And I think society in general is riddled with anxiety, perhaps not entirely because of, but I think this constant negativity is accelerating this sort of anxiety hangover we all wake up with every day, I think.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  And it's for me, it's a process of trying to stay present and trying to stay cognizant of what the reality of my situation is. And looking at that, realizing that in this moment I'm okay. And then If there's anything I can do to alleviate the suffering of other people, then I can take action, right? If I'm calm and looking at myself and looking at my situation with clear eyes, then I can actually think and plan and do something to actually make the situation better, rather than just sit here clutching my pearls and wringing my hands like, this is so terrible, this is so terrible.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  And I'm guilty of that, I am, but I'm trying so hard to fight against that. And I mean, right before this conversation, we're talking about the wildfires in LA and I, for the last five, six days, I'm constantly checking on my friends and remembering someone else, as I said, and I've felt like this overwhelming anxiety and I've wanted to make things better. And I was talking to my girlfriend right before this, I'm like, we've donated some money trying to figure out what I can do. But I realized, oh yeah, I'm going on this book tour and it's hard for me to promote to like, feel like I'm promoting a book tour and I'm promoting my new book when all these horrible things are happening. Then I realized she had this great idea. She's donate the proceeds from your Los Angeles show to one of the charities that is helping people right there.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  And then I talked to my manager and he's like, yeah, you could do the three California shows. Cause I'm gonna do three California shows. And then I contacted my friends at this podcast, The Dollop, and I asked them about what charity. So I'm like, what do you think about Habitat for Humanity for Los Angeles? So now I've got these three shows in California, then I'm going to donate any money I make to Habitat LA. And I can only do that because I'm thinking and remaining calm and looking for a solution, not completely consumed by here, by fear and anxiety. But it's a, it's a process, dude. It's a fight every day. It's a fight.

• 56:06John R. Miles?

  For me, images like this, and it's easy to empathize with the people who are being impacted. But earlier this year, we got hit severely by the hurricanes and I had three feet of water in my house and we lost everything.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:25John R. Miles?

  And so it was the first time in my life that, I mean, I can honestly feel what these people are going through. I heard about an Olympics athlete who lost five of their gold medals. Tom Hanks lost his house. The Kardashians lost their house. Ben Affleck lost his house. I mean, the list goes on and on, but it just shows you how raw and real it is. And I mean, it's just crazy to think that all of a sudden you were just told you got to pick up and leave.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Well, it started out, that area, Malibu, the Palisades is extremely wealthy. The homes that were on the beachfront were destroyed. These belong to wealthy people, but there are also normal people that live out there too. And there are working class people who were displaced. It's not just movie stars and so forth. And I think that's something that is a bit of a misconception. I have friends who live all around there and luckily, none of my friends have lost their house, but they've had to evacuate. I have a friend who's on tour right now as a comedian and his house is under fire watch. It's okay. I hope my home is still there when I get back. And this is a working class comedian. He's not a bazillionaire or a rich guy.

• 57:39John R. Miles?

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  It's heartbreaking and no, I'm sorry to hear about your house. I am from a coastal area myself. I grew up in Tidewater, Virginia and Cape Fear, North Carolina. And hurricanes come. They definitely come. I've done some, once again, it's a matter of looking at what you can do a few years ago. Down in Brunswick County, North Carolina and Cape Fear, a hurricane came and ripped through and destroyed a lot of things. And so I stopped and asked myself, okay, how can I help? And I have a buddy who is a member of a disaster relief team. He's a New York City firefighter for years. And in his spare time, he goes in and does disaster relief. And his team came down to North Carolina to do some relief. And since I have a lot

• 58:25Speaker 01

  of connections in the area, I went on social media and found out through locals where things were most needed and set up a distribution center. Because the Red Cross is a great organization, but there's a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of red tape. It's very slow moving. And my buddy, he's a former Marine, New York firefighter. He has no time for all that. It's time to get supplies to people. So I went and used my connections in the area to set up stuff. And then the next thing you know, we're in a flooded out trailer park delivering emergency relief. Boom, like that. And it's because I was able to think and use my mind. And I hate to keep coming back to alcohol. When I'm numbing myself from

• 59:08Speaker 01

  the chaos and the bad things in the world, or whatever, by just pouring alcohol and doing drugs and because I don't like the way it is, I am combat ineffective. I cannot do anything. And it's not always fun trying to figure out a solution to these issues, or at least a way to help or try to make the world a better place. But for me, I have to have a clear head. I have to be able to face things, the good, the bad, and the ugly, without that sort of substance filter over. Otherwise, I can't do anything.

• 59:43John R. Miles?

  I think I'm going to title this episode, How to Fight the War Inside. And this war is really a common theme across the whole book.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:51John R. Miles?

  But when I quit drinking, I had to face who I really was. And even after quitting, I found that the mental battle, it doesn't just end. The cravings, the doubts, the old habits, they're still there. Today, do you still feel like you're fighting the war inside? Or has the battlefield changed for you?

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  I no longer feel, I think within the last 10 years, I had the urge to drink once and it hit me out of the blue at a traffic light. All of a sudden I was like, I want a beer. It was crazy. It just came out of nowhere. So I immediately called some friends of mine who are sober and I told on myself, I was like, I just thought about drinking and it passed. And of course you did, you're an alcoholic, right? You haven't had a drink in 14 years, but it is my belief that once I, and I drank myself into the state of alcoholism, I cannot safely drink again. Therefore, every now and then naturally an alcoholic would think about drinking. For me, except for this one time, I think in the last 10 years, I seriously had a slight urge

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  to do it and it passed. It's not, I'm fighting against this desire to drink, right? That sort of compulsion has been lifted from me and it's just my normal state now is sobriety. And I don't think about it that much unless I'm discussing it in a context like it, like this with someone else who has quit drinking or who wants to quit drinking. So for me, this once I removed this alcohol though, I did have to face myself. And there's a saying amongst the sort of sobriety community that what do you get when you sober up a horse thief? A sober horse thief. You still have to, you still have to look at yourself and not that

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  I've ever stole a horse. I'm not that cool. I'd like to think I'm like a Comanche Raider or something. But in fact, the matter is that I'm still looking at myself when I'm sober, when I remove this alcohol, it's not like everything's immediately better. And I'm looking at myself and I'm forced to deal with my shortcomings. And I found myself, particularly in the beginning, it's not as bad now, trying to replace the alcohol with other things, which I justified as being not as harmful. For instance, for me, it's buying books.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Right? And I have gotten much better about this, but I used to have a very bad book problem to the point where I was going to the bookstore every day for a while and buying books because I'm looking, a lot of times about self-help books, right? I have a massive collection of which I have read 20 pages of each one. And I'm like, this isn't gonna fix me because I'm looking to some sort of external thing to fix this, this problem within me. And for me, it was buying books. It's embarrassing after a while because you show up at the bookstore and they're like, oh, hey, how are you doing? Randy's back. It's like when you drink, you hear alcoholics say this is like, they're trying to cover up

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  the fact that they drink so much by shifting their alcohol purchasing location to different convenience stores. Like on Tuesday, I go to this one and get a 12 pack. And then on Wednesday, I go over here to this other one to get a 12 pack because you don't want the clerk at the convenience store to think you're an alcoholic. For me, it's like, like the bookstore, they're like, oh, this guy has a book problem.

• 1:03:13John R. Miles?

  You're a bookaholic.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  I'm a bookaholic, yeah. It's a problem to this day, I will admit, but I've gotten better about it. I've slowed down about it. I just love books. I love them. I can't help it.

• 1:03:23John R. Miles?

  Well, I have to send you mine then.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah, I will definitely take that. No problem. So for me, this sort of, and some people, like you mentioned earlier, like sex, gambling, all these things, these are external, these are attempts to use external measures to control ourselves, I think, to exert control, to make us feel better. And in the end, the only thing I have absolutely any control over is myself. And I don't even have control over my thought processes. I can't control some of the thoughts that pop into my mind, but I can, with practice,

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  control how much energy I feed those thoughts. I can, if I am intentional about this, control my attitude towards things.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  That are happening beyond my control, right? Outside of my control. It is completely outside of my control that there is a wildfire in Los Angeles right now. And it's even outside of my control that it upsets me and that I'm worried about my friends who live there. But what is in my control is me looking at the way I am reacting to that and rationally examining that and thinking, okay, it is useless for you to sit in this pit of anxiety. You need to think about what you can do because I have no control over anything else in the world other than myself. Thank God. Because if I was in control of everything, it would

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  just be a disaster. Everything would be horrible. I would make a horrible world dictator or whatever. But I can only control myself and my attitudes, I think. And it's a constant work in progress. It's constantly me reminding myself of that, waking up every day and thinking, okay, today it could be really screwed up. What matters is how you respond to that rather than simply react.

• 1:05:39John R. Miles?

  Well, since I brought up the Smiths at the beginning of this, I'm going to go into one of my favorite chapters, which reminds me of their song, Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now. And Mark Manson

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  That's the title of it.

• 1:05:50John R. Miles?

  Mark Manson wrote an endorsement for you in this chapter reminded me of Mark Manson's writing. You write in here, "I can very easily justify with countless examples. Let's face it, that people suck. There's just one problem. No matter how much I may feel like a space alien, and I often do, like it or not, I am people." And where I wanted to go with this is, I think there's so many people who feel this way, and they see this world that we're living in now, and That they're part of the noise, social media, the news, everything. And it makes us feel like we're spinning out of control.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36John R. Miles?

  How do you find meaning and balance in all the chaos?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Man, for one thing, it starts with how I start my day. I wake up, right? I, what I do every morning is I wake up and I make my coffee and I pour myself a cup and one for my girl. And then I go into my study and I do not look at my phone for the first hour I'm awake. I refuse to look at it absolutely. And it doesn't stay in the same room with me either. It stays in a different room when I wake up and I don't have to look at it. I use it as an alarm or anything. I do not touch it for at least an hour before I wake up. So I wake up and I read some meaningful literature, whether it be philosophy

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  or inspirational memoir or something. I'm, I'm not just waking up and reading nonsense. Normally I like to read a, a bit of Stoic philosophy, whether it be Epictetus or, or Marcus Aurelius or, or Seneca. And then I journal a little bit and I start off the day intentionally, no matter what is going on in my life, by placing myself firmly in reality and not looking at all this chaos that's coming at me through this screen, through this digital world. Because if I do that, if I wake up and immediately check the news or check social media, then I have started off my first few moments of consciousness

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  at the mercy of the dictates of others. I have not decided what I'm going to think about, what I'm going to work on today, how I would, at the very least, like to attempt to approach the issues that are going to face me this day. I, I just start off looking at stuff. I'm a passive sponge. I'm immediately inputting all this other stuff. And let's face it, a lot of it is negative, whether it be social media or the news. It's just a, a lot of negativity. That is no way to start off the day. I, I will be an ineffective human being because I'm starting off the day consumed by anxiety. Then what I'm trying to do throughout the day is

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Remind myself that I'm just one person, I'm just one human being and I can only use the tools I have at my disposal to try and make myself calm, to make my, improve my life and hopefully in doing that, make the world a better place. For me, my tools, I'm an artist, right? This is the one question I would, I hope people will take away while they're reading this book. They will look at this book and ask themselves, what am I, that's a very broad question. What am I, the meaning of life, the universe and everything, but what is my function? What am I most effective at doing at? What are the, my tools at my

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  disposal I can use to improve my life and make the world a better place? And for me, at 53 years old, I am, it's a little late to become a doctor or a scientist or any of that stuff. I'm a writer, a musician and a photographer. Those, I'm an artist, as bizarre it is, as it is to me to this day, I'm a professional artist. So I'm looking at what I do that day and trying to create art that matters and that can be of service to others because it just, it feels better to me. It just does. It's primarily a mode of expressing myself, admittedly. That's why I was drawn to this life, even when it

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  was not profitable, no guarantee of monetary compensation or whatever, but I felt as if expressing myself through any of these three things, it's what I'm supposed to be doing. And now that I am lucky enough, through a combination of luck and perseverance and hard work, I'm lucky enough to make my living this way. Like I said, I'm not a doctor, I'm not curing cancer or whatever, but I can use these tools at my disposal to. Try and improve things. And I find fulfillment and purpose in that. And sometimes I still question myself or I beat up on myself. I'm like, you're not really doing anything. You're just a stupid heavy metal singer. That's all you're doing with your life and it feels meaningless.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  But then every now and then I will meet a fan who will tell me, your music saved me, man. I was going to kill myself, but this song you wrote kept me going. And I'm like, yes, I did it. I made a difference. And I remember how music made me feel when I, as we talked at the beginning of this conversation, how I felt so different and outside and alone. And then I first heard this music, this punk rock music, this I'm like, these people understand. Finally, someone understands. And when I get told this, these, this by these fans that, and I've been told so many times how our music or a book I wrote,

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  or even my photography has truly helped people get through difficult times. It is by far the most rewarding part of what I do. It's nice to make a living. It is true. But having someone tell you that you made a real impact in your life, in their life, it's supremely gratifying to me. And it provides me what I feel like a sense of purpose. And I think we're talking about how people feel lost and as if they don't matter. Not everybody is supposed to be an artist. Not everybody's supposed to be in a heavy metal band. But everybody has something that they can do to help others.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  And I have found that trying, at least trying to structure my life around beyond paying the basic bills of around allowing enough room for me to be of service to other people in other ways, has provided me with fulfillment and a sense of purpose that chasing money or success or notoriety has never provided ever. And I think anyone Can be of service to others. They just have to look around. They have to look and look around their own neighborhood and see what can I do to make this place better? Or who can I help? Even if just by walking over and talking to someone like old people, man, old people are lonely.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  If you are able to go and go to an old person's home and volunteer and talk to old people who are spending the last of their lives alone, you may A, learn something from these people. There's a lot of wisdom and B, you will be being of service and that costs nothing. It costs nothing to you to to engage with this other human being on a person to person level. And I think for all this supposed connectivity that the internet and social media provides, it's really in many ways causing us to separate from ourselves more and more. When my grandmother, I interviewed my grandmother right before, not right before, eight years before she died. She lived to be 100 and a

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  half years old and I was right by her side when she died. But I interviewed her, maybe she was 94. I can't remember when I interviewed her and I asked her this question. I said, Grandma, what do you think is the biggest difference between now and when you grew up? She grew up in the depression. So there's massive differences, but she didn't talk about computers or technology or self-driving cars or whatever. She said, I think people aren't as close as they used to be. I think they don't come and visit as much as they used to. Nobody knows their neighbors. And I think our society is feeling that. And I think that lack of real person to person, human contact is

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  manifesting itself in these feelings of anxiety and not belonging and feeling alone and not knowing our purpose because we don't know the people around us. We don't know our community. And therefore, we don't have anyone to bounce these feelings off of. So we're just stuck with ourselves.

• 1:14:51John R. Miles?

  Randy, I love what you just said throughout the entire segment. It's really the cornerstone of this entire podcast and it means so much that you brought it up. I know the band is really a champion of fighting cancer and you're using your music and the memory of a fan called The Duke to champion this cause.

• 1:15:11John R. Miles?

  Can you tell us a little bit more about it?

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  That opens up the book. It's a chapter called "The Duke," which is a Lamb of God song. I wrote about this young man, Wayne Ford, and I've talked about this before. Wayne was a young man I'd met outside a show in Phoenix, Arizona, and he had been diagnosed with leukemia recently and was starting his chemo treatments and radiation and all this stuff. And I had a talk with him and his wife outside the show and wished him the best of luck. And I thought, man, good luck. I hope this guy makes it. And pulled away and didn't think much more of it. And then five years go by, and one of his friends wound up emailing me through my publicist and was like,

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  Wayne, I don't know if you remember meeting him, but he's not gonna make it, dude. He's fought this thing for five years and he's done. So he's decided to spend out the last of his days at home, not undergoing any more chemo or trips to the hospital, and enjoy his life with his family the way he wants to, the way he's gonna live, the way he wants to, because he had spent the last five years in and out of hospitals, unable to eat what he wanted to eat, just a miserable existence. But he was fighting for his life. This guy wrote me this letter to let me know that Wayne was dying. And he said, can you get the guys and Lamb of God together to say hello to him? And I said, unfortunately, that is not possible because they were in California

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  recording an album, and I was in Richmond, Virginia, working on lyrics. We weren't all together, and they were in different studios. I said, look, I'll call him, though. I would love to talk to him for whatever that's worth. So I wound up setting up this video call where I was going to chat with this terminal young man, Wayne Ford. He's 33 years old. And before the chat, I became overwhelmed. We were talking about fear. I became overwhelmed with fear and anxiety that I'm not a grief counselor. I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know how to handle this sort of situation. And then I started worrying, well, what if I make it worse? What if I say something wrong or stupid and this sends him,

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  it shortens his life even more? What if I offend him? And it was, I had this realization. As I'm thinking about all this, I'm not thinking about this young man. I'm thinking about myself. I'm thinking about my fear of looking ineffective or of doing the wrong things, entirely fear-based. And I came to, I asked my dad, who was a minister and had a lot of experience with grief counseling. I asked another friend of mine, actually he was a rabbi who had experience with grief counseling. I'm like, they both confirmed what I already knew is it's not my job to talk to this guy and make him feel better and be the frontman clown and tell tour stories or whatever.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  It's just my job to be present and be a human being and listen to this young man. And so when I wound up talking to him, I approached it. We said hello and it was normal conversation, like, hey dude, how are you doing? I approached it from this sort of way where I was thinking, well, there's this elephant in the room and this young man is going to die, but I don't need to beat him over the head over it, but I can open up space for that if he wants to talk about this with me. So I asked him how he was feeling, which is a different than, it's very different than just like, what's up dude? It's like when you're talking to a dying person, you're like, how are you feeling?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  And I figured if he wanted to move into that, explain to me what was going on with him, then I would listen. And he did. And we had these frank conversations and I would, I'd ask him how he was dealing with things and so forth. So this went, we kept in touch back and forth for a while, mostly via text message. And at one point, I asked him, I said, do you want to come and see me? I'll video chat you into the studio when I'm recording vocals, which no one's allowed in the studio when I record vocals, not even my own bandmates. I just thought it would be neat for this young man to, obviously he's an exception, to be able to see me doing what I do. And because we were his favorite band and he said, yeah, sure.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  And so then I had the idea, I asked him, I said, is there anything you want to say to the world or what you want to be remembered by? I could record you saying it or work it into lyrics and then you'll become part of our music on this record. And you'll be immortalized on this record. And he's, that's really cool. And he said, let me think about it. And He never got back to me on it and he died shortly thereafter. He was such a, he handled his own mortality with such calm and grace. Like just this outwardly like calm demeanor. And I'm sure he was afraid at times. It's natural, but he did not. He just handled, he had a very stoic demeanor, man.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  And I, it was so inspirational because having been around people who are dying before, an older person, they're coming to the end of their life. They generally come to a place of acceptance. And it, like my grandmother, she was a hundred, but when she went, she was ready, man. She's a hundred years old. It's time to go. She's, she'd had a good life. When this young man checked out, he was 33 and the way he handled this was so, for lack of a better term, inspirational, because I would like to think that I'm going to face my own imminent end. Whenever it comes with that sort of level of calm and grace, but I don't know. However, I do know that it's possible because I witnessed it.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  And it, it just, it also put my own, of course, these brings your own mortality into focus. And it made me think about my own. I'm not a spring chicken. I'm 54. It's all right though, because all we have is this moment right now. That's it. That's the only thing that, that exists. I'm seeing here that you lost your sister. I'm very sorry to hear that. I'm glad you were able to have a good conversation with her. What a blessing. And I really cherish my conversations with Wayne and tried to take something from it. Cause we're all gonna go one day and I refuse to ignore that fact. I think trying to hide from that only heightens anxiety.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  I'm trying to come to a place of acceptance and make the most of the time that I have.

• 1:21:50John R. Miles?

  Randy, I so appreciated and was so honored to have you come on the show today. Can you tell the audience a little bit more about how they can get in touch with you?

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  So I really enjoyed talking to you, man. And as far as if anyone wants to learn, if anyone wants to learn more about me or my book, the new one is called Just Beyond the Light. And it will be out February 18 via Grand Central Publishing slash Hachette. You can order it wherever you order your books from. I'm going on a spoken word tour to support the book. I'll be telling a bunch of stories from my life to illustrate the themes from the book. Should be pretty funny, a good time. You can go to randyblithe.net, R A N D Y B L Y T H E. And I have an Instagram and a Substack, Randonesia. So look me up. Thank you so much.

• 1:22:42John R. Miles?

  What a phenomenal conversation that was with Randy Blythe. What an incredible conversation that was with Randy. His journey is such a powerful testament to the idea that resilience, creativity and intentionality can transform even the darkest moments into something meaningful. His reflections on overcoming addiction, embracing discomfort and using art as a force for survival remind us that true growth comes not from avoiding life's hardships, but from leaning into them with purpose. As you reflect on today's episode, ask yourself, where in your life are you resisting discomfort instead of using it as a fuel for growth? How can you channel your struggles into something creative, impactful and lasting?

• 1:23:23John R. Miles?

  What legacy are you building, not just in your work, but in how you show up every day? All the links to Randy's work, including his latest book, Just Beyond the Light, can be found in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Be sure to explore his writing, photography and music. It's a masterclass in storytelling, artistry and the power of transformation. And if this conversation resonated with you, I'd be incredibly grateful if you could take a moment to leave a five star rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. It helps us continue bringing these impactful discussions to the Passion Struck community. Even better, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. You never know the impact it might have. Lastly, if you're looking to bring these kinds of transformative insights into your organization or team, visit johnrmyles.com/speaking to learn how we can work together to ignite purpose.

• 1:24:09John R. Miles?

  Connection and emotional mastery where it matters most. Coming up next on Passion Struck, we're diving into the science of optimizing your mind and body with Dr. Scott Scher. Scott is a friend of mine and he's a pioneer in health optimization medicine. And in our conversation, we explore cutting edge breakthroughs in hyperbaric oxygen therapy, nootropics, as well as a much needed deep dive into GABA, the brain's key neurotransmitter for calm and focus. If you're looking for ways to sharpen your mental clarity, boost resilience, and take your performance to the next level, you don't want to miss it.

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  GABA amino butyric acid is one of our primary inhibitory or relaxing neurotransmitters in our brain. And it's the unsung hero of the brain, John. Most people think of the superstar neurotransmitters when we're thinking about the brain or neurotransmitters in general, we're thinking about dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. And these are important, obviously, but in much smaller quantities compared to how much GABA we have in the brain. Methylene blue itself actually works on a system called the monoamine inhibitory system. It actually prevents the breakdown of norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin. As a result of this, you get more of those neurotransmitters and you get a mood boost.

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  You get more focus, a little bit more endurance. But the key also is to-

• 1:25:30John R. Miles?

  Thank you for being part of the Passion Struck movement. Remember, the fee for the show is simple. If you found value in today's conversation, share it with someone who could benefit. Most importantly, apply what you've learned so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, live life, passion struck.