JACKASS Star Steve-O: A SHOCKING Story Of Unaddressed Childhood Trauma, 3-Day Drug Binges, Mocking Death & Craving Attention! (HOW TO TURN YOUR LIFE AROUND).

In this new episode Steven sits down with Stephen Glover, better known as the star of Jackass, Steve-O. After graduating from Clown College in 1997, and recording various death defying stunts on camera, Stephen became Steve-O, a member of the MTV series ‘Jackass’ in 1999. Since then, Jackass has become a cultural phenomenon with 3 TV series and 4 number one box office smash hit films. After battling addiction and becoming sober in 2008, Stephen has diversified his career, starting stand up comedy in 2013, creating the ‘Wild Ride! with Steve-O’ podcast in 2020, and writing 2 best selling memoirs. In this conversation Stephen and Steven discuss topics, such as: Stephen’s ‘insane’ childhood His mother’s alcoholism and later illness Why he thought he would be dead before the age of 25 His anger at the idea of death Feeling guilty for being successful Becoming sober and escaping addiction How heartbreak led Stephen to find stunts His constant need for attention and how it has driven his life Why Stephen feels as if he is defective You can purchase tickets to Stephen’s ‘Bucket List Tour’, which we be in the UK until 14th July 2023, here: https://bit.ly/3PCTIH8 Follow Stephen: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3CXQyWQ Twitter: https://bit.ly/44hbN1R YouTube: https://bit.ly/3pIyRHH Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  I read that you were practically living on Diet Coke, booze and nitrous.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Not Diet Coke, a diet of cocaine. Steve-O! The jackass superstar.

• 0:10Speaker 02

  He survived his trademark wild stunts along with some personal struggles.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  It is of paramount importance that I find separation between me and the persona of Steve-O.

• 0:21Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 0:23Speaker 01

  We have to go back to the beginning of my journey. I didn't get attention from my parents. My dad was a businessman and my mom suffered from alcoholism.

• 0:32Steven Bartlett?

  Your father would praise you for stunts, diving headfirst for baseballs.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  And he'd give $1. I don't think you have to be Sigmund Freud to imagine that had something to do with coming in attention for. That was when I started doing dangerous stunts. I'm Steve-O and this is the fish hook.

• 0:49Steven Bartlett?

  Why stunts?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Growing up, I felt defective and the thought was I wasn't gonna live very long. So I was lashing out at death, taunting it. But I lost my mom in 2003 and that traumatized me more than anything. Out of control, broadcasting my downward spiral to 200 influential people in real time.

• 1:11Steven Bartlett?

  You were manhandled into a psych ward.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was gonna be my legacy, having miserably failed at life. And the toughest thing is that I wanted to make my mom proud.

• 1:28Steven Bartlett?

  Stephen Gilchrist Glover, aka Steve-O. Honesty. Honesty saved Steve-O's life. But the man that sits in front of me today isn't Steve-O. It is Stephen Gilchrist Glover, which is a man you've probably never met before. But once you meet Stephen Gilchrist Glover, you'll undoubtedly understand Steve-O. That guy that we grew up with on our screens doing those crazy jackass stunts. That behind the scenes struggled with a deep discomfort of being in his own skin. Depression, drug addiction, existential panic, an obsession with attention.

• 2:09Steven Bartlett?

  Crippling grief and most surprisingly and paradoxically of all, a deep, deep fear of death. It absolutely doesn't appear to make sense, but once you listen to this conversation, if you listen closely, you'll understand exactly why that's driving him. This conversation will make you laugh. It will inspire you. It will motivate you. It will challenge you. It will make you feel understood and it will teach you what it takes and what it means to live a good life, including the role that romantic love has played in Steve-O finally living a good life. And for me, it reaffirms to me once again that in order to live that good life, in order to find that good life, we need to surrender, stop fighting life and we need to be honest.

• 2:54Steven Bartlett?

  And once we are, we might just find all of the things that we're looking for. You're gonna love this one.

• 3:07Steven Bartlett?

  Stephen.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:09Steven Bartlett?

  You've lived a anomalous life. The man that sits before me today is an anomaly in many respects. The professional path you've walked is extraordinary, to say the least. In order to understand you, what do I need to understand about your earliest context to understand who you are and why you walked the path you did in your life? What's the first sort of domino that I need to understand?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  I would point to my lineage. My mom's side of the family is like the whole family tree, every leaf on the tree suffered from alcoholism, some form of addiction.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  And then at the same time, very.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Personable, charismatic individuals, which is very alcoholic and a lot of deviance. Then my dad's side of the family is a super academic. There's a lot of theologians, clergymen. Everybody's got at least like a master's degree or a PhD or, you know, highly decorated academia. And my dad broke the mold by becoming a businessman. So I just kind of think that I am a little bit of a hybrid of both

• 4:48Speaker 01

  in that I definitely went towards deviance and suffered from alcoholism. But I had this rocket engine on it from my dad's side of the family. And as I've grown older, I think my, I kind of manifest my dad's side more than my mom's side.

• 5:13Steven Bartlett?

  Before we start recording, I said that one of the things that really surprised me, we're sat in London now, was to learn that you were born in London back in 1974.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, born in Wimbledon, which makes me British. My mother was born in Canada, which makes me Canadian. And my father was born in America, which makes me American. I'm what you call triple national. And I hold three valid passports.

• 5:40Steven Bartlett?

  I'm very jealous.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  It's cool.

• 5:43Steven Bartlett?

  Like having the keys to the, to the world in many respects. How, how did that impact you though? Cause you, you told me that you were, you were born here. Your first words were in Portuguese in Brazil. Then you're in Venezuela, then Canada, then USA. As a young child, that's figuring out the world and figuring out where he belongs and making friends. How does that sort of destabilization impact, impact you in hindsight?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  I don't think you have to be Sigmund Freud to imagine that that had something to do with me becoming an attention whore. And I think that it's actually exacerbated by the fact that when I moved to Brazil at the age of six months. I moved to Brazil because my father became the president of Pepsi-Cola in all of Brazil. And it was just kind of living it up, you know? I think that's the best way to describe it. And I didn't get much attention from my parents. I was actually raised by live-in maids,

• 6:49Speaker 01

  which is why I spoke my first words in Portuguese. So I think I was lacking for some attention from my parents. And I think that that has something to do, plus the instability. And always being the new kid in school, it was I never stayed one place for more than a couple of years.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  So yeah, I

• 7:18Speaker 01

  point to that for why I became such an attention whore.

• 7:22Steven Bartlett?

  The context that you raised and your mother's at home, your dad's very, very busy, very successful businessman by all accounts.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, not just busy, but traveling. My dad was consistently gone. I would argue that he was gone more than he was home.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  And mom was drunk a lot, so I had

• 7:47Speaker 01

  not just lacking attention, but lacking supervision a lot of the time, too.

• 7:54Steven Bartlett?

  In 2023, we've learned a lot about addiction and alcoholism and those kinds of things. But I imagine, I mean, I wasn't alive then, but back in 1974, people didn't understand that behavior as clearly as they do now. Did you understand your mother's behavior when you were young? Did you understand her relationship with alcohol? Was a an unhealthy thing or an addiction?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  I think so because I remember she would have these binges drinking

• 8:30Speaker 01

  where

• 8:32Speaker 01

  It wouldn't be the case that my mom would get drunk at night and then wake up and have a hangover and then get drunk again the next night. It was more of a case where she would stay drunk for days or weeks on end.

• 8:50Steven Bartlett?

  You how old, sorry?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Oh, um, like it got really pretty crazy, I would say, when I was about eight. Certainly when I was nine, it was terrible. And whenever my mom would sober up from one of her binges, she would swear that she was never gonna drink again. And invariably, she would. And I say this because I think I really, really understood the concept of the disease of alcoholism very well. Because when I would come home from school and find that my mom was drinking, I would

• 9:32Speaker 01

  say to her, "Mom, you said you were never gonna do this again." And she would explain to me that this time it was gonna be different. This time, she was only gonna have a couple. And I remember knowing that that was not the case. And that's kind of the reality of alcoholism, is that the alcoholic, once they start drinking, they cannot stop. They've lost control. And it's a characteristic of alcoholics, the idea that they, the illusion that one day, they're gonna control and enjoy their drinking. And they pursue this illusion into the gates of insanity or death.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  That's how it's described. And I understood that. So I knew if mom had one drink, I knew that all bets were off for days or weeks.

• 10:27Steven Bartlett?

  You know, you talked about lineage, like-

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the family line.

• 10:31Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. What is that, then? Is that a predisposition? Is that a genetic predisposition, in your view? Or is that a generational trauma? You know, have you ever figured out what causes that?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  I understand there to be a genetic component to the alcoholism.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  I don't know that it really matters as much, like, why one becomes an alcoholic. But certainly, as I said, on my mom's side of the- The family, it never skipped a generation. I mean, it got everybody. And then sanity of it, I mean, one could really describe it as as a mental illness. I mean, they they do say it's a disease that centered in the mind.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  For me to see and experience what I did as a child, like just how how awful it got. And then for me to just pick up a drink is is so is so insane. I mean, if if anybody should have known better, it should have been me. And I remember at the time, like 16 years old, when I when I started drinking regularly, I just convinced myself that what would make me different is that I was gonna enjoy it. I was gonna I was gonna party.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  And it's just insanity.

• 12:04Steven Bartlett?

  That that speaks to the nature of the addiction and the disease, though, because people people that are outside of that situation might see it as self destructive. But clearly, you know, clearly, it's it can't be that. It's clearly something else because you saw how destructive it was.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:23Steven Bartlett?

  And yet, it's still through no choice you made, through no intention you made, it managed to to find you later in life. Did what your father in this context, is he aware that your mother's has this disease of addiction with alcohol?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Mom would really do her best to get her act together by the time dad got home from his business trips. And with very little success, I would say. When dad would get back, mom would describe that that she was ill. And and and dad would believe it a lot of the time. I think dad, I mean, yeah, he knew. But but the extent of it and how naive he was to to believe that mom just wasn't feeling well or.

• 13:13Steven Bartlett?

  Did he but did he?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, we we would describe it as rose colored glasses.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I don't know, and perhaps dad was just so focused on his stuff that, I mean, I don't even know. It would be crazy to not know, but somehow I believe that my dad was particularly naive or gullible, I'm not sure, but.

• 13:45Steven Bartlett?

  Sometimes I think men have a predisposition to avoid conflict.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:51Steven Bartlett?

  And to opt for an easy life.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Right, I think that that's probably fair, too. But man, it's, it makes me really sad that, that I lost my mom. Yeah, I lost my mom in 2003, November of 2003. And I just, like, I think, had we both been in recovery. I don't think anybody from my mom's side of the family ever managed to achieve long-term sobriety. I think I'm the first.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  And I just, I fantasize about what it would be like to, for my mom and I to have both gotten, you know, gotten it, like what our relationship would be like. She would get such a kick out of it. I think that she would have gotten such a kick out of me being successful.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  And she didn't get to see it, you know?

• 14:58Steven Bartlett?

  She never, she never.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Well.

• 15:01Steven Bartlett?

  Because Jackass had just started to move at that point, hadn't it?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Well, the thing was that her last five years, she was terribly disabled, both physically and mentally, because in 1998, she suffered an aneurysm, which led, which, yeah, it rendered her very disabled. So the last five years, it, she didn't.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  She had a really rough last five years. And that traumatized me more than anything. She developed bed sores. She cried in pain for her last five years. It was the most upsetting, the most, by far, the most traumatized I've ever been by anything, was the situation that my mom was in for her last five years. And, yeah, and it's all because of this, this, this thing, this alcoholism.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  And had, again, like, had she been in recovery, had that not happened, had, like, we, I just, again, I fantasize about what our relationship might be like today. But, yeah, that started us off on a bummer.

• 16:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting context. Specifically, this, you know, you said the thing about attention and seeking attention from, in a variety of different ways, because you were destabilized in terms of your school, early schooling life, your father's not present. I read that you'd said that you wanted your father's approval, and as a child, your father would praise you for physical stunts, such as

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:00Steven Bartlett?

  diving headfirst for baseballs or doing pushups for your father's and his friends.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  I would do a hundred pushups in a row for his buddies. And he'd give me like one dollar. And that, everybody got a kick out of that. I loved doing it. And I don't think they were terribly impressive pushups, because a hundred's a lot. But, yeah, I was a little bit of a performer at my dad's behest.

• 17:33Steven Bartlett?

  I think there's this thing called love languages. Have you ever seen it before? Have you ever done the love languages test thing?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:39Steven Bartlett?

  It's this thing you do online, and I think it's pretty telling. I'm not into like pseudo bullshit, whatever, but I think it's pretty telling. And it basic, you answer these like thirty, forty questions, and it tells you the language of love that you have. So some people are words of affirmation. That's how they kind of show and receive love. Some people are physical touch. Some people are little acts of service. Some people are gifts, for example. And it was making me, when I was reading that in your, in your book, I was thinking about how Like, that can become a love language for us. And it's funny, because then I skipped to this moment later in your story where you had a heartbreak. And the way that you responded to the heartbreak to try and get attention was by doing stunts.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:17Steven Bartlett?

  And I just saw this connection there, and I thought, you know, it's interesting. Some of our love languages can be like stunts or

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 18:23Steven Bartlett?

  or other forms of like validation.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Uh huh. It's an interesting take on it. I remember at the point when I had the heartbreak, and that was when I really started doing dangerous stunts.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  It was less for, well, yeah, it was for attention. And I wanted this, this, this girl who had dumped me to, to be worried that I would die. Like, I mean, it's crazy. But yeah, I was like, I was jumping off rooftops into pools and, and, you know, climbing off of like just huge balconies and stuff and.

• 19:10Steven Bartlett?

  And sending her the videos or just posting them where she's.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  At the time, there was no such thing as sending videos without going to the post office. But yeah, I would send her in mail videos from the post office. I would mail them to her like once a year.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  And, and the videos genuinely did get radder and radder.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, each new installment, it was, it was, yeah, it was crazy.

• 19:38Steven Bartlett?

  If I'd asked you when you were a young man, in your teenage years, what are you going to be when you grow up? What would you have responded?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Ah, man.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  The first actual thought I had for a career to pursue was one in advertising.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  You know, um, my father had won a video camera in a golf tournament. And I stole it from his closet and began videotaping my skateboarding with my buddies. And I learned how to edit by plugging these video cassette recorders together. And I would hit play on one and record on the other to just record the good bits. And it was crude editing, not sophisticated. But I fell in love with the process. And clearly, I wasn't that great at skateboarding. So I just thought, there's something about this capturing video and then editing it

• 20:43Speaker 01

  to, you know, I mean, create presentations and ultimately to manipulate the video to create influence. You know, there was just something really magical and powerful about that. And I thought that that would be a great career for me. And so I went off to the University of Miami to pursue that. But I just had trouble making it to class. So I, graduating from university was not in the cards. And I knew I still loved the video camera and, you know, manipulating images to sway

• 21:27Speaker 01

  people one way or the other. And I decided that since I wasn't that great at skateboarding, that I would do crazy stunts. And so I literally dropped out of university in 1993 to pursue a career as a crazy famous stunt man. And there was no precedent at the time. Everybody who I explained that plan to legitimately felt sorry for me. Like, what a tragic loser I seemed to be. And they weren't wrong. For the first three years after I left the University of Miami, I was genuinely homeless.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  I was, um...

• 22:15Speaker 01

  More of a couch surfer than a guy living on the streets. But yeah, I had no home, man, and I was not doing well.

• 22:26Steven Bartlett?

  There's so many things. I want to ask this question because I just really want to hear it in your own words, which is like, and I've tried to maybe piece it together using some connected dots, but why stunts?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  I have a theory that

• 22:42Speaker 01

  that the human condition is one of

• 22:48Speaker 01

  a real catch 22. We've got one instinct, which is to survive, and one guarantee, which is we won't survive. And I view the human experience largely as an exercise to come to terms with our mortality, to wrap our heads around it, to become, to come to peace with it. And I view the different ways that people

• 23:17Speaker 01

  do that.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  You know, there's reproduction, we have children. So then I think that eases people's mind about their mortality because they have a legacy living on with their children, that they won't really be dead. Then, of course, people turn to religion because they think everything's going to be great when they go to heaven. And then there's people who leave stuff behind to outlive them. You know, like cavemen scrawling stick figures on the cave. It seems that they were just, like I described, really upset about their mortality and leaving this art on the cave walls to outlive them.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Because I had failed in university the way I did. I mean, I failed every which way that you can. And every attempt that I had ever had to be employed ended in disaster. I was fired from literally every job that I ever had. So not being able to make it through school or keep a job, I felt absolutely

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Just not qualified to navigate the world. I believed that I was going to fail at life, like badly and quickly. And I think that this idea that I believed that I was just gonna fail at life and die very young, I think that it heightened my mortality issues. Because even though, you know, I was young, but like, man, I think I was somehow angry at the idea of death.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And my theory is that I was lashing out at death by climbing off of balconies and just dangling from my hands off like 12 stories and then letting go and dropping onto the balcony below. Like, that was totally life-threatening, especially how intoxicated I was while doing that. And, you know, like I said, I wanted that girl who dumped me to think I was gonna die. Like, there was this idea of mortality was very woven into all of the art.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  And so I think that I was upset about mortality and lashing out at it. I was mocking death, taunting it.

• 26:11Steven Bartlett?

  Why? You? Because that is, I understand at a certain level, we all probably have that relationship with our mortality, but you seem to, more than anyone I've ever spoken to, have had a more close and adverse relationship with the concept of mortality, the concept of death. Like, you seem to, the way that I'd word it plainly is like, you seem to have the biggest problem with death than anyone I've met.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:37Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  I think about it. And I've always thought about it.

• 26:43Steven Bartlett?

  Since you were young?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  I'd say so. Yeah, I would absolutely say that. I seem to recall being quite young.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  I wouldn't know an age, but quite young. And being in the bathtub, just for some reason, I was thinking about, it's gonna be the year 2000. And like, we weren't really anywhere near the year 2000. But just kind of doing math in my head, trying to calculate how old I would be at the turn of the millennium. And I came to 25, I'll be 25 years old. And the thought was, I'll never live that long. No, I'll never make it that long.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  And again, I don't know how old I was, but I was definitely a child when I had that thought. And the older I got, the more convinced I was that I wasn't gonna live very long. And perhaps, you know, that's, you know, another manifestation of my alcoholism. But I think that really, to describe alcoholism, there's, like, I felt defective. You know, I felt like there was just something wrong with me,

• 28:19Speaker 01

  that things weren't gonna work, you know? And I think that, to some extent, is a characteristic of alcoholism for a lot of alcoholics. Feel like just uncomfortable in your own skin. They describe it as restless, irritable, and discontented. Defective is a word that really resonates with me. Does that ever subside? Oh, it's a tough one, because I don't think so. I mean, to an extent, yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  I'm definitely better with all that now. But at the same time, it doesn't go away. I think that it improves and, you know, fluctuates.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  But what doesn't go away is this this default setting I have that everything's not going to be okay. You know, I live in this perpetual state of of terrible anxiety and stress that just things are not going to be okay. And I've got to just hurry up and frantically work and hustle to try to make it so everything will be okay.

• 29:43Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not surprised to hear that because it is the story I've heard over and over and over and over and over again, Saeed.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, good.

• 29:50Steven Bartlett?

  And it surprises me because when before I started doing this podcast and having these conversations, I assumed that, you know, something, you know, have a certain upbringing, childhood, you're programmed in a certain way, you go to therapy and it's fixed.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:04Steven Bartlett?

  And it's actually been, I've I've asked the question purely because I've never heard anyone say anything other than what you've said.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:11Steven Bartlett?

  So, you know, and I think it's actually helpful because it helps people know that they're not that their efforts to heal in whatever context that they've tried to heal doesn't make them inadequate. It makes them very much human that, you know, the way that we're we're programmed in hard wide because of whatever reasons, you know, it is, it is, it is not something that is easy or in many cases possible, just a therapy away or to prescription away. And I think that's makes people a lot of feel people feel better.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  And and what's crazy too is that I think, and I'm fascinated that you said this is something they've heard many times and.

• 30:53Steven Bartlett?

  I've never not heard it.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Right. And and I would also guess that for all of the the successful people that you've spoken with, that they would describe having been much more at peace, much, much more serenity, much more happiness before they were successful.

• 31:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  And and it's so counterintuitive to imagine that that's the case. But there's one saying that I think really explains it to a degree, which is that, this is the saying,

• 31:35Speaker 01

  a man who has nothing only has to worry about his next meal. But a man who has everything worries about his last meal.

• 31:46Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  And that that messes me up, man. That messes me up big time because if you're just focused on the next meal, then you're in the moment. Life's, you know, pretty, pretty simple. It's not too much of a task to, to accomplish finding your next meal. But once you've got your next meal covered and then it's like, all right, and then I've, I've, I've saved up some money. My, I'm, I'm good. My next meals are set for, for the next year. And but then I'm thinking, how long am I set for? And once you start thinking, how long am I set for? Then, then, then life gets really scary. When, when, because you're not in the moment and you're, you're future tripping and everything isn't going to be okay.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And then, and, and what's even crazier is that I understand that there's been studies about financial security. And it's people who have upwards of $10 million net worth, who, who find themselves feeling considerably more financially insecure than, than, than anybody who has less. The more money you have, the more financially insecure you feel.

• 33:09Steven Bartlett?

  The study that I read about this, it says that they interviewed people all the way up the wealth income spectrum. And they asked them the question, how much money? How, um, how happy are you out of 10? And then they asked them the second question, which is, how much money would you need to be 10 out of 10 happy? And all the way up the wealth spectrum, people said three times currently what they have now. So millionaires said they needed 3 million. People with 10 million said they needed 30 to be a 10 out of 10 happiness. And people with 100K said they needed 300K, which speaks to this sort of like hedonic endless treadmill and increasing anxiety.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Right. And, and also studies are pretty clear that, um,

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Happiness will increase up to.

• 33:54Steven Bartlett?

  Like a baseline, it's like seventy five K.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:56Steven Bartlett?

  Household.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that that number is just going up with inflation. I understood it to be like sixty thousand.

• 34:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Sixty thousand a year and then you've got all of your needs met. And then after that, more money doesn't really equate to more happiness.

• 34:09Steven Bartlett?

  And also to your point about the the panic of like losing it. I think that's a an issue for people that came from nothing predominantly. So if you've always had this financial security growing up and you're you're, you know, you were, I don't know, extremely wealthy or and you've been wealthy. I think people tend to have less of a fear of going of losing it all. And they also never seem to have the guilt. I sit here with people and they speak to this success guilt they have. I I hear that a lot and it's typically people that have felt sleeping on a sofa. That have the kind of, even when they become successful, they feel like they don't deserve it to some degree. And I read that a little bit in your story in your book.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Right, it's interesting because I I grew up very privileged. You know, my my my father didn't grow up with privilege. As I said, he broke the mold becoming a businessman. He became like my my mom didn't marry a rich guy. My mom married a motivated guy who who became quite wealthy. I had privileged guilt when I was a kid. I was I was like quite ashamed of of how wealthy my parents were.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  And and I don't understand why that is, but.

• 35:34Steven Bartlett?

  In whose eyes?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Like I I was self conscious about about how my peers viewed me at school. As I grew older.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  The, the homes that we lived in, each move to each, you know, represented a bigger house, you know? It became a little bit obnoxious, but by the end.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  When I was attending high school

• 36:07Speaker 01

  here in London, I went to the American School in St. John's Wood. And I lived directly across the street from Regent's Park on Prince Albert Road.

• 36:17Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, wow.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  In this, I mean, it was a just gaudy, obnoxiously huge house. And I never wanted kids from school to see it. So I, you know, we would have like overnight. When you're a kid, I wouldn't have kids spend the night at my house. I was always overnight at someone else's house. And for me to ride my skateboard to, to school, you know, it took a certain amount of time. And if I, if I would oversleep, I would ride with my dad. My dad was chauffeur driven to work and, and he would be reading his newspaper in the backseat.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  And, and whenever I overslept and I had to ride with my dad, the chauffeur would pull up to the school. And as I got out of the car, I would hug the chauffeur.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, like to try to create the impression that, because I was just embarrassed. My dad was in the backseat, like being chauffeured around. I don't know what that is.

• 37:24Steven Bartlett?

  Wanting to fit in is every, I was the opposite.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 37:28Steven Bartlett?

  In every respect, no one came to my house. Because it was like, it was, the windows were smashed and the grass was six foot high. So everything you described was me, but the opposite, for opposite reasons. Like I would, I would pray that the traffic lights near our school would stop, go turn red, which meant that I could get out of the, like this beat up van we drove in as far from school as possible.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:48Steven Bartlett?

  Whereas you're hugging the chauffeur.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Right. It's really interesting, too. Like, I went to a super privileged school, too. I mean, like, I attended school with the son of the American ambassador to the UK. Like, my best friend was this kid Abdullah. His father was like a crazy, like, oil tycoon. And when I was in, for me, fifth and sixth grade, I was in London, England at that time, too, same school. And my father was, I'm not even quite sure what his job position was, but worked for Del Monte, the canned fruits.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  And he had to, you know, like, there was a pineapple factory in Kenya. Dad had to go visit this pineapple factory, I want to say, maybe once a year. And so, he planned the trip, his trip to the pineapple factory in Kenya to coincide with our spring break, the one week off from school, so that he could take the family on safari. And I have this crazy memory of coming out of the airport in Nairobi,

• 39:15Speaker 01

  being ushered into some chauffeur-driven car. I always remembered it as a stretch limo. My dad says, "No, we didn't have a..." But whatever. Ushered into a chauffeur-driven car out of the airport. And, um, and just sitting in the back of this car and these, just, it was my first time seeing poverty, like, real poverty. And these people were clawing at the windows, begging. And I'm just sitting in this car and just thinking, "What did I ever do?" To deserve to be like, I'm not a good kid. You know, like I I'm just always in trouble. Like I don't do like, again, feeling defective.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  You know, like, and it was, I really wasn't a good kid. I mean, I was always in trouble. Everything was just a disaster with me. And here I am inside the car that's being clawed at by these people who are barely clothed. You know, and just clearly desperate. And that like, that was a moment where I felt genuinely guilty. You know, I had a privilege guilt, you know? And that's that's worse than success guilt because, you know, and again, I did everything wrong. I was always in trouble, got terrible grades. And my sister, who was, who is three and a half years older than me, she did everything right.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Got straight A's, the the just did everything perfect. Somehow, along the way, like, like my sister went into a low earning career. She was a school teacher, which is notoriously underpaid, especially for how important of a job that is.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  To with the same, became a single mom with a special needs kid and and low earning. And and like,

• 41:21Speaker 01

  it's kind of struggles, you know, like, like life is hard for my sister. And and like somehow me, the guy who just did everything wrong and then goes on to have this stupid career and and everything just works out great for me. So when you said success guilt, I feel that. I I felt like, like what, why, you know? Why did everything work out great for me and my sister's having a tough time? And I struggle with that, too. I actually, um.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  I I I have it. I I've always called it kind of survivor's guilt, but but yeah, success guilt, same thing.

• 42:05Steven Bartlett?

  You, your mother had a brain aneurysm in ninety eight.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:10Steven Bartlett?

  Um, Jackass, the pilot was in ninety nine.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:14Steven Bartlett?

  A year later.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:15Steven Bartlett?

  You describe how your mother was ill for for roughly five years before she passed away and she was um just disabled. You're very busy with Jackass at that time. How do you do you deal? Did you? Did you cope with it? Because it doesn't seem to me that there's any anyone in your life really at that point, or any experience that's going to help you deal with the concept of grief and loss.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:36Steven Bartlett?

  How did you cope with it? If you did it all.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Um.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  My parents divorced in nineteen ninety one. I graduated from the American School here in London, the American School in London in St. John's Wood in nineteen ninety two. I went off to the University of Miami. The right around the time when I went to the University of Miami, my mom moved to Florida as well. Then, on that fateful day of October tenth nineteen ninety eight, we received word that

• 43:14Speaker 01

  mom had this brain aneurysm. My sister and I flew to Florida from New Mexico. My dad flew to Florida from England. We all congregated around this this crisis with my mom. At one point, we went to a nearby restaurant just to get a meal. I went outside to smoke a cigarette. And my dad came outside and initiated this conversation. He says, I've been, I want to tell you that I feel I've done a disservice to you by not supporting you in this path that you've chosen, my my path to be a crazy famous stuntman.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  He said, I he said, I chose a path that. My father, you know, Dad broke the mold becoming a businessman. The idea of that was pretty repugnant to his father.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And, and he said that his father had the same conversation. You chose something that I would not have chosen for you, but you're clearly committed to it. And so I just want you to be the best and, you know, be the happiest. And I pledge to support you. And I'm thinking, man, like, it's tough because I'm a loser. You know, like, the whole thing going on with my mom was, it was kind of prevalent. But this side conversation, like, I just felt like, wow, you know, like, now Dad supports me. And I, I, I didn't feel very, very hopeful, I don't think, at that time. But it put a lot of wind in my sails.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  So the next year, I saw this advert on television for a show called Real TV, where they're saying, if you got, if you have video, home video footage that's crazy and you think that we should have it on our show, then call this number. I called the number and sent them my videotape, and they wanted it. And, uh, and Dad helped me negotiate the, the license deal with them. And, uh, and it was meaningful. You know, this pursuit of becoming a crazy famous stuntman had made my father and I as far apart as, as, you know,

• 45:37Speaker 01

  it really, really made us not, our relationship suffer. And then ultimately, it would bring us together. And today, my dad is 80 years old, been retired forever. But he's come out of retirement and he's on my payroll. He manages, like, all kinds of, uh, business stuff for me, all my insurance stuff, like, and, um...

• 46:12Speaker 01

  It's crazy. It's insanity that, that, that, you know, just again, what, what, what drove us so far apart and brought us so close together.

• 46:22Steven Bartlett?

  And that catalyst moment was your mother's brain aneurysm, really?

• 46:26Speaker 01

  It was.

• 46:26Steven Bartlett?

  That conversation might not have happened and then.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  It, it, it was. And now, now you pointed to when Jackass turned, I wouldn't just, well, okay. Um.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  My sister and I

• 46:43Speaker 01

  both moved from New Mexico to Florida.

• 46:47Steven Bartlett?

  To be with your mom.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  To be with my mom.

• 46:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  And my sister naturally assumed the role of, of caregiver for my mom. And um, I, I got this opportunity to go uh

• 47:03Speaker 01

  be a circus clown on cruise ships. And it just made sense for me to do that. You know, like um, I think that my overall attitude in particular, like even going off to work on cruise ships and then with, you know, with, with Jackass. I don't think that I had any level of like

• 47:30Speaker 01

  guilt about it. I think that my, my attitude about pursuing

• 47:36Speaker 01

  my own career and to be, you know, with Jackass and everything else. My attitude was that rather than let this aneurysm destroy everything, that, that I've, I've really strongly wanted to get out there and really make something of myself. And that that would be the way to honor my mom more. And then make my mom proud that way.

• 48:04Steven Bartlett?

  People don't uh, and often appreciate how difficult it is for everybody around the individual. That's, that's sick. And I've, again, I've learned that from doing this, having this conversation about just how sort of debilitating and difficult it is for everyone around the individual, especially when they're in a situation where they've become disabled. And your mother's situation was, I mean, she, she, she couldn't move. From what I understood, she wasn't necessarily speaking.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  She was wheelchair bound. She had to be lifted out of bed and into a wheelchair and, and back.

• 48:35Steven Bartlett?

  And could she, she could speak?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  She could speak, but.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  It fluctuated how present she was, how aware she was. One of the more aware moments, I said, "Mom, I'm gonna have a book written about my life." And she, uh, she said, "And who's gonna write this masterpiece?"

• 49:02Speaker 01

  You know, she was making fun of me and it was funny. Like, uh, the last time that, um, that my mom ever laughed was I came home, um, with the words shit and fuck tattooed on my knuckles. And, um, mom was in the hospital at that point with the do not resuscitate order on her bed. Like, this was, this was the end, like, it was about a month before she passed. And, um, I, I walked into her hospital room and I just didn't, you know, it was just a tough situation. I didn't, and I just said, "Hey, ma." Like, "Check it out." And I held up my, my knuckles to her.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  And she, she, she looked at it and she said, "Shit, fuck. Shit, fuck." And then she said, "My son is a shit fuck." And she could, like, she laughed and it was just the most beautiful. I thought it was just the most beautiful thing, like, uh, she was able to laugh and, you know, and, um...

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tough, man. That whole thing's tough. And, and, and the toughest thing is just imagining. When, uh, when I was struggling in the beginning, like, like prior to her aneur- aneurysm, like, there were times when I'd show her one of my videos, "Ma, check it out." She says, "Oh, yeah, that, that's great." But like, how, how are, how is this ever going to, like, earn you anything? You know, like, she didn't ever seem to be, like, terribly concerned for my safety. I was showing her videos of, like, jumping off of bridges and...

• 50:54Speaker 01

  You know, doing stuff that was like really pretty dangerous and appeared to be life threatening. And that never seemed to upset her. What she was upset about was that I was, I didn't have a pot to piss in. And she would say, you don't have a pot to piss in. Like, how am I supposed to be impressed by this? Where's this ever gonna get, you know? How is this ever gonna? And she would say, show me the money.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Show me the money. Like, how is this gonna get you the money? And, um, man, like, given that, that that was her position on it. And I think that, that she was largely concerned with the appearance of things and, and, um, like, less, she wasn't ever, I never got the sense that she was worried for my safety on any level. I think that what she was concerned with was how I reflected on her. Interesting. You know, like, my son's a loser. This is a bummer, you know? She was bummed that I was a loser because that reflected badly on her. And that's just, that's what was important to her, you know? There's nothing wrong with that. And, um.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  Is that why you want her, you'd like her to be able to say? God, yeah. Man, that's the toughest thing, to imagine if, uh, if we, if she, she had been to rehab many times. She was in the program of recovery, but she just couldn't hang on to that. You know, she would always, she would just always end up drinking again. And, um, I think that what would, what would cause her to relapse was, was the, you know, trauma from the breakup with my dad, which is just a vicious cycle. Because what broke her up with my dad was her drinking. And then the trauma from the divorce would make, you know, it's a vicious cycle.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  But had she gotten it, had she really, really grabbed on to it and not let go and been in recovery, and, and both of us, like, she would have just gotten such a kick out of, like.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Being on, being on the red carpet, I had a big movie premiere. And she would just be letting me have it, making fun of me for the dumb shit I was doing in the movies. Like, we'd be laughing. So that was one thing. My mom had like a sense of humor. She had, she was cool, man. She was cool. And we would, we related to each other a lot.

• 53:34Steven Bartlett?

  You're, you're twenty nine, November the seventh, she passes away.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 53:42Steven Bartlett?

  A mixture of emotions. I read in your book, um, in Professional Idiot, page one hundred and ninety four, the overwhelming emotion I felt afterward was relief.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. She like, it, the, the suffering was over. You know, it was, it was merciful. Like, there was nothing upsetting about my mom dying. It was, what was upsetting was the, the pain and the suffering that she had endured for the five years leading up to her death.

• 54:12Steven Bartlett?

  Do you ever process that? We talk a lot about, these days about grief and we understand that grief is a thing. And I don't think we ever did before. Do you, did you ever process that?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  If I did, it was years later in recovery and, and digesting the concepts in that book, Conversations with God.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  That was when I finally.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  That, that, that was when I just developed the idea that mom wasn't alone.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  You know, that mom was, uh, she wasn't alone. She like, that, that was an experience that she had as God. And then somehow that just, it, it doesn't change anything, but it changes everything.

• 55:11Steven Bartlett?

  Alone. Why, why the word alone? Why was that the concern?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Just because the, I mean, it, it's a.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Like on a bigger level, like mom's this one thing, you know, so there's no such thing as a mom.

• 55:36Steven Bartlett?

  At the same time, Jackass starts taking off, right? So that's roughly around that time. Your fame goes through the roof.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, mom's aneurysm was 1998. I worked on cruise ships for six months of 1999. I worked in a circus at a flea market for six months in year 2000. And Jackass came out in October of year 2000. And then, yeah, everything.

• 56:07Steven Bartlett?

  The movie comes out 2002.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:09Steven Bartlett?

  You're 28 years old at that time. Your mother passes when you're 29 the next year. These two things have almost happened at similar times. Your trajectory has started to skyrocket. Your mother has passed away. Lots to deal with, lots going on. Fame is this new thing in your life now and attention and

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:27Steven Bartlett?

  as you said earlier, like worrying about the next meal is maybe sometimes a better problem than worrying about the last. Um, this strikes me as a real difficult moment in your life.

• 56:39Steven Bartlett?

  I, the quote from Professional Idiot, which I read, it said, by mid 2007, I was practically living on Diet Coke, booze and nitrous.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Not Diet Coke, a diet of cocaine.

• 56:51Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, cocaine. Fuck.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  It was a, it was a diet of.

• 57:01Steven Bartlett?

  Big difference. Um, you were hallucinating and hearing voices.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, big time. It's called psychosis. And it's a fascinating, um, it's a fascinating thing. That, um, there are so many different substances one can ingest that might bring about this phenomena of psychosis, yet there's so much similarity between the experiences people have with it, uh, even though they take so many different avenues to get there. And that's partially why I believe that psychosis, um,

• 57:52Speaker 01

  That there's a sort of different compartments, maybe dimensions. And that we're in our, in our human experience, we're in a distinct compartment. And that psychosis happens when you erode the barriers to the other compartments, other dimensions. And by doing that with, with chemical substances, we erode the barriers, kind of open ourselves

• 58:33Speaker 01

  up to energies from other dimensions. You, you open yourself up to like all levels of it. So you can really let in demons, you know, like, like demons being low level frequency energy and angels like being a higher level. And by just consuming enough substances, I, I really believe that you erode the barriers, you open yourself up to all these energies and in comes flooding demons and, and angels.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  And that, that's how I characterize my experiences with hallucinations. All that stuff is demon activity with some angels mixed in.

• 59:27Steven Bartlett?

  I was reading about this thing called the rad email list.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:31Steven Bartlett?

  Where you sent an email to a lot of people, which I think ultimately it sounds like one of the things that brought about an intervention, but.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Right. It wasn't one email. It was more of a stream, a barrage. I was inundating a list of 200, roughly 200 people, many of them very influential people in the, the entertainment industry, celebrities and agents and just powerful people, you know, media personalities.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  And I was just inundating these 200 people with emails at all hours around the clock and effectively broadcasting my downward spiral in real time. And I would send at times really funny stuff, you know, at times just deeply alarming stuff. I was, you know, I was I knew that how out of control I was, but I was just, I was rad. I mean, I was out of my mind. I was out of my mind and I was making that abundantly clear by sending YouTube had become a thing.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  YouTube started in 2005. So 2007 YouTube allowed me to make really disturbing videos and then email the links to 200 people.

• 1:01:10Steven Bartlett?

  If I was a fly on the wall in 2007 in your life, what would I have seen on an average day?

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  In 2007, I was renting four apartments in one building. One of them, I just demolished the walls and built a skate park throughout the whole apartment.

• 1:01:35Steven Bartlett?

  With permission from the landlord?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  No, not at all. No permission whatsoever. And it was just with the, I remember there was like a Russian prostitute operation in the adjacent apartment. So they weren't trying to complain about the noise. There was a stairwell on the other side and beneath was the parking garage. So there were never any complaints for that. And then a little bit down the hall was, I had

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Couple of my buddies living there, one of them was, you know, edited stuff for me, but we very rarely, very rarely, well, I mean, he would.

• 1:02:21Steven Bartlett?

  He thinks he works hard.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I had people like on salary and they didn't do too much. But when I was really out of my mind in these disturbing videos that I wanted to email, the links to the rad email, that's my editor guy was in charge of that.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I had the office, the skate park apartment, the office apartment. And then I had an apartment for the assistant. The assistant really didn't do anything, except explain to people that she couldn't get a hold of me and change my flights, because I would always miss my flights.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  And then I had my apartment, which was just a sort of a, where all the really crazy stuff happened. That was, that was just my little drug den. And I would, I would inhale this nitrous oxide stuff and it would come in these little cartridges that people use to make whipped cream. And a box of these nitrous oxide cartridges would have, there'd be 24 cartridges per box. But if you bought a case, there would be 25 boxes in the case. And I believe that 25 times 24 comes to 600.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  And so I would sit down with 600 cartridges of nitrous oxide and just inhale, like the thing that the cartridge goes into, this canister, correct, yeah, but I'd have two of them. So I would, you know, I would crack one open, fill that and inhale it with my lungs filled with nitrous oxide. I would be busy filling up the next one.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  So that when I exhaled the nitrous from the first, I would then inhale just so I would not breathe, I wasn't breathing air as like a, I was breathing, I was inhaling nitrous oxide to the exclusion of breathing air, I mean, as much as possible. And my, my goal at all times would be to lose consciousness. Cause if you, um, you know, if you do that and you hold your breath, you, you will become unconscious and you're kind of twitching and flopping around and, and your lips are all blue and then, and then you come back to and, and it would, uh, it's not, not healthy.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  And I would be doing that and I would be doing that for days on end while, um, snorting cocaine. So it was on, on like the second and particularly on the third day of being awake on a cocaine binge while inhaling nothing but nitrous oxide. Um, that's when the, the most profound psychosis with all of the hallucinating would be going on.

• 1:05:36Steven Bartlett?

  You sent out on that rad email at one time, suicidal ideation.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I, uh, I, um, I mean, I was going so crazy in this apartment and, um, I, uh, very loud and, and, um, destructive in there and, and the, the next apartment over was a, a, a lawyer in his first year of, of being a lawyer. Uh, so, you know, like.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  A guy who cared about work. And I was just making all kinds of noise at all hours. And so he was, he would call the police. He's kidding, my neighbor, it's insane, you know? And the more that the police would show up at my apartment, the angrier I would get at the lawyer who was calling the police, which is a little bit backwards. And that was kind of my MO. Like, I would, I would wrong people. And then I would resent them for their perfectly natural response to being wronged by me.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Mr. Honest.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  So I would, you know, I would bang on the guys. Well, I would really antagonize this, this poor lawyer guy. And at one point, it got to, to the level where pounding on the wall, I actually pounded a hole in the wall. And I pounded a hole, you know, on my side, there's the, there's the, the drywall. And then in between, there's like fiberglass stuff. And then, then there's his side of the road. I actually, this one night, pounded all the way through his side of the wall too. So I was actually looking into his apartment, which of course constitutes vandalism. So when he called the cops this time, the cops showed up.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  They had no choice but to actually arrest me for vandalism. He said, "Look, you put a hole in my wall." So they were here to arrest me. And I was really, really out of it. Like, having been snorting both cocaine and ketamine. So I was super out of it and didn't put it together that I was being arrested and going to jail with a bag of cocaine in my pocket.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I probably could have. It would make sense that. And I remember it was funny, too, because they said that I was barefoot and I had no shirt. They said, well, we have to take you to jail. We have no choice, but we will let you go. Put on a shirt and some shoes, which, which was the perfect opportunity for me to go into my apartment and remove the bag of cocaine from my pocket. But I didn't do that. And I'd said, you know, fuck a shirt, fuck shoes.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  So I went to jail completely barefoot and shirtless with a bag of cocaine in my pocket. And, um, and then when they, you know, when they process you into jail, they search, you know, your pockets. They found the cocaine and they arrested me again. So I was now I had a felony cocaine possession charge as well as the vandalism charge. And, and this was like pretty well publicized, the, you know, the fact of the cocaine and the, you know, the arrest. And when I was released from the jail, I was in there for like, I want to say like three days because the consensus among anybody who loved me was he's better off in jail.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  So there was no concerted effort to bail me out, which was why I managed to stay in there for, I believe, about three days. And then when I finally did get released from the jail after the three days and I returned to my apartment, there was an eviction notice on the door. So my response to that was, oh, okay, well, I'm being evicted. And I went into the apartment. I found more vials of ketamine that I had stashed in there and I cooked that all up. And, um, within a couple hours, I was like screaming about.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  God, like while jumping up and down on a parked car and like dealing with more cops.

• 1:10:10Steven Bartlett?

  You were manhandled into a psych ward, right?

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, so I went on this prodigious final bender. And I was running out of time before I had to get my stuff out of the apartment. I was evicted. So the email to the rad email list was, hey, I have to have my stuff out of this apartment because I've been evicted. But before I have to be gone, I want to jump a motorcycle, I want to ride a motorcycle through the living room and off a ramp and jump it over onto the building next door, which was a very, very small gap.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  It was hardly even a big stunt. And it was like two and a half stories up. I think I was on the third floor, but it was really like kind of two and a half, so maybe like 20, 25 feet. And I said on the rad email list, and I also, I want to jump the motorcycle onto the roof next door. And I want to jump out of the bedroom window into a hot tub. You know, as I said, so Knoxville, bring a camera crew and a hot tub. And if you can't do the hot tub, at least bring some cardboard boxes. But I'm jumping out of the window and I'm jumping, you know, and if you don't come, I'm jumping out of the window anyway.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  I'm going to jump and I'm going to find out how many bones break when I land on the sidewalk 25 feet below. I'm ready to die. And like I was like promising that I was going to jump out of the window and break bones on the concrete below. And that qualified me for the psychiatric evaluation.

• 1:11:57Steven Bartlett?

  And they staged an intervention?

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  They staged an intervention, yeah. And I said, so Knoxville responded. I forget if he responded with all 200 people on copy. But I did this on the rad email list with the 200 people. And I said,

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  if Knoxville responded, he says, okay, I'll be there, you know? I said, be here at 10 a.m. Be here at 10 a.m. where I'm gonna jump. Everybody, but his response was, he says, uh, can we do noon? What's with the early call times? Sheesh.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  So we agreed on noon.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  I forget, I don't think he was concerned with the early call times. I think what he was concerned with was having more time to, uh, to rally, uh, you know, a, a group to really do the intervention. But, but by, in that email exchange, I, I was not scheduling a shoot for, you know, for Jackass, as I thought. I was actually scheduling my intervention.

• 1:13:06Steven Bartlett?

  And that's really where your life seems to have started to take a new direction, although not linear in any respect.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that, that, that intervention marked, uh, the beginning of my journey. I've been clean and sober since that day.

• 1:13:23Steven Bartlett?

  Which is...

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  I mean, the, the intervention was March 9th. The intervention was March 9th of 2009. Oh, sorry, no.

• 1:13:32Steven Bartlett?

  Eight.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, March 9th of 2008. And we don't count that as our sobriety, because it's the first day you didn't get loaded is your sobriety date. So my, my sobriety date is March 10th of 2008.

• 1:13:48Steven Bartlett?

  Over 14 years sober.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Over 15 now.

• 1:13:50Steven Bartlett?

  Over 15 years sober.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Steven Bartlett?

  Congratulations.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Dude, it's huge.

• 1:13:55Steven Bartlett?

  That's amazing, honestly, that's incredible.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  It, it, it's so incredible. And I don't say that to, you know, to be, uh, self-important or, you know, like, like douche, it's just the most profound gift, like, ever. And, and I, I believe strongly that, you know, th- this conversation began with this dark discussion of alcoholism and, and, and how, uh, just how terrible and, and sad alcoholism is. However...

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  As upsetting as alcoholism and drug addiction is,

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  it's the only disease where, once you treat it, you become a better version of yourself than you were before. And that's really incredible to me, because any other disease, the best you can hope for is to get back to as healthy as you were before you got sick. But for us sober alcoholics and addicts, like, we genuinely become improved versions of ourselves.

• 1:15:09Steven Bartlett?

  And the work you've done since has been incredible. I mean, you've taken on many professional pursuits. Your stand-up comedy became a facet of your life in 2013.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  2010.

• 1:15:20Steven Bartlett?

  2010, okay.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  I had, the first time I had gotten on stage in a comedy club and performed what I intended to be stand-up comedy was 2006.

• 1:15:30Steven Bartlett?

  How did that go?

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  I thought it went a lot better than it actually did, but, but the first time I ever got on that stage, it wasn't, it wasn't a disaster. It became a disaster later.

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  But, but in 2010, once I'd been clean and sober for just over two years, I pursued stand-up comedy in earnest.

• 1:16:00Steven Bartlett?

  Why stand-up comedy? I know you've got a big tour coming up in the UK, but why stand-up comedy? I'm trying to understand the through line between the stunts.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  It's, the through line is just attention-seeking. You know, um, the first time I ever got on stage to perform in a comedy club, there was, it was 2006, I believe it was August of 2006, and our second Jackass movie was, to be released a couple of months later. Showed up at this comedy club. I walked in, had no plan for what I was gonna do. And just observing what was happening on the stage with somebody standing there, holding a microphone, just speaking to the audience.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  I thought, there's no stunt that could possibly be crazier than that, you know, like, I'm gonna do, my, my, my, the craziest stunt that I could possibly do is no stunt at all. I'm gonna stand there and speak into a microphone and try to make the people laugh. This was genuinely the most terrifying concept. And I was just wasted enough to decide, I'm gonna do that. When it became my turn to, to get on the stage, I had come up with one joke. And as I got on the stage, there were people, they, they were aware of me. They were excited to see me. I felt like an excitement.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  They, they were there to have a good time. They were, they were rooting for me. I mean, of course, like, get on the stage, oh, Steve-O rad. They were, they, I felt loved. I felt, uh, that they were rooting for me. They wanted to have a good time. I got, I got on, yeah, I was terrified, but, but, uh, but it was, it was just, it was, man, it was, uh, it was electric, dude. And, um, you know, I said, you know, what's up, everybody? I'm in the mood for a blowjob. Does anybody want one? And, uh, and, and, and I got a laugh, you know, like, they'd laughed and I just was so happy about that. And, um, I couldn't have been on that stage for more than three minutes. Like, um,

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  I got on and I got off, just got out of there. And it was a favorable experience and I decided that this was something I wanted to pursue.

• 1:18:23Steven Bartlett?

  And you've been pursuing it ever since. There's a, an awesome tour coming up in the UK from June 30th to July 14th, I believe, called Bucket List.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  That's right. And, and-

• 1:18:31Steven Bartlett?

  Which I'm coming to see.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Oh, dude, I love that, man.

• 1:18:33Steven Bartlett?

  Gonna make sure that that happens soon.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  When, when I started doing stand-up in earnest in 2010,

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  I imagined that I was-

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  That I was trying to establish myself as a stand-up comedian and that I was going to forge a career with speaking into a microphone. And I felt that I was well-equipped to succeed in that endeavor because my life has been so just colorful. Like, the experience that I've had in my life, like, to mine my life experience for material in stand-up comedy, it seemed very doable, you know? Like, I've got stuff to talk about. So I felt that I came into stand-up comedy

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  not with just an advantage in that I had an audience, a profile, but I just had interesting material to, you know, to mine. And clearly, the world was not eager for the stand-up comedy of Steve-O. You know, I think that the bar for the stuff that I was known for, like, to go from, like, the shocking, like, unbelievable, like, crazy visual stuff that I'd become known for, and then appear speaking into a microphone,

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  it seems like a...

• 1:20:18Steven Bartlett?

  Mismatch in expectation.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:21Steven Bartlett?

  And that's always disappointment, isn't it?

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Right. And maybe this is from my own perception, I'm not sure. But with all of the self-doubt, with all of the,

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  you know, negative self-talk, I just still persisted. And I wasn't...

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  Super successful in the beginning and like, of course not, but I was successful enough to get booked by comedy clubs and then be welcomed back. And I would go around this comedy club circuit around the, the United States. And I did just well enough to go back around the loop. And that loop lasted for 11 years in comedy clubs. And, and I tirelessly persisted. I genuinely didn't. I put in work and I developed this craft of storytelling and, and stand up, telling jokes. Along the way, I taped two comedy specials.

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  The first one was me and a microphone and some intermittent stunts I performed on stage throughout the act. And as I put together what would become the next comedy special, I put together this, this new act to tour with. It occurred to me that the stories I was telling in this new act had, for the most part, all happened on camera. And I had the idea, wow, what if for my next comedy special, I, I perform the act, but

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  in post-production, I edit into the special interstitial footage of these stories unfolding?

• 1:22:15Steven Bartlett?

  Ah, love that. So depth to the storytelling.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Oh dude, my head exploded. I got so excited. I, I couldn't even, I couldn't even stand it. Wow, like I'm gonna have a, my next comedy special is gonna be multimedia. Uh, that, that one I put out myself. Um, and uh,

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  And then it was time to put together the third show. So now I knew that for this third show.

• 1:22:44Steven Bartlett?

  Which is Bucket List.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  The Bucket List, correct. That I needed to film all new stuff, which would lend itself to all new stand up material. And it had to be crazier than shit. It had to be crazier than ever.

• 1:23:00Steven Bartlett?

  And that's what people will see if they go.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. This, uh, there, there, there were just ideas that came up over the years that were, that were genuinely never supposed to happen on any level, but they were, they were just ideas that I was so fond of just because they were crazy things to say.

• 1:23:20Steven Bartlett?

  I can't wait.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  The idea was to push things further than Jackass ever could. And there's no way that you do that and there's not a story to tell. You know, there's like, the, the, the, the challenges of, of making these things happen. It's just, there's a, it's inherently juicy material for stand up. There's just no way around it. And, and one step further is that, um, I've worked so hard on, um, developing the ability to be in a healthy relationship with a life partner.

• 1:24:03Steven Bartlett?

  So I was just about to ask you, this was my question, which was about Lux.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Right, my fiance Lux. And, and the, the Bucket List show is every bit as much about these ultra high level Jackass stunts and how they're conceived and executed. It's every bit as much about that as the implications of carrying out these bucket list items on my relationship with my fiance.

• 1:24:35Steven Bartlett?

  What I was actually going to ask you about was specifically kind of the juxtaposition of what's making you successful here. Seems to me as a guy that's gotten into relationships, struggled to find a relationship for my own reasons with my childhood, seems to be the antithesis, the very opposite of what it takes to be successful in a relationship, which is like the stability, the, the, I don't know, the, the calm, the.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:57Steven Bartlett?

  And over here we're seeking instability. And here in a relationship, then I, I don't know, there needs to be a certain stability that I think, how?

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Well, to derive one's self-worth and self-esteem from external validation, the way that we do in show business. Like, for me to base my self-worth and self-esteem on how successful I am as Steve-O, it just plainly presents a dark and upsetting future

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  as the spotlight wanes, you know, like the... And this is something that became very clear to me 15 years ago when I got sober, was that for me to be happy and healthy on any level, it is of paramount importance that I find some separation between me and the persona of Steve-O. And with that kind of ruminating in my mind, and as I, when I got into the stand-up, like, I was acting out sexually as much as possible

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  on the road while doing stand-up. And at that time, I was in my late 30s, approaching 40, and it just occurred to me, man, this is not the road to being happy. And, you know, I gotta learn, if I wanna be happy later in life, I need to learn how to have a healthy relationship. That was a belief that I subscribed to. And I got to work on learning how to be in a healthy relationship. And thank God I did, because I'm terrified of being a washed-up...

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Old attention whore that nobody wants to pay attention to anymore. And being alone. And being alone. That sounds like the most terrifying, like awful thing. And so. What does it, what does she mean to you, Lux? I mean, she, you said something earlier that, uh, that the, the design for living in the 12 steps. And this isn't my, you know, kind of extrapolating on what you said. You said that the principles of honesty, open mindedness and willingness are helpful to all people. And I'll take that a step further, that the design for living outlined in the 12 steps is something that you don't have to be an alcoholic or an addict to benefit from.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  But what Lux is as a person is somebody who automatically does that stuff. You know, she's automatically honest, you know, she's automatically like open, willing. Like, like she's automatically does the right thing. You know, where I had to, to really, really work and train myself to be honest and to do the right thing. You know, and, uh, you know, she's just automatically, they're just automatic to her. And, and Lux's capacity for love is so staggering.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Like her, it's just so natural to her to, to be loving. And, and, and it blows me away. We both like with animals, we're out of our minds. We love animals so much. And, um, gosh, the way that Lux loves me and the way that she wants me to love her. Like, just, uh, no, no, no, hold like the way that we like hold each other, the way that like she's, she's, she's taught me to love. She's, she's increased my capacity to love. And, and that's, that's the biggest deal, man. It's, it's massive.

• 1:29:22Steven Bartlett?

  Such a beautiful thing. Steveo, thank you so, Steven.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:29:32Steven Bartlett?

  And the question that's been left for you is one of the most interesting questions that's ever been left, in fact. They don't know who they're leaving it for.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:29:38Steven Bartlett?

  So it's a totally, they said, what can Steven?

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  So you've filled in the blank?

• 1:29:44Steven Bartlett?

  No, no, no, no. They literally wrote, what can Steven? And they're talking about me.

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  Ah, okay.

• 1:29:48Steven Bartlett?

  Funny enough, they spelt it with your name, with a P H. They said, what can Steven, this beautiful man, improve about himself?

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  So that's my quote, what can I improve about myself?

• 1:29:59Steven Bartlett?

  No, it's, they're asking you to tell me what I can improve about myself. Because they didn't know you were called Steven. So they said, what can Steven, this beautiful man, improve about himself? Honesty.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  You didn't speak about yourself very much, but, but one thing that you did say, you seemed to point to the deficiency in your relationship with your girlfriend, being that you're so consumed with work. And that you said something about she wants quality time. You can't compensate for your, you know, all of your energy and time going into your career. And that you want to compensate by, with material things and, and that, but that she's no, no interest in material things. She wants quality time.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  And I think that, that you and I both have this, this drive, this, this, this hustle, this, this urge to succeed. And I think that, that, that both of us would do well to find our success in our relationships. Every study about, about longevity and health and happiness.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  One hundred percent points to relationships as the source of happy and true happiness and true health comes from the quality of our relationships, not the numbers in our bank account, but the quality in our relationships. So um.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  I think that the my answer for you is this and for me is just that uh.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  You know that we should put the emphasis on our quality time in our relationships that we do on our hustle.

• 1:32:10Steven Bartlett?

  And it's the reason why I don't is because I think of some of the stuff that I said earlier about like where I came from and being a poor family and all. So like my survival innately in me or my validation comes from my work. So I'm like being pulled by this like insecurity and the shame from my childhood over here like become fucking become everything that you weren't and you know. And then on the other hand, my sense goes, well, Steve, the happiest times in your life, the all the studies, I've sat here with the guy that did that ninety five year old study on um men and found that they live, I think it's like fourteen years longer if they have a meaningful relationship. I know logically. But then emotionally and the scar the scar tissue in me goes, no, you need to validate yourself, right? I'm being dragged by that still to, you know.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  Right. And hustle, but but not in a way that that undermines or or detracts from the quality of the relationships.

• 1:33:08Steven Bartlett?

  Is that that's what you're doing?

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  I mean, like, uh. I mean, yeah, shit, Lux and I have a rule that we we were not to be apart for more than two weeks.

• 1:33:20Steven Bartlett?

  I love that.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  And we spent two days together over the course of six weeks. We broke our rule badly. And that's not cool, man. Yeah. So um, if I wasn't so.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  You know, so, so, operating from fear, that's the, that's the difference.

• 1:33:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  Hustle because you love it.

• 1:33:46Steven Bartlett?

  Not because you're.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  Not because you're afraid of the post-apocalyptic, you know?

• 1:33:50Steven Bartlett?

  And there's this concept I've been toying with a lot on this podcast between the distinction between being driven and being dragged, and sometimes I'm being dragged.

• 1:33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:57Steven Bartlett?

  Driven is the like intentional, it sounds like, you know, kind of the intentional hustle with control over the hustle. Dragged is like fucking fear, like if I don't.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Steven Bartlett?

  Then I'm not enough and.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:08Steven Bartlett?

  I've taken so much of your time.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:34:10Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. A pleasure to meet you and I've learnt so much. Incredibly surprising, wisdom-filled conversation that graced so many different aspects. I'm so excited to see Bucket List. I'm sure all of my audience are as well. The 13th is the date to be there, right?

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Steven Bartlett?

  Hack the Empire? That's where I'll be. I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  I think that we might be able to open up some tickets on the 14th.

• 1:34:30Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  But, but I don't know, and I don't know how many. I just know that as I sit here now, the, the show on the 13th just went live.

• 1:34:41Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  So that's, that's a whole show that I gotta fill.

• 1:34:43Steven Bartlett?

  So, link is in the description below to get tickets, in the YouTube description, and on the audio apps. It's in the description below, and I hope to see you guys there. Thank you so much, Stephen.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  Thank you, bro.