From Avalanche to Addiction: Cory Richards on Trauma, Survival, and Rewriting His Life

Cory Richards has summited Everest without oxygen, survived avalanches, and photographed some of the world’s most remote regions. But his most grueling expeditions didn’t happen on a mountain—they happened within. In this revealing episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, you’ll hear how a life shaped by mental health struggles, institutionalization, and homelessness led Cory to push the limits of endurance—and how those experiences can offer powerful lessons on healing and self-discovery. We explore: • Why big achievements don’t guarantee fulfillment—and what actually does • How spending time in nature and solitude can help you reconnect with yourself and find clarity • What Cory’s journey through trauma and recovery can teach you about your own capacity to heal • Why creativity, purpose, and self-reflection are essential tools for building a meaningful life Don’t miss this powerful conversation about what it really takes to overcome adversity. View Show Notes From This EpisodeGet Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hymanhttps://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcastSign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journalhttps://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcastJoin the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Healthhttps://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detoxJoin the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Resultshttps://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by Seed, BON CHARGE, Paleovalley, and Pique. Visit seed.com/hyman and use code 25HYMAN for 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic. Go to boncharge.com and use code DRMARK to save 15% on your PEMF mat today. Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase. Head to piquelife.com/hyman to get 20% off + a free beaker and frother today.

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  The air blast of this avalanche just took us. I took a photograph after this of my face.

• 0:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Ended up on National Geographic cover.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Right. And so that very much launched my life and career into a new phase. At the same time, it triggered all of that internal turmoil that I was living with.

• 0:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Cory Richards is a world renowned photographer and climber.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Known for capturing the raw edge of human experience.

• 0:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  While battling his own inner extremes.

• 0:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, The Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website at drhyman.com for my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Welcome to the Dr. Hyman Show. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and this is a place for conversations that matter. In today's conversation with Cory Richards, who's a world renowned photographer,

• 1:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  professional athlete, climber, bestselling author of The Color of Everything and Bipolar, will be an incredible conversation because it dives deep into our own inner landscapes and how we navigate those in ways that teach us about ourselves, the world around us, and how to navigate places that are pretty tough. And Cory has had a tough life. He's struggled with mental illness. He's had a tough childhood on and off the streets and has spent his life pushing the boundaries of human potential, both in terms of extreme landscapes of our planet, climbing top peaks and doing crazy athletic feats, as well as in his deeply personal journey of self-discovery and transformation. You know, all of us have

• 1:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  stress in our life, traumas, little t traumas, big t traumas, and many of us. Often don't know how to navigate through them. And I think through Cory's story, his book, The Color of Everything, his, his own metabolizing of his own struggles. I think we can learn a lot about ourselves. He's done crazy stuff, gone to the remotest corners of the earth. He's summited Everest without oxygen, one of, I think, 600 people to ever do that, being the only American to climb one of the world's highest peaks in winter. And I don't, I mean, I always thought you, winter was when you saw Mount Everest, but that was summer, summer, most of the time. So doing it in winter is pretty nuts. He survived an avalanche, which helped transform him. And his work has been featured in National

• 2:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Geographic. He was actually named National Geographic Adventure of the Year. And his bigger journey in some ways had been his profound exploration of the depths of his own mind and including PTSD addiction, bipolar disease. And I think he's really used his own story and advocacy to sort of break the story of being broken, tell a different story. So you're gonna love this conversation. Let's jump right in. It gets pretty deep. So stay with us. Cory, welcome to the Dr. Hyman Show. It's so great to have you.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Thanks for, thanks for having me.

• 3:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When I meet people who've done extraordinary things, like climbed the highest peaks in the world, done extreme feats of human endurance and stretched the limits of what's possible for human beings, I'm always a little bit in awe because I'm like, damn, I don't think I could do that, like climb Mount Everest. And, you know, you know, these are outer challenges.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That are extraordinarily hard. There are massive amounts of training, planning, mental fortitude, sort of a mental toughness that makes you go when your body says no.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you've also had to climb very deep and hard places in your inside life.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I'm very curious about how you sort of kind of leaned into the external challenges as a way of navigating your internal peaks that you had to climb.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been an interesting journey because I think so often there's a natural. Tendency to try to solve like internal problems through external means. And and and that can be very, very healthy at times. And it can also be very maladaptive. And I think for me initially, it was a very healthy expression because it gave me a way to anchor in the world. It gave me a way to try to counteract some of the stories that I had learned about myself in my adolescence. When I was really going through sort of the introduction to a mental health journey.

• 4:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's a nice way of putting it.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Being in psych units and living on the street.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Institutions for years.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I was institutionalized and then I was on the street and then I, you know, I dropped out of high school. And so when I rediscovered climbing, because I started when I was five and then I lost it. But when I rediscovered it, it was very much a way to anchor. And then photography as a sidecar to it sort of gave me a voice. And I think, but in many ways, I was, it was more an examination of self. Initially, that was, I think, a very healthy thing. And then over time, it became less healthy.

• 5:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You mean your, your attempt to kind of seek salvation in, in great achievements of

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  human endurance was not actually helping you on the inside?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  It never really does, at least in my experience. It never fully helps you resolve that internal turmoil. It gives it a vehicle to express, but it doesn't necessarily resolve it, if that makes sense.

• 5:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You've done some of the hardest things like climb Mount Everest without oxygen.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Very few human beings have ever done.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, it seems like a crazy thing to do, what they call the death zone up there.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  For a reason.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And those, those, those were extreme feats of

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  what a human being could potentially do with their body. But the, the, the, the mental challenges, I wonder for you, were those, were those harder?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Oh, by leaps and bounds. Mental challenges are always the harder thing in my experience because they're more complicated. There's this very hard reality of climbing mountains or

• 6:32Speaker 01

  You know, descending rivers in Africa, it's a container and there's the physical world that you're moving through where in your mind, it's a whole universe unto itself. So the barriers and boundaries in there are much more immaterial and because of that, it is much harder to sort out where you are on the journey and what the progress is. And it's very, it's very just difficult.

• 7:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So basically you've got a circumscribed task, which is climb a mountain or descend a river or do some crazy shit.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But it's, it's a very circumscribed, defined.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Very clear, it's very delineated.

• 7:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Piece of work.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But the piece of work to heal and sort through what's going on the inside is a very different.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  It's just nebulous. Like, how do you even define growth? The only way that I've found to define growth is messy. Right? Like, it's not clear and you're backsliding and you're regressing and devolving at times and that feels like you're going backwards, but it's always forward motion. But it's just messy.

• 7:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  You know, it's just a messy, messy process.

• 7:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you describe a lot of this in your book, which is sort of a memoir.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  All of Everything, A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within. And I've been in the mountains and it's so quiet there, it's so peaceful, it's so still and you just feel like you can kind of hear the, the sound of God there. And, and yet the internal turmoil was just still happening.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  I mean, in some ways, it was almost amplified by those environments. Because when it's so quiet externally, you're made aware of how loud it is internally. Right? And so I could find moments of calm and I could find moments of peace. But oftentimes that was when I was engaged with doing something very hard because it demanded.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  A reduction of of that noise inside my mind, simply to survive.

• 8:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, when you're about to die.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 8:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You're basically, it's the only thing you can think about is like not dying.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How to not die.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I've been in those situations, not as many as you, obviously, but you know, and it's like, everything just kind of goes away and you just focus on the task in front of you so you don't fall off a cliff.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or fall off a mountain or something.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Whether it's a metaphorical mountain or not, you know, anytime we're in survival mode, we're we're going to have a an element of flow. And that is because, you know, we're uniquely programmed to survive. The funny thing about survival that I've found is that it's reaction based versus resilience, which is a response, right? And so the the shift from reaction to response, I think, is part of that internal growth. Because as somebody who's dealt with, you know, bipolar and these these difficult uh mental struggles, it's very easy just to default to a reactionary thinking.

• 9:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hmm.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  The other interesting thing about that is survival is not values based. Right? Like, when people are in survival mode, they'll do crazy shit.

• 9:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  When people are in a resilience mode, it's slower and it's and it's underwritten by value.

• 9:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  And the values are actually guiding it. So that shift into into a resilience mindset has been one of the most important things I've done. And I would say that climbing and photography was actually mostly survival.

• 9:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, it's it's so brave of you because it's one, it's a brave thing to go climb Mount Everest. But it's it's a much braver thing to talk about mental challenges that you have. They're still prevalent, you know, 25% of Americans struggle with mental illness. You know, suicides, death of despair, opioid, you know, eating people, eating themselves to death. Anything about that, people that get to a thousand pounds, 600 pounds. I mean, that is just a response to trauma.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not being able to navigate it and not having a path.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  And not having the tools to, you know, not having the infrastructure. Judith Herman, who's a Harvard psychologist, in 1995, she basically said, look, all, all psychological dysfunction is really one diagnosis, which is trauma. It's all an extension of trauma for the, I mean,

• 10:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  For the most part. Trauma has become a buzzword now and everybody's learning about it, which is so important. And at the same time, there's this overcorrection where we're sort of believing that by knowing our trauma and being able to voice it and explain it, that that is healing it, which isn't the case. In fact, it becomes a new narrative that I've observed stops people on the

• 11:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Self identify with it.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Exactly. We reinforce it by telling, oh, this happened to me. This is, and now this is my new story. And I did that for decades.

• 11:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So maybe you can walk us back through your early life and what, what happened in your family and in your life where things broke down when you were a teenager and you ended up hospitalized in a psychiatric unit, institutionalized for months in the streets. Like what, what was that and what happened to you and what was going on in your internal world at that moment?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Very early on, I, I realized I had a, I had a loud interior landscape. And I remember that from a very, very young age. And by virtue of that, there was a sense of isolation where I was almost trapped in my own mind. And thus engaging with the external world felt difficult. And there was a sense also of like on the outside looking in. Now, I think that's pretty human. As I grew into adolescence, there was a lot of violence in my home and it was, it was between my brother and I. He was only two years older, but to me, he was like, he was my adult. You know, my parents were loving, they did the absolute best they could, but families are

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Crazy intricate. The dynamics of families are wildly complicated.

• 12:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, you throw a bunch of humans with unsolved pasts into a small container and daily basis.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  And be like, go. Yeah, see what happens. And so that violence was, it wasn't as simple as brothers beating each other up. It was, it was rage based violence and rage, I would actually say was the more traumatic component of that. And it was his rage that perpetuated it. But then I learned also that when he beat the hell out of me, I got attention. So for many years.

• 13:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  From your parents.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  From, from my parents, we both did, right? It was, so it was a means of having our emotional needs met, both of us. But then because I looked like the victim, the attention that he was getting was very detrimental to his sort of sense of well being and self value. And I learned that, well, if I feed into this, then guess what? Like I, I get all the attention. I get all that soft attention. But ultimately it didn't work. It just amplified the violence. And then I remember I was 12 and I just had this moment, this night. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't just, I was so unsettled and I was, I was in my family's den and my mind just sped up to the point where I couldn't track my thoughts.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  And it was almost, it was just these, almost flashes of, of black and white. And the only thing I could remember is I could track it to my heart beating. The noise was so profound and I remember just sort of collapsing and pulling at my hair and trying to make sense of it. And it was at this time that, you know, I was a smart kid. I went to high school two years early and I'd gone from getting straight A's to getting basically failing everything. And so then it was, that was the first time I was medicated. Um, with SSRIs. And then about, God, I'd say about a year later, eight months later, my mom was like, hey, can we go to?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Primary Children's Hospital and sort of try to get a handle on this. And I knew something was wrong, so, or something was off. So I, I, I agreed and we went, there was sort of this evaluation. I remember the therapist so clearly. I remember like Enya playing.

• 14:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  I remember the smell so vividly. And, um, and then as we were leaving, this guy, his name was Ivan, came up. He's like, oh, we've just had a bed open up. And I was like, what? So I thought I was leaving and then I never left.

• 15:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Your mom checked you in?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  She checked me in.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  And

• 15:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, that's gotta be a very disorienting experience to be that young and be

• 15:19Speaker 01

  hugely disorienting.

• 15:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hospital.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And I think what's so interesting is that at that point, there's a splintering of stories. Her story and mine. So my story becomes one of abandonment, right? Her story is one of love. I'm trying to help my child. Both those things exist concurrently, but they are conflicting.

• 15:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Right?

• 15:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  And resolving that both individually and collectively over time is incredibly

• 15:49Speaker 01

  hard. It's very hard work to do. After that, I was put in a long-term institution or, or care facility for eight months. I ran away three times.

• 16:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And heavily medicated.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Heavily medicated, heavily medicated. I was on, it was actually there that I got diagnosed. And again, I'm very much like you. I don't love diagnoses because I think they come with tremendous baggage, huge stories, especially in mental health. There's a story of brokenness that's inherent in mental health issues. Something is wrong.

• 16:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, it's so stigmatized, right?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In our culture and the labels really are kind of just descriptions of symptoms. They don't

• 16:27Speaker 01

  They're just a container.

• 16:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Cause or why, or

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What's going on?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  They're just a container for a set of behaviors.

• 16:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Right? But, but they come with the story of dysfunction, illness. I mean, we call it, uh, mental illness, right? Or we have. That implies something and it's a very hard story to get out of. And like we were saying earlier, now we're in this culture of like, we're owning it sort of in not a necessarily a healthy way, right? And that actually Perpetuates the stigma. Oh, I can't do that. I'm ADHD. Or I can't, you know, my triggers prohibit me from being in this environment. So that's hiding behind it and further stigmatizing it.

• 17:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's identifying with the diagnosis.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 17:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  As opposed to saying, oh, this is something that I can heal or work with.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Or work alongside or turn into a superpower. During that time, you know, I ran away from this place three times. And the last time, my dad, who's very big on agency, was like, great. You can run away. You can do whatever you want, but you can't come home.

• 17:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And how old were you?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  I was 15 at this point. And some people would say, well, that's the worst thing a parent can do.

• 17:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Child abuse.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Child abuse, right? Quite frankly, they, I fault them in no way for that. They were scared of me. I was, you know, erratic. I wouldn't listen. Like, really, home was just a bed and a source of food. And then I'd leave and do whatever I wanted. So there was a learning that rules in every way are arbitrary. And I just broke every rule because I had no respect for them. And I remember watching them change the locks on the house. And just being like, well, now what? For the most part, I was kept off the street by family, friends and friends. But there were times that I was in chapter eight in the, in the book,

• 18:20Speaker 01

  profoundly dark experience that some people would categorize as rape. And some people, the way I describe it, is a much different interpretation of that. But all that to say that there were things that happened that almost certainly.

• 18:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To you.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  To, to me. Or there were things that happened in my life. I try to stay away from the language of to me.

• 18:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To or for.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like, things happened, right? And they had an impact. And that took years to, like, this sort of quasi homelessness took, I don't know, two years to really resolve, you know? And then I ended up in the hospital again. When I was seventeen.

• 18:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So imagine when you were out, you were off your medication.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Sometimes, like if I, especially when I was running away, the medications would just run out. You know, like I was actually still, I would take them because one of the stories that I picked up is that my mind was dangerous. And if I didn't take the medications, I was gonna go crazy. That was so deeply ingrained in me that I didn't want to go crazy. I didn't want to scream at trees. So I kept taking them. And I think that was actually to great benefit. That I had, that I had picked up that story that I was gonna go crazy.

• 19:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And then, and then you, when you kind of were kind of out and about.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like something, and you kind of lifted up yourself up to kind of get back into place of doing something, right?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I ended up living with my aunt and uncle in Seattle. And because I was out of Salt Lake, I think, and out of that environment, even though I had dropped out of high school, I'd gotten my GED by that point. But I think living in an environment where it was not the deeply ingrained tapestry of my home life was so beneficial. And it was there that I sort of rediscovered climbing. And I discovered photography and started to go down that path. And that was, again, that's where it became healthy. That's when it was generative.

• 20:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So when you were, when you were in your teenage years, were you using drugs and alcohol? And were you self-medicating as many people with mental illness do or?

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah. I love, I love drugs and I, and I still love drugs. Um, but in a very different, I have a very different relationship with them now. For me, actually, I would say that the vast majority of my maladaptive behavior was focused mostly around drinking and sex, right? That was because I was so hungry.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  For connection. That was a source that at least felt like there was some level of desire to have me in your life, even if it's like that, you know, even if it's a very short-lived thing. But I, I, I think that was actually, those were my behaviors. That really kind of were the most detrimental. Drugs, again, because I had this story of I was gonna go crazy. Were a little bit more, had a more tenuous relationship with them.

• 21:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So those, those, the alcohol and those drugs you were more afraid of because you felt like they were.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Alcohol I wasn't, but the, but like more psychoactive drugs like psychedelics and, you know, cocaine, all those things I was much more reticent of. Later in life, of course, I've used psychedelics as, as part of my mental health journey and that's been wildly generative.

• 21:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you, when you, when you started sort of your journey back, it's down to yourself. Which sounds like where you've come most full circle and like gone through this horrible childhood and traumatic childhood with, which, you know, in itself was traumatizing from the trauma of trying to deal with the trauma.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. So meta.

• 22:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So meta, right? You kind of got back into a world of physical endurance and climbing and also trying to see the world through a lens, which I imagine was your way of sort of reimagining the world and your relationship to it.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Beautifully put.

• 22:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Tell us about how you kind of got from that dark place. It's sort of this attempt to try to deal that through these external things. And what were the, what were the limitations of that? Did you think, oh, well, you know, you've conquered so many things?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You, you've pushed so many limits.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and yet it didn't quite. Do what you wanted.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  It did until it didn't. So part of it was being with my aunt and uncle. I got three jobs. I started saving money because I wanted to go climbing. You know, I wasn't at school. And that was such a beautiful observation that photography was really a way for me to try to interpret and understand the world that I was moving through. One of the things that I write in the book is that there was a sense that if I looked hard enough at anything or anybody, I could see my own reflection because there is a shared experience, not just with other people, but with the natural world, in the entire world, our entire physical world that we live in. There is a reflection of ourselves that exists.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  And I think photography was a way to try to see that and anchor myself to the world. Also, it gave me a very real voice, meaning that coming from a place of feeling like I really didn't matter that much and I wasn't wanted. There was no belonging. To have my name printed in ink on a page with my expression,

• 23:54Speaker 01

  sort of was this proof that I had a place in the world. And I loved that. And I also used that for validation. Over time, it became, it became maladaptive in its own way because I was mistaking validation for love or external attention for love, which is not the same thing. I mean, that's like the likes on Instagram, right? Oh, look at me. Like, everybody loves me. And you're like, that's not love, bro.

• 24:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  But then the physicality of it also was trying to, I think, get out of my mind and marry somehow my mind and my body. And, and it was a way to get all the angst out. And then it just got harder and harder and harder, meaning like, The climbs got more and more difficult. Then I got more and more attention because then I'm getting sponsored. I'm going on bigger trips and I was just filling myself with that. But it becomes much more dangerous, too.

• 24:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In what way?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Just more dangerous climbs, right? More dangerous endeavors. You're going to higher altitudes, harder ways. And then that is sort of its own swelling of hubris and ego that allows you to escape what's actually happening inside, which is also driving it. So you don't want to resolve it because you want it to keep fueling you.

• 25:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  There's the fear that if I am actually somehow healthy.

• 25:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You're happy, then you won't want to do the hard things.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 25:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  All success comes out of somebody chasing pain away somehow.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Chasing pain away, getting their heart broken. I mean, look at the vast majority of amazing art.

• 25:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Is all about getting your heart smashed, right?

• 25:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I always wondered when I was in college, is there a place for art without suffering? Like, did art come out of joy or light or beauty or magic or wonder?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I actually think all art is an expression of love. But oftentimes, it's coming through the lens of pain. But it's in my mind, it's love trying to be expressed. And so the reason we create during pain and crisis is because the love feels suppressed. It feels pushed down. And so art is the expression of love coming through you.

• 26:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you can see in your book Bipolar Photographs from an Unquiet Mind, it's sort of a double entree of bipolar, like both poles and everything in between.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's an incredible book, a beautiful book of photographs from all around the world that you've taken and how you see the world and what you see and the things you photograph that reflects who you are.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I imagine in some ways it was very healing to do that for you.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  It was healing. I mean, the photographs, putting the photographs in a book, putting them into bipolar as a collection was very healing. The memoir, The Color of Everything, the way I often refer to them is they're actually one book. There's the internal exploration and then there's the external manifestation of it. And so they're really. Companion books where one you get to see how my mind was interpreting the world around me, but the other one you get to see what was really happening underneath it.

• 27:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  And what was at many times driving it.

• 27:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, some of those pictures are just stunning, you know, and I, I, you know, often wanted to go see what it would be like to go to Mount Everest or K two.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  You should.

• 27:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The top peaks, but I'm like.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Dude, come on, look at you. You're ready to go right now.

• 27:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I actually had a dream of to backpack and hike and be in the mountains. And I had a dream of being an expedition doctor and wanted to be on expeditions. And I actually was a wilderness medicine doctor.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 27:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In Idaho, I was a family doc and I, I was part of the backcountry rescue team. So we learned how to like.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  No kidding.

• 27:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, rescue people from, you know, really rugged mountain conditions, but it wasn't climbing Mount Everest that would like to no oxygen.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Well, my, my friend, Dr. Luanne Freer, she was the one that actually sort of was like, I went to Everest in 2012 and she was like, and, and got evacuated. And she's like, I think you had a panic attack. And this was after the avalanche. My point in bringing that up is she never climbed Everest. She just created the Everest ER. And that was her life for, for years and years and years.

• 28:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Was creating a medical facility to care for.

• 28:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Climbers.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Climbers and Sherpa and high altitude workers.

• 28:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Crazy. So I want you to take us to this sort of this moment where, and it tells the story of when you were climbing in winter.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A mountain that'd never been climbed in winter.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In Pakistan, and something catastrophic happened. But tell us what happened in terms of the actual events, but also what happened on your inner landscape.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Okay. So just so people know, there are 14 mountains in the world that are above 8,000 meters, so 26,240 feet roughly. Five of those are in Pakistan and the other nine are in, right on the border of Nepal and Tibet, and then there's one down in India. After all those peaks were climbed in the early eighties, there was this crazy idea and it was really the Polish doing these sort of nationalist expeditions to start climbing these peaks in winter. So it's like, okay, now we've done it. Now we've been to the top. Now let's try to go there in a much harder way. So all nine that are south of Pakistan had been climbed, but over, I think, 26 years, 16 expeditions had gone to Pakistan to try to do one of the winter ascents,

• 29:25Speaker 01

  and they had all failed. And so in 2010, 11, I was invited by an Italian guy, Simone Moro, and a Russian guy, Denis Rupko, to try to do one of these peaks, Gasherbrum 2. And that is the 13th highest mountain in the world. So we ended up climbing it in this very short weather window, about a 12-hour weather window. And then we got hit by a storm on the descent.

• 29:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You made it to the top?

• 29:48Speaker 01

  We made it to the top.

• 29:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And in winter, I mean, just to put it perspective, it was feeling Mount Everest. Even climbing in the summer, it's like snow and cold and like 30 below. Like, what is winter like? That's not winter. What is winter? If summer is 30 below, and what's winter?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Winter is like this. We got up on the summit day where it's 6,800 meters. There's three of us smashed into this sardine can of a tent that's really a two-man. We're sleeping head to toe. I mean, it's incredibly cramped and tight. We wake up in the, well, at 11:00 PM.

• 30:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you barely sleep with that altitude.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Oh, my, sleeping is like, yeah, no. That's like trying to sleep at, you know, an AC/DC concert. So we got up at 11:00 and, you know, I had my altimeter and my thermometer hanging from the ceiling. It was minus 51 centigrade in the tent.

• 30:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Without the wind chill?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Without the wind chill. So that's like minus 60 Fahrenheit. It's terrible, right? But it's like, I loved it at the time. I absolutely adored it. And we start climbing through the night, you know, six or eight hours later, we're sort of, it was almost as if it just happened. We were on the summit. It's almost like I blacked out, you know? And then the weather came in. I think on the summit, it was registering at minus 80 without the wind chill.

• 30:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You get frostbite, where you have enough clothes? I mean, it's like, how do you protect against that cold weather?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Well, you're wearing these huge down suits.

• 31:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  That kind of look like space suits.

• 31:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  And you've got a ton of layers on, but it's tricky because if you, if you layer up too much, you start sweating.

• 31:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Which makes you cold. So if your feet are sweating in that kind of temperature, your toes are going to get frostbitten. And it's very, very Tenuous too, it's, you have to be very, very careful because if you say you drop a glove or a mitten, I mean, that hand is gone. Right. You know, you can't handle stuff at that temperature. It's kind of like grabbing dry ice. So we got to the summit and I'm, I was, I became, I didn't know this, by the way, at the time. I became the first and I still am the only American to summit any of the 8,000 meter peaks in winter. So we start descending and this storm hits us and it just starts dumping snow. And we got back to camp one and we had a, you know, it's relatively flat, but it's this huge glacial valley.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  That's just, if you look at pictures of it, it looks like, it looks like sliced bread. These crevasses just kind of, as the grade gets steeper, they just spill over. I have video of it where like the snow is up to our waist and I heard above us this sort of crack. Sounds a little bit like thunder and I know what's coming and I turn and I look and the cloud ceiling was very low. And then the air blast of this avalanche just took us and then we're in the snow and it. And you're tumbling around. We're, I mean, it's just like being in a washing machine. It's very violent, it's very loud, your mind goes absolutely crazy trying to make sense of what to do. Um, how to make it stop, how to not die.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  And, and yet it's flooding with memories at the same time. So the idea that like your life flashes before your eyes is accurate, but in my experience, there was like, wasn't poetic. Right. It was just like random shit going through my head. Yeah. But a million thoughts in a second. So you're living this, this, this elongated timeline in a very short timeline. I just remember being angry and then I remember just kind of resigning to the fact that I was going to die. And there was nothing I could do about it. And then stopping and realizing my face and my head were kind of above the surface.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  And, and then my first thought was, well, Simone and Dennis are dead. Because there's no way we all, all of us survived.

• 33:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Your climbing partner.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  My climbing partners. And there's no way I'm gonna dig them up. I don't have a shovel. And the snow is gonna come packed very quickly. I could pull the rope. That we were tied to to see if I could get down to them. My thought was, well, there's no way I'm gonna get to them in time.

• 33:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Were your hands free?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  One hand was free. And so I started kind of thrashing and flopping like a fish, trying to get out of it before the, that my body heat would actually kind of freeze me in a sort of a cocoon. And then I heard Simone's voice. And it was so confusing, cuz I was like, there's, you're dead.

• 34:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  You're dead. Like, there's no way you're alive.

• 34:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  And then I felt him on me. He was more in the periphery. Somehow, when, he was leading, he was ahead when we got hit, and somehow I ended up ahead. When we stopped. We'd gone over several big crevasses. There were huge chunks of ice in the snow. So any one of these things could have killed any of us. And then I heard Dennis's voice too. So somehow, we had all survived. And really, that is because what, what, the impetus of the force was actually the air blast in front of the snow. And then we got hit by a little bit of the snow. And that's, that's how we all were mostly on the surface. And then Simone-

• 34:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Cuz you were kind of ahead of it in this.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because it, we were on basically flat ground. So what happens is it slides off the steep ground. And the snow starts to slow down, but it actually amplifies the force of the air blast. And so we got thrown about 500 feet. And then I felt Simone's sort of hands on me and digging me out. What happens in those moments, the way trauma works is basically, it stores a memory. So trauma is not the event itself. It's, it's the mind storing the memory in the hippocampus. And when it's very traumatic.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  It then triggers the amygdala in this loop into your sympathetic nervous system. And so that shuts down your prefrontal cortex. So you have no logic and reasoning and you're just living in this recycling loop. Because your mind is telling you everything is a threat. That's what we call PTSD, right? And that recycling system becomes so problematic that then we search for any way to slow that down, to zone out from it. That's why there's so much substance abuse within people with PTSD. That's why there's anger. That's why there's violence, because you're trying to express through it.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Then by virtue of that, it becomes sort of a life path that you can't get out of. There's two ways to rewire the brain, only two. One is through intense experience and one is through repetition. And so that's why when people have these intense experiences, it changes the brain entirely. And then oftentimes, the only way out of that is repetition, which is much, much harder.

• 36:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So what do you mean by repetition?

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Meaning, meaning you have to change your neural pathways. You have to change what's going on in your head by repeating new patterns over and over and over again to get out of the trenches of the shift that happens during a traumatic event. You can also have profoundly intense experiences that are very positive, that change the wiring of the brain. For example, psychedelic use can facilitate that. That's why people have this big blowout experience and all of a sudden, they're freed from years of addiction because they had a positive intense experience.

• 37:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so when you, when you, you were in that avalanche and then you came out of that, you already had, you know, experience in living with PTSD and trauma from your child. You're already having struggles with bipolar illness. When you came out of that, what, what shifted? Did you kind of have an exacerbation of the PTSD experiences? Was it a vehicle for you to sort of navigate a new way out of all of those? What happened?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Well, yes, is the answer to that question. Both, all of it. When we have complex post-traumatic stress, which is, you know, deeply ingrained, repetitive.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Traumatic experiences, say for example, like my childhood, it's much more likely that you'll have a PTSD episode when something big happens like that. So what happened was I took a photograph after this of my face.

• 38:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Ended up on National Geographic cover.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Right. And this story blew up well beyond the climbing world. And so that very much launched my life and career into a new phase, which was very, very positive and generative and changed the course of everything for me. At the same time, it triggered all of that internal turmoil that I was living with. And so I started to unravel internally. There was the hyperstimulation of the external world, which was something that I knew how to navigate because of childhood. And yet, the trauma inside started leading me down some very, very dark paths, specifically with substance abuse.

• 38:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And after this experience?

• 38:46Speaker 01

  After the avalanche. But it was subtle and then it kind of grew. And then there was anger, there was a lack of memory, there was...

• 38:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It wasn't like, holy shit, I survived. Now I have a new lease on life and let me be free. It was like the opposite. You went into a darker...

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Well, I wanted that. Again, they existed concurrently, right? So I wanted intellectually the new lease on life. But what I was experiencing internally was, why is this getting harder? Why is this actually louder in my brain now? So I used the external success, again, to quiet that down. But internally, I was like, give me anything to make this stop. Just like, give me anything.

• 39:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And when you say this, can you kind of describe what this feels like?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  It's like an internal hum that never goes away. It's like the way I describe it in the book. It's like the edges of the world become fragmented and sharp. And yet, there's a dullness to your perception and ability to function. It's like living in a haze where you've had too much coffee, you've gotten yelled at by somebody that you love. You know, like, it's like all the worst shit. And so you're stuck in these rumination loops. You know, having conversations and arguments with the person that cut you off in the Whole Foods parking lot. But it's like all the time, you know? It's just so deeply uncomfortable. It's like jagged edges.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  In your mind, that is ceaseless and constant and will never ever shut the fuck up.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  You can't find a moment of calm.

• 40:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, it's interesting that you call your photography book Photographs from an Unquiet Mind. And in the color of everything, you kind of have a flip way of talking about that, which is really about how to get you.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So can you kind of walk us through that?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Well, the photographs were made throughout a life of very, you know, this disquiet. And the memoir is all about the journey to find the quiet and where I found some of that. Which is not to say that I live with a very quiet mind. But it's about the process through which I've found ways to regulate and to manage the dysregulation and to manage the highs and lows. But again, like, it's not as if it just is an instant resolution or it all just goes away. I just went through something recently where I was like, just got my heart absolutely smashed.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  And it was like, I feel good, I feel good, I feel like, you know, in the past three months, there were the fires, nine of my friends lost their homes.

• 41:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Los Angeles.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I left a relationship that I had been in for a year and a half. I, my dad died. And then I fell madly in love and then it got, and then that just ended super abruptly in a very confusing way. And, and so you look at like, the kind of dysregulation that that causes.

• 42:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, any one of those things is enough to knock you off your feet.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Right, and then you're doing four of them.

• 42:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A avalanche of life comes at you.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then you think, well, I've really done a lot of personal work. And then there's this vacuousness after all of this loss. And it was instantly back into these. These patterns, you know, these pathologies. And so in some ways, it's like

• 42:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You mean the narrative in your head?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  The narrative in your head and the behaviors and like, not necessarily substance abuse. It's different. It's a different expression now, but it's just like, wow, I'm grabbing for anything to calm this. And it's a very, it's a good barometer and roadmap for, oh, this is still where I need to do some work. You know, it's because it's, it's easy to be regulated when things are going your way. It's much, much harder to stay regulated when the world falls apart. And that's usually where you see your markers for growth. You see what I mean?

• 42:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's when the shit goes down that you start to have a place for heal up. Someone said to me, either you're happy or you're growing.

• 43:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think that's really true. And it's what we do with that. And some people come up against that and they hide, they run, they numb, they

• 43:11Speaker 01

  They tell the story of brokenness.

• 43:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And they don't, they don't actually use it as an opportunity for growth.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They, they use it as a sort of

• 43:18Speaker 01

  An excuse for fuckery.

• 43:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  You know?

• 43:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. That's one way of putting it.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I think that, you know, it's easy to fall back into that, right?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Because it's sort of easier, it's our culture sort of supports it. We don't have structures and systems to help us navigate out of that. And I think the psychedelic revolution is really interesting to me because it's a way to talk about trauma collectively. Talk about the de-stigmatizing mental illness. To sort of understand that there, the brain has this plasticity that can shift out of trauma. You know, there's this sort of funny joke in medicine that neurologists pay no attention to the mind and psychiatrists pay no attention to the brain.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and, and a lot of the, the things you're describing are brain dysfunction.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That is a response to external triggers.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or external influences. And it could be anything from actual psychological trauma to changes in your metabolic health, to inflammatory change in the brain that come from toxins, diet, or various, you know, external factors that drive mental illness. So mental illness is sort of the end result of many Potential causes.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I wrote a book, I don't know if you know this, but I wrote a book about 15 years ago called The Ultra Mind Solution, How to Fix Your Broken Brain by Fixing Your Body First.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And in that book, I basically call myself the accidental psychiatrist because what I was doing was helping people address physical complaints that they had, an autoimmune disease, or digestive issues, or psoriasis, or whatever the heck it was.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 44:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they would tell me that their ADD was better.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Their bipolar disease was gone, that their schizophrenia was improved, that whatever it was,

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Mm hmm, mm hmm.

• 45:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  dementia would get better, depression would get better, PTSD would get better, panic attacks would go away. I mean, and I was like, well, what's going on here?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This is not what I learned in medical school.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right, this is something fundamentally different. And it's a sort of got me down this rabbit hole of asking the question about what the the causes are and what does the brain need to heal in order for the mind to heal?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 45:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Because it's a lot harder to heal the mind if the brain is not working.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 45:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It doesn't mean you don't have to do the work once your brain is healed.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But it's a much easier path than dealing with all the physiological things that are driving brain disorder.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  And so like, for example, this is like the ACEs scale, the adverse childhood experiences scale, right? Like, so if you have, you know, it's, it's, it's a basically a questionnaire of one to 10. Did you have this happen in your childhood? Did you have this happen? And if you-

• 45:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like, did you have a divorce in your family? Was somebody in your family in jail? Were you abused? Were you yelled at?

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. Were you ever hungry, right? Did somebody ever hit you so hard that there were marks, right? And the more you add this up, there's this profound expression of both physical ailments and behavioral ailments, right? So like- You're I don't know the exact figures, but you're far more likely to be a smoker. You're far more likely to attempt suicide. You're far more likely to.

• 46:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Thirty thirty times more likely to have suicide.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, it's crazy.

• 46:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  High score, much more likely to be depressed or.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Get divorced. One of the things that's so beautiful that you're talking about, and one of the things that we miss is also the integrated system of the heart. Because the heart is not a metaphor. As we're learning so much more about it, there's mirror neurons in your heart and your mind and emotion processing in some way starts in the heart. And then, you know, it's the signal for it travels up your vagus nerve. And then it starts this bilateral conversation between your mind and your heart. So it's not just this metaphor. So in my mind, wellness is the integration of the mind, the body and the heart. And there's those three components that when they're working in in concert,

• 47:16Speaker 01

  you are stepping into a place of more holistic wellness. But you're absolutely right. It's an inside out and an outside in job, and it can work both ways. Right. And it does work both ways.

• 47:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  As an elite athlete, when you when you started working with all this, on, you know, both internal and external, like, you know, you try to manage it in some ways by doing all these crazy things. Most people think are nuts.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it helped you in some ways.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 47:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I think probably take you out of a maladaptive behavior.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, although people say climbing the mountain is crazy.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Now, what's the scale?

• 47:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But it's sort of a socially acceptable crazy.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's like what we look up to, you know?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Were there things that you found helpful that that helped quiet your mind that were not these extreme endurance things such as what you ate? Or because you were obviously extremely fit and.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Healthy and from that perspective, but also what was food a part of this? How did you use things like meditation or supplements or other things that that helped you to sort of regulate? Because you seem pretty well regulated now. And I imagine compared to how we were, it's a big shift.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  It's a huge shift. And there were many modalities outside of therapy. That was one, right? But in my daily life, there are some very basic things that I try to hit. One is journaling. Like literally mind dumping.

• 48:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  And it's not, I'm not trying to write well. I'm not trying to be pretty. It's mind vomit.

• 48:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  And it's

• 48:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Called purging.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  It's yeah, purging. I do that in the morning if I can. Just get to it, vomit what's going on. And you just get it out.

• 48:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you basically were talking about is your inner dialogue that's your lower self.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You're, you're not keeping it inside. You're basically, it's like having shit, literally shit inside you. Instead of being constipated mentally, you literally get it out.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  You get it out.

• 49:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Kind of purge.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  It's a mental suppository.

• 49:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Basically, it's just.

• 49:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's so powerful.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  It's so powerful and consistency is key with it, right? Doing it regardless is great, but consistency is really.

• 49:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Do you wake up in the morning and you journal?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  I wake up in the morning. I meditate. One of the things I've really learned is to remove the roadblocks. If you think that meditation has to be sitting up straight with your legs perfectly crossed, trying to get a blue light shooting out of the top of your head, you're missing the point. If you remove all the roadblocks to these things. So I wake up in the morning, I prop myself up in my bed a little bit. And I meditate. I don't try to sit up straight because I've found that that means I won't do it.

• 49:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Then I go to the gym or I do my, my sort of morning pages. And or, you know, those can happen whatever time it happens. But by then, you know, by the time nine o'clock rolls around or eight o'clock, meditated, journaled, exercised.

• 50:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it sets the foundation for your day.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Exactly. It sets and so again, I, I've tried to be the guy who does it at five o'clock and then you do that. That's fuck that. Like that is a hurdle, right? And then you'll feel the sense of failure when you don't hit it. And then I have other pillars which are community. I do a lot of men's work now where it's, we call it the treehouse. And we are just a group of people who are committed to our own growth and the growth of other men. Through the messy work of change and accountability. And that provides the structure for one of the other pillars, which is community. Right? So spending time with other people. Dan Buettner, who started Blue Zones, has done a lot of research on this. He's a dear friend and a mentor where it's like.

• 50:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Good guy.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Spending a lot of time with people is actually, healthy people is really good for you, you know? And then creativity. So you hit that creative, whatever it is, doodle for 30 minutes while you're on the phone. Just be creative in some way. Giving. And that could be simple. That could be listening to a friend. Not trying to fix it, just listening. That is a huge gift. So there's, I try to hit all these things. And then diet, of course. I try to get enough food. I try to bias protein, basically for muscle function. And get plenty of greens and veggies in and kind of stay away from sugars and bad carbs.

• 51:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you notice that those adversely affect you when you do go off the?

• 51:43Speaker 01

  I'm just foggier. Foggier and I don't feel as good in my body. I feel lethargic. It doesn't mean I don't love them. I mean, give me some pizza.

• 51:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  You know, like just being mindful of that. And then with supplements, again, it's my supplement sort of regimen is very, very basic. It's vitamin D, it's omega threes, it's, you know, maybe some probiotics at different times. I also supplement with like a super greens thing in my, in my protein shakes and fiber. Because I have naturally high cholesterol. So when you're eating a lot of meat.

• 52:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  And you have naturally high cholesterol, you gotta be careful. But it's very simple.

• 52:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And has that affected how your brain is and how your, your mood is and cognitive function and inner dialogue and by the swings of mood?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  I would say it has, but it's by virtue not only of the, like, the actual chemical reaction in my body and what that's doing and the reduction in inflammation, but it's also the consistency. Being consistent with, with things in, in your life in general.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Creates a foundational sense of stasis.

• 52:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Because it's reliable.

• 52:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A huge sense of agency.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And not being, not being at the effect of the world, but being in charge of your world.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Agency, it's so interesting you say that. Agency is everything.

• 53:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do you mean?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Like you said, it puts you in control and it takes you out of a state of this is happening to me to this is happening and I get to choose my response to it.

• 53:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  When you're not in agency, you're reacting to it and you're always back, looking backward. Not having agency is living in a place of blame.

• 53:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  So it's backward focus. This happened to me and that's always in the rear view.

• 53:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Victim blame.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Victimhood is like, and we're fostering victimhood right now. And that is, we are a culture right now that is rewarding victimhood.

• 53:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's really true. We have a victim-based culture. I mean,

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, the whole sort of woke movement.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Is really about, I'm the victim. I've been abused. It's the oppressed oppressor narrative.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 53:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Which, which has a place, but it's,

• 53:55Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 53:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But it, it seems to have gotten kind of way over, you know, to the other end where,

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Well, it's the extraction of agency.

• 54:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  You know, it's like we get to just be in the trauma of it and we get to sit in it and we get to stay victims. I'm not saying that when terrible things happen, there's not a place for being a victim. You are a victim of something happening. There's a time and a place for that. The goal is not to get stuck in it. When I was writing my book, and I say this in the book, I started writing from a place of victimhood. Look at how hard my life has been, right? And look at what I've overcome and look what, I'm a survivor.

• 54:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  And then I realized, oh my God, even claiming that I'm a survivor keeps me chained to the trauma.

• 54:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Because I'm still always in reference to the thing that happened.

• 54:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Versus, there's, there's data and then there's the stories we create around it. The data is the event and then there's the stories that we spin up to find meaning and navigate life with that.

• 54:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  But we have to be very careful about the stories we're telling.

• 55:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  And right now, as you point out, We are stuck in a story of this happened to me. But when I look back now and I look at the relationship with my brother, I look at my family, I look at being institutioned. I am literally profoundly grateful for it. And that's the shift.

• 55:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's the alchemy that made you who you are.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 55:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  I wouldn't, I literally would not be sitting here with you.

• 55:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Had all that stuff not happened.

• 55:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right, you wouldn't have gone and do all these crazy things.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  I wouldn't have done it.

• 55:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And yeah. It's, you know, so what you're talking about reminds me of the, this sort of profound, extreme examples of where one would think that it would be impossible to have this perspective. You know, and I, there's, you know, three stories that I, I kind of, were things that I've heard that really kind of always echo in my mind. One was, you know, Viktor Frankl's book, Man's First.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Man's Search for Meaning.

• 55:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Search for Meaning.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  My favorite book.

• 55:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  He realized, you know, he was in a concentration camp. And, you know, he, the only thing he could control was his response to his environment.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Couldn't change the environment.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Couldn't change what he was getting to eat, or how he was being abused, or the fact that people were in crematoriums burning next to him. But he realized that, you know, he had agency.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 56:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Over his mind.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And he, he, he said, you know, between stimulus and response, there's a pause. In that pause lies a choice, and that choice lies your freedom.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 56:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so he was free, even though he was in a prison.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I, I remember a story, I heard about Nelson Mandela, where he was in Robben Island.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In, in prison, you know.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hard labor.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 56:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Splitting rocks with a sledgehammer and there was a moment where he was so angry at his oppressors, at the white jailers.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the guards. And he had this moment where he realized that they were actually just human beings. And that if he chose to love them instead of hate them, that, you know, that he was no longer in prison.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and during his inauguration, and I had, knew some people who were at that inauguration, it wasn't filmed, but it, there was a, after the inauguration, there was a, sort of a lunch. And, and he, he had the prime minister here and the head of that there, and he, he moved them away from the chairs next to him, and he invited in. Two of the jailers who he got to know. Wow. Who were his jailers, the guards during his imprisonment in Robben Island and welcomed them and embraced them. And he had gotten to know them and they'd gotten to be human beings with him. It was really quite an astounding story. And the other story was when I was, I was a young medical sort of student and I went to Nepal on an expedition for Kachin

• 57:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Junga, which is one of the tallest peaks there. And I wasn't climbing it, I was just trekking. And, and we were studying this small village and, and doing a public health survey. And after I went down to the town in, in, in Nepal called Bodhanath, which is where all the Tibetan refugees hang out. And I, I was really interested in Tibetan medicine and I wanted to learn about Tibetan medicine. And so I found there was this Tibetan doctor, this old Tibetan doctor that was practicing there. And I, and I found someone who was a translator and I got to sit with him all day. And while he was seeing patient after patient. And he told me the story of how he spent 22 years in a Chinese gulag

• 58:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  where he was beaten and abused and tortured. And, you know, they took away all of the things that mattered to him of his sort of sacred Buddhist. Yeah. Prayer. And I said, what was the hardest moment for you there? He said, well, the hardest moments were those moments where I thought I might lose compassion for my Chinese jailers. I was like, wow. You know, so that sort of speaks to how, how we see things. And Gabor Maté talks about, you know, the fact that trauma isn't what happens to you. Right. It's the meaning you make from what happens to you. And I think when you're little. The story you tell. The story you tell. And like, when you're little, it's hard because, you know, you, you don't have this perspective. You don't, you can't kind of call on your higher self

• 59:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that easily. You're. You don't have agency. You have agency, you're a little kid, you're at the effect of your parents. I mean, you're, you're kind of a, you are a dependent. That's why they call them dependents. Yeah, yeah. Um, but when you get older, like you have to sort of re-tell that story. You have to unlearn. And you have to re-tell that story in a way that doesn't hold you as that victim. Right.

• 59:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and it sounds like your journey was, was through that dark tunnel of victimhood. Mm hmm. And survival. Mm hmm. But out the other side of it, you've figured out how to actually. Tell a different story. So can you can you walk us through how you got from that place where it was hard and you were a victim to the place where you are in power and and actually in charge of your own story and narrative and how you were able to retell that story in a way that allowed you to become more free?

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  A lot of it was really writing the book, but that something happened concurrently with that where I did start doing more psychedelic work.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  And as I was writing the book, I was confronted by my own words, looking at them in black and white on a page. As I became more aware of my heart, my actual heart, I became more compassionate towards the external stimulus of my life. Because I started to see that, like Mandela or like Viktor Frankl, when you start to see the world as a collection of complicated contradictory beings, there is a necessary

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  extension of compassion. And it also happens internally. When you start to see yourself, you take agency and you start to see that you are full of contradictions. You are full of polarities. You know, we are all hypocritical at different times. And the more we're in search for survival, the more binary we become. That's a natural response of the brain. In writing the book, when I was confronted with my own stories and I was coming more into contact with my heart, I realized that I could reframe the stories. I could abandon the narratives. I could literally rewrite them on the page. And what a powerful experience to do that as an exercise for people.

• 1:01:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Does this sort of metabolize your life story in the process of the writing?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Which is almost like a way of metabolizing your life story.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It sort of got transmuted into something else.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Well, and I saw, I literally, one day I had this sort of revelation. I was, I love reading. One of my favorite books is The Power of Myth, where Joseph Campbell talks about how there are basically archetypes of humans and there are stories that we consistently tell throughout history and have, right? And I started to see, there's this moment where I was like, oh my God, it's all a story. And I'm in charge of that. I have the agency to imagine, reimagine, and unlearn the stories that I've learned in a very conscious way. And it doesn't mean lie to yourself about it.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  It doesn't mean these things didn't happen. It means that my interpretation of them and the meaning that I'm giving them is my responsibility. And I have control and agency over that. And so you step out of the blame mentality and into the gratitude mentality, where you see that the shape of you and all of your contradictions and complexities, all of that beautiful mess is yours to own versus somebody else's to control, or a memory to control. And there's so much liberation and freedom in that moment. Consciousness is storytelling.

• 1:03:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's important. I mean, I think, you know, most of us don't even realize we can retell the narrative of our life.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That we can change the meaning we ascribe to things.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That we can end our internal suffering by actually reimagining the narrative that we've created for ourselves. And, you know, I've had to do that. And if, you know, if anybody who's sort of gotten to a place of more peace, you know, sort of like I said, your interesting titles of your books are so different, right? One is, you know, Photographs from an Unquiet Mind, and the other one's A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within. So it's an interesting.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  It's polarity.

• 1:04:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Flip, right?

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  And that has been, my life has been defined on some level by polarity. And there is, in the Hermetic teachings, that's one of the principles-

• 1:04:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I don't know if you meant to say that. My, my life's been defined by polarity, bipolar.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Nice dude, that was great. I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep that one. I, in the Hermetic teachings, which are basically underlie all religious philosophy, one of the principles of the seven principles is basically based around polarity. And so, the idea is that every truth is simply a half-truth. And until you incorporate the other half-truth, which naturally exists, you are living in half-truths, which are falsehoods, right? It's, it's, and so, part of my journey has been to become more compassionate

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  towards those seemingly paradoxical relationships,

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  and allowing myself to expand to include both sides of everything. And that, that extends to myself, meaning that like, the highs that create things would not be the highs that create things without the lows that balance against them. And so, to say that I want only one would betray the law of polarity.

• 1:05:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, it's true. I mean, most of us try to push away what's uncomfortable-

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And get, seek pleasure. We avoid things, we seek pleasure. And in a way, that, that kind of misses the point of life, which is it's all part of life.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  It's all part of it.

• 1:05:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and, and you can't experience one without the other.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Discovery demands discomfort. So if we're trying to constantly avoid the things that make us uncomfortable, we will no longer discover. And another one of the things that I talk about oftentimes is that certainty kills curiosity. So as soon as you become certain of your story, certain of anything, you're done growing. There's no more exploration. There's no more discovery. You're done. It's over. So grow your capacity for discomfort, lean into the things that are hard, lose your certainty, take agency, and grow.

• 1:06:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah. Most of the questions.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Rilke has a famous passage around that, which is beautiful. About welcoming the questions, because that's really where you find the answers.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Well, and it's funny that I opened the book with a Rilke quote, which is, "Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  It just, you know, the idea to avoid suffering.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  There's a lot of that right now in the mindfulness wellness community where there's almost like a, it's spiritual bypassing. Where you're like trying to almost escape the necessity of pain. You're just like bypassing it. No, I'm just gonna be mindful. And I think it's a misinterpretation of non-attachment.

• 1:07:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  True. I'm gonna share that Rilke quote, because it was so important to me as a young man, and it's from a book called Letters to a Young Poet.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, great book.

• 1:07:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That actually helped, you know, the poet kind of reflect on his own life. And it was this beautiful meditation. These letters were just mostly poetry, but he said, "Be patient toward all that's unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now, and perhaps you'll then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. It makes me emotional, because it.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  I mean, the one thing that I, I still have tremendous amounts of questions, and especially right now in my life, it feels almost more confusing than it ever has.

• 1:08:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I'll tell you what, I'm 65, and I still have so many questions, and so many unsolved things, and so many things I'm still leaning into and learning and growing. And it doesn't matter what age you are, what point of life you are, you know, your story is one of inspiration, but also I think it's one of giving people a sense that they're not alone in these struggles and trials and challenges, whether it's just anxiety, depression, or just tough moments in life, or that's where more serious mental illness, that there's a way through.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? The only way out is through. And you've clearly demonstrated that, Cory, with your life and your life's work. And I encourage everybody to learn more about Cory. Check out his book Bipolar Photographs, When In Quiet Mind, his book that he just came out with, The Color of Everything, which is just a beautiful meditation on your life and experience. And in a way, you're sharing people the alchemy of your change and how you sort of shifted your narrative, which is, I think it's almost like you get to see the work in progress of that.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You can follow him on Instagram at, and your handle is just Cory Richards.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:09:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right?

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  So no E.

• 1:09:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No E.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  C O R Y.

• 1:09:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and, yeah, there's films you've made, there's all kinds of stuff out there, but I think, you know, we all find challenges in life and your story of overcoming those challenges and then to overcome those challenges is inspirational for all of us. So thanks for doing what you do, being who you are and coming on the show.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. This is great. Perfect. Loved it.

• 1:09:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand-selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, drhyman.com has the world's best selection of top quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out drhyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's drhyman.com, D R H Y M A N dot com.

• 1:10:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical

• 1:11:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at UltraWellnessCenter.com, and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.