January 14, 2019 • 34 mins
Our fearless host goes where only he can: his own sordid past as a competitive bodybuilder who went from purist to steroid abuser and back and maintained a twisted rationale throughout.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't wait for the next episode to drop. Be one
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That's h I M A L A y A, and
then follow Ozzy Confidential once you're there. I remember a
(00:27):
girlfriend at the time saying, uh, this blood in your underwear?
Why her all eyes must have scraped against the nail.
(01:01):
Welcome to Ozzy. This antion. It's about power, a certain
kind of megalomaniac pulled toward more more more. Alright, alright, alright,
(01:28):
So here you are. It's Azzi Confidential. My name is
Eugeneus Robinson, the host. So we're gonna do something special
to show you that this is an actual no holes barred,
deep dive into stories that are untold, unheard. I'm gonna
do something different. Usually I'm getting other people's stories, but
(01:51):
for you, special, for you, it's gonna be my story.
I'm in a band called ox Bowl. A cursory not
even a cursory glance. Your Internet will tell you that
if I'm known for anything, it's a certain kind of
volatility which brings me to a friend John Mitchell, to
be at the l A Times talking about an article
(02:12):
I wanted him to write the guys goading me remembering
when I was fourteen and not nearly as adept at
handling the reins of volatility as I am now. I remember,
you lifted weights when you were fourteen, you were you
were making much progress. And I lifted weights as a hobby.
(02:33):
But I competed right then, and my first competition New
York was National Gym Association Teenage, uh New York, mr
Teenage New York. When I started to go through puberty
and you know some guys, oh, I was so horny
all the time. That wasn't the issue for me. The
issue for me was this really weird kind of sense overpowering,
(02:54):
testosterone fueled sense of invulnerability. I think they call it
a hysteria patio standing. I grew up in New York,
so standing on the subway platform and as a train
started to come in, I started to have this increasing
obsession combined with standing on the edge of the platform,
(03:14):
that I could throw myself in front of the train
and physically stop the train that I had I had
through my weightlifting ministrations, and I had developed enough physical
power to actually now trains come through the station's express
train speeding. I knew I couldn't stop a speeding subway train,
but as it as it cruises to a stop or
(03:36):
starts up, I was convinced, and I actually had to
force myself to stand back from the edge of the platform,
so that it was a very strange, weird like Octave
Mirbau and the Torture Guarden talking about these overpowering obsessions compelling.
It was like that, based on what I know now
(03:58):
about testosterone, I was probably peaking, and then I started
lifting weights harder, and I probably just leveled it out.
I didn't have that continued obsession with throwing myself in
front of the train beyond my senior year. But of
course I left New York and then um I came
out to California and I went to Stanford. But I
(04:19):
didn't compete at all during Stanford. I started lifting after
Stanford seriously and started competing again after I was doing
insane things. I remember I was big into glandular extracts.
I don't know where they got them. I don't know
what was in those pills. You could get them at
health food stores. I remember feeling dizzy a lot. The
idea was that you had to you had to make gains.
(04:41):
It was, you know, it was a burgeoning supplement industry,
and pumping iron had come out late seventies, and you know,
nobody had figured out at least two was seventeen or eighteen,
like I was, had figured out that probably it wasn't
just supplements that got them there. There hadn't been a
lot of high profile, well publicized bust four performance enhancing.
(05:03):
I was a purist for so long that um that
it always feels kind of strange for me to talk
about steroids, which is what we're talking about. I was
surrounded by them when I was training in Brooklyn. I
was surrounded by them at my gym in California. I
trained down at Venice Golds. It was, I mean, I
figured out by the time I'd hit my twenties that
(05:25):
Arnold and all the pro body builders were taking stuff.
Fell in love with the with the weight training, or
with the feeling of being strong and being big and
all that, and I wanted to win Mr. Union was
I wasn't interested, not at all, not at all interested.
And then something strange happened. I competed in the in
the Mr. California. Uh natural right. It was supposed to
(05:46):
be a non steroid aided show, which was comically not.
I finished last but prior to that, some friends and
we're gonna be in San Diego. You're gonna be close
to Juanna, go across the border and get us some stuff.
So they gave me a bunch of money and they
gave me a laundry list because you could legally steroids there,
and so the show was drug tested, but it was
a polygraph. So as I'm sitting there in some kind
(06:09):
of like Abu Grab type room in San Diego with
the Athletic Commission, I have a Fannie pack full of
these steroids which I had no intention of taking, and
they're asking me if I had ever taken them, and
technically I had not taken them, right, so um, I
answered and passed the polygraph. Um. But something about coming
in last place, I don't say it unseated me. But
I started to think about the long view, and I go,
(06:31):
you know, some of these guys, they're gonna be gone tomorrow.
You know I'm a lifer. I'll be lifted. I've been
lifting weight since I was nine years old. I'll be
lifting in when I'm it's gonna be a lifelong thing.
So steroids, what seems to be like a quick gain
for some people, could be mixed in like a healthier supplement.
(06:53):
And on the drive back from San Diego started to
have these thoughts, and I and because I'm a hopeless
and researcher, keep in mind, this is well in advance
of any Internet. I worked at a defense company then
and went into the Lexus Nexus network, which was part
of the Darker Thing, and did all this research on steroids,
and I developed like you talked about mid Romney. I
(07:14):
developed a folder binders full of women, a steroid research folder,
which I still have to this day, And and made
what I thought was informed decision that I was going
to take steroids. I had been a purist for so
long that I didn't want to be publicly identified as
a guy who used. I was initially I wasn't ready
(07:36):
for that yet. It's weird. Well, I could like like
why who would care? I was surrounded by but that
became my thing, Like I was the guy, like a
guy who wouldn't. And in the punk rock community, straight
edge was a thing, not drugs. Straight clear mind that
I was going to do this thing. You know. Part
(07:58):
of one wanting to be kind of sold vot about
it was that I would I would do it myself.
And keep in mind, it's not the needles that you
use for steroids or entry. I am needles intromuscular there
eighteen to gauge. They're really giant needles. There's a catch, right,
and the catches that you have to inject it into
(08:19):
a muscle, So it has to be a large muscle grouping. Now,
I know guys who shot themselves in the quadra set
and but these are guys who had already used and
were big and had lots of muscle around the knee
um or the thigh, and somehow couldn't do that. Um.
But the most common was the buttocks. But it's hard
to turn and do and see if you're alone. But
(08:42):
I just decided that was going to be the best place.
And um, I remember a girlfriend at the time saying, uh,
this blood in your underwear. Why go oh, eyes must
just scraped against the nail. But you know, I mean,
at that point, I still was in denial sort of
about wanting to publicly be identified as a steroid user.
(09:05):
And we're talking now eighties eight eight. And I know
this because I was in the worst movie of eight seven,
Leonard Part six, with a bunch of bodybuilders who were
using and wouldn't talk to me about it because they
knew it's a kid. Don't do what I did. Do
what I say to fly the straight and narrow, And
(09:26):
those guys, all to varying degrees, ended up having not
all of them, some of them ended up having serious
problems connected to what some would say we're personality deformations
that came as a result of steroids. You're walking along,
you see a guy in the hole. You go, oh
my god, how did you get in that hole? And
the guy goes, well, I put my hand on that
branch there, and you go, what branch? This branch and
(09:48):
you put your hand on that branch, goes yeah, And
I put my other foot on that other branch. You
what this foot? Yeah? And I jumped up and down
really hard, really and then what you know, and then
you fall and you're in the hole next to the guy,
you know, and that's you. Just you have to realize
that there's certain things. And I've recognized the cycle now
with younger people have come up to me and start
talking to me about, yeah, boy, I would. I don't
(10:09):
think I would ever do steroids, And that's always that's
always a poker tell I don't think. You don't think
you would ever? Really that means you think you would ever.
So I went through the same you know, it's probably
the life cycle of a story user denial and uh,
knowing it's not good and then figuring, you know, if
the science were faster on this, this would just be
(10:30):
another supplement in the rational and then of course taking it.
And once you take it, your advantage point is no
longer reasonably trustworthy. Because one thing that nobody ever talks
about when they talk about steroids, about how fucking great
they make you feel, they don't want to talk about
(10:53):
the fact that one of the things that was so
compelling about it was that on the at least on
the upward portion of your cycle, you feel like superman
mental acuity through the roof. I mean, if you're prone
to being creative, super creative, um, four hours of sleep
(11:13):
at night, no refractory period, you could you know lots,
I mean, and you just good natured. And people said, well,
what about the royal rage. I personally think it's like alcohol.
It magnifies you know they're bad drunks, but these are
kind of bad people. It magnifies who it is that
you are. It's on the down portion of your cycle
where you start to have weirdness, but on the up
(11:33):
portion it was it was absolutely fantastic. First week. You
would have a regime of half a c C maybe
some orals pills that would go with it. You would decide.
My personal favorite was one called Sustana, which was a
mix of four testosteronies, approprianate and mathate, and I can't
remember the other two. And the pills I decided were
(11:54):
not only worthless but bad for you because your liver
attempts to metabolize them all at once, whereas the objectible
it pass just a liver several times, so it's not
as hard on your liver, which is one of the
big problems. We too would be like one c C
right and no pills. There's sometimes people would combine it
with bills if you had good ones, like Anna Bar
was a good strength pill I remember, and I was
(12:15):
taking this one called Deck of the Roblin, which was
supposed to be one of the healthiest, safest as these
things go. Steroids ever but again, nobody tells you about
the head game. They don't mention that ever, ever, ever, ever,
unless they're talking about it in the negative. I mean,
the thing is, it's like, if you've ever watched a
movie the Invisible Man. The chemical makes them invisible, but
it also makes them crazy. I realized the part to
(12:39):
make the world corp, you'll know who the invisible man.
So all of a sudden, I hearkened back to that
subway thing, and I remember that I had written an
article about a bodybuilder out in Sheep's at Bay who,
in the midst of this kind of meglomaniacal steroid thing,
(13:00):
had convinced himself that he could stop a car like
me with a train, except he had a bunch of enablers,
and all these guys were all taking steroids in the
common parlance juicing, and they follow him. He goes, I'm
I can stop a car, and they go out to
whatever that is, the highway that sneaks through Sheeps had
Babe b Qui or something like that, and they sat
on the guardrail and he waited, and he jumped out
(13:23):
into the lane in front of a car. And technically,
if you want to be philosophically consistent. He did stop.
The car broke both arms and broke a leg and
was hospitalized. But that car did stop, not the way
he thought, you know. And uh, so I remember that
there had been stories about guys who had gotten ill,
but most of the people who got badly hurt on
(13:44):
steroids were from other things. It was like from diuretics
to lose water weight during the contest. Uh I uh,
and I figured these guys were just doing it wrong.
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a z A Y. I had one Royd rage moment
where I had in these multiple cans of protein powder
because you're taking tons of protein, and I had this
old fashioned can openers, so it left a really jagged
(15:13):
line on the inside of a can. And the dog,
had had a big master at the time, had shouldered
his way into the house and I just started screaming him,
and I threw the can at him and and they
cut through all four of my fingers, and which was
a real problem one I didn't like abusing my dog too.
Now that I had my fingers almost cut to the bone,
(15:34):
it was gonna it was gonna bite into my lifting time.
Would you become pathological about your lifting time? Because if
you're taking steroids and not lifting, it's like money out
the window in your in the steroid adult state. And
uh so, I said, look, I need to control myself.
I can't be one of those guys, you know, I
knew guys like that that that I couldn't be one
of those guys, and so um, but what was happening is, um, well,
(16:02):
what's happening is but what was that thing that Tyson
says about everybody's got a plan until they get punched
in the face. I literally got punched in the face
by steroids. I didn't account on the fact, and there
was nothing in the source material that says, once you
take half a c C and one c C and
to CC, your ability to cap it at two and
a half CC is gonna be non existent. Moreover, you're
(16:24):
gonna want to go, well, if two and a half
CEC is to maybe three and a half CC, what
about four? What about five? What about six? I mean,
you know this. I don't want to even say this
is a worldwide phenomena, but it seems to me a
particularly Western thing of just more, bigger, more, And so
I ended up. I remember trying to crazy glue together too.
(16:49):
I am the bodies of the syringes of tubes so
that I could fit more rather than take two separate shots,
which I'd have to sacrifice the actual needle part I
was trying to craze. He glued together two stems so
I could have a super long needle and get six
ccs UM. I didn't have enough insight at that time
(17:09):
to realize that UM deviating from the plan was going
to be problematical for me. But he used to be
a TV show called a six million Dollar Man, and
he had like a bionic leg and a bionic arm,
and he would do all these amazing things, like he
could run sixty miles an hour. But they never dealt
(17:31):
with the issue of what happens to the non bionic
leg if the bionic leg is running sixty miles an hour. Right,
And this is where I was. My body was used
to get in these chemicals that was making it do
phenomenal things. I was deadlifting over six pounds. I had
gone from a body weight of one to sixty five.
(17:53):
I was bench pressing three fifteen that's three forty five
pound reps and a forty five pound bar in the middle,
close grip, benching for eight to ten as a warm up,
squatting almost five pounds. I was a really big, strong guy.
But of course they you've heard about it. They talked
about a weird dysmorphia. I had no sense of how
big I was really. I just knew I wanted to
(18:14):
get to three hundred pounds. That's what I wanted to do.
And if it was four ccs or five ccs or
six c cs at that point, that's what I was
gonna do. And then I have a weird relationship with
my father. We only talked once since I turned nineteen,
and he came out to talk to me. Maybe I
was thirty at that point, twenty nine or something, and
(18:36):
he I said, look, I'm not breaking my schedule for you.
I got stuff to do, because well, what do you
want to So I'm going to the gym. Come with
me to the gym. We can talk while we're at
the gym. He was flying through or something, and we're
gonna work out together. And it was just this great
moment where I had a completely soured on the prospect
of having a father, but even though we had had problems.
(18:56):
And so we go to the bench press and uh,
I put one fifteen pounds and he's like, I said,
he goes, I can't do I said, yeah, I know
you can't do it. It's for me he goes, well,
I can't spy you. I got just standing here. Just
I don't I don't need you. So you measure your
(19:16):
hands out from the ends of the plates. And usually
when you do a bench press, you hold your arms
like you're doing a push up, so your arms are
shoulder with the fart. They're pretty wide. But I measure
it out, and then I measured it again so that
now my thumbs are touching in the middle, and I'm
doing what you call a close script bench press. Most
people can't bench press three d and fifteen pounds anyway
(19:38):
close grip where your your wrist ben at the middle
and your your your hands are only thumbs with apart.
It's incredibly hard. And I loaded it to my chest
and I can and I'm watching him from the bench.
He's looking down at me, and I'm watching him and
where eye contact. And as I get down to my chest,
I pause, and then I knock out eight to nine
rips and just looking at him. And as I finished,
(20:03):
I hold it at the top and I go, you
can just guide it back in, and so he pulls
it back to two inches into the into the upright
struts that hold it and uh, he goes, I stand up,
and I'm still looking at him. I stand up and
he goes, I can't do this. I got I know,
let's take off some weight for you. And it was
(20:25):
a great kind of inversion inversion moment. Uh. And then
of course we went back to never speaking to each
other again. So that was the last time I spoke
to him. You know, if if you grew up on
ABC after school specials, you might think that that was
(20:45):
a good moment, But that was that was a steroid
fuel moment of rage, you know. And what I was
hoping was transmitted in that moment was old man, you'd
don't have a chance, you know, or like the line
from Cape Fear, you know, I can outthink you. I
(21:06):
cannot fight you. I can out you know, lift you,
and outrage you. I can out thank you, and I
can out philosophy. I have exceeded you in every way.
It wasn't a general good sign of mental health, but
it was in terms of my personal development probably a
(21:28):
really good sign. I was getting over wanting to be
a son. Uh God, this is the part where I'm
supposed to be really candid to encourage others to be candid.
But I remember the girlfriend I had at the time.
There was a resistance to telling her because not only
(21:52):
was your athletic performance through the roof, but sexual performance
also through the roof. It's so cheesy, it's you know.
I asked one of my body build a friends. I go, hey,
do you let people know that you're on it? Do
you just let them think you're this way always? He
was like, I'm this way always because I'm always on,
And I go, I'm not always on, but I feel
(22:13):
like I should totally disclose, and he's like, I don't
do that. So there there were well, there were reasons
why people were not really looking too hard, like, gee,
you've gained ten pounds. I mean, everybody saw me taking protein.
And there was a guy who I knew who was
on a similar thing, and he asked him once. And
(22:33):
the weird thing is this is all completely illegal, but
a large number of people doing it that we worked
out with we're all cops. So it was a very
interesting way of I mean, this is prior to Barry
Bonds and Mark McGuire and the home of the steroid
era of baseball, and these guys would take a growth
horm and all this other stuff allegedly, but you had
(22:54):
this weird detente with cops. So you know this guy
you know, was a cop, and he goes, you look
at pretty good. I go, yeah, because game about fifteen
pounds in the last month and a half. Yeah about that.
He goes, what do you? What do you? I would
say cyber genics, and so that became that would became yeah,
me too, cyber genics too. And there was a thing
(23:16):
called Cybergenics and that was pretty powerful, but it wasn't
doing pounds of raw weight game. No, that's not cyber genics.
But I never competed again. And after I took them
because the purest in me didn't want to, I still
at a certain level thought it was cheating and didn't
want to do it. I didn't want to do it.
So but also something else happened when I started taking steroids.
(23:40):
Bodybuildings seemed to be aspiration really seemed to be too small.
This is this is the key to kind of the
mental deformations. It seemed to be. It seemed to be
kind of a parochial greatness. And I was I was
I was looking for Master four life greatness like things.
(24:02):
You know, I was gonna be the best singer and
the best writer, the best not just good, the best,
the best anybody had ever seen. I mean it was
a kind of madness, right and um kind of madness.
But I look back and I was super productive during
that period. Published a lot of magazines, did a lot
of interviews, did a lot of work one awards. Not
(24:22):
just athletic, was that anything but athletic? Was you know? Um?
And I don't know that I make a one to
one connection, but if you're being productive, then some of
that stuff is good. That might happen. And we were
all I mean it was Nobody ever talks about the euphoria.
I mean, look, you might get feeling, are you certain
euphoria on angel dust, but you're not able to really
(24:42):
physically back it up. But this was just we were euphoric.
And but it was a cyclical euphoria, right you for
that up portion of your cycle, and U the down
portion was routinely terrible. So all the heaven that we
had all been enjoying these bodybuilders, bouncers, uh you know
(25:07):
barbell boys that I knew when we would cycle at
the same time on the downtop, I mean I remember
going over pulling guns out of people's mouths because they
was suicidal. Myself. Remember sitting watching some commercial for Scrooge
was it Bill Murray movie, And at one point they're
talking about putting a little love in your life. I'm
(25:28):
sitting there sobbing like a baby. And it wasn't even
the movie. It was a commercial for the movie worse Right,
and I'm like, my God, loving your life. And then
at that point I realized, I think I may have
mismanaged the down portion of the cycle. But that was
a very dangerous couple of weeks because I was having
(25:50):
like and they say in the Apocalypse now, I was
having ideas that were increasingly unsound. Idea it became cha
and uh. I was involved in the relationship then that
(26:13):
was probably not the best of all relationships. And I
always thinking, I gotta I gotta settle down, I gotta
get serious about life. We me and her, we could
get all tied in. And of course, about two weeks,
twelve or fourteen days afterward, when your body starts producing
testospode again, your perspective comes back. But you know, during
(26:33):
that two weeks, I could have said and done a
lot of dage. I could have asked three or four
people to marry me. You know who knows it was.
It was a cavalier attitude about things that I wasn't
prepared and wasn't in the source material. The thing is,
this community also included women and women bodybuilders who take
(26:55):
steroids very frequently. The changes that they encounter through or irreversible.
And there was this one friend of mine and she
had gone out with a friend of mine and they
broke up, and she was in the gym and we're
training together, and she had this very kind of effective way,
this kind of breathy thing. I remember at the time,
I mean its in my twenties. I think this is
kind of sexiest kind of breathy thing she's doing. But
(27:18):
we were actually training together, so it was annoying. After
a certain point, I couldn't hear her, and I just said,
I'm sorry, what you say? What did you want me
to put on? We were changing the weights on the day,
and she was put on early five, and I realized
that it was an accommodation that she had made because
her voice had dropped an ox, so as long as
she kind of whispered, she could maintain a higher voice,
(27:39):
but when she raised the volume of her voice. It was,
and that's like forever. I'm sure if I were to
find it today, she sounds. So it was. So I
was surrounded by examples of people who I mean mostly
the women who had physical changes that they were never
going to be able to come back from UM. And
and indeed, you know, I got paranoid enough about some
(27:59):
of those changes that I actually sought out a doctor.
I went through several so I could find a doctor who,
in my mind was good enough some might say crazy
enough to do the surgery that I had wanted done,
which was UM. When you have men who have too
much estrogen in their system, get this thing called kind
of camacity of fat starts to form behind the nipple
(28:21):
in the chest, and you know, you start to develop
kind of secondary female sexual characteristics. It's a it's a
common thing that happens naturally, but it happens a lot
when you see people who are abused steroids. So I said,
I'm gonna get around this because once I started steroids.
Of course, the thing I told me about, that told
myself about that first cycle was I just did it wrong.
Next time, I'll do it right. So as a as
(28:44):
A as A prophylactic measure. I want all that stuff,
all those all those glands taken out. The doctor said, well,
we can't do it if if after it happens, because
then technically it'll be cosmetic. So why don't What if
you would have a biopsy, dumb, we could say maybe
it's possible be preconcerous and we could pull it out.
That way, go cool, let's do it. So insurance pays
for it. So I had to burst into the laboratory
(29:07):
and it was like to get my mammogram. But at
least now when women talking about mammograms, I know what
it's like. It's unpleasant and uh. And they did the
surgery and they cut open my chest and uh, like
use those those claws that they have an amusement parks
to get stuffed animal toys to reach and pull out
all the glandular matter and cut it off. Took my nipples,
(29:29):
put them back on and sewed them back on, and
put drainage tubes in my chest, which I wore for
three weeks. So that was I mean, if you smoke
a joint three weeks later, you're probably not remembering that
joint you smoke three weeks later, when I have tubes
in my chest. I kind of remembered that this happened
because I want to take steroids, so I was I
(29:49):
was in at this point. I was committed to the
lifestyle you see now sitting here like this. It makes
me sound crazy. It made you feel good enough that
it was an actual effort to stop. And I have
to say the circumstances under which I finally decided to
(30:10):
stop or what you know, alcoholics call you have these
moments of clarity, and it was a pretty potent one.
We were all racing the three hundred, and I say
we I'm talking about me and maybe nine other guys,
ten twelve, maybe twelve tops, and I got a call.
One day. A couple of things happened simultaneous. One of
the guys, who was one of the dealers, would get
(30:34):
his big shipment and he would come to the gym
and announced that he had had it, and then he,
like Johnny Appleseed, would go from house to house to
deliver it um And one day he got into the
post office, got the shipment, went from house to house
and the d e A followed him and busted every
single person that he delivered to. Lastly him somebody had
(30:56):
gone over to his house to pick up a shipment
was sitting there as a guy this in the Blue
blazers kicked through his door. They come back to the
gym and they say so and so got busted, and
everybody who had purchased from him or used from him
interrupted their workouts. It was literally like a like a
run on the bank to opposite everybody gribbage in bags
(31:16):
and you could tell exactly who was using because they
were all just out to go home. It's not like
like coke where you know, I'm gonna flush it down
to No. This stuff is hard to get, mostly to hide,
give it to your girlfriend, put it at her house,
or do whatever. So there was a massive bust. Right.
People were looking at real people, friends were looking at
jail time. And that was a pretty potent call. You know,
(31:39):
if ever there were signs, that was probably a pretty
good sign. You know, that was a good time to stop.
But um, but people do start to know that you're
the guy who knows guys. So I didn't buy again,
but I made introductions again to people who would I
mean guys I knew who were hardcore users and they
were not going to stop. I remember asking one guy.
(32:01):
I go he was like an elder statesman, and I
was like, I'm gonna ask him, like, how do when
I was up to six c seeds? Like, how do
I know? I haven't read in many cases of overdose?
How do I know if I've taken too much? And
I asked him and he goes, well, I know I've
taken too much when I and he pulls his shirt
up and yeah, he's got there, you know, the ripped
abs and stuff. And he pulls his shirt up and
(32:22):
he goes, when I feel my liver and he points,
and I for the first time notice something poking out
of right under his rib cage, and he just when
I feel it, when I see it start to swell
through my shirt, I back off. That was another sign
(32:46):
there's never any why you never asked somebody, well, why
would you smoke a joint? Why would you drink glass
of wine? Sometimes you just do these things just to doom.
You know, it's life on planet human, you know, why
would you? Why would you do that to yourself? You don't.
I'm many times I've actually heard that, you know, regards
the tattoos or people do strange things sometimes and there
was nothing quite as strange as this. Now you made
(33:14):
it through that one, all right? Next up, next week,
we've got a Swedish royal, former beauty queen, speaker of
three languages, world renowned nietzsche scholar PhD holder, and in
a weird, unfortunate twist of fate, maybe Crackhore. Welcome to
one Miss Josephine knock Off on the next edition of
(33:36):
Ozzy Confidential. Ozzy Confidential is produced by who Else Made
Eugenez Robinson, an executive produced by Robert Coolos, and this
episode was sound designed, edited and mixed by Jamie con
(33:58):
and Nick Johnson. For more Ozzy Confidential, check us out
on Azzi dot com. That's o z y dot com
slash confidentential. We published editorial companion articles on Azzi and
photos videos for every single story, so to check them out,
go to Ozzy dot com slash Confidential That's o z
(34:21):
y dot com slash Confidential and you can see behind
the scenes. You can learn more about the stories we tell,
and even become an official o c and you'll be
kept uh in the knowe on all things azzimm Indanger
and if you want to get in touch with us,
learn more or just generally vent Hit us up at
(34:41):
confidential at Ozzi dot com, will send over a T
shirt if we did what you gotta say, good, bad,
or ugly or maybe we'll get too lazy doing that. Thanks,
Can't wait for the next episode to drop. Be one
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early only on Himalaya. Go to your app store download Himalaya.
That's h I M A L A y A, and
then follow Ozzy Confidential once you're there. I remember a
(00:27):
girlfriend at the time saying, uh, this blood in your underwear?
Why her all eyes must have scraped against the nail.
(01:01):
Welcome to Ozzy. This antion. It's about power, a certain
kind of megalomaniac pulled toward more more more. Alright, alright, alright,
(01:28):
So here you are. It's Azzi Confidential. My name is
Eugeneus Robinson, the host. So we're gonna do something special
to show you that this is an actual no holes barred,
deep dive into stories that are untold, unheard. I'm gonna
do something different. Usually I'm getting other people's stories, but
(01:51):
for you, special, for you, it's gonna be my story.
I'm in a band called ox Bowl. A cursory not
even a cursory glance. Your Internet will tell you that
if I'm known for anything, it's a certain kind of
volatility which brings me to a friend John Mitchell, to
be at the l A Times talking about an article
(02:12):
I wanted him to write the guys goading me remembering
when I was fourteen and not nearly as adept at
handling the reins of volatility as I am now. I remember,
you lifted weights when you were fourteen, you were you
were making much progress. And I lifted weights as a hobby.
(02:33):
But I competed right then, and my first competition New
York was National Gym Association Teenage, uh New York, mr
Teenage New York. When I started to go through puberty
and you know some guys, oh, I was so horny
all the time. That wasn't the issue for me. The
issue for me was this really weird kind of sense overpowering,
(02:54):
testosterone fueled sense of invulnerability. I think they call it
a hysteria patio standing. I grew up in New York,
so standing on the subway platform and as a train
started to come in, I started to have this increasing
obsession combined with standing on the edge of the platform,
(03:14):
that I could throw myself in front of the train
and physically stop the train that I had I had
through my weightlifting ministrations, and I had developed enough physical
power to actually now trains come through the station's express
train speeding. I knew I couldn't stop a speeding subway train,
but as it as it cruises to a stop or
(03:36):
starts up, I was convinced, and I actually had to
force myself to stand back from the edge of the platform,
so that it was a very strange, weird like Octave
Mirbau and the Torture Guarden talking about these overpowering obsessions compelling.
It was like that, based on what I know now
(03:58):
about testosterone, I was probably peaking, and then I started
lifting weights harder, and I probably just leveled it out.
I didn't have that continued obsession with throwing myself in
front of the train beyond my senior year. But of
course I left New York and then um I came
out to California and I went to Stanford. But I
(04:19):
didn't compete at all during Stanford. I started lifting after
Stanford seriously and started competing again after I was doing
insane things. I remember I was big into glandular extracts.
I don't know where they got them. I don't know
what was in those pills. You could get them at
health food stores. I remember feeling dizzy a lot. The
idea was that you had to you had to make gains.
(04:41):
It was, you know, it was a burgeoning supplement industry,
and pumping iron had come out late seventies, and you know,
nobody had figured out at least two was seventeen or eighteen,
like I was, had figured out that probably it wasn't
just supplements that got them there. There hadn't been a
lot of high profile, well publicized bust four performance enhancing.
(05:03):
I was a purist for so long that um that
it always feels kind of strange for me to talk
about steroids, which is what we're talking about. I was
surrounded by them when I was training in Brooklyn. I
was surrounded by them at my gym in California. I
trained down at Venice Golds. It was, I mean, I
figured out by the time I'd hit my twenties that
(05:25):
Arnold and all the pro body builders were taking stuff.
Fell in love with the with the weight training, or
with the feeling of being strong and being big and
all that, and I wanted to win Mr. Union was
I wasn't interested, not at all, not at all interested.
And then something strange happened. I competed in the in
the Mr. California. Uh natural right. It was supposed to
(05:46):
be a non steroid aided show, which was comically not.
I finished last but prior to that, some friends and
we're gonna be in San Diego. You're gonna be close
to Juanna, go across the border and get us some stuff.
So they gave me a bunch of money and they
gave me a laundry list because you could legally steroids there,
and so the show was drug tested, but it was
a polygraph. So as I'm sitting there in some kind
(06:09):
of like Abu Grab type room in San Diego with
the Athletic Commission, I have a Fannie pack full of
these steroids which I had no intention of taking, and
they're asking me if I had ever taken them, and
technically I had not taken them, right, so um, I
answered and passed the polygraph. Um. But something about coming
in last place, I don't say it unseated me. But
I started to think about the long view, and I go,
(06:31):
you know, some of these guys, they're gonna be gone tomorrow.
You know I'm a lifer. I'll be lifted. I've been
lifting weight since I was nine years old. I'll be
lifting in when I'm it's gonna be a lifelong thing.
So steroids, what seems to be like a quick gain
for some people, could be mixed in like a healthier supplement.
(06:53):
And on the drive back from San Diego started to
have these thoughts, and I and because I'm a hopeless
and researcher, keep in mind, this is well in advance
of any Internet. I worked at a defense company then
and went into the Lexus Nexus network, which was part
of the Darker Thing, and did all this research on steroids,
and I developed like you talked about mid Romney. I
(07:14):
developed a folder binders full of women, a steroid research folder,
which I still have to this day, And and made
what I thought was informed decision that I was going
to take steroids. I had been a purist for so
long that I didn't want to be publicly identified as
a guy who used. I was initially I wasn't ready
(07:36):
for that yet. It's weird. Well, I could like like
why who would care? I was surrounded by but that
became my thing, Like I was the guy, like a
guy who wouldn't. And in the punk rock community, straight
edge was a thing, not drugs. Straight clear mind that
I was going to do this thing. You know. Part
(07:58):
of one wanting to be kind of sold vot about
it was that I would I would do it myself.
And keep in mind, it's not the needles that you
use for steroids or entry. I am needles intromuscular there
eighteen to gauge. They're really giant needles. There's a catch, right,
and the catches that you have to inject it into
(08:19):
a muscle, So it has to be a large muscle grouping. Now,
I know guys who shot themselves in the quadra set
and but these are guys who had already used and
were big and had lots of muscle around the knee
um or the thigh, and somehow couldn't do that. Um.
But the most common was the buttocks. But it's hard
to turn and do and see if you're alone. But
(08:42):
I just decided that was going to be the best place.
And um, I remember a girlfriend at the time saying, uh,
this blood in your underwear. Why go oh, eyes must
just scraped against the nail. But you know, I mean,
at that point, I still was in denial sort of
about wanting to publicly be identified as a steroid user.
(09:05):
And we're talking now eighties eight eight. And I know
this because I was in the worst movie of eight seven,
Leonard Part six, with a bunch of bodybuilders who were
using and wouldn't talk to me about it because they
knew it's a kid. Don't do what I did. Do
what I say to fly the straight and narrow, And
(09:26):
those guys, all to varying degrees, ended up having not
all of them, some of them ended up having serious
problems connected to what some would say we're personality deformations
that came as a result of steroids. You're walking along,
you see a guy in the hole. You go, oh
my god, how did you get in that hole? And
the guy goes, well, I put my hand on that
branch there, and you go, what branch? This branch and
(09:48):
you put your hand on that branch, goes yeah, And
I put my other foot on that other branch. You
what this foot? Yeah? And I jumped up and down
really hard, really and then what you know, and then
you fall and you're in the hole next to the guy,
you know, and that's you. Just you have to realize
that there's certain things. And I've recognized the cycle now
with younger people have come up to me and start
talking to me about, yeah, boy, I would. I don't
(10:09):
think I would ever do steroids, And that's always that's
always a poker tell I don't think. You don't think
you would ever? Really that means you think you would ever.
So I went through the same you know, it's probably
the life cycle of a story user denial and uh,
knowing it's not good and then figuring, you know, if
the science were faster on this, this would just be
(10:30):
another supplement in the rational and then of course taking it.
And once you take it, your advantage point is no
longer reasonably trustworthy. Because one thing that nobody ever talks
about when they talk about steroids, about how fucking great
they make you feel, they don't want to talk about
(10:53):
the fact that one of the things that was so
compelling about it was that on the at least on
the upward portion of your cycle, you feel like superman
mental acuity through the roof. I mean, if you're prone
to being creative, super creative, um, four hours of sleep
(11:13):
at night, no refractory period, you could you know lots,
I mean, and you just good natured. And people said, well,
what about the royal rage. I personally think it's like alcohol.
It magnifies you know they're bad drunks, but these are
kind of bad people. It magnifies who it is that
you are. It's on the down portion of your cycle
where you start to have weirdness, but on the up
(11:33):
portion it was it was absolutely fantastic. First week. You
would have a regime of half a c C maybe
some orals pills that would go with it. You would decide.
My personal favorite was one called Sustana, which was a
mix of four testosteronies, approprianate and mathate, and I can't
remember the other two. And the pills I decided were
(11:54):
not only worthless but bad for you because your liver
attempts to metabolize them all at once, whereas the objectible
it pass just a liver several times, so it's not
as hard on your liver, which is one of the
big problems. We too would be like one c C
right and no pills. There's sometimes people would combine it
with bills if you had good ones, like Anna Bar
was a good strength pill I remember, and I was
(12:15):
taking this one called Deck of the Roblin, which was
supposed to be one of the healthiest, safest as these
things go. Steroids ever but again, nobody tells you about
the head game. They don't mention that ever, ever, ever, ever,
unless they're talking about it in the negative. I mean,
the thing is, it's like, if you've ever watched a
movie the Invisible Man. The chemical makes them invisible, but
it also makes them crazy. I realized the part to
(12:39):
make the world corp, you'll know who the invisible man.
So all of a sudden, I hearkened back to that
subway thing, and I remember that I had written an
article about a bodybuilder out in Sheep's at Bay who,
in the midst of this kind of meglomaniacal steroid thing,
(13:00):
had convinced himself that he could stop a car like
me with a train, except he had a bunch of enablers,
and all these guys were all taking steroids in the
common parlance juicing, and they follow him. He goes, I'm
I can stop a car, and they go out to
whatever that is, the highway that sneaks through Sheeps had
Babe b Qui or something like that, and they sat
on the guardrail and he waited, and he jumped out
(13:23):
into the lane in front of a car. And technically,
if you want to be philosophically consistent. He did stop.
The car broke both arms and broke a leg and
was hospitalized. But that car did stop, not the way
he thought, you know. And uh, so I remember that
there had been stories about guys who had gotten ill,
but most of the people who got badly hurt on
(13:44):
steroids were from other things. It was like from diuretics
to lose water weight during the contest. Uh I uh,
and I figured these guys were just doing it wrong.
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a z A Y. I had one Royd rage moment
where I had in these multiple cans of protein powder
because you're taking tons of protein, and I had this
old fashioned can openers, so it left a really jagged
(15:13):
line on the inside of a can. And the dog,
had had a big master at the time, had shouldered
his way into the house and I just started screaming him,
and I threw the can at him and and they
cut through all four of my fingers, and which was
a real problem one I didn't like abusing my dog too.
Now that I had my fingers almost cut to the bone,
(15:34):
it was gonna it was gonna bite into my lifting time.
Would you become pathological about your lifting time? Because if
you're taking steroids and not lifting, it's like money out
the window in your in the steroid adult state. And
uh so, I said, look, I need to control myself.
I can't be one of those guys, you know, I
knew guys like that that that I couldn't be one
of those guys, and so um, but what was happening is, um, well,
(16:02):
what's happening is but what was that thing that Tyson
says about everybody's got a plan until they get punched
in the face. I literally got punched in the face
by steroids. I didn't account on the fact, and there
was nothing in the source material that says, once you
take half a c C and one c C and
to CC, your ability to cap it at two and
a half CC is gonna be non existent. Moreover, you're
(16:24):
gonna want to go, well, if two and a half
CEC is to maybe three and a half CC, what
about four? What about five? What about six? I mean,
you know this. I don't want to even say this
is a worldwide phenomena, but it seems to me a
particularly Western thing of just more, bigger, more, And so
I ended up. I remember trying to crazy glue together too.
(16:49):
I am the bodies of the syringes of tubes so
that I could fit more rather than take two separate shots,
which I'd have to sacrifice the actual needle part I
was trying to craze. He glued together two stems so
I could have a super long needle and get six
ccs UM. I didn't have enough insight at that time
(17:09):
to realize that UM deviating from the plan was going
to be problematical for me. But he used to be
a TV show called a six million Dollar Man, and
he had like a bionic leg and a bionic arm,
and he would do all these amazing things, like he
could run sixty miles an hour. But they never dealt
(17:31):
with the issue of what happens to the non bionic
leg if the bionic leg is running sixty miles an hour. Right,
And this is where I was. My body was used
to get in these chemicals that was making it do
phenomenal things. I was deadlifting over six pounds. I had
gone from a body weight of one to sixty five.
(17:53):
I was bench pressing three fifteen that's three forty five
pound reps and a forty five pound bar in the middle,
close grip, benching for eight to ten as a warm up,
squatting almost five pounds. I was a really big, strong guy.
But of course they you've heard about it. They talked
about a weird dysmorphia. I had no sense of how
big I was really. I just knew I wanted to
(18:14):
get to three hundred pounds. That's what I wanted to do.
And if it was four ccs or five ccs or
six c cs at that point, that's what I was
gonna do. And then I have a weird relationship with
my father. We only talked once since I turned nineteen,
and he came out to talk to me. Maybe I
was thirty at that point, twenty nine or something, and
(18:36):
he I said, look, I'm not breaking my schedule for you.
I got stuff to do, because well, what do you
want to So I'm going to the gym. Come with
me to the gym. We can talk while we're at
the gym. He was flying through or something, and we're
gonna work out together. And it was just this great
moment where I had a completely soured on the prospect
of having a father, but even though we had had problems.
(18:56):
And so we go to the bench press and uh,
I put one fifteen pounds and he's like, I said,
he goes, I can't do I said, yeah, I know
you can't do it. It's for me he goes, well,
I can't spy you. I got just standing here. Just
I don't I don't need you. So you measure your
(19:16):
hands out from the ends of the plates. And usually
when you do a bench press, you hold your arms
like you're doing a push up, so your arms are
shoulder with the fart. They're pretty wide. But I measure
it out, and then I measured it again so that
now my thumbs are touching in the middle, and I'm
doing what you call a close script bench press. Most
people can't bench press three d and fifteen pounds anyway
(19:38):
close grip where your your wrist ben at the middle
and your your your hands are only thumbs with apart.
It's incredibly hard. And I loaded it to my chest
and I can and I'm watching him from the bench.
He's looking down at me, and I'm watching him and
where eye contact. And as I get down to my chest,
I pause, and then I knock out eight to nine
rips and just looking at him. And as I finished,
(20:03):
I hold it at the top and I go, you
can just guide it back in, and so he pulls
it back to two inches into the into the upright
struts that hold it and uh, he goes, I stand up,
and I'm still looking at him. I stand up and
he goes, I can't do this. I got I know,
let's take off some weight for you. And it was
(20:25):
a great kind of inversion inversion moment. Uh. And then
of course we went back to never speaking to each
other again. So that was the last time I spoke
to him. You know, if if you grew up on
ABC after school specials, you might think that that was
(20:45):
a good moment, But that was that was a steroid
fuel moment of rage, you know. And what I was
hoping was transmitted in that moment was old man, you'd
don't have a chance, you know, or like the line
from Cape Fear, you know, I can outthink you. I
(21:06):
cannot fight you. I can out you know, lift you,
and outrage you. I can out thank you, and I
can out philosophy. I have exceeded you in every way.
It wasn't a general good sign of mental health, but
it was in terms of my personal development probably a
(21:28):
really good sign. I was getting over wanting to be
a son. Uh God, this is the part where I'm
supposed to be really candid to encourage others to be candid.
But I remember the girlfriend I had at the time.
There was a resistance to telling her because not only
(21:52):
was your athletic performance through the roof, but sexual performance
also through the roof. It's so cheesy, it's you know.
I asked one of my body build a friends. I go, hey,
do you let people know that you're on it? Do
you just let them think you're this way always? He
was like, I'm this way always because I'm always on,
And I go, I'm not always on, but I feel
(22:13):
like I should totally disclose, and he's like, I don't
do that. So there there were well, there were reasons
why people were not really looking too hard, like, gee,
you've gained ten pounds. I mean, everybody saw me taking protein.
And there was a guy who I knew who was
on a similar thing, and he asked him once. And
(22:33):
the weird thing is this is all completely illegal, but
a large number of people doing it that we worked
out with we're all cops. So it was a very
interesting way of I mean, this is prior to Barry
Bonds and Mark McGuire and the home of the steroid
era of baseball, and these guys would take a growth
horm and all this other stuff allegedly, but you had
(22:54):
this weird detente with cops. So you know this guy
you know, was a cop, and he goes, you look
at pretty good. I go, yeah, because game about fifteen
pounds in the last month and a half. Yeah about that.
He goes, what do you? What do you? I would
say cyber genics, and so that became that would became yeah,
me too, cyber genics too. And there was a thing
(23:16):
called Cybergenics and that was pretty powerful, but it wasn't
doing pounds of raw weight game. No, that's not cyber genics.
But I never competed again. And after I took them
because the purest in me didn't want to, I still
at a certain level thought it was cheating and didn't
want to do it. I didn't want to do it.
So but also something else happened when I started taking steroids.
(23:40):
Bodybuildings seemed to be aspiration really seemed to be too small.
This is this is the key to kind of the
mental deformations. It seemed to be. It seemed to be
kind of a parochial greatness. And I was I was
I was looking for Master four life greatness like things.
(24:02):
You know, I was gonna be the best singer and
the best writer, the best not just good, the best,
the best anybody had ever seen. I mean it was
a kind of madness, right and um kind of madness.
But I look back and I was super productive during
that period. Published a lot of magazines, did a lot
of interviews, did a lot of work one awards. Not
(24:22):
just athletic, was that anything but athletic? Was you know? Um?
And I don't know that I make a one to
one connection, but if you're being productive, then some of
that stuff is good. That might happen. And we were
all I mean it was Nobody ever talks about the euphoria.
I mean, look, you might get feeling, are you certain
euphoria on angel dust, but you're not able to really
(24:42):
physically back it up. But this was just we were euphoric.
And but it was a cyclical euphoria, right you for
that up portion of your cycle, and U the down
portion was routinely terrible. So all the heaven that we
had all been enjoying these bodybuilders, bouncers, uh you know
(25:07):
barbell boys that I knew when we would cycle at
the same time on the downtop, I mean I remember
going over pulling guns out of people's mouths because they
was suicidal. Myself. Remember sitting watching some commercial for Scrooge
was it Bill Murray movie, And at one point they're
talking about putting a little love in your life. I'm
(25:28):
sitting there sobbing like a baby. And it wasn't even
the movie. It was a commercial for the movie worse Right,
and I'm like, my God, loving your life. And then
at that point I realized, I think I may have
mismanaged the down portion of the cycle. But that was
a very dangerous couple of weeks because I was having
(25:50):
like and they say in the Apocalypse now, I was
having ideas that were increasingly unsound. Idea it became cha
and uh. I was involved in the relationship then that
(26:13):
was probably not the best of all relationships. And I
always thinking, I gotta I gotta settle down, I gotta
get serious about life. We me and her, we could
get all tied in. And of course, about two weeks,
twelve or fourteen days afterward, when your body starts producing
testospode again, your perspective comes back. But you know, during
(26:33):
that two weeks, I could have said and done a
lot of dage. I could have asked three or four
people to marry me. You know who knows it was.
It was a cavalier attitude about things that I wasn't
prepared and wasn't in the source material. The thing is,
this community also included women and women bodybuilders who take
(26:55):
steroids very frequently. The changes that they encounter through or irreversible.
And there was this one friend of mine and she
had gone out with a friend of mine and they
broke up, and she was in the gym and we're
training together, and she had this very kind of effective way,
this kind of breathy thing. I remember at the time,
I mean its in my twenties. I think this is
kind of sexiest kind of breathy thing she's doing. But
(27:18):
we were actually training together, so it was annoying. After
a certain point, I couldn't hear her, and I just said,
I'm sorry, what you say? What did you want me
to put on? We were changing the weights on the day,
and she was put on early five, and I realized
that it was an accommodation that she had made because
her voice had dropped an ox, so as long as
she kind of whispered, she could maintain a higher voice,
(27:39):
but when she raised the volume of her voice. It was,
and that's like forever. I'm sure if I were to
find it today, she sounds. So it was. So I
was surrounded by examples of people who I mean mostly
the women who had physical changes that they were never
going to be able to come back from UM. And
and indeed, you know, I got paranoid enough about some
(27:59):
of those changes that I actually sought out a doctor.
I went through several so I could find a doctor who,
in my mind was good enough some might say crazy
enough to do the surgery that I had wanted done,
which was UM. When you have men who have too
much estrogen in their system, get this thing called kind
of camacity of fat starts to form behind the nipple
(28:21):
in the chest, and you know, you start to develop
kind of secondary female sexual characteristics. It's a it's a
common thing that happens naturally, but it happens a lot
when you see people who are abused steroids. So I said,
I'm gonna get around this because once I started steroids.
Of course, the thing I told me about, that told
myself about that first cycle was I just did it wrong.
Next time, I'll do it right. So as a as
(28:44):
A as A prophylactic measure. I want all that stuff,
all those all those glands taken out. The doctor said, well,
we can't do it if if after it happens, because
then technically it'll be cosmetic. So why don't What if
you would have a biopsy, dumb, we could say maybe
it's possible be preconcerous and we could pull it out.
That way, go cool, let's do it. So insurance pays
for it. So I had to burst into the laboratory
(29:07):
and it was like to get my mammogram. But at
least now when women talking about mammograms, I know what
it's like. It's unpleasant and uh. And they did the
surgery and they cut open my chest and uh, like
use those those claws that they have an amusement parks
to get stuffed animal toys to reach and pull out
all the glandular matter and cut it off. Took my nipples,
(29:29):
put them back on and sewed them back on, and
put drainage tubes in my chest, which I wore for
three weeks. So that was I mean, if you smoke
a joint three weeks later, you're probably not remembering that
joint you smoke three weeks later, when I have tubes
in my chest. I kind of remembered that this happened
because I want to take steroids, so I was I
(29:49):
was in at this point. I was committed to the
lifestyle you see now sitting here like this. It makes
me sound crazy. It made you feel good enough that
it was an actual effort to stop. And I have
to say the circumstances under which I finally decided to
(30:10):
stop or what you know, alcoholics call you have these
moments of clarity, and it was a pretty potent one.
We were all racing the three hundred, and I say
we I'm talking about me and maybe nine other guys,
ten twelve, maybe twelve tops, and I got a call.
One day. A couple of things happened simultaneous. One of
the guys, who was one of the dealers, would get
(30:34):
his big shipment and he would come to the gym
and announced that he had had it, and then he,
like Johnny Appleseed, would go from house to house to
deliver it um And one day he got into the
post office, got the shipment, went from house to house
and the d e A followed him and busted every
single person that he delivered to. Lastly him somebody had
(30:56):
gone over to his house to pick up a shipment
was sitting there as a guy this in the Blue
blazers kicked through his door. They come back to the
gym and they say so and so got busted, and
everybody who had purchased from him or used from him
interrupted their workouts. It was literally like a like a
run on the bank to opposite everybody gribbage in bags
(31:16):
and you could tell exactly who was using because they
were all just out to go home. It's not like
like coke where you know, I'm gonna flush it down
to No. This stuff is hard to get, mostly to hide,
give it to your girlfriend, put it at her house,
or do whatever. So there was a massive bust. Right.
People were looking at real people, friends were looking at
jail time. And that was a pretty potent call. You know,
(31:39):
if ever there were signs, that was probably a pretty
good sign. You know, that was a good time to stop.
But um, but people do start to know that you're
the guy who knows guys. So I didn't buy again,
but I made introductions again to people who would I
mean guys I knew who were hardcore users and they
were not going to stop. I remember asking one guy.
(32:01):
I go he was like an elder statesman, and I
was like, I'm gonna ask him, like, how do when
I was up to six c seeds? Like, how do
I know? I haven't read in many cases of overdose?
How do I know if I've taken too much? And
I asked him and he goes, well, I know I've
taken too much when I and he pulls his shirt
up and yeah, he's got there, you know, the ripped
abs and stuff. And he pulls his shirt up and
(32:22):
he goes, when I feel my liver and he points,
and I for the first time notice something poking out
of right under his rib cage, and he just when
I feel it, when I see it start to swell
through my shirt, I back off. That was another sign
(32:46):
there's never any why you never asked somebody, well, why
would you smoke a joint? Why would you drink glass
of wine? Sometimes you just do these things just to doom.
You know, it's life on planet human, you know, why
would you? Why would you do that to yourself? You don't.
I'm many times I've actually heard that, you know, regards
the tattoos or people do strange things sometimes and there
was nothing quite as strange as this. Now you made
(33:14):
it through that one, all right? Next up, next week,
we've got a Swedish royal, former beauty queen, speaker of
three languages, world renowned nietzsche scholar PhD holder, and in
a weird, unfortunate twist of fate, maybe Crackhore. Welcome to
one Miss Josephine knock Off on the next edition of
(33:36):
Ozzy Confidential. Ozzy Confidential is produced by who Else Made
Eugenez Robinson, an executive produced by Robert Coolos, and this
episode was sound designed, edited and mixed by Jamie con
(33:58):
and Nick Johnson. For more Ozzy Confidential, check us out
on Azzi dot com. That's o z y dot com
slash confidentential. We published editorial companion articles on Azzi and
photos videos for every single story, so to check them out,
go to Ozzy dot com slash Confidential That's o z
(34:21):
y dot com slash Confidential and you can see behind
the scenes. You can learn more about the stories we tell,
and even become an official o c and you'll be
kept uh in the knowe on all things azzimm Indanger
and if you want to get in touch with us,
learn more or just generally vent Hit us up at
(34:41):
confidential at Ozzi dot com, will send over a T
shirt if we did what you gotta say, good, bad,
or ugly or maybe we'll get too lazy doing that. Thanks,
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