Josh Brolin on Sobriety and Self-Discovery

This week we talk with actor and writer Josh Brolin about his career, personal battles with addiction, and his journey to sobriety. Brolin discusses the importance of authenticity in his work and life, his new book From Under the Truck that offers insight into resilience, and the generational trauma he's determined to break for his children's sake. He recounts his early struggles with alcohol, brushes with the law, and how his loved ones and various transformative experiences, including the Hoffman Institute, helped him embrace sobriety.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I would have rather died alcoholically than been invisible and
racked in fear for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
You were studying Bruce Lee and yet your own Bruce
Lee moment.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
I was in a blackout drunk. I don't remember any
of this. I don't remember any of it. So I
turned around, Hey, you know, come over here, turn around,
put your hands up. And I turned around, and as
Herb was shutting the door, all he heard was, whoa
what if I trip on the way there? I get it.

(00:32):
If you fall down, it's embarrassing. Then you get up
and it's fine. You know, it's okay. I see that.
My kids sometimes they have all these worries. I don't
know if it comes from me, if it's in them innately,
But those are all the things that I worried about.
What if I look like an idiot? What if I
come across as being stupid?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Welcome back to the Sino Show. I'm your host, Cino mcfarre.
This brother needs no introduction, but I'm just going to say,
as far as I'm concerned, one of the greatest actors
of our generation. Goodise, no country from all men, American gangster.
I get to keep going on and on milk. He
has a book out that for anybody in recovery, anybody

(01:19):
looking for resilience, anybody looking for a human being that
understands kindness and respect and you know, being accountable. Fucking
read this right fucking now. It's amazing you're still alive
to write it. And you're my brother and my friend,
my confidant, Josh. Welcome to the show man.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Thank you man, Well, thank you for that introduction. That
was really nice. It's nice. It was really nice, you know,
with this book coming out. First of all, oh, I'll
tell you right now. You know, I write a daily
gratitude list, which you know, yeah, they're sent incredible couple.

(02:01):
And the first thing I wrote, I was outside during
your meeting, and I didn't want to bombard the meeting
because I know there's a people are sharing and then
you come in and it gets distracted, but whatever. And
the first thing I wrote in this, the beginning of
this gratitude list that I usually write at night, is
sitting outside of a meeting right now, waiting to go

(02:21):
in and do a podcast with someone I love, just
hanging out on the street right now, comfortably and marveling
at being fifty seven and content. I'm not always content,
but that moment I was that moment.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
I was that's good and I love you too, man,
and I really appreciate you making a busy guy. Yeah,
that's timing. So let's make this shit happen.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
I'm happy to be here. I'm really happy to be here.
And you know, I kind of put you on the
spot and I know how you felt, which I think
probably was unconsciously on purpose, even though it was unconscious
or subconscious, where I kind of go, like, everybody has
a fucking podcast now, and everybody's friend has podcasts, everybody's
kids have podcasts, and like, like, I don't want to

(03:05):
like I've done my stint, I did my tour, you know,
And you want a podcast to feel you don't want
it to be formal, too formal and too you know
what I mean. Oh, it's like this is really important
and you should do this one and you shouldn't do
this one. But you can't do all of them. But
when you left me that voice memo today, I started laughing.
It was superhuman. It was raw. You poked me. You

(03:30):
poked at me a couple of times, Like I get
what you're saying. That like I'm fucking meaningless or some shit.
By the way, I'm not fucking meaningless. And I just
enjoyed the humanity of your voice memo, and it made
me smile and laugh and it made me want to
do this right away. Not that I not that you
lived up to something that I require. I just am

(03:52):
fifty seven, and I have less and less and less
patience and time for things that don't fully resonate.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
And I'm saying I love that about you.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
All right.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Let's yeah, why'd you write the book?

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I don't you know. I kind of talked about this
the other day. You know, I've always written, you know,
I think I have. I don't know now. It's like
I don't write in a journal so much. I do
this daily gratitude list. But I think I've filled probably
ninety journals, you know, and I have them all still.
I have them in big clear bins. And I've always written.

(04:28):
It's just been the way that I'm able to clarify
thoughts that are kind of chaotic in my own brain.
I need to manifest them in some way. And like
you could say, oh, well, that's why you're an actor,
and I go, yeah, I think the acting is more
about confronting my own fear of revealing myself, whereas this
is a safe place, this is a piece of paper

(04:49):
that's not challenging me. It's just me manifest. It's me
getting it out and being able to simplify it. And
so I've written since I was probably eight or nine,
and poetry was something that kind of popped up in
my early teens. I don't know where from, but I
started writing in kind of poetry form, and then and

(05:11):
then I started writing, you know, later on wards ceremonies
and people say, you know, we want to give you
this award, and I was like, oh okay, and I'd write
my own speech and they'd go, oh fuck, you can
write like you're funny or this or and then people
started asking me to write their speeches, and then I
became like the go to guy to write everybody's speeches.

(05:31):
And then Instagram happened and I was like one of
the last people to get on Instagram, and I started
writing little missives off the top of my head. It
take five minutes through it, and then people start folksing.
Then Brolin book and all this stuff. So I think
it was a very innocent. Any platform I could find

(05:52):
to write. I would take advantage of I loved Instagram
because it was like, I'm not going to use this
to kind of make myself look like something i'm not.
I'm going to use this to be even more raw
and more honest and then see what happens. It was
almost like a challenge, but in the opposite way. And
then uh, and then I'm helping people write their books.

(06:15):
I'm writing forwards books. And then I'm like, who the
fuck am I? I'm like that guy who's saying he's
a writer and everybody's perceiving as a writer and I
don't have a fucking book. Go write a book. Validate
yourself to yourself, not to anybody else, to yourself. And
I think the book kind of dictated what it wanted
to be. And the only thing other than wanting to

(06:38):
structure and be a good technical writer was was to
be authentic. And I think I I think I pulled
it off.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
You pulled off. Okay, we're gonna get into the book
in a second. I'm gonna did you write that? You know?
When I one of the things I was like when
I was at the Music Cares event for Bob Dylan, Yeah,
and you came on and did that. Did you write that?
That's fucking that blew me away. That was like, holy shit, man.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
It's funny. It means a lot to me when somebody
says they've read the book or they come to and
there's specific things that they've reacted to or a speech
that they've heard. I don't know why, but it really
affects me a lot more than somebody says. Not a
lot more, but I still am affected by it when
somebody says, hey, I saw your milk and I thought
you were great, Because that's more of a collective thing.

(07:27):
It's like, oh, you liked me, but you also like
the filmmaking, also like the way it was edited. You
also like the writing. Is you? It's nakedly you.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
What did Alan Ginsburg teach you?

Speaker 1 (07:45):
I were great? H shit man. So I was in Rochester,
New York. There was a place called Jazzberriers that existed
for a year and a half, maybe a little bit more.
Aunt Aunt Annie DiFranco started there. There's like a lot
of any Ani DiFranco is like this great kind of
folk amazing gnarly musician, and a lot a lot of

(08:07):
poets started there. And it became like a famous upstate
New York place, and I was doing I was doing
plays in Rochester, New York with Anthony Zerbe and I
would read my poetry at Jazzberry's a few of us would,
and Alan Ginsburg came to town and I and I
had this intensive with Alan Ginsburg, who to me, was,

(08:29):
as I wrote it down, lost in the black soup
of his past. He could only talk about Kerouac. He
could only talk about you know, Beat Generation or Loovski
and Gregory Corso and all this kind of shit. And
I was like, yeah, but teach us something, you know
what I mean. So there's a photograph I have at
home here in Venice that is me and I had

(08:51):
really long hair, and I had like Indian beads and shit,
and I'm looking up at him and he's looking down
at me. But I know somebody took that picture and
they get me the picture, and I framed the picture
because it looks good, because there's a pride I have
if the reality didn't exist in the picture of what
really was going on, that's a picture I would hold

(09:12):
dear to my heart. But as a cosmetic thing, it's
really cool looking. But The truth is is he didn't
like me at all. He just was like he would
have us do these things. Put two words together. I
remember a friend of mine put together Tyland all Christ
and I thought that was a really interesting pairing of words.
I don't think I'd put together anything that that Ginsburg

(09:35):
thought was great. So it wasn't like a great love affair,
you know what I mean. But I wrote a poem
about him. The whole point is is I wrote a
poem about him, and I was in the middle of
reading it at Jasberry's on stage when he walked in
and he listened to half of this poem that I wrote,
basically not insulting him, but kind of like saying, well,

(09:55):
it didn't work out with Ginsburg for me.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Do you think he didn't like you because you saw
through him?

Speaker 1 (10:01):
I don't know, because that's what I got was this
guy that had just kind of stut And he's such
a genius poet. I mean, he's truly like one of
the most Howell and I had studied him and I
had memorized him, and you know, but there was something
about that moment in time, which was maybe nineteen ninety,
nineteen ninety, that I just go, oh, how sad, you

(10:25):
know what I mean? And it may have just been
a moment for him. You know. I around that same time,
I saw a lecture by Edward Alby that I was
blown away by. I mean, this is like one of
the great Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? He wrote, you know,
I mean, some of the greatest plays ever written, one
of the greatest playwrights ever to live, And I saw

(10:49):
I had a moment that was just like, I can't
believe that I'm here and in the presence of greatness
kind of thing. I wanted to feel that with Ginsburg,
but but I didn't. Got it, even though he has
the history that still blows me away to this day.
Got it?

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, got it. I think a good place to start
your journey is in your book to folks where you
came from a little bit, because I think it would
be a good jumping obviously.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
All right, I won't I won't read the whole thing, yeah,
because it's too long. Let's see, what did you say?
It was almost great name, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, nineteen
eighty one. I don't remember what day it was, but
it must have been during a weekend. It was over
at Jason's at the back end of the wrong side
of the house, in this makeshift room against the garage.

(11:38):
It was the same room where later at fifteen, I
made him tattoo me in Indian ink with a crude needle,
but just above the scalpula on my right shoulder. JB
is all it said me, My moniker, my brothers, Desito, rats,
rich kids on LSD RKL hadn't yet started, but it

(11:59):
was sorry it was soon to be. This was pre that.
This was all of us skateboarding and surfing. This was
getting a ride from Matt Mondragon's hunchback grandmother D in
the blue rusted Dotson five to ten wagon with all
our boards, rope and bungee cord on its roof. D
was our geriatric mascot. She was our head cheerleader with

(12:22):
a walker, and she gave us everything she had readily
and happily, especially her time. This was the late nineteen
seventies in the early nineteen eighties. This is when McDonald's
was good for you, and when hitchhiking didn't wind up
with you kidnapped and kept in some underground shelter for
seven years. This was the beginning of a whole new

(12:42):
era of angry lsd explorers, spearheaded locally by us, and
it was the beginning of the cocaine craze that none
of us would be able to afford, and all of
us would steal, fight and fuck rich old ladies. For
this was the time where the guys I hung out
with didn't run from cops, but instead threw full bottles

(13:04):
of cheap gin at their windshields, which is true, by
the way. This was the era of the herb Estake,
an actual house where Mike Herbert and his single drunk
mother lived, a spray painted middle class home ripped of
all its bourgeoisie and replaced with our rage, a rage
fueled by all the self absorbed parents who would rather

(13:24):
chew their respective ice than bother themselves with children. We
built half pipes in their backyards and stole their cars
when they were sleeping to go to the parties, to
go to the parts of town where they'd sell us
cases of beer for ten cents on the dollar. This
was before the Heroin epidemic, and back when led Zeppelin
was considered as punk as anyone willing not to show

(13:46):
up at fucking Woodstock sid Vicious was a hero, and
so was Darby Crash. Inside our destructive membrane was Foolish,
Mortal Herb Dead Ted, no Hands, Dan Bomber, Bohawk, Wilmo,
t Roll, the Other, JB, Twisty mole Ma's friend of
Fat Chick, Hydro, Scott Doobye, t Shaver, Hawk, Zane, Wookie,

(14:09):
man Chester, the Molester, Doorbo, Galen, Horns, car Ride, Rick,
shark By, Razor Lips, and Felcher, to name a few.
Then there was the bottle shop parking lot on Coast
Village Road, where we spent all our time and got
arrested more often than not. These were the years when
we'd sneak out of town, hop in a van, and
end up at Godzilla's in the San Fernando Valley ninety

(14:32):
miles away, scared, bloodied, willing, and smiling. The trips were
well worth the introduction into a movement that was as
close and feeling that was as close in feeling to
cleaning a wolf's cage at seven years old as I'd
known since, and compared to everything else around us, it
was the best thing going on. Sorry for the trip

(14:58):
for the trippings. Yeah, by the way, there's guys like
Scott Dobie Hydro chest of the Molester. I still don't
know his real name. Horns, Yeah, I do, car right, Rick,
I don't. I mean, there's several guys who I names
I never knew. I never knew their real names, and
I knew them my whole childhood. No hands Dan was

(15:20):
Danny and Naz who had no hands. He had just
one little finger. He was born without any hands and
one of the best fighters I ever knew in my life.
And he lives right down the street from where I
just bought a house, and I'm building rebuilding a house.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Very few books put me right there. I'm right there.
I know these guys. Oh yeah, you did I know
these guys, of course you do. I know these guys
tell folks where you grew up that they don't know.
The reference.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
The reference is is I grew up in I was like,
I won't go into a long trajectory, but I was
born in La. I left LA when I was five.
My mom, who was from uh Texas, she was from
Corpus Christi, Texas. She was a very She moved here
when she was nineteen years old. She got on a plane.
I found out later that she was married for like
six months in Texas before she left got that in

(16:12):
olled I guess, or her parents did. Got here, ended
up in Hollywood. The first people she met before he
became famous was Clint Eastwood and Maggie Eastwood, so they
kind of put her under their wings, and she started
running with a group in Hollywood. She started kind of

(16:32):
sleeping with married men, and coming from a Southern Baptist upbringing,
kind of you know, through her this what I call
chaotic vortex of what she flew into here in Hollywood.
And even then and then she ended up taking a
bunch of pills and getting in the car and driving

(16:53):
and just hitting part cars. So the men with the
white coats came. They took her to Camerio State Hospital,
and she was in Amoro State Hospital being evaluated for
three and a half weeks. Clinton Maggie went to go
pick her up, and her reaction was, I'm not I
like it here. I'm in really enjoying myself. And she

(17:14):
had basically taken over kind of like McMurtry and not McMurtry.
Oh right, yeah, in one flow of the Cuckoo's nest
had taken over the whole place, and the doctors were
even marveling because there was a woman in there that
had chopped up her whole family, who hadn't spoken a
word in twelve years, and my mom got her to
say candy. And I'm sure my mom got her to

(17:37):
do that because my mom probably sat next to her
and wouldn't shut the fuck up like my mom talked
way more than I do, and super loud, and the
girl probably just gave it up anyway. She didn't want
to leave, but she loved She was a personality, She
was a character. She raised animals who had have been

(17:57):
illegally taken out of the wild. She would nurse them
back to health and find the most habitable zoo or
re released them. So I grew up around wild wolves
and cougars and all kinds of wild animals. Had to
clean their cages at seven eight years old. We moved
up to Passer Robles when I was five. We lived

(18:17):
up there until I was eleven. We moved down to
Santa Barbara when I was eleven. I was there until
I got kicked out of the house at sixteen, and
then came back down to live my dad's couch. When
I was sixteen. That's the trajectory. Yeah, man, yeah, man, yeah, brother,
you know, budding alcoholic.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah yeah, you started, but you started hitting it really young.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Super I mean yeah, I mean yeah. Eleven, Yeah, I
mean eleven. That's pretty young. It's pretty young when I
look at eleven year olds now like then, I didn't
think it was so young when I look at their
their toddlers. To me in my head, let's talk.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
You were studying Bruce Lyne and you had your own
Bruce Lee moment.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, yeah, did I have that? Huh? Do I have
that in the body. I know a few things about you, brother,
that's fucking funny, right, I did. I had one of
the probably the most embarrassing and Mike kerb whose house
I just read about, who's sober for twenty five years now,
Who's the first guy who should have died? For sure?
One of the worst heroinauts I've ever known in my life.

(19:20):
You know, three gram a day, stealing this jails and
he's sober and he's still one of my closest friends.
But he tells the story of I was nineteen, I
left the hard Rock Cafe on my motorcycle. I had
a soft tail nineteen eighty seven Harley. At that point

(19:40):
that was the beginning of Harley is not the beginning
of my motorcycle riding. I have a motorcycle obsession. I
still do. And I left the hard rock cafe, I
guess with a girl on the back of my bike.
Later I asked, was there a girl on the back
of my bike? When he said, yeah, I saw you
show up because the fucking Harley's so loud out and

(20:00):
all that, I saw you show up. I said, well,
where's the where's the girl? He said, what girl? What
girl do you keep talking about? So I don't know
to this day, and I'm not proud of it. I
don't know where that girl went from A to B right,
I don't know if she got off and she realized
I was drunk or I don't know. I still don't know.
I just forget. It kills me. It's still like have

(20:20):
nightmares about it. So I showed up. I asked him,
I want to go get from drugs or whatever, and
he said, go home. It's too late. It was probably
two in the morning. His mom was drunk in there,
miss her, and there was a whole thing, and there
was a row and we all, and I punched him
and he split his lip, and somebody called the cops

(20:41):
in the in the apartment complex. Anyway, as I was
dealing with him, I heard the cops come in to
the gate and I turned around, and I had been
competing in martial arts, and.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Really I was serious about your martial arts.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
No, that's serious about it. I wasn't just wasn't just
on Bruce Lee movies, but highly influenced by Jim Brislay
movies and blind Way. I was in a blackout drunk.
I don't remember any of this. I don't remember any
of it. So I turned around, Hey, you know, come
over here, turn around, put your hands up. And I
turned around and as Herb was shutting the door, all

(21:17):
he heard was whoa. It was fucking ridiculous. Six cops.
I fought. I had that stricken for my record at
some point, but I don't mind talking about it. I
got I had six felonies in time, oh yeah, real time,

(21:41):
like real time. And two of those cops went to
the hospital because in the booking room they had me hit.
They hog tied me, put me in the van, took
me to the booking room, and so and then they
they was. I wasn't hogtied, but I had the ankle
cuffs and the handcuffs on. And again I don't remember
any of this, but I said to them, I said,

(22:03):
you know you're cutting off you cut off the circulation,
like I can't feel my feet. Just loosen up or
take off the thing. And I think I was really
ingratiating at that point, you know. And finally they took
off the ankle cuffs. In a minute, they took off
the ankle cuffs. I attacked them again, so they kicked
the shit out of me, and I woke up in
my cell naked. They took my clothes at evidence, and

(22:27):
I woke up in my cell naked, not knowing what
had happened. I mean, I was bruised from head to toe. Yeah,
and I didn't know what happened. And then I read
on the slip and said six counts of assault with
a deadly weapon without firearm. I've never said that, by
the way, Oh really, no, Well I've never said that.
I've told stories, but I don't think i've ever said that. Yeah. Yeah,

(22:48):
so that was the reality, and I was looking at times.
So when I got sober the first time, I was
doing it. I was serious about it. But I was
nineteen and I was living that thing. I had found
something in alcohol, even though it never really sat well
with me because you know, you talk about the allergy
and I won't get into that, but you know, I

(23:09):
had a reaction to alcohol right from the beginning. It
just turned me into somebody else. But that's somebody else.
As destructive or as painful as it was, it materialized me,
you know what I mean. It gave me a character.
And I before that, I was just racked with fear.
So if I had to if I had to get

(23:30):
up on stage or not, that I had to back
then if I was confronted, if I had to talk
to more than three people, I remember my knees shaking.
I remember my trade care closing up. So I had
a base fear that was that was paralyzing and debilitating.
So when alcohol entered my system, I was I didn't care.

(23:51):
You know. It was like all those fears kind of
melted away and I was. I suddenly could pontificate on
all kinds of shit. I was. I was alive, I
was whole, I was, you know, which was really strange.
So when I got sober, I was doing it to
stay out of jail, which I for the most part,

(24:12):
I mean, I did some time, but that the truth
of the matter is is like I went back out
very consciously because I felt like something was being kept
for me, a personality was being kept for me, you know,
and and to me, it was not worth it. I

(24:33):
would have rather died alcoholically than been invisible and racked
in fear for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, yeah, good, let's start there. Okay, obviously a big
first big break.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, oh my god, right, yeah, the only thing, Yeah,
I mean, first big break. I had already done like
three hundred readings, you know, and I'd been told I
should look to do something else, that I was too green,
that I didn't have any talent. People knew that my
dad was an actress, so they were like, oh, yeah,

(25:09):
you're brolin Son. Huh do you want to be an actor?
So okay, well, act let's see what you got. Do
you want me to do a monologue or do you
want me to do now that's what I thought, Thanks
for coming in. I mean, I got fucked with. I
got fucked with, and but I was I really wanted
to do well at that point, I wanted to. I
wanted to validate myself in some positive way because it

(25:30):
had all been negative, you know, for as long as
I could remember, you know, whether it was up and
pass robles and dealing with guys up there, just kind
of the gnarly lit ness of Bucolic living, people who
have nothing to do, who just fuck especially because I
was the youngest, I just get fucked with constantly. And
then I moved down here and that was just the

(25:51):
beginning of a you know whatever surf culture of the
Sito rats that was just dehui. Was the same way
in the North Shore Wolf packed with klaws, who I
know really well now is in Kawai bra boys in Maruba.
We were all the same group and we all know
each other now that people who survived it were all
fucking sober. Some version of sober goonies happened like it's

(26:14):
almost like it was an accident. I walked in and
did one of these readings, and I guess Spielberg was there.
I didn't recognize them, but Dick Donner and he just
kept staring at me and he said, you know, you
might be the guy. And I was like, I don't
know what that means okay. And they had me back
six times, I think, wow, five or six times just

(26:37):
to make sure. And I had never acted before, you know,
so they said. And I had made up a you know,
a whole resume and all this kind of like I
had no experience. I sat on paper. I had a
ton of experience in you know, theater that I had
made up in theaters I had made up the internet
Libero International Theater in Italy. Oh yeah, am I talking

(26:59):
about it like all of it's a horseshit. But I
was a good liar, you know so I bet you
are the best actors are the best liars, I think.
I don't know if that's true. I still don't know
if that's true or not. I think maybe it starts
out that way, and then now I perceive it, not

(27:21):
that you're asking, but I perceive it very differently now
where I go, How truthful can I be with myself?
How willing am I to be as absolutely truthful as
I can and somehow implement that into my work? So
I feel like, especially recently, I was just talking with

(27:41):
the guy produced we did and then I'll go back
to good news. But we did knives out the Third
Knives Out, and it was a really great part, and
it's a great fucking movie and a great script. And
it's always and I'm not just saying this, I always
feel like I'm starting out, Like I'll start picking up

(28:02):
acting books and shit, I'll read through them because I
feel like it's I'm starting all over again. And I
don't have any history with this, and I really do
feel like that most every time, not every time, but
most every time. And I said, I want to see
if I can like actually get into this and not
worry about the dialogue. And I want to make the
dialogue cellular. I want to read it one hundred and

(28:23):
fifty thousand fucking times until it's literally there could be
an earthquake and I could do it. And then I
want to see if I can actually reach other you
know what I mean. So the Goonies was the beginning,
and I had seen streetcar named Desire. I had seen
East of Eden, a place in the sun. So there

(28:45):
were performances James Dean and also women, you know, like
Shelley Winter's but Shelley Winter and Montgomery Cliff and James
Dean and Marlon Brando that blew my mind. They just
fucking blew my mind and they still blow my mind today.
So I wanted to be like that. This wasn't like movie.

(29:10):
It wasn't that I the profession that I knew my
father to be a you know, that was that was
as interesting to me at that point. But when I
saw Brando and when I saw James Dean, I go, oh,
this is about people who are obsessed with the human condition,
you know what I mean, and travel through that labyrinth
of an innate curiosity. They just won't go away. And

(29:34):
I identified with that because I was this lost young
kid who didn't understand why I did what I did
and why other people did what they did. And I
was just this and this kind of lost PVC pipe
that I couldn't get out of it.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Where'd you get? But where'd you get your work, ethic
and drive from? Because it's it's really quite something.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
I don't you know, I don't think it's like you
and I said earlier it was like, oh, you work
really hard and I work really hard, and I think
it comes from I mean, I'm making this up right now,
but I think it comes from two differents. I don't
think it comes from this mania of constantly running from
intimacy and all this kind of stuff. I thought it
might be that. I think it's I think something happens

(30:30):
with trauma early on, do you know what I mean,
where you become very resilient. Do you know what I mean?
So I think that I'm constantly playing with this idea
of myself to be resilient but also to be as
vulnerable as possible, do you know what I mean? And

(30:50):
within that, I find that so many moments in my
day and my life challenged that jazz is me up.
So I like being in this exchange with life. It
used to terrify me, and it really inspires me now.

(31:12):
And then I have this other, you know, kind of
concept or feeling that you know, especially as a fifty
seven year old guy just turned fifty seven, and I'm
like time is more precious now, Like I'm more okay
with if I'm doing something I don't want to be doing,
like I probably will just get up and go away,

(31:33):
you know what I mean? I just don't you know,
fifty seven, you go, oh man, you got your whole
You've got half a life to live, and you're like, no,
like thirteen years I'll be seventy and then ten years
from then I'll be eighty, you know, with like dribble
going down my pucking pants, you know what I mean.

(31:54):
So I want to take advantage of the time and
I want to experience, not as much as I can,
but whatever I choose to experience, I want to experience fully.
I want to experience on a cellular level. Like my
kids right now. You know, I have a thirty six
year old, a thirty one year old, a six year old,
and a four year old. That means I have been

(32:16):
raising kids my entire adult life. And there's moments where
I go, can I just fucking read a book? I
just want to read a book. I mean, I wrote
this book from three in the morning to five in
the morning.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
And I know I needed to write the book. And
it wasn't like, oh, you know, I know how I said.
It was like, oh, Instagram and this and that, and
people are like, oh, you should write a book, and
I but the book had to be written. Like when
it decided in me. When it was decided in me
to write a book, then I was going to do it.
You know. And I love the idea of like being

(32:53):
in a cabin overlooking you know, maybe some wild flowers.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
How I love that.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, where's that fine? Where's that fine? Where's That's? Where
I wanted to write my book. But where I wrote
my book was in Jordan, in the in the sands,
two and a half hours outside of Abu Dhabi, where
I had my family with me all the time, and
Buda paste passorobles anywhere I could fucking sit from five

(33:23):
minutes twenty minutes, an hour and a half and get
more words down on paper and then edit them later.
But most of the time the quietest time. And I
have a habit of waking up now like this because
it became such a habit between two thirty and five
in the morning, like a lot of times I'm up.
I don't want to be, but I do utilize the time. Well,

(33:45):
I know you do.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Did I get this right?

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Brother?

Speaker 2 (33:48):
You didn't the book wasn't You didn't sell it from
the gate?

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Right? Oh no, no, No?

Speaker 2 (33:53):
I love that about it. Yeah, tell the audience why
you did that?

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Well, there was one thing. I went to the desert
a friend of mine, Jay Car. I don't know if
you know, but Jay Carson is sober dude, and he uh,
he was like, hey, you should go to this place
and like, I don't know where is that out by
Palm Spring somewhere and you know. And I didn't like it.
I really didn't like. He just didn't fit with me
like it did with him. But I started compiling stories since,

(34:19):
like from some journal writings and some stories I had
written and all that, and I put together about forty
or fifty pages and I sent him out to a
couple of people, and one was somebody at CIA, and
then I chose a couple of LID agents that were
totally had no connection with the movie industry and I
knew through CIA, like and they were super sweet, but

(34:39):
they go, hey, man, love your writing, super good, right,
And I was like, all right, they're full of shit.
So they got And it wasn't that he was full
of shit, because most everybody was saying that. They were like, hey,
the part and I don't even think it's in here,
but the part about Chris Cornell, like you should go
further with that. And I was like, Oh, that's what

(35:00):
they want. They want the names, they wanted this, They
want a typical memoir. I think this is wrongly called
a memoir. I think it's like, you know, memories, anecdotes, paintings,
you know, whatever. How we see memories, we go back
and we see it in pieces and swatches, you know.
And so there was one lady Kimberly Witherspoon at Inkwell Management,

(35:23):
and she was her first client decades before was Anthony Bourdain.
And and she said, yeah, I read your stuff. She's
in New York. I fucking love her so much, man,
And she goes, you can write. I go, thank you.

(35:44):
And she goes, there's a lot of work to do.
And I go okay, and she goes, just keep writing.
I go, are you taking me on? She goes, I'm
not sure yet. I was like, all right, I've already
loved this girl because she's fucking honest. So I loved
the idea of that. And we just started writing, and

(36:04):
I kept not we I started writing. But I'll tell
you this one thing is that back then there were
three parts. There was a part one, there's a part
two that had some shift, and then there was a
part three, which was a letter to my kids and
something that I had already written a while back. And
so I did part one. I started writing part two,

(36:25):
and I had this thing and I told nobody, but
I was like, these are fucking like a lot of
these stories are really depressing, you know, like a lot
of shits happened, and like, you know, I got to
be more like Matthew McConaughey, fucking you know, we got
to be more like you know, I got it. I
got to put some umph in there and bring some
lift and some give people some hope. And and I

(36:46):
didn't tell anybody that. And I started writing, and I
wrote fifty thousand more words. Wow, this was a much
bigger book and probably four hundred and fifty pages at
one point. And she read it over and she called
me and she said, part one is really solid right now,

(37:07):
like really moves. Well, it's clear, it's concise, it's like,
she said, really good job. What the fuck happened with
part two?

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Oh? Wow?

Speaker 1 (37:17):
And I went what? And she said what happened with
part two? What did you do? And I said why
would you say that? And she said it doesn't sound
like you and I literally, like, I know, I started crying.
I started like I got teared up, and I teared up,
and I was like wow, this woman. It goes back
to this very kind of raw thing where I go,

(37:40):
this woman sees me, like really sees me. And she
said and I said yeah, and I told her and
she said, yeah, don't do that, meaning don't not be
you just fucking write what you write. And I said,
do you want me to write the whole thing over her?

(38:00):
And she said yeah? And I said okay, and I
wrote the whole thing over. Good for you, man.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
I don't know if you did this on purpose or not,
but I love the cover. And it's not like a
sexy picture of you on your Harley, like you're like
a bad eighties totally hair band, you know shot. And
I talked about that, it's like a l shot. It's

(38:30):
what it's a robot rob b loow and I talked
about that. He'd go, I do that every time. Right, Yeah,
I want that book, right, you know what I mean?
Did you design the cover?

Speaker 1 (38:40):
I did?

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, it's fucking bitching, man, it's very cool.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
I did. And Joey Feldman did the cover. Oh yeah,
I do not know that he's the one who compiled.
I mean, we we shout out through brother Joey, Joey
Feldman and they're fucking cool man. Yeah, yeah, and I
wanted like I chose the color they had chosen like
a tan. I chose the rust in it. You know,
it was fun.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Let's let's go here. Yeah, you're sick and tired of
being sick and tired. Moment when did you tap out?
How long ago was that?

Speaker 1 (39:12):
This time around? Yeah, this time around November one, twenty thirteen. Yeah,
so eleven and a half years or something like that.
Kind of real. It starts to feel real, you know now,
even though I know it's what happened.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
What was the moment when you said I'm yeah, Because
it's never just that you went to mcgilli cutties and
had a couple few and said I'm ready, I'm out.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
No, But it's also not the worst it's ever been,
you know what I mean. That's what's interesting, is like
this idea of a trajectory that just gets worse and
worse and worse until you hit your quote unquote bottom.
I don't know. I think the bottom was death for me.
So I fluctuated just through different levels of pain and
shame and guilt and all that kind of stuff. So yeah,

(39:59):
I mean it was I live in a place close
in Santa Barbara and it's right down the road. And
that was the worst I ever was. I mean, that
was truly a bottom of all bottoms, and you know,
death was right there and all that. And I don't
like thinking about that. That bothers me. When I passed
that road, I look at that and I go, that

(40:22):
was as dark as it gets. And it doesn't mean
that I stopped. It just morphed into something else, and
which morphed into something else. But you know, I will
say that, and I almost marvel at it because there
were times, you know, we're like doing No Country or
doing American Gangster, and you know I was bad, but

(40:43):
I was on an upward trajectory. You know, it was
somehow pulling it off, which I think is part of
the insidiousness of my disease. It's like, I know, we're
not just going to give you a simple downward trajectory
where it's so obvious. But toward the end, I started
drinking more and more in the morning, and I started drinking.
I had lots of moonshine. I had type I don't

(41:03):
know where I got it, but I was. I had
lots of moonshine, and maybe I just like a man.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
I do got some hobo, I do, I got some
homeo in me. I fucking love that dude.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Even when I was in Tucson, Arizona, I met the
guy who was who came up with the Hobo Times,
I was always fascinated with that.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
I love hobo art.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
I love art. I love the idea of going from
place to place and like sitting around a campfire and
like having one eye open. Poets man. Yeah, seriously, So
what happened was is we had no intention. My grandma
was on her deathbed in the hospital and Thousand Oaks,
we were in Venice. My my girlfriend at the time

(41:43):
or the girl that yeah, my girlfriend at the time
was her grandfather had just had a minor stroke in Georgia,
so she was going to have to fly to him
the next day. And it was Halloween night and we said,
let's just go out. So we found these iridescent onesies.
We had nothing on underneath them, so we had our
little schlangy whatever you could sort of see and the

(42:04):
VJ and we're riding bikes down Venice boardwalk and I
don't know, everybody must have gone to West Hollywood or something,
because it was nobody in Venice, so I don't know
where the fuck everybody went in Venice. I was like,
where is everybody? It's amazing sunset going down. We went
almost to Marina Delray and then we started to come
back watching this incredible sunset that lasted forever. And then

(42:26):
we went by I think the Venice Ale House and
I was like, do you before you leave, do you
want to get a beer? And that's that's where it starts.
So you have a beer and then you end up
having five, and then once you have five beers, you
have to go to O'Brien's. And that's when O'Brien's was opening.
O'Brien's was my bar because I had been kicked out.

(42:46):
I'd been eighty six out of every bar on Main Street,
you know, Finn mccool's, I was out, what does that place,
Nick's or whatever it was. I'd been eighty six out
of all those places. But O'Brien's loved me, you know.
I'd get up on the bar, drop my pants, I'd
do whatever i'd do. And we went there and then
she had to go to the airport. I was supposed

(43:08):
to drive her to the airport. We took the bicycles
back to our house in Venice, and she said, obviously
you can't drive me, but don't leave. So she took
a cab to the airport to go to her grandfather.
I said, where am I going to go? You know,
it's eleven o'clock at night, So I come here.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
I'm home.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
I mean. She wasn't in the cab for sixty seconds
and I was already out. And there was a hit
and run at a very minor one, but at Dell Taco,
I got in a bar fight at O'Brien's. I went
back to O'Brien's. Anyway, I woke up on the sidewalk

(43:46):
in front of my because I couldn't figure out how
to get my house because I had like basically wet
brain at that point, which had happened many, many, many
many times. So I woke up on the sidewalk that
next morning, probably at six, I didn't know where my
truck was, got myself in the apartment, fell back to sleep.
Was supposed to pick up my brother and take them

(44:08):
to where my grandmother was. I missed that moment. My
brother took the public bus down from Ohai to Thousand
Oaks I woke up. When I woke up, got my
tried to figure out where my truck was, went to O'Brien's,
figured out where it was, got it, went to A
thousand Oaks, and I walked into the room where my
grandmother was, where the rest of my extended family was.

(44:30):
I walked in. I was all scratched up, I was dirty.
I hadn't taken a shower or anything. I walked in.
They all put their heads down, and my grandmother lifted
her head up and she turned ninety nine years old,
and she looked at me, and she was so happy
to see me, and she just smiled, and something happened.
I said, that's it. And really what happened was in
my mind, I thought, how dare me? This woman who

(44:54):
doesn't have a problem with alcohol, has gone through ninety
nine years of life on life life's terms, and I
have everything, every opportunity in the palm of my hands,
and I'm shitting on all of them.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Mmm.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
So I'm done. Wow, when I was done? And you
haven't had a drink since, not how to drink since?

Speaker 2 (45:15):
Fuck? And did you go and treatments? Did it on
your own?

Speaker 1 (45:19):
I didn't go in treatment because I started to look
at treatments, and I knew in the back of my head,
in the front of my head, very consciously, I knew
I would I would fuck myself. I would, I would.
I knew the vocabulary so well that I would bullshit
myself right back into a drink. And I knew it.

(45:41):
And it didn't matter where I went. I don't care
how hard ass you were, because I went to a
lot of hard ass places. I was in Prescott House
in Prescott and Prescott, Arizona for seven and a half months.
I don't give a fuck, you know, if I don't.
If I want to do something, I'm gonna do it,
especially you. So it gives me the you know, it
gives me the incentive to have a great work ethic.
But if I'm on a destructive path, you know, fuck

(46:03):
your whole life up and your whole thing in your worlds,
you know what I mean. It's like this angry kind
of thing. So I called a friend of mine, Jordan,
and he said, hey, do you remember that guy that
we that you met a long time ago? I introduced you.
Told me his name is Mike pitch Itally, and I
was like, fuck that piece of shit. And I was like,

(46:28):
I had had a dinner with pitch itally and I
left that dinner thinking, I don't know if I've ever
disliked a human being as much as that human being.
And we were both still out and even we were
supposed to go and he knows the story, but we
were supposed to go out. I think we were asked
to go to Indonesia. At some point, I said, who's going,

(46:50):
pitch Taly's going. I said, no, no, that's I have
no interest. I have no interest. And he said, you know,
Mike Pitchkelly's sober now and he went to this place
it was really cool and you should talk to him.
And I was like, yeah, I don't think so. Anyway,
I eventually called him and I talked to a different
human being. I talked to a different human being. And
who he's become now is mind blowing to me. You know,

(47:12):
he has two kids now, spend a lot of time together.
I love the guy like a brother, you know, I'm
just he's one of the greatest human beings ever. And
talk about what this program, you know, what the program
can do to a human being, and he's the prime
example of it. A great power of example, So I

(47:33):
called him and he said he had gone to this
place called the Hoffman Institute. And I was like, what's that?
And I called the Hoffman Institute and I said, hey,
I'd like to come to your place, and I have
six days sober or five days sober. They go, we
don't take anybody with less than thirty days, and we
don't deal with sobriety. We don't deal with so I
somehow I figured out a way to get them to

(47:56):
let me in, and I got in there, and I
still talk to all those people. Do you really all
of them? Ohow? I still was a part of your story, man. Yeah,
And it was a very very special time.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
What was a big takeaway from Hoffman?

Speaker 1 (48:12):
I just I think, you know, they had a lot
of tools and stuff like that. You know, you can
kind of but there was some spiritual aspect to Hoffman
where I whatever concept of God that I have materialized
at that moment. And I had spent so much time
praying or meditating or this, or talking in fucking old

(48:32):
English or doing everything I could to get oh thou here,
I sit before thou, and you know, and none of
it really worked. It was all in my head. There
wasn't and I always felt that there was something there
and I still don't know what it is, but there's
something godly on a spiritual plane that I feel like

(48:55):
I connect with in a major way. I could cry
when I say it. Yeah, that in a major way
that wants me to be the best person that I
can be, no matter what. And it allows me to
embrace discomforts that I celebrate in embracing now used to

(49:16):
scare the shit out of me and I would run
from before.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Can you give me an example one?

Speaker 1 (49:20):
I just you know, a perfect example is and I
know it's a trend now and I've been reading it
for a long time, or the Stoics. You know, if
you read the Stoics and you go, it's all about that.
Whether it's Nero who used to go and you know
he was the emperor and yet he used to go
and dress like a pauper and go out into the
street for two or three weeks and live off whatever

(49:42):
he could beg for, you know, a couple of bites
of bread today and truly like starve himself and become
the thing that he was representing. And for me, like
from an actor's point of view, you goes, oh, yeah,
that's soir, Daniel de Lewis. From a human point of view,
you go, I love that human being. I love that
human being that just that challenged himself outside of the

(50:05):
comfort that he was awarded in order to identify with
the with the with the base level human being. And
I get off on that ship. I don't know what.
I get super emotional about it. I don't I don't
know why. I don't know, because when people are brave
enough to put themselves out there, and people survive whatever

(50:26):
their scenarios are, to me, what it comes down to
is like, look, man, we're all in this together. And
if you're not able to rely on your fellow man,
especially in this day and age, and if you can't
rely on a neighbor, and if we're all fucking extremist enemies,
what's the point. What's the point if you can't share

(50:49):
this gift that we've been given. So I'm very kind
of at war with it. I remember my dad said
that at one point, he said, I remember when you
went to it. He meant for work, He said, I
remember when you went to war. And I basically just
read every book and I put myself in every scenario
that you that scared me or I wanted to stay

(51:09):
away from it. I just said, I'm just I'm either
gonna die doing this, but I know that this is
what I have to do because I'm either slow or
I don't know what the deal is. And I feel
the same way about about community.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Now, Yeah, yeah, I know I do. That's fucking beautiful.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Man. Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Did you ever get close to relapse in the last
eleven plus years?

Speaker 1 (51:32):
No?

Speaker 2 (51:33):
No, it was gone.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
I don't. I you know. No, it's a funny question.
It's a funny question because I want to have a story.
I know. I mean, what is relapsing? I don't. I
don't like I go back out and use. That's not
going to happen.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Why is it not gonna happen?

Speaker 1 (51:52):
I don't want to? Why don't you want to? This
is way better? Why? What's better about it? Everything? Tell me?
Everything in that all the things that I was searching
for when I was using, that I found in this
false creation through alcohol and drugs is realized. Now do
you know what I mean? Fuck? I do. I just

(52:13):
have to work at it. The other one is a lazy,
fucking you pick up a drink, you go to a bar,
you have a few drinks, you become the person that
you want to be, even though, by the way, it's
totally different than what you think it is, because when
I look at drunks now, I go, oh, man, you're
saying you're gonna hate yourself in the morning because you're
saying all the things you shouldn't say. You're acting tough,

(52:37):
you're doing all these things that feel powerful to you
right now, and yet it's all stemming from you have
no power. You haven't earned it. It's like someone being
given a shitload of money. It's like, oh man, you're
in business, you're business school, and then you're starting this
thing and you somehow got involved in this you know,

(53:00):
a startup company, and now you're a triple billionaire. It's
like the worst fucking thing that can happen. And then
you're going to spend the rest because you haven't earned it.
You have to earn. To me, I have to earn shit.
And I feel like I've earned my sobriety because my
and I've said it a million times, but my whole
thing in sobriety has been is my responsibility to make

(53:23):
today better than my greatest romance of what drinking was
bought up. That's it. It's it. So it's not up
to God. It's not up to God. God provided me
with the platform, but it's up to me to do
the work. And if I don't do the work, that's
my problem. You know. Oh I feel victimized. Oh that

(53:45):
person took that job away from me. I don't know
what it means later. So every every quote unquote shitty
thing that happens Jazz is me up now because I go, oh,
it's an opportunity. There's a lesson coming. And it doesn't
mean that I don't get angry at stuff, doesn't mean
that I don't get irritated at stuff. But I see

(54:06):
life in a very different way now. I go, oh,
there's a humbling company. You know, I'm gonna get slapped soon.
I'm gonna get woken up. I feel like I'm more
humble and more available to learn now and learning more
now than I ever have. And I'm like, Okay, that

(54:26):
takes eleven and a half years. I mean, you got
thirty eight years of sobriety. I got eleven and a
half years of sobriety. Book, what's going to happen? In
thirty years. I mean, that's nineteen years from now I'll
be I'm seventy five. You can't fucking wait where you go.
Oh so just take a walk. That's all I'm supposed

(54:47):
to do. Whatever it is, whatever it is, it's all
interesting to me now, and I have it to look
forward to to. Why do I have to deal with
myself for another day. I don't want to do that.
I don't want to feel no power. I don't want

(55:10):
to feel so much fear. I don't want to feel.
You know, when you see a little kid and you're like, hey,
go ask them go get a fork for us, and
they go, what, No, They go, okay over there, and
you have to go, hey, it's going to be okay,
and I know you feel fear, and it's okay. Just

(55:30):
go ask for the fork, and that's what you know,
that's what they do, happily give you the fork and
all that. But what if I trip on the way there?
I get it. If you fall down, it's embarrassing. Then
you get up and it's fine, you know, it's okay.
I see that in my kids sometimes they have all
these worries. I don't know if it comes from me
if it's in them innately. But those are all the

(55:50):
things that I worried about. What if I look like
an idiot? What if I come across as being stupid?
So what so? What? Ultimately right?

Speaker 2 (56:03):
So what so what? You're an incredible father, You love
a very deep place. Man. Let's talk about the importance
of any generational trauma. Okay, what are you teaching your children.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
How to be open? And how do you do that
by being a power of example? Amen, and having a
good partner, and having a good partner and having a
united front. I know shit that you've been through. You
know shit that I've been through. And it's not avoiding it.
It's it's trying to it's trying to cultivate in my

(56:48):
children enough of a sense of self and resilience and
self reliance, not in the negative sense, but in the
positive sense to be able to confront things that you
and I weren't in a position to confront because we
didn't have enough of a sense of self, or we
were too young, and we didn't have the protection of others.

(57:12):
I'm definitely there to protect, but I also am very
aware that I have you know, I talk about this sometimes.
I used to have it really really bad. But now
it comes and it goes, and I have images in
a nanosecond, a whole scenario of like a zoatrop You
know what a zoatrop is, so is zoatrop of images

(57:37):
of the worst case scenario you can imagine happening to
my kids, and it happens all of a sudden. My
older kids used to say when they were younger, and
I go, oh Jesus, and they go, oh, you had
an image, and everybody kind of knew what it was.
And I never talked about what it was. I said,
I have these images, but I wouldn't ever say what
they were. I would, you know. And now it doesn't

(57:58):
happen as much because maybe I feel like I'm actually
present in my ability to protect, but they still happen.
I still have these things because I think it's because
when I grew up, you know, I grew up in
a very self absorbed family, so there was no protection.

(58:20):
And I remember I have a younger brother, and I
always you know, I remember looking at my parents and thinking, well,
you people don't know what you're fucking doing. You're lost.
So I got him, like I'll take care of him.
When I was eight or nine, and my parents actually talk.
My dad talks about that now. He was like, Oh,
you were so protective of your brother, and you never

(58:42):
thought we were looking after him. I said, well, you
weren't really, you know ultimately, so I think I have
that protective thing. But I try to keep that in
mind because I don't want to overcompensate, because I think
that's just as bad. And like, I can't let them
do anything. I can't let them this. I let them fall,
I let them try. I let them have the experiences

(59:05):
that they need on an individual basis to grow that confidence.
I try.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
It's a nice Valentine's you wrote to all your family.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
That was beautiful. That was beautiful, man, I felt that.
You know, those things just come on a whim. I
don't sit there and work on those things.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
I just I think it's what makes you such a
great actor. Brother. But this deep capacity for love, that's
what I've discovered.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
Where did that happen? I don't know, Huh, I don't know.
I think I mean and I I mean, I really
truly feel this way. I go, I'm getting closer. And again,
I'm not a religious person, you know, I like churches,
My daughter's name is Chapel. I like Chapels, but I'm

(59:55):
not particularly religious. But I I think I'm getting closer
and closer. And this is what I'd like to think.
I'm getting closer and closer of what God initially intended
of me. It's just before all the shit got in
the way, and I created a lot of that shit myself.
I think that my parents had something to do with it,
And yet I don't blame my parents. I think my

(01:00:17):
parents were just who they were and had kids. You know,
you talk about generational trauma and how far it goes back,
and you know, reliving all this shit that's kind of
stuck in our bones, and I go, I don't know
if I'm a massive believer in that up until recently,
because even moving to Santa Barbara because of all, you know,

(01:00:38):
I've lost a lot of friends. I've lost thirty six friends,
and so in that time that was very encapsulated. The
one place when we lived in la and we knew
we wanted to move out, and I go, yeah, but
Santa Barbara's off limits. It's off limits, like I'm never
going back to Santa Barbara. Right, And seventeen years ago

(01:01:03):
there was a moment with my ex wife that we
looked in Santa Barbara. She was like, we should look
up there, and we went and looked in Santa Barbara
and we talked about we found a house and we
were like, well, maybe this house. And I didn't really
have any money, and it was kind of her doing.
And in the process of possibly moving up there, I
contracted Bell's palsy. Right, so half of my face just

(01:01:25):
kind of fell off my skull and it was a
severe case of it, and I didn't know if I
was going to get my face back or not or whatever.
So that was built on the stress that I felt
about moving back to Santa Barbara. I got my face back.
I ended up doing w with Oliver Stone and he
pushed the movie back and all this kind of stuff.
It has to be you. Seventeen years later, at a

(01:01:48):
frustration of us constantly saying we wanted to move and
where we're going to go to the East Coast, We're
going to go to Europe? Where are we going to go?
And I took out my phone and I zilloed Santa
Barbara and the first house that came up, I go, wow,
that's a really cool house, and I called a friend
of mine from Santa Barbara, and I said, will you
show us this house? And I went up there and
we walked on the property and it was immediately obvious

(01:02:10):
this place was like all broken down. It was Joe
Walsh's old house. I loved that idea, and I said,
I just walked on the property and both of us said,
this is it, Like it's undeniable. During that process, I
contracted Myles Bell's policy again. So whenever I think that

(01:02:32):
things aren't trapped in your body, and I would go, yeah,
free through this, prow through that, Like, I get it.
But it's a little dramatic for me. Now I'm a
believer because I contracted going back to a very specific
place in a very specific time in my head. I
stressed myself up out so dramatically that I ended up

(01:02:55):
contracting Bell's palsy twice. Wow, in the pursuit of it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
That reminds me of the great book on trauma, The
Body Keeps a Score.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
I've never read it. Yeah, it's great title, right, Yeah,
it's an amazing type. It's amazing title.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
But what, Josh, what do you have to work extra
hard on from not kicking your ass? And throwing you
off your game.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
I don't know what what do you mean by my game?

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Staying so focused, staying in the light, staying in the frequency.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
I get thrown off my game all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
What's the one that really you gotta work extra harded
like not letting. This is called the dark forces, the
dark energy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
It happened today. I was down here. I have an
idea for a film that I think could be really good.
That there's a dearth of a certain type of person
that is non existent today, or is there's a couple
of actors that represent it. I could say who they are,
but I won't. And and I go, this fits in

(01:03:54):
this storyline, a storyline that was very popular in the
seventies that I think we could recreate now that be
really good. So I was down here meeting a bunch
of producers, a lot of good producers, really good producers.
And I didn't I didn't have a fleshed out storyline.
I didn't want to, but I started to feel like

(01:04:15):
I hadn't done enough work. So and I took the
wrong computer down here, So I left the whole storyline
up in Santa Barbara. So I had the wrong fucking computer,
so I'm having to do it for memory. And then
my wife called and she said, what do you think
about this fireplace? On my way to this thing? And

(01:04:37):
I can't fucking find the parking lot. It's in Beverly Hills.
I haven't been to Beverly Hills in like ten years.
I hate Beverly Hills. And I'm like trying to figure
out how to get in the parking lot and I'm
looking around and I don't know where I am. And
she's saying, should we put stone on the thing or
like the hearth I got? And I'm explaining to her
what I think would be best, and she's not understanding,

(01:05:00):
and she's drawing it and she's saying, I'll send it
to you, and I'm trying to look at my phone. Anyway,
I just got stressed out. I got stressed out because
I felt less than a version of less than. I
wasn't going to own up. I'm meeting these top people
and I'm gonna come across like a fucking dope.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
That's the truth, right, how'd you resenter yourself?

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Let me think I got off the phone with my
wife in a huff. I couldn't find the elevators to go.
I was stuck in the parking lot and I started
laughing and I said, okay, so you're way off Camber

(01:05:45):
right now. It's not just your wife. It's not the
finding it, it's not the leaving the thing. Like, you're
way off and how do you I don't know, there's
like a I wouldn't have called it a recentering, but
how do you find your center? And just accepting that
you're off and it's all going to be okay. I'm

(01:06:07):
not I'm not you know, I'm not solving Firma's last
theorem right now. I'm not curing cancer right now. I'm
just living my day. I'm filling my day with things
that I find interesting and if it doesn't work out,
it's going to be okay, right, yeah, good for you man.

(01:06:30):
Yeah that's a version of it. But like you know, again,
I could have prayed, I could have this, I could
have that, And sometimes that comes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Up to and sometimes just laughing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Good. Sometimes that's the thing is when I take it
all too seriously. It's I take my parenting very seriously.
I take friendships very seriously. So it's either you know,
but when I when I get on myself. It's just
not a good place for me to be. It's like, again,

(01:07:00):
my sponsors say this, like there's I have one sponsor
who you know. I write amen at the end of
my lists. I don't know where it came from, but
it just came and I started doing that. Maybe I'll
change it. I don't know. I have a sponsor at
the end of his list is something that I talked
to him about and he writes it at the end
of his list, and he says, it's not about me anymore.

(01:07:21):
And I love that, and I learned something from him
when he started writing that, even though it came from me.
It's that's a theme that comes up again and again
and again. It's not about me anymore. Ever, I'm ever ever. Literally, Yeah,
it's like, no matter what I do or self importance,
that I'm imagining myself in best case scenario in that

(01:07:45):
is that I am a power of example for other people,
not in any kind of arrogant way, that you can
confront things and prevail. I set it to a woman
who'd gotten sober. She's in her sixties, and she had
she really like within three years of her sobriety, she
found out she had a brain tumor. She had to

(01:08:07):
have that operated on. Her husband got cancer. He's in
the middle of chemo. The chemo's working. The fire came
right up to their house and obviously smoked the shit
out of their house, but it didn't burn it down.
They were so happy. She was so happy. She had
all her mother's heirlooms and all this stuff. And then
her house just got robbed yesterday and all that stuff

(01:08:28):
was taken. And I left her a message. She said,
I don't feel safe down here. I said, come up
and stay with us, and all that and there in
their seventies and eighties and her sixties and eighties, and
I and I said this thing. And I don't know
why I said it, but I said, you're the one.
You're the chosen one. You're the one who's supposed to

(01:08:50):
be going through this in order to show other people
that a human being can go through it, that they'll
they'll confront they'll be confronted with whatever obstacles they're confronted with,
but you will be the human example that it's possible.
So it's almost like looking at it, whether it's a
fallacy or not looking at it in a way of like, Wow,

(01:09:12):
this sucks. I get it, I acknowledge it. But it's
also a gift being in sobriety and going through hardships
like you would as a parent. I'm going to show
you that going through stuff is possible, beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
One of the things I love about you is you're
always given back, You always being of service. I think
it's just raised like a couple million dollars, right. Why
is service this is a big component of your life? Why
is that so important to you?

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
Service in a certain way is important to me because
my ego can get in a way, do you know
what I mean? And that's okay sometimes I guess, But
you know, when you really do something in order to
bring a smile to somebody's face, just to bring a
smile to somebody's face, it's like I challenge myself in

(01:10:10):
that way. Do I really care about humanity? Or am
I doing this for me to make myself feel like
a hero? And I like the challenge, So I try
to challenge myself as much as possible. So if I'm
being of service, often I'm challenging that thing as much
as possible. So it's selfish ultimately to challenge myself in

(01:10:32):
being in service as much as possible, because I want
to see if I'm the real deal or not, you know,
And I really like the human exchange. I really enjoy it.
It moves me. It moves when people are seen. Probably

(01:10:52):
you talk about generational shit, probably because I felt when
I was a kid that I wasn't I talk about materializing,
you know, it's invisible. I remember thinking that about obesity.
I have somebody in my family that deals with obesity,
and I couldn't understand why they didn't have the incentive
to lose the weight until I paralleled it with alcoholic

(01:11:14):
problems and I go, oh, it's it's what people talk about.
Hey man, you should lose weight, aymen, or therefore you exist.
Well if I lose the weight, what are they going
to talk about if I don't feel like I have
a sense of self? And I went, oh, you know
what I mean big time? So yeah, being of service

(01:11:36):
is a is a is a big thing for me
because I think, like I said, selfishly, I think ultimately
I'm a you know, not a selfish person because I
think there's a part of me that really loves connecting,
you know what I mean. And it's a maybe that's it.

(01:11:56):
It's a great way to connect. It's a great way
to connect with people. I like connecting with people in
the rawest way possible, Like even this. We have cameras,
we have all this stuff, but ultimately there's moments in
the interview where it's like all that stuff doesn't exist.
And what I'll leave with is something that will well

(01:12:16):
up in me as I drive away, or as I tomorrow,
as I think about it, or and I go you
know what, whether that's a podcast or not, it doesn't
fucking matter to me. I just got a nutrient. There
was some nectar in that that's going to enhance my life,
and then it's up to me to be able to
give it away and however that manifests. It's a good thing.

(01:12:39):
I know it's a good thing. So put yourself out
there and do it. That's why it just suddenly hit
me when I heard your voice memo. It tickled me
so much that I wanted to do it now.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
And I learned when somebody says let's do it now,
someonere like you, you fucking do it now.

Speaker 1 (01:12:59):
Right you I'll disappear, huh. Otherwise I mean it's I mean, yes,
I want to do it. Now because I'm open. I'm
not that I'm open to doing it. I'm open to you.
I can feel myself open up, and I go, this
is the best time to do it because I can
feel myself open up. But I also know on a
very practical level that I am very busy and that

(01:13:20):
you know, even coming down here, it's like, Hey, I'd
like to do this face to face. I go, like,
when when am I going to do that? I don't
know how I can. You know, Sobriety taught me to
call you back and leave you a message really, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
all right, let's go on this, buddy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
A lot of people recovery listening to the show. Yeah, good,
A lot of people a struggling. Yeah, what's the message?
What do you want to tell them?

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
Wow? You know, I've seen the trajectory of getting sober
in a billion different ways. There's a guy that I
know in New York that I remember. I met him
a meeting and he said the last drink he had
was two bananas and a beer. And I thought I'd
never heard of anything so disgusting in my life. And

(01:14:07):
I had to know the guy, and I became friends
with him and he's called me since, completely out of
his mind, saying the shittiest things you can possibly say.
And I got a call from him and he's got
thirty three days today, and I was very emotional and
I was so happy for him. I wasn't so pissed
and he fucking called me and called me a cocksucker

(01:14:28):
into this and that I was happy that he got
thirty three days. And you know, it's like, we have
the gift. In my mind, we have the gift, this crazy, fucking,
totally absurd gift of a life. If you have an out,

(01:14:49):
take advantage of the out, and you get to live
two lives in one. We beat all the way the
system set up. We beat it. We get to experience
that's what it's like to live crazy. This bars drinking,
all these crazy stories and all that, but that ends.
It all ends in the same way in misery. Experience

(01:15:13):
the other side of it, and you get to live
two lives, and you get to end the life not
in shame and guilt and spiraling and hurting yourself and
other people. So give yourself a chance. Went on. It's
a decision. It's a decision, you know, to me, quitting

(01:15:35):
drinking is just the tip tip of the iceberg. You
have to quit drinking in order to get with this offers,
and what it offers is to me a very inspired,
very energized, electric existence that you couldn't even imagine beforehand.

(01:16:01):
So when you say before, when you said go back
and you know, have you ever gotten close to relapse?
I don't even know how to respond to that. And
I don't feel like I'm far away from it. I
feel like relapse relapse. Literally, if I wanted to drink
by the way I would, I would, I know me.

(01:16:22):
So it is up to me. So I say, if
you could get away with a drink with no consequences,
would you do it? No? Because if I felt that way,
I would just drink. It's right, I know me. So
I have cultivated my life in a way where a

(01:16:47):
drink sounds about as fucking awful as eating shit. I
don't want to eat anybody's turn.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Amen.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
So that's how I feel about it. I like this
life as it's being laid out right now, and it
has nothing to do with success, and it has nothing
to do with any of that. I could I could
just as easily complain about life and having to fucking
wake up at six in the morning with kids and
have to make the lunch and have to make the breakfast,
and then they don't want to go to school, and
then I have to convince them to go to school,

(01:17:18):
and then I have to pick them up at twelve
forty five, and I have to pick them up at
two o'clock and I get and then it's all about them,
and they will not stop talking. They literally won't stop talking.
If I even start to talk to my wife. Da
da da da da da da da da dah. I
could see all that as a negative, but I don't.
I don't. It's uh, it's all better than what was.

(01:17:44):
And I remind myself that often.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
I love you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
I love you too, man.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
It's it's a real blessing having you on.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Well, it's uh, it's an honor being here.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
It's an honor. And I do love you and I
appreciate you. And whether we help somebody or not, you
helped me today.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
And you helped me. I'm always a better man in
your company.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
Thanks godspeed, brother, god speed.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
The Sino Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People and twenty
eighth av Our lead producer is Keith Carlick, Our executive
producer is Lindsay Hoffman, Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank
you so much for listening. We'll see you next week.