The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett XX
[0] I read that you were practically living on Diet Coke, booze, and nitrous.
[1] Not Diet Coke, a diet of cocaine.
[2] Steve -O!
[3] The jackass superstar.
[4] He's survived his trademark wild stunts, along with some personal struggles.
[5] It is of paramount importance that I find separation between me and the persona of Steve -O.
[6] Why?
[7] We have to go back to the beginning of my journey.
[8] I didn't get attention from my parents.
[9] My dad was a businessman.
[10] And my mom suffered from alcoholism.
[11] The father would praise you for stunts, diving headfirst, for baseballs.
[12] And he'd give one dollar.
[13] I don't think you have to be Sigmund Freud to imagine that had something to do with coming an attention for.
[14] That was when I started doing dangerous stunts.
[15] I'm Stevo, and this is the fish hook.
[16] Why stunts?
[17] Growing up, I felt defective.
[18] And the thought was, I wasn't going to live very long.
[19] So I was lashing out at death, taunting it.
[20] But I lost my mom.
[21] in 2003 and that traumatized me more than anything.
[22] I was out of control, broadcasting my downward spiral to 200 influential people in real time.
[23] You were manhandled into a psych ward.
[24] Yeah.
[25] This was going to be my legacy, having miserably failed at life.
[26] And the toughest thing is I wanted to make my mom proud.
[27] Stephen Gilchrist Glover, aka Steveo.
[28] Honesty.
[29] Honesty saved but the man that sits in front of me today isn't stevo it is stephen gilchrist glover which is a man you've probably never met before but once you meet stephen gilchrist glover you'll undoubtedly understand stevo that guy that we grew up with on our screens doing those crazy jackass stunts that behind the scenes struggled with a deep discomfort of being in his own skin depression drug addiction, existential panic, an obsession with attention, crippling grief.
[30] And most surprisingly and paradoxically of all, a deep, deep fear of death.
[31] It absolutely doesn't appear to make sense.
[32] But once you listen to this conversation, if you listen closely, you'll understand exactly why that's driving him.
[33] This conversation will make you laugh.
[34] It will inspire you, it will motivate you, it will challenge you, it will make you feel understood.
[35] and it will teach you what it takes and what it means to live a good life, including the role that romantic love has played in Stivo finally living a good life.
[36] And for me, it reaffirms to me once again that in order to live that good life, in order to find that good life, we need to surrender, stop fighting life.
[37] And we need to be honest.
[38] And once we are, we might just find all of the things that we're looking for.
[39] You're going to love this one.
[40] Stephen All right You've lived a anomalous life The man that sits before me today is an anomaly in many respects The professional path you've walked Is extraordinary to say the least In order to understand you What do I need to understand About your earliest context To understand who you are And why you walked the path you did in your life What's the first sort of domino that I need to understand?
[41] I would point to my lineage.
[42] My mom's side of the family is like the whole family tree, every leaf on the tree suffered from alcoholism, some form of addiction.
[43] And then at the same time very personable, charismatic individuals, which is very alcoholic and a lot of deviants.
[44] Then my dad's side of the family is super academic.
[45] There's a lot of theologians, clergymen.
[46] And everybody's got at least like a master's degree or a PhD or, you know, highly decorated academia.
[47] And my dad broke the mold by becoming a businessman.
[48] So I just kind of think that I'm a little bit of a hybrid of both in that I definitely went towards deviance and suffered from alcoholism.
[49] but I had this rocket engine on it from my dad's side of the family.
[50] And as I've grown older, I think my, I kind of manifest my dad's side more than my mom's side.
[51] Before we start recording, I said that one of the things that really surprised me, we're sat in London now, was to learn that you were born in London back in 1974.
[52] Yeah, born in Wimbledon, which makes me British.
[53] my mother was born in Canada, which makes me Canadian, and my father was born in America, which makes me American.
[54] I'm what you call triple national.
[55] Wow.
[56] And I hold three valid passports.
[57] I'm very jealous.
[58] It's cool.
[59] Like having the keys to the world in many respects.
[60] How did that impact you, though?
[61] Because you told me that you were born here.
[62] Your first words were in Portuguese, in Brazil.
[63] Then you're in Venezuela, then Canada, then USA.
[64] As a young child, that's figuring out the world and figuring out where he belongs and making friends.
[65] How does that sort of destabilization impact you in hindsight?
[66] I don't think you have to be Sigmund Freud to imagine that that had something to do with me becoming an attention whore.
[67] And I think that it's actually exacerbated by the fact that when I moved to Brazil at the age of six months, I moved to Brazil because my father became the president of Pepsi Cola in all of Brazil.
[68] And it was just kind of living it up.
[69] I think that's the best way to describe it.
[70] And I didn't get much attention from my parents.
[71] I was actually raised by live -in maids, which is why I spoke my first words in Portuguese.
[72] So I think I was lacking for some attention.
[73] from my parents and I think that that has something to do plus the instability and and always being the new kid in school it was I never stayed one place for more than a couple years um so yeah I uh I I point to that for why I became such an attention horror the the context that you were you raised in your mother's at home your dad's very very busy.
[74] Very successful businessman by all accounts.
[75] Yeah, not just busy, but traveling.
[76] My dad was consistently gone.
[77] I would argue that he was gone more than he was home.
[78] And mom was drunk a lot.
[79] So I had not just lacking attention, but lacking supervision a lot of the time, too.
[80] In 2023, we've learned a lot about addiction and alcoholism and those.
[81] kinds of things, but I imagine, I mean, I wasn't alive then, but back in 1974, people didn't understand that behavior as clearly as they do now.
[82] Did you understand your mother's behavior when you were young?
[83] Did you understand her relationship with alcohol was an unhealthy thing or an addiction?
[84] I think so, yeah.
[85] I think so because I remember she would have these, these binges drinking, where it wouldn't be the case that my mom would get drunk at night and then wake up and have a hangover and then get drunk again the next night.
[86] It was more of a case where she would stay drunk for days or weeks on end.
[87] You how old, sorry.
[88] Oh, like it got really pretty crazy, I would say.
[89] when I was about eight, certainly when I was nine, it was, it was terrible.
[90] And whenever my mom would sober up from one of her binges, she would swear that she was never going to drink again.
[91] And invariably, she would.
[92] And I say this because I think I really, really understood the concept of the disease of alcoholism very well because when I would come home from school and find that my mom was drinking, I would say to her, mommy said you were never going to do this again.
[93] And she would explain to me that this time it was going to be different.
[94] This time she was only going to have a couple.
[95] And I remember knowing that that was not the case.
[96] And that's kind of the reality of alcoholism.
[97] is that the alcoholic, once they start drinking, they cannot stop.
[98] They've lost control.
[99] And it's a characteristic of alcoholics, the idea that they, the illusion that one day they're going to control and enjoy their drinking.
[100] And they pursue this illusion into the gates of insanity or death.
[101] That's how it's described.
[102] And I understood that.
[103] So I knew if mom had one drink, I knew that all bets were off for days or weeks.
[104] You know, you talked about lineage.
[105] Yeah, the family line.
[106] Yeah.
[107] What is that then?
[108] Is that a predisposition?
[109] Is that a genetic predisposition in your viewer?
[110] Is that a generational trauma?
[111] You know, have you ever figured out what causes that?
[112] I understand there to be a genetic component to the alcoholism.
[113] I don't know that it really matters as much, like why one becomes an alcoholic.
[114] But certainly, as I said, on my mom's side of the family, it never skipped a generation.
[115] I mean, you got everybody.
[116] And then sanity of it.
[117] I mean, one could really describe it as a mental illness.
[118] I mean, they do say it's a disease that's centered in the mind.
[119] For me to see an experience what I did as a child, like just how awful it got.
[120] And then for me to just pick up a drink is so insane.
[121] I mean, if anybody should have known better, it should have been me. And I remember at the time, like 16 years old, when I started drinking, right?
[122] I just convinced myself that what would make me different is that I was going to enjoy it.
[123] I was going to party.
[124] And it's just insanity.
[125] That speaks to the nature of the addiction and the disease, though, because people that are outside of that situation might see it as self -destructive.
[126] But clearly, you know, clearly it can't be that.
[127] It's clearly something else because you saw how destructive.
[128] it was right and yet it's still through no choice you made to no intention you made it managed to to find you later in life do what your father in this context is he aware that your mother's has this disease of addiction with alcohol um mom would really do her best to get her act together by the time dad got home from his business trips um and with very little little success, I would say.
[129] When dad would get back, mom would describe that she was ill. And dad would believe it a lot of the time.
[130] I think dad, I mean, yeah, he knew.
[131] But the extent of it and how naive he was to believe that mom just wasn't feeling well.
[132] I don't know.
[133] I mean, we would describe it as rose -colored glasses.
[134] I don't know.
[135] And perhaps dad was just so focused on his stuff that, I mean, I don't even know.
[136] It would be crazy to not know.
[137] But somehow I believe that my dad was particularly naive or gullible.
[138] I'm not sure.
[139] But sometimes I think men have a predisposed.
[140] position to avoid conflict yeah and to opt for an easy life right um i think that that that's probably fair too but man it's um it makes me really sad that uh that that i lost my mom yeah i lost my mom in in 2003 um november of 2003 and um i just like i just like i I think had we both been in recovery, I don't think anybody from my mom's side of the family ever managed to achieve long -term sobriety.
[141] I think I'm the first.
[142] And I just fantasize about what it would be like to, from my mom and I to have both gotten, you know, gotten it.
[143] Well, like what our relationship would be like.
[144] She would get such a kick out of it.
[145] I think that she would have gotten such a kick out of me being successful.
[146] And she didn't get to see it, you know.
[147] She never, she never seen.
[148] Well, the thing.
[149] Because Jackass had just started to move at that point, hadn't it?
[150] Well, the thing was that her last five years, she was terribly disabled both physically and mentally because, In 1998, she suffered an aneurysm, which, yeah, it rendered her very, very disabled.
[151] So the last five years, she didn't, she had a really rough last five years.
[152] And that traumatized me more than anything.
[153] She developed bed sores.
[154] She cried in pain for her last five years.
[155] It was the most upsetting, by far the most traumatized I've ever been by anything, was the situation that my mom was in for her last five years.
[156] And it's all because of this thing, this alcoholism.
[157] And had, again, like, had she been in recovery, had that not happened, had, like, we, I just, again, I fantasized about what our relationship might be like today.
[158] But yeah, that started us off on a bummer.
[159] Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting context, though, specifically this, you know, you said the thing about attention and seeking attention from, in a variety of different ways, because you were destabilized in terms of your early schooling life, your father's, Not present.
[160] I read that you'd said that you wanted your father's approval, and as a child, your father would praise you for physical stunts, such as diving headfirst for baseballs or doing push -ups for your fathers and his friends.
[161] I would do 100 push -ups in a row for his buddies, and he'd give me, like, $1.
[162] And that, everybody got a kick out of that.
[163] I love doing it.
[164] and I don't think they were terribly impressive push -ups because there's a lot.
[165] But yeah, I was a little bit of a performer at my dad's behest.
[166] I think there's this thing called Love Languages.
[167] Have you ever seen it before?
[168] Have you ever done the Love Languages testing?
[169] No. It's this thing you do online and I think it's pretty telling.
[170] I'm not into like pseudo bullshit, whatever, but I think it's pretty telling.
[171] And it basic, you answer these like 30, 40 questions and it tells you the language of love that you have.
[172] So some people are words of affirmation.
[173] That's how they kind of show and receive love.
[174] Some people are physical touch.
[175] Some people are little acts of service.
[176] Some people are gifts, for example.
[177] And it was making me, when I was reading that in your book, I was thinking about how like that can become a love language for us.
[178] And it's funny because then I skip to this moment later in your story where you had a heartbreak.
[179] And the way that you responded to the heartbreak to try and get attention was by doing stunts.
[180] And I just saw this connection there.
[181] And I thought, you know, it's interesting.
[182] Some of our love languages can be, like, stunts or other forms of, like, validation.
[183] Uh -huh.
[184] It's an interesting take on it.
[185] I remember at the point when I had the heartbreak, and that was when I really started doing dangerous stunts, it was less for, well, yeah, it was for attention.
[186] And I wanted this, this, this.
[187] this girl who had dumped me to be worried that I would die.
[188] Like, I mean, it's crazy.
[189] But yeah, I was like, I was jumping off rooftops into pools and, you know, climbing off of like just huge balconies and stuff.
[190] And sending her the videos or just posting them where she's doing it.
[191] At the time, there was no such thing as sending videos without going to the post office.
[192] But yeah, I would send her in mail videos from the postops.
[193] I would mail them to her like once a year.
[194] And the videos genuinely did get ratter and ratter.
[195] Yeah, each new installment, it was, yeah, it was crazy.
[196] If I'd asked you when you were a young man and your teenagers, what are you going to be when you grow up?
[197] What would you have responded?
[198] Ah, man. The first.
[199] actual thought I had for a career to pursue was one in advertising.
[200] My father had won a video camera in a golf tournament, and I stole it from his closet and began videotaping my skateboarding with my buddies.
[201] And I learned how to edit by plugging these video cassette recorders together, and I would hit play on one and record on the other to just record the good bits.
[202] And it was crude editing, not sophisticated.
[203] But I fell in love with the process.
[204] And clearly I wasn't that great at skateboarding.
[205] So I just thought there's something about this capturing video and then editing it to, I mean, create presentations.
[206] ultimately to manipulate the video to create influence, you know, there was just something really magical and powerful about that.
[207] And I thought that that would be a great career for me. And so I went off to the University of Miami to pursue that, but I just had trouble making it to class.
[208] So I graduating from university was not in the cards and I knew I still loved the video camera and manipulating images to sway people one way or the other and I decided that since I wasn't that great at skateboarding that I would do crazy stunts and so I literally dropped out of university in 1993 to pursue a career as a crazy famous stuntman and there was no precedent at the time like everybody who i explained that plan to legitimately felt sorry for me like what a tragic loser i i seemed to be and they weren't wrong for the first uh three years after i left the university of miami i was genuinely homeless i was more of a couch surfer than, you know, a guy living on the streets.
[209] But yeah, I had no home, man. And I was not doing well.
[210] There's so many things.
[211] I want to ask this question because I just really want to hear it in your own words, which is like, and I've tried to maybe piece it together using some connected dots, but why stunts?
[212] I have a theory that the human condition is one of a real catch -22.
[213] We've got one instinct which is to survive and one guarantee, which is we won't survive.
[214] And I view the human experience largely as an exercise to come to terms with our mortality, to wrap our heads around it, to come to peace with it.
[215] And I view the different ways that people do that you know there's there's reproduction we have children so then I think that eases people's mind about their mortality because they have a legacy living on with their children that they won't really be dead then of course people turn to religion because they think everything's going to be great when they go to heaven and then there's people who leave stuff behind to outlive them, you know, like cavemen, scrawling stick figures on the cave.
[216] It seems that they were just, like I described, really upset about their mortality and leaving this art on the cave walls to outlive them.
[217] Because I had failed in university the way I did, I mean, I failed every which way that you can.
[218] And every attempt that I had ever had to be employed ended in disaster.
[219] I was fired from literally every job that I ever had.
[220] So not being able to make it through school or keep a job, I felt absolutely just not qualified to navigate the world.
[221] I believed that I was going to fail at life, like badly.
[222] And, and, and, and, and, quickly and um i think that this idea that that i would that i believe that i was just going to fail at life and die very young i think that it heightened my my mortality issues because even though you know i was i was young but like man i think i was somehow i'm angry at the idea of death and and my theory is that i was uh i was lashing out at death by by climbing off of balconies and and just dangling from my hands off like 12 stories and then letting go and dropping onto the balcony below like that was totally life -threatening especially how intoxicated i was while doing that and um you know like like i said i wanted that girl who dumped me to think i was going to die like there was this this this idea of mortality was was very woven into all of uh the art and so i think that i was i was upset about mortality and and i'm lashing out at it i was mocking death, taunting it.
[223] Why?
[224] You?
[225] Because that is, I understand at a certain level, we all probably have that relationship with our mortality, but you seem to, more than anyone I've ever spoken to, have had a more close and adverse relationship with the concept of mortality, the concept of death.
[226] Like, you seem to, the way that I'd word it plainly is, like, you seem to have the biggest problem with death than anyone I've met.
[227] All right.
[228] Why?
[229] I think about it.
[230] I've always thought about it.
[231] Since you're young.
[232] I'd say so.
[233] Yeah, I would absolutely say that I'd seem to recall being quite young.
[234] I wouldn't know an age, but quite young.
[235] And being in the bathtub, just for some reason I was thinking about it's going to be the year 2000.
[236] And like we weren't really anywhere near the year 2000.
[237] but just kind of doing math in my head trying to calculate how old I would be at the turn of the millennium and I came to 25 I'll be 25 years old and the thought was I'll never live that long no I'll never make it that long that and again I don't know how old I was but I was definitely a child when I had that thought.
[238] And the older I got, the more convinced I was that I wasn't going to live very long.
[239] And perhaps, you know, that's, you know, another manifestation of my alcoholism.
[240] But I think that, I think that really, to describe alcohol.
[241] alcoholism there's there's a like I felt defective you know I felt like there was just something wrong with me that things weren't going to work you know and I think that that that to some extent is a characteristic of alcoholism for a lot of alcoholics feel like just uncomfortable in your own skin they describe it as restless irritable and discontented um defective is a word that really resonates with me does that does that ever subside oh it's a tough one because um i don't think so i mean to an extent yeah i'm i'm definitely better with all that now like what but at the same time it doesn't go away i think that it improves and you know fluctuates but um what doesn't go away is this this default setting i have that everything's not going to be okay you know i live in this perpetual state of of terrible anxiety and stress that just things are not going to be okay and i've got to just hurry up and frantically work and hustle to try to make it so everything will be okay I'm not surprised to hear that because it is the story I've heard over and over and over and over and over again sat here.
[242] Okay, yeah, okay, good.
[243] And it surprises me because before I started doing this podcast and having these conversations, I assumed that, you know, something, you know, have a certain upbringing childhood, you're programmed in a certain way, you go to therapy, and it's fixed.
[244] Yeah.
[245] And it's actually been, I've asked the question purely because I've never heard anyone say anything other than what you've said.
[246] Right.
[247] So, you know, and I think it's actually helpful because it helps people know that they're not, their efforts to heal in whatever context that they've tried to heal doesn't make them inadequate.
[248] It makes them very much human that, you know, the way that we're programmed and hardwired because of whatever reasons, you know, it is, it is, it is not something that is easy or in many cases possible just to therapy away or to prescription away.
[249] And I think that makes people a lot of people feel better.
[250] And what's crazy, too, is that I think, and I'm fascinated that you say this is something they've heard many times.
[251] I've never not heard it.
[252] Right.
[253] And I would also guess that for all of the successful people that you've spoken with, that they would describe having been much more at peace, much more serenity, much more happiness.
[254] before they were successful.
[255] Yeah.
[256] And it's so counterintuitive to imagine that that's the case.
[257] But there's one saying that I think really explains it to a degree, which is that this is the saying, a man who has nothing only has to worry about his next meal.
[258] But a man who has everything, worries about his last meal yes and that that messes me up man that messes me up big time because if you're just focused on the next meal then you're in the moment life's you know pretty pretty simple it's not too much of a task to accomplish finding your next meal but once you've got your next meal covered and then it's like all right and then I've saved up some money I'm good my next meals are set for the next year and but then now you're thinking how long am I set for and once you start thinking how long am I set for then then life gets really scary when because you're not in the moment and your future tripping and everything isn't going to be okay and then and and what's even crazier is that I understand that there's been studies about financial security and and it's people who have upwards of $10 million net worth who find themselves feeling considerably more financially insecure than anybody has less, the more money you have, the more financially insecure you feel.
[259] The study that I read about this, it says that they interviewed people all the way up the wealth income spectrum, and they asked them the question, how much money, how happy are you out of 10?
[260] And then they asked them the second question, which is how much money would you need to be 10 out of 10 happy?
[261] And all the way up the wealth spectrum, people said three times currently what they have now.
[262] So millionaires said they needed 3 million.
[263] People with 10 million said they needed 30 to be a 10 out of 10 happiness.
[264] And people with 100K said they needed 300K, which speaks to this sort of like hedonic endless treadmill and increasing anxiety.
[265] Right.
[266] And also studies are pretty clear that happiness will increase up to...
[267] Like a baseline, it's like 75K, household.
[268] Yeah, I think that that number is just going up with inflation.
[269] I understood it to be like 60 ,000, 60 ,000 a year.
[270] And then you've got all of your needs met.
[271] And then after that, more money doesn't really equate to more happiness.
[272] And also to your point about the panic of like losing it, I think that's a, an issue for people that came from nothing predominantly.
[273] So if you've always had this financial security growing up and you're, you know, you were, I don't know, extremely wealthy and you've been wealthy, I think people tend to have less of a fear of going, of losing it all.
[274] And they also never seem to have the guilt.
[275] I sit here with people and they speak to this success guilt they have.
[276] I hear that a lot.
[277] And it's typically people that have felt sleeping on a sofa that have the kind of, even when they become successful, or they feel like they don't deserve it to some degree.
[278] And I read that a little bit in your story in your book.
[279] Right.
[280] It's interesting because I grew up very privileged.
[281] You know, my father didn't grow up with privilege.
[282] As I said, he broke the mold becoming a business man. He became like my mom didn't marry a rich guy.
[283] My mom married a motivated guy who became quite wealthy.
[284] I had privilege guilt when I was a kid I was I was like quite ashamed of how wealthy my parents were and I don't understand why that is but um in whose eyes in like I was I was self -conscious about about how my peers viewed me at school As I grew older, the homes that we lived in each move to each, you know, represented a bigger house.
[285] You know, it became kind of a little bit obnoxious, but by the end, when I was attending high school here in London, I went to the American school in St. John's Wood, and I lived during directly across the street from Regents Park on Prince Albert Road in this, I mean, it was a just gaudy, obnoxiously huge house.
[286] And I never wanted kids from school to see it.
[287] So I, you know, we would have like overnight.
[288] So when you're a kid, I wouldn't have kids spend the night at my house.
[289] I was always overnight at someone else's house.
[290] And for me to ride my skateboard to school, you know, took a certain amount of time.
[291] And if I would oversleep, I would ride with my dad.
[292] My dad was chauffeur driven to work.
[293] And he would be reading his newspaper in the back seat.
[294] And whenever I overslept and I had to ride with my dad, the chauffeur would pull up to the school.
[295] And as I got out of the car, I would hug the chauffeur.
[296] yeah like to try to create the impression that I was just embarrassed my dad was in the back seat like being chauvered around I don't know what that is wanting to fit in it's every I was the opposite okay in every respect no one came to my house because it was like it was the windows were smashed and the grass was six foot high so everything you described was me but the opposite for opposite reasons like I would I would pray that the traffic lights near our school would stop turn red which meant that I could get out of this beat -up van we drove in as far from school as possible.
[297] Yeah.
[298] Whereas you're hugging the show for.
[299] Right.
[300] It's really interesting, too.
[301] Like, I went to a super privileged school, too.
[302] I mean, like, I attended school with the son of the American ambassador to the UK.
[303] Like, my best friend was this kid Abdullah.
[304] His father was, like, a crazy, like, oil tycoon.
[305] And when I, when I, when I was in, for me, fifth and sixth grade, I was in London, England at that time, too.
[306] Same school.
[307] And my father was, I'm not even quite sure what his job position was, but worked for Del Monte, the canned fruits.
[308] And he had to, you know, like the, all the, there was a pineapple factory in Kenya.
[309] Dad had to go visit this pineapple factory.
[310] I want to see maybe once a year.
[311] And so he planned his trip to the pineapple factory in Kenya to coincide with our spring break, the one week off from school so that he could take the family on safari.
[312] And I have this crazy memory of coming out the airport in Nairobi being ushered into some chauffeur -driven car.
[313] I always remembered it as a stretch limo.
[314] My dad says, no, we didn't have it.
[315] But whatever.
[316] Ushered into a chauffeur -driven car out of the airport.
[317] And sitting in the back of this car and these, it was my first time seeing poverty, like real poverty.
[318] These people were, were clawing at the windows, begging.
[319] and I'm just sitting in this car and just thinking what did I ever do to deserve to be like I'm not a good kid you know like I'm just always in trouble like I don't do like again feeling defective you know like and it was I really wasn't a good kid I mean I was always in trouble everything was just a disaster with me and here I am inside the car that's being clawed at by these people who are barely clothed you know and just clearly desperate and um that like that was a moment where i felt genuinely guilty you know i had a privilege guilt you know and that's that's worse than success guilt because you know and again i did everything wrong i was always in trouble got terrible grades and my sister who is three and a half years older than me she did it every everything right.
[320] Got stray days.
[321] Just did everything perfect.
[322] Somehow, along the way, like my sister went into a low -earning career.
[323] She was a school teacher, which is notoriously underpaid, especially for how important of a job that is.
[324] It became a single mom with special needs kid and low earning and like it's kind of struggles you know like like life is hard for my sister and and like somehow me that the guy just did everything wrong and then goes on to have this stupid career and everything just works out great for me so when you said success guilt.
[325] I feel that.
[326] I feel like what why you know why did everything work out great for me and my sisters have a tough time and I struggle with that too.
[327] I actually um I uh I I have it I've always called it kind of survivor's guilt but but yeah success guilt same thing.
[328] You your mother had a brain aneurysm in 98 you said um jackass the pilot was in 99 yeah a year later yeah you describe how your mother was ill for for roughly five years before she passed away and she was um disabled you're very busy with jackass at that time how do you do you deal did you did you cope with it because it doesn't seem to me that there's any anyone in your life really at that point or any experience that's going to help you deal with the concept of grief and loss right how did you cope with it if you do it um my parents divorced in 1991 i graduated from the american school here in london the american school in london in st john's wood in 1992 i went off to the university of miami um the right around the time when i went to the university of miami my mom moved to Florida as well.
[329] Then on that fateful day of October 10th, 1998, we received word that mom had this brain aneurysm.
[330] My sister and I flew to Florida from New Mexico.
[331] My dad flew to Florida from England.
[332] We all congregated around this crisis with my mom.
[333] At one point, we went to a...
[334] a nearby restaurant just to get a meal.
[335] I went outside to smoke a cigarette.
[336] And my dad came outside and initiated this conversation.
[337] He says, I want to tell you that I feel I've done a disservice to you by not supporting you in this path that you've chosen, my path to be a crazy, famous stuntman.
[338] He said, I chose a path that.
[339] my father you know dad broke the mold becoming a businessman the idea of that was pretty repugnant to his father and and he said that his father had the same conversation you have where you chose something that i would not have chosen for you but you're clearly committed to it and so i just want you to be the best and you know be the happiest and i pledged to support you and i'm thinking man like that's tough because I'm a loser, you know?
[340] Like the whole thing going on with my mom was kind of prevalent, but this side conversation.
[341] Like I just felt like, wow, you know, like now dad supports me. And I didn't feel very, very hopeful, I don't think, at that time.
[342] But it put a lot of wind in my sales.
[343] So the next year, I saw this advert on, television for a show called Real TV where they're saying if you got if you have video home video footage that's crazy and you think that we should have it on our show then call this number and I called the number and sent them my videotape and they wanted it and uh and dad helped me negotiate the the license deal with them and uh and it was meaningful you know this pursuit of becoming a crazy famous stuntman had made my father and I as far apart as you know it really really made us not our relationship suffer and then ultimately it would bring us together and today my dad is 80 years old been retired forever but he's come out of retirement and he's on my payroll He manages like all kinds of business stuff for me, all my insurance stuff.
[344] Like, and, um, it's crazy.
[345] It's insanity that, that, that, just again, what, what drove us so far apart brought us so close together.
[346] And that catalyst moment was your mother's brain aneurysm, really.
[347] It was.
[348] That conversation might not have happened and then.
[349] It, it was.
[350] And now you pointed to when Jack asked toward, I wouldn't just, well, okay, my sister and I both moved from New Mexico to Florida.
[351] To be with your mom.
[352] To be with my mom.
[353] And my sister naturally assumed the role of caregiver for my mom.
[354] And I got this opportunity to go be a circus clown on cruise ships.
[355] And it just made sense for me to do that.
[356] You know, like I think that my overall attitude, particularly, like even going off to work on cruise ships and then with, you know, with jackass, I don't think that I had any level of.
[357] like guilt about it.
[358] I think that my attitude about pursuing my own career and to be, you know, with jackass and everything else, my attitude was that rather than let this aneurysm destroy everything, that I've really strongly wanted to get out there and really make something of myself and that that would be the way to honor my mom more and make my mom proud that way.
[359] People don't often appreciate how difficult it is for everybody around the individual, that's sick.
[360] And again, I've learned that from having this conversation about just how sort of debilitating and difficult it is for everyone around the individual, especially when there are a situation where they become disabled and your mother's situation was, I mean, she, She couldn't move from what I understood.
[361] She wasn't necessarily speaking.
[362] She was wheelchair bound.
[363] She had to be lifted out of bed and into a wheelchair and back.
[364] And could she, she could speak?
[365] She could speak, but it fluctuated how present she was, how aware she was.
[366] One of the more aware moments, I said, Mom, I'm going to have a book written about my life.
[367] and she she said and who's going to write this masterpiece she was making fun of me and it was funny like the last time that my mom ever laughed was I came home with the words of shit and fuck tattooed on my knuckles and mom was in the hospital at that point with the do not resuscitate order on her bed like this was this was the end like it was about a month before she passed and um i i i walked into her hospital room and i just didn't you know it was just a tough situation i didn't and i just said hey ma like check it out and i held up my my knuckles to her and she she looked at it and she said shit fuck shit fuck And then she said, my son is a shit fuck.
[368] And she, like, she laughed.
[369] And it's just the most beautiful, I thought it was just the most beautiful thing.
[370] Like, she's able to laugh.
[371] And, you know, and, yeah, it's tough, man. That whole thing's tough.
[372] And the toughest thing is just imagining.
[373] When I was struggling in the beginning, like prior to her aneurysm.
[374] Like there were times when I'd show her one of my videos.
[375] I said, Ma, check it out.
[376] She says, oh, yeah, that's great.
[377] But like, how is this ever going to, like, earn you anything?
[378] You know, like, she didn't ever seem to be, like, terribly concerned for my safety.
[379] I was showing her videos of, like, jumping off bridges and, like, you know, doing stuff there was like really pretty dangerous and uh appeared to be life threatening and and that never seemed to upset her what what she was upset about was that uh that i i was i didn't have a pot to piss and that she would say you don't have a pot to piss in like how am i supposed to be impressed by this where's this ever going to get you know how is this ever going to she would say show me the money you know show me the money like how is this going to get you the money and um man like given that that was her position on it and I think that that she was um largely concerned with the appearance of things and and um like less she wasn't ever I never got the sense that she was worried for my safety on any level I think that what she was concerned with was how I reflected on her interesting you know like my son's a loser this is a bummer you know she was bummed that i was a loser because that reflected badly on her and um that's just that's what was important to her you know there's nothing wrong with that and um is that why you want her you'd like her to be able to see god yeah man that's the toughest thing to imagine if uh if we if she she had been to rehab many times she was in the program or recovery but she just couldn't hang on to that you know she would always she was just always end up drinking again and um i think that what would what would cause her to relapse was was the you know trauma from the breakup with my dad which is just a vicious cycle because what broke her up with my dad was her drinking and then the trauma from the the divorce would make you know it's a vicious cycle but um had she gotten it had she really really grabbed onto it and not let go and been in recovery and and both of us like she would have just gotten such a kick out of like being on being on the red carpet at a big movie premiere and she would just be letting me have it making fun of me for the dumb shit I was doing in the movies like we'd be laughing so that's one thing my mom had like a sense of humor she had she was cool man she was cool and we would we were related to each other a lot you're you're 29 November the 7th she passes away correct a mixture of emotions I read in your book um in professional idiot page 194 the overwhelming emotion I felt afterward was relief sure yeah she like it this the suffering was over you know it was merciful like there's nothing upsetting about my mom dying it was what was upsetting was the the pain and the suffering that she had endured for the five years leading up to her death do you ever process that we talk a lot about these days about grief and we understand that grief is a thing and i don't think we ever did before do you did you ever process that if i did it was years later in recovery and and digesting the concepts in that book, Conversations with God.
[380] That was when I finally, that was when I just developed the idea that mom wasn't alone, you know, that mom was, she wasn't alone.
[381] She, like, that that was an experience that she had, like, that, that was an had as god and somehow that just that it doesn't change anything but it changes everything alone why why the word alone why was that the concern yeah just because the i mean it's uh like on on a bigger level like mom mom's this one thing you know so there's no such thing as alone Jackass starts taking off, right?
[382] So that's roughly around that time.
[383] Your fame goes through the roof.
[384] Yeah, well, mom's aneurysm was 1998.
[385] I worked on cruise ships for six months of 1999.
[386] I worked in a circus at a flea market for six months in year 2000.
[387] And Jackass came out in October of year 2000.
[388] And then, yeah, everything.
[389] The movie comes out in 2002.
[390] You're 28 years old at that time.
[391] Your mother passes when you're 29 the next year.
[392] These two things have almost happened at similar times.
[393] Your trajectory has started to skyrocket.
[394] Your mother has passed away.
[395] Lots to deal with.
[396] Lots going on.
[397] Fame is this new thing in your life now and attention.
[398] And as you said earlier, like, worrying about the next meal is maybe sometimes a better problem than worrying about the last.
[399] This strikes me as a real different thing.
[400] moment in your life um i i the quote from professional lydia which i read it said by by mid 2007 i was practically living on diet coke booze and nitrous a not diet coke a diet of cocaine oh cocaine fuck i really that's a big difference it was a diet of coke big difference um you were hallucinating and hearing voices Yeah, big time.
[401] It's called psychosis.
[402] And it's a fascinating thing that there are so many different substances one can ingest that might bring about this phenomena of psychosis.
[403] Yet there's so much similarity between the experiences people have.
[404] with it even though they take so many different avenues to get there and that's partially why i believe that psychosis um that there's uh sort of different compartments maybe dimensions and that um we're in our in our human experience we're uh in a distinct compartment and that psychosis happens when you erode the barriers to the other compartments, other dimensions.
[405] And by doing that with chemical substances, we erode the barriers, kind of open ourselves up to energies from other dimensions.
[406] you open yourself up to like all levels of it so you can really let in demons you know like demons being low level of frequency energy and angels like being a higher level and by uh just consuming enough substances i i really believe that you erode the barriers you open yourself up to all these energies and in comes flooding demons and angels and that's how I characterize my experiences with hallucinations.
[407] All that stuff is a demon activity with some angels mixed in.
[408] I was reading about this thing called the rad email list where you sent an email to a lot of people, which I think ultimately sounds like one of the things that brought about an intervention.
[409] Right.
[410] It wasn't one email.
[411] It was more of a stream, a barrage.
[412] I was inundating a list of 200, roughly 200 people, many of them very influential people in the entertainment industry, celebrities and agents and just powerful people of media personalities and I was just inundating these 200 people with emails at all hours around the clock and effectively broadcasting my downward spiral in real time and I would send at times really funny stuff you know at times uh just deeply alarming stuff i was you know i was i was i knew that i how out of control i was in a bit but i but i was just i was rad i mean i i was out of my mind i was out of my mind and i was making that abundantly clear by uh sending video youtube had become a thing YouTube started in 2005.
[413] So 2007, YouTube allowed me to make really disturbing videos and then email the links to 200 people.
[414] If I was a floor on the wall in 2007 in your life, what would I have seen on an average day?
[415] In 2007, I was renting four apartments in one building.
[416] one of them i just demolished the walls and built escape park throughout the whole apartment um with permission from my landlord no not at all no no permission whatsoever and it was just with the the i remember there was like a russian prostitute operation um in the adjacent apartment so they They weren't trying to complain about the noise.
[417] There was a stairwell on the other side, and beneath was the parking garage.
[418] So there were never any complaints for that.
[419] And then a little bit down the hall was, I had a couple of my buddies living there.
[420] One of them was, you know, edited stuff for me, but we very rarely, very rarely.
[421] Well, I mean, he would...
[422] He thinks he works hard.
[423] Yeah, I mean, I had people on salary, and they didn't do too much.
[424] But when I was really out of my mind in these disturbing videos that I wanted to email the links to the rat email, as my editor guy was in charge of that.
[425] So, yeah, I had the office, the skate park apartment, the office apartment.
[426] And then I had an apartment for the assistant.
[427] The assistant really didn't do anything.
[428] um except uh explain to people that she couldn't get a hold of me and change my flights uh when because i would always miss my flights um and then i had my apartment which uh was this is sort of a this is where all the really crazy stuff happened that was that was just my little drug den and I would inhale this nitrous oxide stuff and it would come in these little cartridges that people used to make whipped cream and a box of these nitrous oxide cartridges would have there would be 24 cartridges per box but if you bought a case there would be 25 boxes in the case and I believe that 25 times 24 comes to 600 um and so I would sit down with 600 cartridges of nitrous oxide and just inhale like the the thing that the cartridge goes into this canister correct yeah but I'd have two of them oh so I would you know I would crack one up and fill that and inhale it.
[429] it with my lungs filled with nitrous oxide, I would be busy filling up the next one so that when I exhaled the nitrous from the first, I would then inhale just so I would not breathe.
[430] I wasn't breathing air as like I was breathing.
[431] I was inhaling nitrous oxide to the exclusion of breathing air.
[432] I mean, as much as possible.
[433] And my, my goal.
[434] at all times would be to lose consciousness.
[435] Because if you do that and you hold your breath, you will become unconscious.
[436] And you're kind of twitching and flopping around.
[437] And your lips are all blue.
[438] And then you come back to and it's not healthy.
[439] And I would be doing that.
[440] And I would be doing that for days on end while snorting, cocaine.
[441] So it was on on like the second and particularly on the third day of being awake on a cocaine binge while inhaling nothing but nitrous oxide.
[442] That's when the most profound psychosis with all of the hallucinating would be going on.
[443] You sent out on that rad email at one time suicidal ideation yeah i i i uh i um i mean i was going so crazy in this apartment and um i uh it's very loud and and and um destructive in there and and the the the next department over was a lawyer in his first year of being a lawyer.
[444] So, you know, like, a guy who cared about work and I was just making all kinds of noise at all hours and so he was, he would call the police.
[445] He's kidding, you know, my neighbor, it's insane, you know.
[446] And the more that the police would show up in my apartment, the angry I would get at the lawyer who was calling the police, which is a little bit backwards.
[447] And that was kind of my M .O. Like I would wrong people.
[448] And then I would resent them for their perfectly natural response to being wronged by me. So I would, you know, I would bang on the guys.
[449] I would really antagonize this, this poor lawyer guy.
[450] At one point, it got to the level where pounding on the wall, I actually pounded a hole in the wall.
[451] And I pounded a hole.
[452] On my side, there's the dry wall.
[453] And then in between there's like the fiberglass stuff.
[454] And then there's his side of throat.
[455] I actually, this one night, pounded all the way through his side of the wall too.
[456] So I was actually looking into the apartment, which of course constitutes vandalism.
[457] So when he called the cops this time, the cops showed up, they had no choice but to actually arrest me for vandal.
[458] He said, look, they put a hole in my wall.
[459] So they were here to arrest me. And I was really, really out of it, like having been snorting both cocaine, and ketamine.
[460] So I was super out of it and didn't put it together that I was being arrested and going to jail with a bag of cocaine in my pocket.
[461] I probably could have.
[462] It would make sense that.
[463] And I remember it was funny too because they said that I was barefoot and I had no shirt and they said, well, we have to take you to jail.
[464] We have no choice.
[465] But we will let you go put on a shirt and some shoes.
[466] Which was the perfect.
[467] opportunity for me to go into my apartment and remove the bag of cocaine from my pocket but i didn't do that and i'd said you know fuck a shirt fuck shoes so i went to jail completely barefoot and shirtless with the bag of cocaine in my pocket and um and then when they you know when they process you into jail they search you know your pockets they found the cocaine and they arrested me again so i was now I had a felony cocaine possession charge as well as the vandalism charge.
[468] And this was like pretty well publicized, the fact of the cocaine and the arrest.
[469] And when I was released from the jail, I was in there for like, I want to say like three days because the consensus among anybody who loved me was he's better off in jail.
[470] So there was no concerted effort to bail me out, which was why.
[471] I managed to stay in there for, I believe, about three days.
[472] And then when I finally did get released from the jail after the three days, and I returned to my apartment, there was an eviction notice on the door.
[473] So my response to that was, oh, okay, well, I'm being evicted, and I went into the apartment.
[474] I found more vials of ketamine that I had stashed in there, and I cooked that all up.
[475] and um within a couple hours i was like screaming about god like jumping up and down on a parked car and like dealing with more cops you were you a man handled into a psych ward right like yeah yeah well so i went on this this this prodigious final bender and and uh i was running out of time before i had to get my stuff out of the apartment i was evicted So the email to the rat email list was, hey, I have to have my stuff out of this apartment because I've been evicted.
[476] But before I have to be gone, I want to jump a motorcycle.
[477] I want to ride a motorcycle through the living room and off a ramp and jump it over onto the building next door, which was a very, very small gap.
[478] It's not, it was hardly even a big stunt.
[479] And it was like two and a half stories up.
[480] I think I was on the third floor, but it was really like kind of two and a half.
[481] So maybe like 20, 25 feet.
[482] And I said on the rad email list, and I want to jump the motorcycle onto the roof next door.
[483] And I want to jump out of the bedroom window into a hot tub.
[484] And I just said, so Knoxville, bring.
[485] a camera crew and a hot tub and if you can't do the hot tub at least bring some cardboard boxes but i'm jumping out of the window and i'm jumping you know and if you don't come i'm jumping out of the window anyway i'm going to jump and i'm going to find out how many bones break when i land on the sidewalk 25 feet below i'm ready to die like as i was like promising that i was going to jump out of the window and and break bones on the concrete below and that qualified me for the psychiatric evaluation and they they staged an intervention yeah they staged an intervention yeah i said not so knoxle responded i forget if he responded with all 200 people on copy but uh but i said this i did this on the the rat email list with the 200 people and and um i said uh um if knoxel responded he says okay i'll be there you know i said be here at 10 a m be here at 10 a .m. where I'm going to jump.
[486] But his response was, he says, can we do noon?
[487] What's with the early call times?
[488] Sheesh.
[489] So we agreed on noon.
[490] I don't think he was concerned with the early call times.
[491] I think what he was concerned with was having more time to rally a, you know, a group to really do the intervention.
[492] but but by in that email exchange i i was not scheduling a shoot for you know for jackass as i thought i was actually scheduling my intervention and that's really where your life seems to have started to take a new direction although not linear in any respect well i mean that that that intervention marked uh the beginning of my journey i've been clean and sober since that day Which is...
[493] I mean, the intervention was March 9th.
[494] The intervention was March 9th of 2009.
[495] Oh, sorry, 9th.
[496] Yeah, March 9th of 2008.
[497] And we don't count that as our sobriety date because it's the first day you didn't get loaded is your sobriety date.
[498] So my sobriety date is March 10th of 2008.
[499] Over 14 years sober.
[500] Over 15 now.
[501] Over 15 years sober.
[502] Yeah.
[503] congratulations that's amazing honestly that's incredible it's so incredible and i don't say that to you know to be uh self -important or you know like like douche it's just the most profound gift like ever and i and i believe strongly that you know this conversation began with this dark discussion of alcoholism and how terrible and sad alcoholism is.
[504] However, as upsetting as alcoholism and drug addiction is, it's the only disease where once you treat it, you become a better version of yourself than you were before.
[505] And that's really incredible to me, because any other disease, the best you can hope for is to get back to as healthy as you were before you got sick.
[506] But for us, sober alcoholics and addicts, like, we genuinely become improved versions of ourselves.
[507] And the work you've done since has been incredible.
[508] I mean, you've taken on many professional pursuits.
[509] Your stand -up comedy became a facet of your life in 2013.
[510] 2010.
[511] 2010, okay.
[512] I had the first time I had gotten on stage in a comedy club and performed what I intended to be stand -up comedy was 2006.
[513] How did that go?
[514] I thought it went a lot better than it actually did.
[515] But the first time I ever got on that stage, it wasn't a disaster.
[516] It became a disaster later.
[517] But in 2010, once I'd been, clean and sober for just over two years i i've pursued stand -up comedy in earnest why stand -up comedy i know you've got a big tour coming up in the uk but why stand -up comedy i'm trying to understand the through line between the stunts it's the the through line is just attention -seeking you know um the first time i ever got on stage to perform in a comedy club uh there was it was 2006 I believe it was August of 2006.
[518] And our second jackass movie was to be released a couple months later.
[519] Showed up at this comedy club.
[520] I walked in, had no plan for what I was going to do.
[521] And just observing what was happening on the stage was somebody standing there holding a microphone, just speaking to the audience.
[522] I thought there's no stunt that could possibly be crazier than that, you know, like I'm going to do my, my, my, my, my, my, the craziest stunt that I could possibly do is no stunt at all.
[523] I'm going to stand there and speak into a microphone and try to make the people laugh.
[524] This was genuinely the most terrifying concept.
[525] And I was just wasted enough to decide I'm going to do that.
[526] When it became my turn to, to get on the stage.
[527] I had come up with one joke.
[528] As I got on the stage, there were people, they were aware of me. They were excited to see me. I felt like an excitement.
[529] They were there to have a good time.
[530] They were rooting for me. I mean, of course, like get on the stage on Steve O 'Rad.
[531] I felt loved.
[532] I felt they were rooting for me. They wanted to have a good time.
[533] Terrified.
[534] I got on, I was terrified.
[535] but but uh but it was it was it was man it was uh it was electric dude and um you know I said you know what's up everybody I'm in the mood for a blowjob does anybody want one and and and I got laugh you know like they'd laughed and I just was so happy about that and I couldn't have been on that stage for more than three minutes like I got on and I got on It's got out of there and it was a favorable experience and I decided that this was something I wanted to pursue and you've been pursuing ever since there's a an awesome tour coming up in the UK from June 30th to July 14th I believe called bucket list that's right and and which I'm coming to see oh dude I love that man and make sure that happens so when I started doing stand up in earnest in 2010 um I imagined that I was that I was trying to establish myself as a stand -up comedian and that I was going to forge a career with speaking into a microphone.
[536] And I felt that I felt that I was well equipped to succeed in that endeavor because my life has been so just colorful.
[537] Like the experience that I've had in my life, Like to mine my life experience for material, stand -up comedy, it seemed very doable.
[538] You know, like I've got stuff to talk about.
[539] So I felt that I came in to stand -up comedy, not with just an advantage in that I had an audience, a profile.
[540] But I just had an interesting material to, you know, to mine.
[541] and clearly the world was not eager for the stand -up comedy of stevo you know i think that they're the bar for the stuff that i was known for like to to go from like the the shocking like unbelievable like crazy visual stuff that i'd become known for and then appears speaking into a microphone it seems like a mismatch and expectation yeah like that's always disappointment isn't it right like and maybe this is from my own perception i'm not sure but with all of the self -doubt with all of the um you know negative self -talk i just still persisted and um i wasn't super successful in the because beginning, and like, of course not.
[542] But I was successful enough to get booked by comedy clubs and then be welcome back.
[543] And I would go around this comedy club circuit around the United States.
[544] And I did just well enough to go back around the loop.
[545] And that loop lasted for 11 years in comedy clubs.
[546] And I tirelessly persisted.
[547] I genuinely.
[548] didn't i put in work and i developed this craft of storytelling and and stand up telling jokes along the way i taped two comedy specials the first one was me in a microphone and uh some intermittent stunts i performed on stage throughout the act and as i put together what would become the next comedy special i put together this this new act to tour with it occurred to me that the stories i was telling in this new act had for the most part all happened on camera and i had the idea wow what if for my next comedy special i perform the act but in post production i edit into the special interstitial footage of these stories unfolding I love that so depth to the storytelling oh dude my head exploded I got so excited I couldn't even I couldn't even stand it of wow like I'm gonna have a my next comedy special is going to be multimedia that one I put out myself and then it was time to put together the third show so now I knew that for this third show which is bucket list the bucket list correct that I needed to film all new stuff which would lend itself to all new stand -up material and it had to be crazier than shit it had to be crazier than ever and that's what people will see if they go yeah okay for sure this uh there there were just ideas that came up over the years that were genuinely never supposed to happen on any level, but they were just ideas that I was so fond of because they were crazy things to say.
[549] I can't wait.
[550] The idea was to push things further than Jackass ever could, and there's no way that you do that, and there's not a story to tell.
[551] You know, there's a...
[552] Yeah, you have to say the least.
[553] Like the challenges of, of, making these things happen, it's just there's, it's inherently juicy material for stand -up.
[554] There's just no way around it.
[555] And one step further is that I've worked so hard on developing the ability to be in a healthy relationship with a life partner.
[556] So I was just about to ask you, this was my last question, which was about Lux.
[557] Right.
[558] My fiancé Lux.
[559] And the bucket list show is every bit as much about these ultra high level jackass stunts and how they're conceived and executed.
[560] It's every bit as much about that as the implications of carrying out these bucket list items on my relationship with my fiancé.
[561] What I was actually going to ask you about was specifically kind of the juxtaposition of what's making you successful here seems to me, as a guy that's gotten to relationship, struggled to find a relationship for my own reasons with my childhood, seems to be the antithesis, the very opposite of what it takes to be successful in a relationship, which is like the stability, the, I don't know, the, I don't know, the, the, I don't know, there needs to be a certain stability that I think.
[562] How?
[563] Well, to derive one's self -worth and self -esteem from external validation the way that we do in show business.
[564] Like for me to base my self -worth and self -esteem on how successful I am as successful.
[565] Steve O, it just plainly presents a dark and upsetting future as the spotlight wanes, you know, like the, the, and I can't, and this is something that that became very clear to me 15 years ago when I got sober was that for me to be happy and healthy on any level, it is.
[566] of paramount importance that I find some separation between me and the persona of Steve -O.
[567] And with that kind of ruminating in my mind, and as I, when I got into the stand -up, like I was acting out sexually as much as possible on the road while doing stand -up.
[568] And at that time, I was in my late 30s.
[569] approaching 40 and it just occurred me, man, this is not the road to being happy.
[570] I got to learn if I want to be happy later in life, I need to learn how to have a healthy relationship.
[571] That was a belief that I subscribed to.
[572] And I got to work on learning how to be in a healthy relationship.
[573] And thank God I did because I'm terrified of being a washed up old attention horror that nobody wants to pay attention to anymore and being alone and being alone that sounds like the most terrifying like awful thing and so what does it what does she mean to you looks i mean she you said something earlier that uh that the the design for living in the 12 steps and this is my you know kind of extrapolating on what you said you said that the principles of honesty open and willingness are helpful to all people.
[574] And I'll take that a step further that the design for living outlined in the 12 steps is something that you don't have to be an alcoholic or an addict to benefit from.
[575] But what Lux is as a person is somebody who automatically does that stuff.
[576] She's automatically honest.
[577] you know she's automatically like open willing like she's automatically does the right thing you know where i had to to really really work and train myself to be honest and to do the right thing you know and uh you know she's just automatically it's just automatic to her and and lux's capacity for love is so staggering.
[578] Like her, it's just so natural to her to be loving.
[579] And it blows me away.
[580] We both, like, with animals, we're out of our minds.
[581] We love animals so much.
[582] And, gosh, the way that Lux loves me and the way that she wants me to love her, like, just, no, no, no, whole, like, God, the way that we, like, hold each other, the way that, like, she's, she's, she's taught me to love.
[583] She's, she's increased my capacity to love.
[584] And, and that's, that's the biggest deal, man. It's, it's massive.
[585] Such a beautiful thing.
[586] Stivo, thank you so, Stephen.
[587] Yeah.
[588] Thank you so much.
[589] We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest.
[590] Okay.
[591] And the question that's been left for you is one of the most interesting questions that's ever been left, in fact.
[592] They don't know who they're leaving it for.
[593] Good.
[594] So it's totally sweet.
[595] They said, what can Stephen?
[596] So you've filled in the blank.
[597] No, no, no, no. They literally wrote, what can Stephen?
[598] And they're talking about me. Oh, okay.
[599] They spelled it with your name, with the pH.
[600] They said, what can Stephen, this beautiful man improve about himself?
[601] So that's my quote.
[602] What can I improve about myself?
[603] No, they're asking you to tell me what I can improve about myself.
[604] Because they didn't know you were called Stephen.
[605] So they said, what can Stephen, this beautiful man, improve about himself?
[606] Honesty.
[607] You didn't speak about yourself very much, but one thing that you did say, you seemed to point to the deficiency in your relationship with your girlfriend being that you're so consumed with work.
[608] and that you said something about she wants quality time you can't compensate for your you know all of your energy and time going into your career and that you want to compensate by with material things and and that but that she's no no interest in material things she wants quality time and um i think that uh that you and i both um have you and i both um have this drive, this, this, this hustle, this, this urge to succeed.
[609] And I think that, uh, that both of us would do well to find our success in our relationships.
[610] Every study about, about longevity and health and happiness, 100 % points to relationships as the source of happy, true happiness and true health comes from the quality of our relationships, not the numbers in our bank account, but the quality in our relationships.
[611] So I think that my answer for you is this for me is just that, you know, that we should, put the emphasis on our quality time in our relationships that we do on our hustle.
[612] And it's the reason why I don't is because I think of some of the stuff that I said earlier about like where I came from and being a poor family.
[613] So like my survival innately in me or my validation comes from my work.
[614] So I'm like being pulled by this like insecurity and the shame from my childhood over here like become fucking become everything that you.
[615] you weren't and you know and then on the other hand my sense goes well steve the happiest times in your life the all the studies i've sat here with the guy that did that 95 year old study on um men and found that they live i think it's like 14 years longer if they have a meaningful relationship i know logically but then emotionally and the scar the scar tissue in me goes no you need to validate yourself right i'm being dragged by that still to you know right and hustle but but not in a way that that undermines or detracts from the quality of the relationships.
[616] That's what you're doing.
[617] I mean, like, I mean, yeah, shit, Lux and I have a rule that we were not to be apart for more than two weeks.
[618] I love that.
[619] And we spent two days together over the course of six weeks.
[620] We broke our rule badly.
[621] And that's not cool, man. sucks yeah so um if i wasn't so you know so operating from fear that's the that's the different yeah exactly hustle because you love it not because you're not because you're afraid of the post apocalyptic you know and there's this concept i've been towing with a lot on this podcast between the distinction between being driven and being dragged and sometimes i'm being dragged yeah driven is the like intentional it sounds like you know kind of the intentional hustle with control over the hustle dragged as like fucking fear like if i don't yeah then i'm not enough and right i've taken so much of your time i did thank you so much really really appreciate it a pleasure to meet and i've learned so much incredibly surprising wisdom -filled conversation that grace so many different aspects um i'm so excited to see bucket list i'm sure all of my audience are as well the 13th is the date to be there right hackney empire that's where i'll be i'm looking forward to it i think that we might be able to open up some tickets on the 14th okay um But I don't know and I don't know how many.
[622] I just know that as I sit here now, the show on the 13th just went live.
[623] So that's a whole show that I got to fill.
[624] So link is in the description below to get tickets in the YouTube description and on the audio apps.
[625] It's in the description below.
[626] And I hope to see you guys there.
[627] Thank you so much, Steve.
[628] Thank you, bro.